Rest, Relaxation, Balance, Equanimity

I've been thinking about the difference between ease and profundity. It seems like a lot of these things are often thought about as nouns but they also fit as verbs, especially when people intentionally DO them. Rest is something that we get or have naturally enough, like when we feel tired and sleep, but we can also choose to rest.

I think "rest" and "relaxation" fit together, that rest is often unintentional (but welcome) while relaxing can be understood as something we do on purpose, intentionally. Balance and equanimity might be different from one another in a similar way. When we feel like things are going pretty well, we might feel balanced without putting effort or intention into it; when push comes to shove, in order to keep that feeling of balance, we may need to engage an intentional sense of equanimity. At the very least, there is a difference between when we feel balanced or competent or in control without putting any thought into it and those moments where we feel stressed in some way.

It seems that balance is supported by general types of health--good sleep, diet, exercise, relationships, etc. A more intentional sense of equanimity seems to involve some degree of identification with profundity, like the feeling that when shit hits the fan, we might still feel solid, stable, deep. This profundity or the equanimity that seems connected to it feels different to me than strength (especially meaning strength of will). I would say that the equanimity and profundity can occur in awareness with intention that does not require forceful effort whereas strength of will involves both intention and effort.

While strength of will or amount of effort may be comparative, I don't know that equanimity involves comparison. Like being a lady. When you feel equanimity, there may be no reason for saying so or making a claim. When people feel a sense of comparison and superiority or inferiority, they seem lacking in psychological balance and equanimity to me. It strikes me that most people's assumptions involve comparison so thoughtlessly that this sense of inferiority in ourselves and others tends to be protected or courteously hidden (in conversation and interactions) rather than being seen as a sign of competitiveness (people who are unhappy about feeling inferior are unhappy about their own sense of comparison). We are all willing to see superiority as a sign of competitiveness. But I wonder that we have not generally done the same with inferiority. It seems to me that, when equanimity is included, inferiority is neither good or bad in any sense as much as it is simply unnecessary. Anyone judging it as good or bad may still be competing.

I guess that my point today is that if we cannot see inferiority when it occurs and for what it is, it will continue to remain as a weapon in the thought-police arsenal. As I intentionally realign myself more with equanimity, rather than seeming good and bad in various ways, arsenals more often seem simply unnecessary in most cases. When I find myself in a situation that is challenging enough to test my balance, I am more often just competing to win or embracing equanimity rather than giving attention to superiority/inferiority. The claims and feelings of superiority and inferiority matter less and less, while the competition hasn't necessarily changed at all. The point of winning, though, rather than being zero-sum and excluding losers, has something more to do with overall or inclusive progress. In such a case, it becomes harder to "lose" and the meaning of "win" changes. The "winners" end up leading progressive change in any given moment and the rest of the people end up following up with progressive change. Rather than losers in a zero-sum competition, then, we can often have a zero-loser equation involving inclusive progress. But someone will likely end up leading. This seems to happen more often when thought-policing and resentment/inferiority are not privileged in the equation.