Climbing To Higher Ground

Today I am thinking about how easy it is to get swept away into someone else's story, to buy into their world view.  Why is that?  And how do you keep that from happening? How do you retain your equanimity when people around you are doing the funky chicken?  How do you get the funky out of the chicken??

These are my questions today.  Do I have answers?  Not really, but I'll do a little archeological dig of the spiritual kind with you.  Let's talk specifics, because as I've learned over the years, talking in generalities is mostly not that helpful.  It's like the rules of phonetics when you're trying to explain them to someone.  The first word you come across is the exception.  So it is with the Dharma, you need to examine each situation for it's chards of truth.  

On Friday we talked to a realtor as we are thinking about making a move.  It wasn't so much a doom and gloom vision that they painted, but a picture that made us feel  squeezed.  The interview should have been called a gazillion reasons why your property is worth less than you think.  Realtors, car salesmen, always create that feeling in me.  I somehow move from sitting at a card table with a lovely hand to feeling like, hey what's that guy over there doing with all the cards, where'd mine go??

So over the weekend I teetered back and forth between thinking that our plans were not possible or maybe we should put them on hold to  feeling that things could work out just fine and that I didn't need to buy into someone else's story.  Now this is not to say that I should buy a pair of rose coloured glasses or stick my pointy little head in the sand.  It seems to me that it is about energy.  There is an energy of fear and lack and there is an energy of openness and possibility.  And for me it is easy to be swept away in someone else's tidal wave of fear (or create my own).  I need to remember to get out the surf board or climb to higher ground.  The work is in how to do this in a real world pragmatic kind of way.  It's easy to say all the words, "don't buy into the story, it's not real, etc, etc".  But how actually do you do that?

It came to me today that one thing I need to do is centre or ground myself before I go into these type of situations or meetings, to gather my chi or energy (in the hara).  Am I sounding too weird and new agey for you??  Even without the pink sunglasses?  And then to be mindful and breathe, which I so often quickly forget.  Human relations are kind of like a martial art in a strange way (and I don't mean I'm going to pull a Jacki Chan on anyone, no kicking and punching allowed!).  But I am thinking in energetic terms for some reason.  You need to be able to hold your own energy in a non aggressive way, like a qi gong master.  Now this is a real skill I think, one I am not very adept at or conscious of.  You see some people with such grace and decorum and equanimity.  They are centred and less likely to be thrown off balance by unwholesome energy.  In the martial arts, it's all about how you stand and how you use the opponents energy to support your own.  Over at the Humble Yogini's blog she told a wonderful story where she and her husband did just that, maintained their centre, held their energy, rather than being blown around by the winds of crazy talk. 

So this is my next project.  To work with (no, maybe play with) preparing myself before encounters that I might perceive as difficult and then attempt to remember my mindfulness as I move through the experience.  Any thoughts on the subject out there?  No rubber chickens, please!