Calm

 There's the obvious ebb and flow of the four seasons that make up a year, maybe the ebb and flow of an academic year. There's the ebb and flow of the work week and the weekend, depending on your work schedule, and, of course, the ebb and flow of the daytime hours and the nighttime hours. 

Unless we pay attention, we take these changes for granted, unless you've trained yourself to notice, perhaps, that time of day when you make yourself a cup of coffee, or when you notice the sun start to be lower in the sky, or when it is getting dark, and you turn on a salt lamp.

 It's like someone actually making a note on a piece of paper to remember something, except this time, it's a mental note such as 'we are moving towards evening'. I think of it as being in sync with the Universe.

In a similar way, you might notice the ebb and flow of your energy levels; when you feel energized to complete tasks and when you need to rest. You might notice that having sat for a long period, you have a desperate desire to move your body. We aren't exactly dictating these things but rather we are noticing what is going on with us.

I noticed this morning, consciously noted, that my brain was different. I don't mean that something changed overnight, as I am sure it did not. I have half consciously noted a difference for a few weeks, perhaps, a rapidly rising difference that seems to be developing into a trait; that is, not a state, but a trait.

Various psychologists and spiritual leaders will talk about practicing states until they become traits. The example I like best is Ian Gawler who likes to say when asked how long one should meditate: Meditate until you no longer need to meditate.  That is to say, we can practice in the qualities of a state until it simply is a trait; part of us; a permanent change, so to speak.

For years I was aware I found my situation at home frustrating. I would attempt discussion about something only to find myself being closed down; I would hear an automatic rejection of what I was saying simply because I was saying it. It wasn't about everything, but it was often about something that my husband felt could be construed as his domain, a man's domain.

I came to feel that discussion was potentially dangerous and would make me feel worse rather than better. Discussion became something I avoided if I thought this would happen.

I think what happened to change the situation was the clearing out of his trauma, or a lot of it because once that happened, we had a chance to effect change.

Still, change was not going to happen without the trait of calm in me. I knew this down to my bones. I could lay it all out, but the reasons why don't really matter. 

I am aware I still experience frustration. For one thing, it had become part of my default network, a bit akin to breathing. I in no way experience only the feel-good emotions.

And yet, now I experience an emotion such as frustration as something in the background, not the foreground. This is the same as experiencing thoughts and emotions in meditation as in the background, not the foreground. Let's say, you see the balloon filled with frustration, but you can't keep hold of the string and it just floats away.

That's awfully strange, I think to myself, how come the balloon just blew away?

My husband is calmer. This helps me to be calm, for sure, but he is far from always calm, and I am nearly always calm now. 

I ponder, is this what they call 'Acceptance'? I think of a variety of people with a variety of personality differences, some wonderful and some not, and no matter who I think about, I think, 'this is what it is'. It's this mind-blowing trait wherein I feel so calm nearly all the time that I find myself thinking of the story of Eckhart Tolle where a former housemate said it was like living with someone in flotation gear.

To be clear, I am not just hanging around meditating. I move from mental to physical tasks and back again with relative ease, profoundly aware of what I have control over and what is completely outside of my control. It's all good. This is fine.

I go through periods where I am sometimes ravenously sexually hungry and then find it moves to something else eventually.  I have come to accept that what floats my boat is something over which I appear to have no control, until I do. I've learned a lot, and my mind discriminates well now. I understand these little nods to my natural persuasions; the biology of it. It is what it is.

There's a man on the streets of NYC who asks people of a certain age what it's like to be 52, or 66 or 79? They come up with amazing answers on the spot all of which relate to feeling more themselves now.

That's part of it, for sure. But I think it truly is this phenomenon of which Rick Hanson, Californian psychologist, talks; that when we practice certain desired states for long enough, they transform into traits. The brain changes, wires fire; transform.

Oddly, oh so oddly, boundaries are suddenly something that make so much sense. One still aims to please people but it's not the preoccupation it was before. One just feels so comfortable in this set of clothes; this skin.

I'm slightly terrified to write this. Will it change tomorrow? Have I jinxed it by writing these words here? I don't think so. I have worked hard at this for a good decade. It's a sense of peace well-earned and I pat myself on the back.