The Geometry of Stillness
On Equanimity in an Age of Dissolution
The role and importance of equanimity has become increasingly present in my life. As the macro stage witnesses the convergence and decline of multidimensional ways of truth and reason, the grasp on exterior modes of stability can no longer be sustained. As the winds of external chaos intensify, the need for our internal equanimity to weather these changes is more crucial than ever.
On a relative level, I witness the self as it orients between the inhale and the exhale of life. It comes time and time again, after each and every inhale, after each and every expansion, the contraction presents itself, the grounding. Function serving form, form serving function.
This eternal oscillation mirrors itself across all scales. The universe breathes. Civilizations breathe. And here, in this temporary constellation of consciousness, I breathe. Each cycle a microcosm of the greater rhythms pulsing through reality's veins.
What presents itself now is the recognition that our external architectures—those grand narratives of progress, those temples of certainty—were always more fragile than we dared admit. They stand like ancient ruins mid-collapse, suspended between what was and what will be. And we, witnesses to this great dismantling, find ourselves at a crossroads that is both terrifying and a source of liberation.
The mind wants to reach, to grasp, to find purchase on something solid. But what if the reaching itself is the trap? What if grasping for external stability perpetuates the very cycle we seek to escape?
Equanimity presents itself not as an answer but as a different mode of questioning. What remains when the reaching stops? What emerges in the space between the inhale's ambition and the exhale's surrender?
It's not the flat-lining of experience, not disconnection from the rawness of being. Rather, it's the capacity to hold space for the full spectrum—to be the container rather than the contained. Learning to rest in the eye of the storm while simultaneously being the storm itself.
On the macro level, systems of meaning collide like tectonic plates. Scientific materialism meets its edges. Spiritual traditions reveal their shadows. Political ideologies crumble under their own contradictions. The very notion of objective truth—our North Star—spins wildly, pointing nowhere fixed.
Yet in this dissolution lies a strange grace. What's being revealed is not chaos without pattern, but pattern too complex for linear tracking. The multidimensional nature of reality refuses our convenient narratives. It demands a new way of seeing, being, and moving through the world.
This is where equanimity becomes not luxury but necessity. Not spiritual bypassing, but radical and intimate engagement.
How else can we meet what's unfolding except through centered presence? How else can we navigate the exponential change except by finding that within us which was never dependent on permanence?
The breath teaches this endlessly. Each inhale draws in the world—beauty, horror, impossible complexity. Each exhale releases attachment to how we think it should be. In that pause between—where neither grasping nor pushing away holds sway—equanimity naturally arises, not as achievement but as recognition of what was always here.
On the relative level, where this body moves through space and time, equanimity becomes utterly practical. The capacity to respond rather than react. To move from center rather than be pulled by external circumstance. To find, amidst accelerating change, a presence that neither speeds up nor slows down but moves at the pace of what is.
This isn't transcending human experience, but fully inhabiting it.
Fear arises, let it.
Grief comes, let it.
Joy bubbles, let it.
Equanimity holds space for all without becoming any. Like awareness itself, it remains unstained by what moves through it.
Perhaps this is the gift hidden in our unraveling: discovering what remains when everything propping up self and world falls away. Finding in groundlessness a different ground—one that doesn't depend on external conditions because it was never separate from the dynamic flux of existence itself.
The macro continues its dissolution dance. The multidimensional ways continue their convergence and fall. And here I sit, we sit, breathing, witnessing, being witnessed. Function serving form, form serving function, in an endless spiral that neither begins nor ends but simply is.
Emergence with Rachel Weissman is a weekly exploration of the interconnections between consciousness, technology, and planetary flourishing.
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