Equanimity is often perceived as neutrality, indifference, or a state of perpetual calm, as if awakening requires the ability to ‘breathe and smile while the bombs are falling.’ But this limited view misses the point – and the true gift – of this practice.
It’s not about being calm all the time, or indifferent to life’s struggles. Real equanimity is so much more. It’s about staying connected. Staying engaged. And meeting each moment – joyful or painful – with stability, spaciousness, and strength.
Real equanimity is the practice of meeting our experiences and our lives with a consistent quality of contact, enquiry and care.
Whether we like a situation or not, and whether we welcome a particular emotion or not, we can start to recognise and put down the reactivity that leads to getting overly caught up, overwhelmed, or numbed out. And from this ground of practice, deeply wise and balanced responsiveness can emerge naturally. What a superpower!
This will be our practice in a *Live* 2-part series led by Milla Gregor, where together we’ll use gentle dharma games and practice experiments to get an embodied taste of meeting challenges with real equanimity, in real time.
We’ll use the gifts of practice to build our capacity to meet life fully and freely, whether that’s individually, relationally, socially or politically. We’ll not shy away from the big questions of justice, conflict and oppression, and we’ll not fall into the trap of equating the quiet and still with the good. Instead, we’ll explore embodied stability, spaciousness and strength, as we face the challenges of this world together.
