Balance

Here I am, still working on that space between Want and Don't Want.  Recently read an article that defined equanimity as that space.  On your right hand, you Want things.  On your left hand, you Don't Want things.  There is a gap in the middle, maybe a very little gap that can be made wider. 

Funny, I recall years ago listening to a talk in which Pema Chodron introduced lovingkindness meditation.  When she came to the part about wishing for the happiness of someone you neither like nor dislike, she called it "the neutral" and joked that it sounded a little ominous, like an alien.  So I am thinking that this same space in which equanimity resides could be called the neutral space.

Church yesterday was an opportunity for intensively practicing being there.  I made a point of just experiencing what was going on, without reaching out with desire when I liked the anthem or reacting with aversion when someone spoke from the pulpit in the kind of  little-girl voice that is hard for me to understand. 

Maybe because of that effort I was aware when Tom was finding it difficult.  The service was about The Day of the Dead, and it directed us to thinking about those we had lost.  And he has lost one important person after another these last months.  So maybe residing in that space made me more open, and that generated compassion.

Just thoughts, and ordinary ones.  There are so few fundamental truths that we are all singing them over and over in our own voice and in our own way, trying to get them ourselves.  It's a serious practice.  Today we are on the outer track of Tropical Storm Sandy, with lots of hope for not losing power, lots of aversion.....