We are deeply habituated to seek equanimity as if it’s a state to be found. In times of crisis, stakes are high. We try harder. The more desperate we feel, the more effort we put in.
In this striving, we forget to ask: “Who is it that’s striving?” This question isn’t about finding the right answer. It’s intended to invite inquiry.
What is it in us that longs for peace, well-being, equanimity, and happiness? Are these experiences found through striving, or are they known through a different route? And what is that route?
Join Caverly for a guided direct experience through Sangha Live on May 3rd at 11am PST/2pm EST. Allow your direct experience to be your test of reality. Learn more here.
Caverly is a long term friend of Sangha Live. She has been offering teachings and meditations every day to the community, along with Martin. Though the offerings began as a response to COVID, they’ve been such a success that she plans to continue. You can find out more about those sessions here.
One of her students has been pulling quotes from her daily sessions (her offerings there are always unscripted and arise in the moment they are offered). As her teaching on Sunday, May 3rd, approaches, she wanted to offer some of these quotes to you as an opportunity for reflection.
These aren’t meant to be read as an essay, but rather as an invitation to pause, to listen, to settle into the stillness of inquiry. Each phrase is an opportunity to pay attention to your direct experience.
Enjoy.
Our experience of equanimity is stabilized by the repetition of recognizing and knowing ourselves as presence.
What is it that rejects?
What is it that withholds?
Recognize yourself
as that which doesn’t reject
and doesn’t withhold.
What you long for is here.
Abandon the attachment to the objects of experience.
Empty, open. Shining with the luminosity of being.
Your true nature is ever-present.
Take a stand as presence,
welcoming everything in you.
Embracing everything in you.
Knowing everything as you.
Like a drop of water landing in the ocean,
simply allow the attention to return to source.
Settle in the stillness and the silence of the heart.
The firmness, the story of identity,
falls away in the experience of love.
Whose experience is this?
Is this the experience of unlimited, conscious awareness?
Or is this the experience that belongs to, and arises on behalf of, a separate self? See the difference.
Rather than being a person who is trying to be more accepting,
know yourself as the unlimited consciousness that is inherently accepting.
As a child, it seems that the sun is always disappearing with the weather patterns. At some point in your life, you understand that the sun is ever-present, no matter the weather. You don’t get confused that clouds mean that the sun has vanished.
If you meditate
to be a better person,
you’ll always be busy,
trying to be a better person.
If you meditate
because you are in love
with resting in your own
luminous infinite being,
you’ll always be in love.
Caverly shares such thoughts on Instagram as well. She invites you follow along there.