Managing political stress

                                Photo: Carol Diehl (c) 2017

It’s clear from posts on Facebook that people are freaking out. One friend writes, “I just feel so anxious, depressed, and terrified that I emotionally eat, crawl into bed and nap, or start buying rations so we can shelter-in-place for six months to a year.” Another dreads being asked how she is. “I need a new response” she says, “that concisely conveys ‘miserable but we don't have to talk about it’”.

Well the bad news is that nothing in the political realm is going to change any time soon. The good news, however, is that you don’t HAVE to feel miserable. I think a lot of people think anyone who isn’t anxious and depressed doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation. Or that the way to have compassion is to feel as bad as possible about, say, the immigrants who have been mistreated or turned away. You are not doing anyone any good, including yourself, releasing cortisol with all that worry. This is a time like no other to learn how not to be buffeted by external events but to be in the present moment–which is not a cliché, but an achievable state of mind. It IS possible to be informed and concerned without going down the tubes; you could even take enjoyment from life—which means you could bring enjoyment to others, and what we need more than anything right now is uplifters.

You cannot get sick enough to help sick people get better. You cannot get poor enough to help poor people thrive. It is only in your thriving that you have anything to offer anyone. —Abraham.

The answer is meditation, and I wonder how anyone functions without it—or would want to. Most people are ruled by their thoughts, which in turn fuel their emotions. They don’t realize that these thoughts are simply random impulses from the brain, thousands every minute, which carry no import unless we attach ourselves to one or the other, and in this we have a choice. It’s not a matter of stopping thoughts—this will never happen—but observing them as they pass and letting them go, like waves on an ocean. With practice, you get good at recognizing the thoughts that serve you and dismissing the ones that don’t, a kind of “curation” of the mind, so to speak.

Long before I learned to meditate, I had a lesson in this when I was climbing a mountain tunnel and found myself teetering at the top of a long rickety ladder with no way back down, the only thing to grab to get out the top seemingly way out of my reach. I was paralyzed with fear until I realized that fear was not going to help me, and I’d have to banish it if I was going to save myself. I did. I simply decided not to have the fear and somehow scrambled out—I still have no idea how I did it.

So yes, our thoughts are optional. Imagine if we knew this as children, how different our lives would be.

There are many forms of meditation, and you can find one that works for you. It helps to have a teacher, but I know some who have learned from books and tapes. I started with t’ai chi, later chose Transcendental Meditation (TM) because I knew people who were still doing it after 20-30 years—and the understanding it gave me enhances my current practice of kundalini yoga. Once you make your choice, make a reasonable commitment. In kundalini, we make our commitments in 40-day increments, which makes them doable and gives us enough time to see the results.

Perhaps the push to go to the next level of personal consciousness is what this is all about.

Carol Diehl (c) 2017