Equanimity

Despite outward appearances of confidence and grounding, I feel blown off balance too easily by external winds. Whether it’s a bi-polar client forgetting her appointment (again) and then acting out in response, or the fear that someone dislikes me, or being co-dependently entangled in a friend’s financial mess, I find myself thrown off course. And so, I am working on the trait of equanimity, of balance.

A friend offered the image of a Whirling Dervish, spinning and spinning around a calm core. This reminded me of a lecture I attended over a decade ago. I’d gone to hear an Ayurvedic practitioner speak at my neighborhood bookstore. He went around the room, identifying each of our dominant doshas. When he got to me, he stumbled. I was either Pitta-Kapha or Kapha-Pitta (Fire-Earth or Earth-Fire) with a core of Vatta (Air) running through my center. (I’m Pitta-Kapha.)

It appears my challenge is to cultivate a calm core, to shift it from air to earth. But how does one change a vapor to a solid? Thinking about water, I realized that one applies cold. So the trick is to chill. Be cool, dude. When the universe tosses me a glitch, take a breath and step back, gain perspective. Remember that there’s a bigger picture than what’s immediately in front of me, and be willing to accept that I don’t have all the information.

The other piece, I think, is to religiously practice grounding through meditation. I’ve been avoiding this for years, although I’m not sure why. A couple of years ago, at the county fair, the palm reader caught my eye and I knew I had to see her. (I’ve never been to a palm reader before or since.) The gist of her message was this: I am psychic and need to be meditating. Okay… I do have a strong relationship with my intuition, and I’ve been told that I’m amazing at running energy, but I don’t feel psychic in the usual understanding of the word. Still, I have been taking beginning psychic classes from Melanie Tolley. She teaches a grounding and aura-cleansing technique that I am now practicing every night before I go to bed. It puts me into a meditative state and, hopefully, will strengthen my grounding abilities so that I can snap to that place whenever I need. Then I’ll just have to remember that I can be grounded at will!