Let It Be Free

 

I'm on vacation at the moment in my favorite summer place, Maine. Do you have the experience of going on vacation and falling in love with the place so much so that you start imagining buying a place there? As you drive, you find yourself looking at the homes with for sale signs and wondering how it just might be possible to live there? You want to hold onto that place because being there feels so good. At the same time when your basement floods for the umpteenth time or one more thing goes wrong with your house, you imagine selling it, getting it off your hands. Good riddance! Holding on to what's pleasant and pushing away what's unpleasant. It is the natural response to being human. But what if we could let what our experiences around what feels good and what feels not so good be equally free?

In our groups, we recently spent time looking at the practice of equanimity as a liberating tool and I want to share it with all of you in the hope that it will bring you more ease. When we see things with greater equanimity, we remove judgement and evaluation. We remove notions of right/wrong, good/bad, and ideas around what should/shouldn't be. Instead we just meet the experience as it is.  What I like to say is "it's like this right now." Multiple people have said they want that expression tattooed on them to remind them that they can just be with the experience and remove the reactivity to it. It's the reactivity that causes suffering. We step off the roller coaster when we do. We still experience highs and lows, but we aren't stuck on the ride, or at the very least if we are on it, it doesn't make us so queazy. We can recognize it and in doing so we begin to slow it down so we can get off.

The invitation this week is in two parts:  

Choose something that is going on that feels pleasant. Something that is going well and feels good and what if you let yourself experience it fully -- the feelings and sensations that go with it, but don't hold onto this pleasant thing. You don't have to figure out how to get more of the good thing. You don't have to worry about it ending. Simply experience it fully as a pleasant experience, breathe with it there, fully present to enjoy, and let it be free -- like letting a bird go.

And now, choose something that feels hard, something not so pleasant, and what if you do the same? Feel what this unpleasantness is like -- the feelings and sensations that go with it, and let them be there without adding on to them, without pushing them away, without making them your story. Instead, let it, too, be free -- like letting a bird go.

How does life feel different if you can bring some more balance to what arises in life? It is certainly less dramatic and causes less reactivity around us. Equanimity needs to be practiced along with it's accompanying practices of loving-kindness, compassion, and joy. We can practice it more easily when we also can bring in care and compassion and we don't forget to appreciate what is here. The practices of living mindfully all work together.

This is something we can keep strengthening. We won't become dull or impassioned. We won't be detached or inactive. It will keep us from causing more harm and this world needs more people striving to do that.

May your experiences be balanced. May you be free. 

🕊
Jean