The balanced mind is fair and just. Thoughts are not biased or extreme but aim through either inner consideration or by means of external debate, to establish as near as possible the mid point that best reflects truth.
It may be trendy in the western world to be ‘non judgmental’ but this phrase is not appropriate in all matters, particularly in our everyday affairs. We are in situations that require our mental assessment and judgment constantly, whether in minor matters, domestic situations, or the workplace where we may hold positions of great social responsibilities. The people in our communities who are expected to exemplify the faculty of mental judgment or discrimination are those in the highest positions of our system of law, our judges. Even our jurors are each examined to establish if they hold any particular bias that may affect their true judgment of people and situations as they attempt to take an overview.
However, there is some confusion in modern terms. The social phrase ‘non judgmental’ may be commonly used to imply liberality and a generous community spirit, one that allows individual freedom. But we should be careful that in our casual use of the term there is no hint that it implies a denial or reduction of the important principles our culture – one of these being the law, the law that is structured to measure and dispense justice and holds the scales as its symbol.
We as individuals require the inner faculty of mental discrimination that allows us to measure and balance out all the diverse and often opposing factors in ideologies and circumstances that can affect our thoughts. We need also to balance our emotional and intellectual regions of our psychological nature. But of prime importance, is the need to maintain the habit of balanced thinking to avoid extremes. A person with a balanced mind is a safe person, just as there is danger in the fanatical.
The mind that seeks beyond the limitations of having an opinion about something, and graduates to having firm knowledge tested by experience, will be most likely to indicate a maturity of thought that demonstrates both firmness of thought and principle, as well as an elasticity that allows further growth.
The balanced mind is a controlled mind, just as a mind that is not under an individual’s control we term ‘unbalanced.’
Sally Janssen’s wonderful book Mental Fitness: A Simple Self-help Guide, offers simple and timely solutions. Read more…
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