A Deep Sense of Calm

 On the subway home tonight, I experienced the calm of other subway commuters, in ways that surprised me. Part of it may have to do with the late time of day and the absence of rush hour traffic. There is a kind of sense of relief: end of the day, without the anxiety of the 9 to 5 shift. I felt my whole body more rested when I was able to pick up on the collective energies of others, even the commuter beside me who seemed to be in a kind of deep sleep.
   If you ever find yourself feeling anxious or tense, it's probably best not to just look at your own body, but to look at the bodies of those around you. Chances are that if you're tense, others might be the same. If there is one person in the room who is extremely (and genuinely) calm, then the whole room feels the same effects of that calm. I have even in myself experienced a gravitation toward this calmness, even though it's quite hard to truly find it let alone experience it.
    Even in meditation circles, calm can be hard to come by precisely because a lot of people subconsciously seek calming states, and this ends up making people feel tense. When I start to try to make my body more relaxed, I end up creating a contrast between two states (calm and tense) and become more tense in comparing the two and wanting the calm over the tense. This is why it's sometimes more effective to look to the calm that comes when a person has really let go of all their devices or 'tools to feel better' and are only really with themselves, in their own skin.
   So how is this calm actually 'achieved'? I think that it comes from a genuine appreciation of one's place in this moment.  When I look upon this body being grounded right here, I naturally feel the calm of someone who has abundance. If I think "I am not calm but I should be calm", I operate from an opposite view, that of someone with a deficit who needs more in order to be a whole person. But the other way is simply to see my being here the way a child might see the toys in front of them or the playground of imaginary beings. This 'being here' is already a kind of miracle-for who else can fill this space but your own awareness, right here in this moment? Can you see how wonderfully irreplaceable that is? When one has that calm, there is nothing more to gain, and there is no anxiety about losing either, because there is too much here to worry about losing.