Equanimity

Good morning everyone. It is about 6:30 AM on Monday morning. February has barreled into the Northeast US bringing with it an abundance of white, fluffy cotton candy falling from the sky. I peeked outside when I got up and noticed how the streetlights illuminated the crystalline flakes as they danced and swirled with the tempo of the wind. There was a vacillation between the peacefulness of softly falling snow in one moment, and an image of fury and frenzy as the wind gusts interrupted the serenity of the scene.

It got me thinking about the word equanimity and what that means for us in the dance of life, we all must learn. The definition of equanimity is mental or emotional stability or composure, especially under tension or strain.

Let us think of ourselves as the sky. The sky is always the sky, right? It looks different and changes appearance and displays some “attitude” or “hostility”, it you will, with the weather that passes through the sky. Yet beneath the grey clouds, torrential rain, blustery wind and sometimes treacherous storms, the sky is still blue. A bright warm sunny and cloudless day might be defined as the sky’s state of equanimity. It is stable and peaceful. A gentle spring shower is a welcome respite sometimes from all the abundance of sunshine, but it is still peaceful. Then we have hurricanes, tornados, nor Easters, and winter snowstorms. They bring a sense of fury and chaos, at times, disrupting the sky’s peacefulness for a while as they churn and blow off steam. Eventually, the storms pass, the blue skies return, and equanimity settles back in. During all the changing of seasons and unpredictable weather the sky does not change, only what passes through it does.

So, let us contemplate, once again, the term human being. If we are the sky where do we find the beingness, in relation to the sky and its passing weather patterns? Perhaps we can come to see the blue sky as the beingness. It is the consciousness and awareness we call the soul. The soul never changes in that, it is always conscious and aware of what is happening in the life of the human it has merged with, and what storms it must weather. Nothing that happens in our lives can hurt the soul or destroy it. Our soul is eternal and will never die.

So, if the blue sky is our soul, where do we find the human part of the duo? Well, if we were actually the sky, we would not react to the storms because the sky does not think. It does not decide to label the passing weather as good or bad. A dark rainy day is not a bad day, it is just a rainy day. Yet, we are not the sky, we are human beings who do think. That is what makes us unique but what can also cause us much confusion and pain. We judge our experiences or “storms” by what we label them. If we think thoughts like “This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I will never survive this,” we will most likely find ourselves in a state of emotional instability, anxiety and stress. What happened to us? The way I have come to understand this is, that we dove headfirst into the chaotic or painful experience. We abandoned the seat of our soul, that simply stays conscious and aware of what is happening. By contrast, rather than reacting, our soul responds by allowing that experience to pass through our lives and not take root in our minds and hearts so that we lose our faith, innocence and hope.

So, are we supposed to ignore the experience and sort of bury our heads in the sand? Should we choose to just not deal with it, and then reengage with life once it is over? Of course not! Instead, if we stay seated on our spiritual throne and view the experience from the soul’s vantage point, we understand that, though we do not like what we are going through, it is in our lives because it is trying to teach us something. We brought it into our lives to assist us in the awakening of our soul within the human experience. It is ok to feel the emotions associated with the difficult circumstances. Tears and heartache are unique to the human experience and one of the reasons souls continue to return here. Along with the greatest of our challenges lies the most powerful opportunity to awaken and remember who we are and why we came here.

The truth is no one, at least no one I have ever met, escapes adversity. It happens to all of us at one point or another. Each adversity has a lesson to teach us and an opportunity to self-correct. For example, because humans learn best through contrast, if we are betrayed by another it teaches us to look at our own capacity to betray others as well and then vow to try our best to be loyal and truthful. If we find ourselves being harshly judged by others, we most likely are also judging ourselves critically as well. So not only do we have an opportunity to self-correct where judging ourselves and others is concerned, we can also learn the importance of self-love and forgiveness too. All these lessons are clear pathways toward our soul’s awakening as well as the recovering of soul memories.

Each time we stay conscious and aware through the storms of our lives we strengthen our ability to fully embrace equanimity, which again, is our capacity to remain emotionally and mentally stable during times of stress. It is all about perception. How are we perceiving our storms and reacting to them? Are we tensing up and becoming rigid to the point where the power of the storms eventually breaks us? Or do we remain calm, flexible, malleable and fully present so that, though we may sway and bend with the wind and rain of our storms, after they pass, we will be even stronger, more grounded and more spiritually awakened than before. Our lives will become more and more soul directed because we have remembered who we are. So, who are we? At this moment in time, we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. Infinitely, we remain the love that we were created with. We are eternal souls always seeking the path of love and peace.

I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes. “If we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.”