I’ve been contemplating this idea of Emotional Maturity. What is it?
It came up in Sri Sri’s discussion of Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita where Arjuna is basically whining to Krishna about having to fight this battle. He lacks emotional maturity in that moment and it’s up to Krishna to “wake him up.” (Which Krishna does by “poking” at Arjuna’s ego. --- “Hey, man!” Krishna prods – I loosely quote here, - “Pull yourself together. What will people think of you? A prince behaving like this! Come on.” And then Krishna takes him to a deeper inquiry of “Who are you? Where are you? What are you?”
Do I have emotional maturity? Do I stay centered and calm even when anger, jealousy, fear, greed, etc., come passing by? Well….not always…but, more and more!
Chetana gave me an opportunity to practice last night when she woke for the third time (very unusual for our Little Pea who 99.99% of the time sleeps 10-hour shifts). At the third waking I was suddenly without patience and annoyed, “Chetana. Shhhhhh! Quiet! Mommy needs to sleep.”
Did this bring sudden calm & quiet from my sweetie? Of course not. Who would respond calmly & sweetly to an agitated accusation, as it were, of sleep sabatoge. She cried. That made my heart feel heavy – I’ve only once before said something so strongly that she cried.
This was my moment of lacking Emotional Maturity – luckily & with Grace, I saw it right away. Where was my equanimity? Easy to see when you’re angry at a sweety pie who has no idea what is wrong with making noises in the middle of the night and has 0 lack of intention of doing anything “wrong.”
Wake up call for me!
I immediately found myself back at my center – calm and collected.
“Chetana, Sweetie. I’m going to put you back in your bed, Love, so you can sleep.”
And lowering her into her crib, she rolled to her side and gently fell off to sleep.
Emotional Maturity on both our parts!
