A practice in neutrality.

Lately I have being witnessing the natural flow of contraction and expansion in my life. I have learned to stay present with the movement as a sort of lived meditation practice. And as I stay present with this current, I am starting to see that everything is always moving towards balance. This insight has encouraged me to hold all of it with as much neutrality as I can muster.

This week I got into a car accident. Everyone was okay (thank goodness) but it was scary. It brought up a lot of emotions that I was able to move through and release, which felt good and important. Like the accident was a way for these old emotions to find their way out. But as I lay awake later that night, I watched as my mind replayed the accident again and again evoking a state of fear and overwhelm in my body. My mind was attempting to somehow get on top of the experience. I knew this wouldn’t work and I remembered my practice. I moved out of my mind and held the experience in neutral acceptance, in the space of awareness, in the slow in and out of the breath, in the groundedness of the body. I let the experience be, not trying to control it, fix it or resist it. The accident had happened. The experience was part of me. I surrendered to it.

It was amazing to see how using my conscious awareness in this way has completely changed my body’s response to it. Now when I think about the accident, I don’t go into fear but actually feel a sense of peace. It is such a good reminder to surrender. Of course I would never wish a car accident on anyone, but it is such a gift to have (and get to practice) tools for holding all of life in neutrality. To let go of good and bad, right and wrong, grasping and resisting, and let myself be opened and transformed and changed by the experience. To say to my being, “This too is allowed to be here.”