Stage 7: Balance When the World Feels Unbalanced

I have been thinking about balance.

Not the serene kind of balance we imagine when everything is calm, the house is clean, the inbox is empty, and everyone is being kind.

I mean balance when the world feels heartbreaking. When cruelty seems loud. When control, fear, and power-over seem to be taking up too much space. When the earth itself feels overheated and unsettled, and our nervous systems are trying to make sense of too much at once.

This is where July brings me in my reflections on the MARI Great Round. July brings us to Stage 7, Balance, also known as Squaring the Circle.

That phrase feels important right now.

Squaring the Circle.

How do we bring the circle of our inner life into the square of the world we actually live in? How do we stay connected to soul, body, intuition, and truth while still functioning in a world that can feel harsh, divided, and unstable?

Stage 7 is a stage of autonomy, stability, consciousness, and independent thought. The ego is more expressed here, not ego as arrogance or self-importance, rather ego as the healthy part of us that can stand in a center and say, “I am here. I can think. I can choose. I can respond.”

That matters, especially now.

There are times when “being” is the medicine. We need to rest, grieve, feel, soften, and let ourselves not know. I believe deeply in that. There are also times when something in us says, “Now I need to do something with what I know.”

Stage 7 carries that movement. We are ready to do, not only be.

Not in a frantic way. Not in the old pattern of overworking, overgiving, or trying to prove our worth. This is a different kind of doing. It is doing that comes from alignment, doing that has roots, doing that remembers the body. It is not just reaction, and it is not collapse.

In the heat of summer, this stage makes sense to me. There is more movement, more energy, more sensuality, more life force. July can stir desire, frustration, courage, exhaustion, pleasure, and longing all at once. We may feel pulled outward into travel, family, work, learning, creativity, and the practical demands of living.

Somewhere inside all of that, a quieter question may arise:

What am I here to live?

Not in a grand, shiny, perfectly branded way. In a real way. What dream still matters? What truth needs more room? What work is mine to do?

Stage 7 is also connected, for me, to the number 7 as the Seeker. The Seeker looks beneath the surface. It wants meaning, wisdom, truth, and spiritual understanding. It studies, questions, listens, analyzes, and senses.

The gift of the Seeker is depth. The challenge is that we can drift too far into the mind. We can analyze the world, read the news, study the patterns, track the danger, and try to make sense of what may not be immediately sensible. The body can get left behind. The heart can get tired. The nervous system can start carrying more than it was meant to hold.

This is one reason I return again and again to mandala making.

The mandala does not fix the world or pretend everything is fine. It gives us a circle when things feel scattered. It gives the hand something to do when the mind is spinning. It gives the soul a way to speak without needing perfect words.

A mandala can hold grief and beauty in the same image. It can hold outrage and tenderness. It can hold the part of us that wants to act, and the part of us that needs to lie down for a while.

This is the kind of balance I am interested in now. Not balance as perfection. Not balance as denial. Balance as the practice of returning to center, to breath, to what is true, and to the next honest step.

A Quiet Seed for What May Come Next

As I continue writing about the MARI stages month by month, I am also beginning to imagine a simple monthly mandala ritual for clarity and integration.

I am not ready to launch it yet. Summer is full, and I will be traveling on and off through September. For now, I am letting the idea take root quietly.

What I imagine is a gentle space to pause, make a mandala, and return to center. A way to gather what we are living, notice what is becoming clear, and let the image help us integrate what words cannot always hold.

It feels like something that may want to grow in its own time.

For July, Stage 7 invites us to consider how we live our dream in a world that can feel deeply unsettled. It asks us to bring inner knowing into outer life, to stay awake without becoming hardened, to care without disappearing, and to act without abandoning ourselves.

Balance is not always stillness.

Sometimes balance is the brave, imperfect practice of staying connected to ourselves while we keep living, loving, creating, and choosing.

Not everything at once.

Just the next true shape.

With warmth,

About the author

Mari Grande is a licensed Creative Arts Therapist, coach, and founder of Creative Healing Integration, Inc.
Through The Mandala Corner and her coaching programs, she helps people reconnect with creativity, clarity, and healing in everyday life.