Thought mosquitos

This morning I had an insight that some of the pent up stress and anxiety of my day to day life is manifesting as a bubbly, vibrating, ANNOYING energy.  It’s not just showing up in my meditations where that is super distracting, but also just as I go about my day.

It’s weird to experience my to do list as a vibration, and my response to it is just to be annoyed with it – like it’s a mosquito just buzzing around my head.

Sometimes I have this experience with other emotions that are sticky – sadness or grief or anger etc.  I prefer to call those Hitchhikers – since they have a bit more weight and history to them typically.  Like old friends that have overstayed their welcome but just won’t leave.  I see them just kind of sitting in my awareness, and just BEING there, but their energy isn’t this type of distracting frenetic “do do do” “go go go go” energy.

This is different – this buzzy doing energy is of the moment, is manifesting right now because we just bought a house, and because work is crazy – and there’s so much to do do do.  So it’s more of a gnat, or a mosquito – and I’m starting to get frustrated that it just won’t leave me alone, an I’m having such a hard time summoning equanimity for it.

I think I resist bringing equanimity to it because I know there IS this uniquely large to do list in my life right now – and I do need the kick in the butt to actually accomplish things right now.  So maybe I should look at it more like a Hummingbird flying around and less like a gnat or mosquito?  Still frenetic and high pitched, but more of a friendly reminder.

I think that this also goes back to one of my primary difficulties with the meditation and mindfulness path, which is how do you accomplish anything in life if the path encourages such great equanimity that you don’t have the kick in the ass of that little bit of suffering required to put together a life to do list and get things done?

Perhaps there is a middle ground?  A halfway between extreme frenetic-ness and extreme chillness?  Maybe there’s a lesson around being able to move in and out of equanimity as needed to accomplish things, that I just have not figured out yet.