As above so below: it’s a great quote for those looking to live authentic lives – it means something different for everyone. For me, a student of nature, it means big theories (opinions) are fantasies unless we can also witness what we say (opinion) in small things too. Here, the picture of BONDI looks wonderful – like a new relationship, new job, new anything – but if you look below, in the sand there is balance, the sand so perfect and bluebottle jelly waiting to sting. Rather than live the upper of fantasy, authenticity would teach that balance is real. Simple, fantasy believes there’s an upper without downer. Authenticity shows that there is alway a balance of upper and downer, wisdom, but the wise person simply focusses on the upside. It’s not positive thinking, no that makes depression, it’s balanced thinking with a choice of focus. Beyond lopsided opinion. Coaching is an essential element of authenticity, staying balanced, centred, calm.

Balanced, Centred, Calm Authenticity in leadership and life

Chris “the Saint” Walker

You can’t give what you haven’t got. If you are balanced, centred and calm, you can give those qualities to all you meet, including at work. If you are not balanced, centred and calm, you give their opposite. People want to be around balanced, centred and calm people. This is also referred to as attraction but sometimes even leadership. It is an important part of self-leadership and may be one of the most important steps in progression.

CENTRED

Living from personal harmony, means to find your centre. To hold that centre no matter whether you are thinking in the head or feeling in the heart, the centre stays strong. That means achieving great inspiration but still having a firm grip on reality, grounded. That centre is never missing. 

For the centred person everything becomes sacred, beautiful, and whole. Whatever he or she is doing, no matter what it is, they focus their mind and take full mindfulness. Nothing is trivial. They will not say, “this is small and this is large.” This is important and this is unimportant, no, for them everything holds the same weight. A self-actualised person, a balanced, centred person, feels in harmony with everything. You can feel it in their touch. The great doctors and healers of our time have been known for the power of their touch, the softness of the disposition and the power of the concentration.

A person who is centred is the same, no matter who they are with, or where they are. They have the same inner quality. When meeting a beggar they are not different from meeting a King. When on stage they are identical to offstage. When alone they are no different then when they are with friends. This is the mark of a person who has uncovered their True Nature; they are centred,
completely natural. There is no need to pretend, there is no act to present. They practice between performances. Falsehood has no place in their life because the centre is the axis around which they live their life. This includes handling discomfort and pain. Can you imagine being centred enough to welcome pain with the same loving kindness as you welcome pleasure? This is real personal harmony.

BALANCED

The second key to personal harmony is that the person remains balanced. Their life is balance. They are never one-sided, they never make a stand, they are never righteous because they understand that everything in this world is built in duality and therefore to stand on one side or the other breeds imbalance. A person who is imbalanced will have significant swings of emotion from infatuation to resentment, elation to depression, and attraction to repulsion. They may overeat and then starve. These same people, imbalanced, find extremes attractive and this is the source of their disharmony. 

Balanced living is neither excess nor deficiency. Neither overeating nor under eating. Never too much, never too little. The result of balanced living is obvious. A balanced person will be at ease. Whatever the situation, their relaxed attitude will not be lost. Unconditionally, the lack of tension will stay. A person who is balanced is always at ease. Even if the death of a loved one comes, and there is grief, they will be at ease: they will receive death as they receive birth. If misery comes they will receive it as they receive joy. Whatever happens it cannot dislodge this person from their place. This relaxed attitude, this ease is a consequence of being balanced.

When the Buddha was dying he asked his followers “why are you weeping? If you would have wept on another day it would have been okay, but this is the last day. Why are you weeping? Do not waste your time in weeping. Treat this day as any other day.”

CALM

The third key to Personal Harmony is the lack of tension. Lack of tension is one of the great witnesses to the self-actualised person. They are at ease, they do not get stressed under any circumstance and take all of life in their stride. Their mood changes for nothing. Nothing disturbs them; nothing dislocates them from their home in their heart, their centeredness. To such a person you cannot add anything. You cannot take anything away, you cannot add anything, they are fulfilled. Their every breath is a fulfilled breath, silent and blissful they need nothing within. This is the ultimate freedom for everything this person will do they will do out of love, kindness and commitment. There is no hunger, no desperation, and no fear.

Buddha said, “I sit in order to be silent, but sometimes this is too easy, so I walk. But when I walk I carry the same silence within me. I sit, and inside it is the same — silent. I walk, the inside and outside are the same — silent” This is the model of a person who has found their True Nature.

We’re not talking here about a partial flowering. The great mystics of our time Jesus, Buddha Mohammed, Abraham, they were in their True Nature – totally actualised. If they had dedicated their lives to music then they would have been great musicians too. But their gift was in Spiritual-actualisation; they were in love in all circumstances. They were not commercial poets, but their words were poetry, they were not musicians but their message was music of the greatest kind. They were not trying to be specialists but were allowing themselves to simply be their True Nature and allow the beauty of their gifts to flow through their being. You can do this too.

BALANCED, CENTRED, CALM

We are not concerned with partial success, or partial growth, we’re concerned with total being. You can be centred, you can be grounded, and you can be balanced – always in the middle without effort. As a result you will be at ease at ease with the universe, at home, in relationship and the many things that follow. You will have desire to contribute from within, from your total contentment. You will feel satisfied and comfortable before you leave for work rather than as a result of it. You will not become happier from a win than a loss. A gentleness will descend over your disposition. 

The joy of life will be fulfilled for you when you live from your True Nature, because you will understand that you are already fulfilled before you act. Then the world simply becomes a playground in which the differing circumstances of your life come and go. You may decide to change location because you don’t like where you are, but this is not in order to make you feel better, inside, you already feel great. Instead it is in order to manifest a different external world out of playful investment, contribution and higher purpose. It is like sitting for dinner with a full stomach. There is no appetite but still sitting at the dinner table is a wonderful way to share time with great friends. 

​PHYSICAL BALANCE, CENTRED, CALM

Personal harmony is not only mental it is also physical. You can tell a happy person because their whole energy is centred in their navel area. That means that they understand the balance and centring techniques of the ancient mysteries. The average person lives on the superficial level of life, out of balance and in their head. Their energy is all above their shoulders or way below their navel. You know it when you meet this energy, you can feel it. When you first notice a person the first place you look at them, is where their energy sits. 

Happiness can never been known on the surface. We may eat sugar or drink alcohol or dance but unless this happiness is felt deeply then in the morning there is no sense of it. The whole of life in all its beautiful diversity can only be known from this place of our True Nature. Living on the surface then only lukewarm life is possible. It’s a great quote that “everybody dies, but not everybody lives.” An inauthentic life is a shallow life. It is lived out of balance where high fluctuations of emotional disturbance permeate every event. One drama to the next. It becomes a daily routine of emotional turbulence of high and low, tension and surrender. This is a very unfulfilling existence although on the surface it may look rich and dramatic. It is shallow and in this heart and mind, there is no rest. For this person their interactions become inauthentic because they have not really lived in their true nature. All they have done is danced up and down all day giving the impression of life. 

Personal harmony leads to an authentic life, which can become invested in an authentic relationship, and anything that is authentic, is beautiful.

Summary.
1. We must separate the inner world from the outer for personal harmony.
2. The inner world cannot be satisfied by dogma, philosophy or materiality.
3. The outer world seeks things in the pursuit of the inner quest of the soul.
4. Nothing of the senses ever satisfied the soul. 
5. Until beauty can be felt it is not harmonious.
6.  Beauty exists in all things, events and people.
7.  Peace of mind, health of the body are the external testaments to personal harmony.
8.  Disharmony is the breakdown between human thought and natural law. The fight can never be won.