When We Feel More at Home in Ourselves, We’re Better Able to Act in Ways That Help Heal Our Nation
What can we do when we know we must face something difficult? Or we wish some event, situation, or person wasn’t beating on the doors of our mind? Or when we wish we had a magic wand to make whatever frightens or disturbs us disappear, but we can’t find any such magic for sale in any local store or the internet? Or when a memory or nightmare from a trauma is so hurtful or disturbing, we have no way to even begin facing it?
Our body, mind, and perception systems follow a natural process to provide direction on how to respond to a situation. When we experience a stimulus, an “orienting response” arises, and we come awake. We get a message to “pay attention now.” This is followed by appraisals of the stimulus, whether it’s bad or good, wonderful or painful, a threat or a problem. Bodily sensations and feelings are created with an almost unconscious impulse to go either toward, away, or ignore the situation.
Then our mind gets even more involved, bringing in memories and judgments. Likes and dislikes and mental labels are created for the situation, or a story to tell ourselves to make sense of what we perceive. And then how we respond, what actions we choose to take depend on how we’ve interpreted the situation we face.
We always have such choices about how we interpret a situation and respond. But the behavior modeled by the people we see around us and how we’ve faced such situations in the past greatly reverberates in the present, in the form of the emotional responses this process creates. We can feel fear if we normally turn away, or anger at the mere fact of having to make such a choice. We can feel excitement and run towards it, maybe because we like adrenaline surges, or adrenaline helps us feel alive, or helps mitigate the fear. Or maybe we feel engaged and we welcome a challenge. Or maybe the fright tries to wrap the situation in layers of forgetfulness.
In Buddhism, there’s a teaching on what’s called the 84th problem: we all face difficulties, problems. Let’s say there are 83 of them. The 84th is thinking we shouldn’t have problems. Steve Hagen, a Zen Priest, in his book Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Awake, Right Now, Every Day explains this exceedingly well. We might want reality to be different from what it is. There’s so much hurt in the world right now. Too many of us face so much pain and confusion every day. But just telling ourselves it should be different doesn’t make it happen. Instead, it can make the sense of something lacking or missing in our lives hurt more and be more difficult to face.
A negativity bias can arise from this emotional construction process. This is an inclination or natural push to see the negative first and foremost. This bias, if understood, can help us avoid or lessen any threat to us. But it can also lead us to interpret a situation that could be merely a challenge as a danger.
When we push away or retreat from a situation, we might also push away an understanding of ourselves that could assist us in perceiving how to best face it. In the same way, we might think of ourselves as something separate from a situation we live, separate from others and our world. We might wish we were different from who we are. We might get hooked on wanting what we thought we lacked or thought others had; or we might wish we didn’t have what we had. We then feel separate from ourselves, from our body and mind. Our home becomes some distant place we can’t easily get to. It’s difficult to feel at home in our skin if our very skin feels wrong.
The author G. K. Chesterton said “an adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”
So, what can we do? There’s no one way; we’re all so different. But for me, being better able to face a challenge begins with understanding the above, so we don’t beat ourselves up for whatever mythical reason we’ve created in the past for doing so. Instead, we treat ourselves, as so many others have recommended, kindly. With kindness, we can more clearly and immediately perceive what’s true.
Calming my mind comes next for me. Walking on my tree-lined road can do this for me. It’s fall, and the crickets are beautifully loud. I love their song so much, I can easily focus on it, meditate on it. I can notice and let go of whatever thoughts run through my mind. Thoughts can be exciting, wondrous, but also oppressive and compulsive. They’re abstractions from the moment. They take us into a mental reality that can obscure what surrounds us and what’s inside us. Thinking can be so necessary and helpful when we’re confronted with something too disturbing to face in the moment. We can label our feelings, analyze how much truth is in our thoughts. But otherwise, we can go to the crickets for a break.
Sight is more directionally focused than hearing. It’s mainly concentrated on what is in front of us, and peripherally what’s above, below, or on the sides. But hearing, although it can also be focused, covers all directions. By listening intently to the crickets singing all around us, we let go of a narrow focus and open to the moment.
Or we can just stop what we’re doing. Pause. Feel our feet on the floor. Notice how our shoulders expand with an inbreath, let go, relax with an outbreath. We can notice sensations in our body, where they’re located, the quality- rough or smooth, hot or cold, fast or slow.
The Buddhist nun and teacher, Pema Chodron, in her book How We Live is How We Die, describes a wonderful practice that takes what I said above into incredibly greater depths. She recommends going toward what disturbs us instead of acting out, suppressing, or mentally wrapping ourselves up in a storyline we repeatedly tell ourselves about it. The destructive aspect of fear and aggression, for example, is not in the sensation we feel but in the rejection of, and our response to it.
The practice she recommends, as far as I understand it, starts with recognizing the mental undercurrent of a moment and what’s happening in us. Noticing, for example, the thoughts streaming in our heads and the story we’re telling ourselves.
When we’re aware of an emotion, for example, it can lose its power to control us. To be more aware requires we pause, slow down, refrain from overreacting to a situation. We can create a “mindful gap.” And she also recommends, instead of being judgmental, we do this with kindness and compassion.
We can notice our physical sensations and then our state of mind. When our body comes alive to us, we feel present where we are. And then we can use the energy of the emotion to help us heal, and to recognize that what we feel, others feel. We all have pain. When I touch my anger or fear, I touch the anger and fear of others. Our sense of separation from others and ourselves is dissolved.
There’s enough fear and pain in the world right now, so much cruelty. The present administration is doing all it can to make us afraid, to feel traumatized, powerless, distant from others– we don’t have to help them hurt us. We don’t have to add being distant, cruel, or fearful of ourselves to the pain they’re already causing. Instead, being mindful of our emotional responses, kind, recognizing how much we all share can help us not only feel more at home in ourselves but able to act in ways that can heal our nation.
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