As the November elections in the US approach, I have become increasingly concerned for my mental health. A big part of me wants to hide under the bed or move to New Zealand or do whatever I can to avoid the intensity and vitriol of the next four months.
Some days it physically hurts me to read the news – and listen to it? For. Get. It. Even NPR. Just turn that shit off. I have a deep temptation to tap out and call it good.
But that’s not how I want to show up in the world. I want to be brave enough to know and face what is happening. So I choose my news outlets carefully and read them with one eye squeezed shut while holding my breath.
My friend Lisa is a sister in anxiety and so wise, funny and kind it takes my breath away. Lisa suggested I try equanimity.
More precisely, Lisa suggested an online course with meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg on equanimity. Sharon Salzberg was my very first meditation teacher in 2006 so yes to her. But equanimity seems a lot like detachment or indifference – and that isn’t the kind of courage I am looking to build.
But since Lisa is a wise genius and Sharon is a wise genius, and I need something to get me through the next 124 days, I signed up.
My first meditation teacher and Buddhist Badass, Sharon Salzberg. (Source: SharonSalzberg.com)
In the first lesson, Sharon cleared up my misunderstanding about equanimity. Rather than indifferent detachment, equanimity is engaging with life with perspective and wisdom.
More than that, though, equanimity is dynamic balance. Equanimity is spaciousness. Equanimity is freedom.
Sign me all the way up.
Over the past few years, I’ve written and taught a good deal about balance since it’s a hugely important skill for living in a human body. I often remind folks that balance isn’t a noun, it’s a verb. It’s not a static place you arrive. It’s active and changing all the time. Balance is something you do.
Sharon points out that the same is true for equanimity and for being free. To be equanimous is to actively make space for all the feelings and yet be non-reactive. To be non-reactive is to be free. Free is a verb.
Sharon teaches:
“To see things as they are, to see the changing mature, to see impermanence, to see that constant flow of pleasant and painful events outside our control, that is freedom.”
My inner dialog usually follows the logic that once this painful thing passes, once this scary thing is resolved, once I solve the difficulty, only then I will be free. But equanimity means to be non-reactive (which is not to say non-feeling or non-compassionate) and free in any circumstance.
Twentieth century philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “Freedom is now or never.”
The practice of equanimity is making space for everything that is happening. When I’m in a painful situation that I want to end or when I’m in a pleasurable situation that I want to stay, my focus quickly narrows in on what I want or don’t want to change.
Equanimity creates spaciousness around the pain, the pleasure, everything. Equanimity holds it all like space holds the universe.
Author and teacher, Martha Beck offers a meditation that opens us to this feeling of spacious equanimity and mindfulness. By posing the odd but simple question, “Can I imagine the space between my eyes?”, the brain shifts from narrow to expansive focus and awareness. And honestly, even I do it only for a few seconds, I can feel a relaxation of my fixation, an opening, a freedom.
I still suck at this, of course. I still get hooked by headlines. I clench when I hear dystopian predictions. I stop breathing when I hear a certain politician’s voice. But when I remember that balance is a verb, that equanimity is a verb, that freedom is a verb, I know I can navigate not just the next 124 days but whatever comes.
“In the midst of a painful situation, there is freedom.” ~ Sharon Salzberg