"Balance and harmony are neglected today, yet they are the foundations of wisdom. 
Everything is done to excess. 
People are overweight because they eat excessively. 
Joggers neglect aspects of themselves and others because they run excessively. People seem excessively mean. 
They drink too much, smoke too much, carouse too much (or too little), talk too much without content, worry too much. 
There is too much black-or-white thinking.
All or none. 
This is not the way of nature.
 "In nature there is balance. Beasts destroy in small amounts. 
Ecological systems are not eliminated en masse. Plants are consumed and then grow. The sources of sustenance are dipped into and then replenished. The flower is enjoyed, the fruit eaten, the root preserved. "Humankind has not learned about balance, let alone practiced it. 

It is guided by greed and ambition, steered by fear. In this way it will eventually destroy itself. But nature will survive; at least the plants will. 
"Happiness is really rooted in simplicity. 
The tendency to excessiveness in thought and action diminishes happiness. Excesses cloud basic values. Religious people tell us that happiness comes from filling one's heart with love, from faith and hope, from practicing charity and dispensing kindness.
 They actually are right. 
Given those attitudes, balance and harmony usually follow. These are collectively a state of being. In these days, they are an altered state of consciousness. 
It is as if humankind were not in its natural state while on earth. It must reach an altered state in order to fill itself with love and charity and simplicity, to feel purity, to rid itself of its chronic fearfulness. 

We all "How is it that you say all are equal, yet the obvious contradictions smack us in the face: inequalities in virtues, temperances, finances, rights, abilities and talents, intelligence, mathematical aptitude, ad infinitum?" The answer was a metaphor. 
"It is as if a large diamond were to be found inside each person. Picture a diamond a foot long. 
The diamond has a thousand facets, but the facets are covered with dirt and tar. It is the job of the soul to clean each facet until the surface is brilliant and can reflect a rainbow of colors. 
"Now, some have cleaned many facets and gleam brightly. Others have only managed to clean a few; they do not sparkle so. Yet, underneath the dirt, each person possesses within his or her breast a brilliant diamond with a thousand gleaming facets. 
The diamond is perfect, not one flaw. The only differences among people are the number of facets-cleaned. But each diamond is the same, and each is perfect. 
"When all the facets are cleaned and shining forth in a spectrum of lights, the diamond returns to the pure energy that it was originally. 

The lights remain. It is as if the process that goes into making the diamond is reversed, all that pressure released. The pure energy exists in the rainbow of lights, and the lights possess consciousness and knowledge.

 -MANY LIVES, MANY MASTERS BRIAN L. WEISS, M.D.