Wishing a Happy Birthday to a great example of principle. We can be species of desire, greed, gluttony, fear, convenience, glamor, comfort, vanity, pride, perversion, exploitation, and hate. When we refuse to acknowledge or deny these shadow qualities I think we move further into violent imbalance, as opposed to violent balance. A simple analogy of the balance of violence would be to picture a man angrily striking another man with his fist. This is unbalanced violence. Balanced violence would be a strike to that man's wrist, intercepting the inbound fist, to avoid being pummeled. Non violence has shadow qualities too, self doubt, frailty, hesitation, shame, cowardice, victimization, fright, ignorance, and passivity. I think it has been unhealthy for me to deny my violent nature. I am more hostile when I deny the qualities of my inner warrior. There is a shadow for the warrior and a shadow for the pacifist. It is not a measure of what is good or bad, but a measure of balance.
I'd like to recognize how the little bit that I know about Mandela has demonstrated a good picture of what it is to be violent and yet in balance. It makes little sense to see the violence in destroy hate. It is beautiful and sad for hate. Mandela seems to have a healthy compassion for hate, a respect that gives paradox to the concept of having love for hate. It may be that balanced violence is not to overcome but to untangle misconception.
