Nguzo Saba & Ma'at- Balance in all things

Greetings Sistas! Hope all is well an blissful in your world as it should be. If it's not make the adjustments to ensure that it is so.

Today's topic is balance. A sisterfriend of mine introduced me to this VERY important concept a few years ago and it has become a type of mantra for me. Indigenous cultures understood balance to be a very real part of life. Most original people believe that good and "bad", light and dark, positive and negative all have a right to exist in the universe; not only do they have a right to exist, but they are essential to the universe.

Let me give you another example. One day in the early spring, you decide to take a walk in the woods. You put on some comfortable clothes and shoe and set out on your journey. The birds are chirping and the breeze brings the freshness of spring. You walk off the path through some fallen leaves and suddenly you feel a horrible pain in your lower leg. When you look down you see a snake and realize that you have been bitten. You will probably go through a range of emotion and feelings. Among these feelings will probably be fear, anger, and confusion.

"Am I going to die? That snake is EVIL! Why did this happen to me? I didn't do anything to that snake. I was just walking along minding my business."

Now, let's be the snake. It's early spring and you've just come above ground from your warm den beneath the earth. You're still feeling a little sluggish and you are SO HUNGRY. You are moving really slowly, because you are low on energy as you haven't eaten in months. You hear something coming toward you. Wow, this animal is big. It might want to eat you! You can't move fast enough to retreat back to your hole so you have to defend yourself or it might kill and eat you! So you strike out. It's the only defense you have.

I realize that many of you will still try to hold on to the tradition of just hating the snake and wanting be the victim. At the end of the day, the snake is not bad or evil. It was defending itself against your big foot that was about the smash it, because you didn't have the knowledge to know how to safely go through the woods in early spring. You should always rustle the leaves with a long stick in front to give anything dangerous time to move out of your way. This is balance. Not being so narcissistic that you think that the world revolves around you. We are a part of a universal and diverse community and the mixture of all of us brings balance to the world.

The Nguzo Saba or Seven Principles are the cornerstone of Kwanzaa, which happens to be my favorite holiday. Please read more about it here. The Seven Principles are:

Unity

Self Determination

Collective Work & Responsibility

Cooperative Economics

Purpose

Creativity

Faith

These are another way to bring balance. If you go to the website you will have see a more in depth explanation. They have a very reparative quality that could literally heal out community if they were followed on a daily basis and applied consistently in our lives.

I gave you the first part. Now, I would ask that you look for the something called The Laws of Ma'at, The Negative Confessions of Ma'at, The 42 Laws of Ma'at, or any other combination of those words. Tell me what you found and what you think of what you found.