Week Three: Equanimity

I am beginning the third week of my Lenten practice "40 Days to a Personal Revolution" by Baron Baptiste. The theme for this week is "Equanimity" which is the art of meeting life as it meets you - calmly, without drama or fuss. This is the way out of frustration and into the light.

Over the past two weeks I have noticed small changes taking place within my mind. Becoming more alert to areas of my life where improvement is needed has been the biggest change I have noticed. It is making me see life differently and taking responsibility for my actions and choices: helping me stop the "Blame Game"; making me mindful of judging others and myself with the hopes of stopping that behavior in the near future.

In the book "40 Days to a Personal Revolution" by Baron Baptiste, he writes about one of Buddha's lessons. "Buddha taught that throughout our lives, we should expect to encounter four specific joys and their opposites: pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, and fame and disrepute. The world conditions us to seek unchanging pleasure, gain, praise and fame. The problem is that things don't always work out that way. When we experience pain, loss, blame and disrepute, we take it personally, as if something is deeply wrong with us. Equanimity releases us from unrealistic expectations about what life should be and allows us to stay centered amid the inevitable highs and lows."

I found the above excerpt from Baron's book to be very powerful and I understand it, it makes complete sense. Where I struggles is with the "HOW?" Hopefully by the end of this week I will have more insight into that!

Week three my yoga practice is now 45 minutes and my meditation is 15 minutes. I had the same experience that I had last week when I upped my meditation from 5 minutes to 10 minutes as I did this morning when I upped my 10 minutes to 15 minutes - my mind was wondering a lot. However,I should congratulate myself on staying put, breathing through it and not moving to change the uncomfortable feelings. I believe I am on the right path. By the end of last week I was able to just be, and what a blessing that was when I simply let go. I pray I can do it again!

This week I will be listing new poses (asanas) that I am including with this weeks practice and will be listing the next 4 and final laws of transformation. I know it will be a good week of learning.

Make it a peaceful day!
Namaste.