One
could say that many of the world’s ills are rooted in fear. This is a
pretty ordinary observation. If you watch a scary movie at night, you
hear the noises in your home as ominous. If you don’t, they aren’t. Fear
changes the way we perceive the world around us.
On
this day just prior to our election in the US, we have an unusually
potent opportunity to work with fear because no matter who we support,
we are all f*cking terrified. The more afraid we are, the more likely we
are to scare each other. The more we scare each other, the greater the
distance between us.
The real danger is not in the policies of those we oppose. It is in dividing humanity into us and them.
Fear makes us demonize some and cling to others. Someone has to put a
stop to this and because you are reading this, that someone is you. (I
didn’t tell you that reading this post was equivalent to being tagged
“it” in the cosmic game of terror tag. Well, now you know.)
Your
job is to assume responsibility for your terror by feeling it because
without doing so you offload it into the environment. You turn others
into your personal punching bag (by blaming them for what you fear) or
your personal snuggy bear (for agreeing with you and assuaging your
fear). We become trapped in an endless cycle of reactivity.
In
Buddhist thought, the cycle of unexamined thought and emotion could
take one of three forms. These are called the “three poisons.”
The
first poison is grasping. We become emotionally terrified and reach out
to anyone, everyone, for reassurance that everything will be okay. We
may confess our terrors on Facebook (thereby shunting our fear onto
others), obsessively scan the headlines or talk to friends in a
desperate search for good news, or collapse into hopelessness.
Everything we encounter is either proof that what we fear is imminent or
that it is not. Our mind shrinks into a very tiny knot. It is extremely
claustrophobic. This does not help anyone, most of all yourself.
The
second poison is aggression. Our reaction to fear is to become enraged,
so enraged that everyone we meet — and everything we read, think, or
overhear — is categorized as either for us or against us. We lash out,
seek to punish, destroy, or demean those we perceive as enemies — which
only serves to strengthen what we oppose, by the way. Just as with
grasping, our mind shrinks into a very tiny knot. It is extremely
claustrophobic. This does not help anyone, most of all yourself.
The
third poison is numbness. We simply hide out. We reach for whatever we
can to self-narcotize, whether it is videos, drink, exercise, incessant
social media surfing, food, drugs, books, or whatever works to keep us
asleep to what we feel. We freeze. We try not to move because any wrong
step may bring us face-to-face with what we are trying to avoid.
Numbness too shrinks our mind into a very tiny knot. It is extremely
claustrophobic. This does not help anyone, most of all yourself.
There is a fourth option. I’m not going to lie, it is not easy. It is to meet your fear.
To feel it. Instead of shrinking away, you open to include it. This is
the only response that expands and softens your mind. You actually relax
with what you feel rather than
working to disprove, demolish, or hide from it. This creates a kind of
space in which you are able to notice others as more than potential
devices to be used for good or for ill. (Others tend to really
appreciate this, I might add.) Then, perhaps, you could do something
intelligently kind to help them with their own grasping, aggression, and
numbness. This helps everyone, most of all yourself.
To
accomplish this type of mind state, it is really, really good to have a
meditation practice. By working with your mind on the cushion, you
develop the capacity to work with it off the cushion. This is the entire
point of the practice. It is not to be good at meditating (so what?)
but to be good at your life. Now we know the truth. Meditation is not a
self-help tactic or a way to be more productive. It is a path of
warriorship that enables us to meet our world with steadiness and
sanity. It is a way to be brave.
The
first definition of a warrior is one who is not afraid of him and/or
herself, so it is essential to acknowledge your own fear, not in an
effort to banish, subjugate, or ignore it, but to feel it.
When
you know how to stop, turn around, and look directly at yourself, you
come into possession of a super power. It is called the ability to care.
Rather than protecting yourself at every turn by clinging to, blaming,
or ignoring others, you can actually be there for and with them.
This
is one solution to our terrible divide. We could care about each other.
It is not easy but it seems we have to do it anyway. This is not to be
all nicey-nice — I most certainly am not — but to enable us to take on
our problems together. Also, personally, I don’t want to live in a world
where everyone is afraid of everyone else.
It
is a strange karmic trick that at those times when we most want to
harden our hearts and ignore others, what is called for is to soften,
first to ourselves and then to everyone else.
At
this moment, on this day, we have the perfect opportunity to practice
this because there is no place to hide. You can do it. Fear makes you
feel powerless, but generosity is a gesture of power. If you want to
recover a sense of stability and dominion, open your heart.
