Equanimity and equality 1

One of the methods for practicing equanimity, in relation to regarding all beings equally with the same state of mind, is progression. Firstly, you concentrate on loving those you love - family members, close friends, a pet, etc. next, you spread this outward and begin to work on keeping the same level of compassion and kindness in you for a wider circle - perhaps including the aunts, uncles and cousins along with parents and siblings, or birds in the yard as well as your pets, for example. Eventually, you can expand to cover all living beings with the same attitude level.

One expansion tool that I have found useful, is to think about where we go after death. This has helped me to include many bugs that formerly I would have screamed and sprayed, rather than accepted and cared about. Having lost my grandparents in my youth, and a mother, aunt, several friends, and many pets since, I can work with this personally. Where have they all gone?

I do believe in rebirth, that they have gone somewhere in a new form or body. Believing this, how can I be sure that the cockroach scuttling across the windowsill in the middle of the night is not my mother or aunt? How can I be sure that the fly that pesters me as I try to study is not the 'now' of one of my pets that have passed on? I cannot prove that the spider webbing above my pillow is not the rebirth of my mother or my aunt…

This helps me to accept the bugs that crawl into my home and life, rather than destroy them and consider them as 'nasty little creepy crawlies'. Once you can accept, you can observe, learn, and love.