Opening a Twilight Artery to Grace
I used to see-saw with my sister. Sometimes, one of us would hold the other hostage by forcing their end down to the ground while the other hovered in space. If you were the one up in the air, your sister could decide to suddenly get off, upsetting the gravity so that you would crash down, hard. I don’t remember why we would punish each other this way, but I do remember the resulting slam to the ground, jarring and harsh. Mostly though, I remember the way we would allow our bodies to keep balance on the board, legs dangling in space, the synchronized weightless feeling a bodily pleasure that was mutually understood. I felt the sunlight and wind holding still too – until one of us bounced herself down, and teeter-tottering started up again.
I’ve always loved the sensation of balance. I taught myself gymnastics and practiced alone for hours –using chain fences, playground bars, walls, snowbanks, anything that could help me feel myself move through space with anti-gravity poise. Born to the most relational of signs (Libra) I think I came into this world with a longing for the peace of equanimity. As a kid, my body moved instinctively toward it. Sadly, the pleasure of that practice was rudely interrupted during adolescence, when my mind and body broke up and I began to try and locate my balance externally.
What does it mean to have a mind of equanimity? I’ve been exploring this question for many years, as equanimity is considered the ground floor of developing compassion in the Buddhist Tradition. Though there are plenty of methods set forth to work “toward” this goal, I personally tend to think of the spiritual path as more of a process of removal rather than an assembly - that we don’t “develop” compassion so much as discover it by looking closely at what is obscuring our awake qualities.
So what is in the way of emotional equipoise? It can be any of the patterns that close us off – anger, craving, jealousy, etc. However, I think pride plays a significant role here. Pride has two faces: The one that wants to see itself as better than anyone else, and the one that is inverted: clinging to an identity that is not unlike a worm. Some people spend their time more in one camp than the other, but most of us feel ourselves flipping back and forth. We feel great about xyz, until self doubt or some “other” force challenges that greatness. If we are extremely inflated, we will undoubtedly become extremely deflated. As a person who lived in the flat tire zone for a long time, the compensation was an extreme internal fantasy about specialness, perfection and “spiritual potential.” This kind of thing is a real drag, let me tell you. 1. You can never live up to these inflated fantasies, and 2. Neither can anyone else. So, lots of yearning, disappointment, expectation, disappointment, desire, disappointment.
So what does it take to quiet the intense polarity of self/other? For me, it is about where I locate my identity. The smaller the role (daughter, sister, friend, writer, teacher, therapist etc. etc.) the harder it is to feel an even-keel.
In tantra, the way one transforms ordinary pride is by identifying with a diety. Sounds like cosmic inflation, right? It’s certainly possible to misunderstand this practice and try to make one’s personality into a celestial debutante, or some such persona, however, this would be a terrible burden, and one would quickly burn-out trying to maintain the “act.” There is lots more to say on this point, but what is the point?: feeling the exquisite balance of non-dual being. Again, how do you identify? Where does it hurt the most when you are insulted? When do you feel like you have to “correct” somebody if their view of you is not like your own? Go directly to this place and feel into it. What is true? What is solid? What happens when this identity is cut deep enough, might surprise you.
We spend sooooooooo much of our energy defending against these cuts, we can miss the gift of what they bring. For me, that process of opening to the wound is like opening a twilight artery to grace – it isn’t blood that spills, but space. Vast, open space, that allows contrariness and oppositional forces to exist simultaneously, peacefully. Legs dangling in space, a moment holding open.
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