Thank you both,
Okay, I think I see where my misconception about the term Neutral came from. I thought that the term "Neutral" was a description of the "state" of a conductor in a balanced system, not of the relationship between this common wire and the non-grounded conductors in the system.
I thought of another question while I was reading your responses. Is the neutral wire actually carrying current in different directions at the same time? How does that work?
For example, in a multiwire single phase circuit, when loads are balanced, do neutral currents "cancel" each other out and therefore current is zero? - (How can there be no current flow when this wire is needed for a complete circuit?)
or, do currents actually flow in opposite directions in the neutral at the same time?
-(How can it do that?) Hmmmmm.
