How To Keep the Chaos From Messing With Your Head.

The inner work of greater peace.

Up here, above the 49th parallel, this winter has felt especially dark. There was the brutal cold and the spate of snow and ice storms. The dismaying barrage of insults and threats to our economy and our sovereignty from the government of our closest friend and ally. All with the backdrop of swirling and intensifying geopolitical chaos around the globe.

I don’t want to talk about politics. There are others better qualified to add perspective and analysis to the garbage heap of vitriol out there.

This is about how we take care of ourselves in an environment that feels increasingly toxic.

Regardless of your political leanings or your country of origin, it’s been tough not to feel pulled into the vortex. Not to feel this heady mix of morbid fascination coupled with a large doses fear and outrage.

So, what do we do with all this turmoil around us, and how do we keep it from creating a toxic brew of stress and anxiety inside of us?

To quote from Rudyard Kipling, how do you “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs?”

Do we wallow, ruminate, and amplify our anxiety and despair? Do we recruit each other into the mess by trading memes, videos, and other on-line outrage? Do we pick up our phones every few minutes to scroll the latest “breaking news?”

Or do we look away? Do we tell ourselves this too shall pass? Do we meditate, breathe, and try to reassure ourselves if we just don’t look, it isn’t happening.

I can report, I’ve tried both approaches over the past several weeks. Neither has been helpful.

Learning to dance in stormy weather.

Photo by valentinrussanov

Our internal states, like our external ones, are like weather systems. They shift and change with new systems blowing in with regularity. Sometimes it can snow and rain for days and we can believe the sun will never shine again. And then, the sun breaks through, as it is doing now, outside my window.

Sometimes, the weather is extreme and the risks to our well-being are grave.

At times like this, we tend to operate under two competing illusions.

The first is to believe that we feel the way we do because of our circumstances. That we are powerless in the face of these forces. That if the world would only be the way we want it to be, we would be “happy then.”

The second illusion is that we have total control over how we feel. That we can stop feeling “bad” by embracing a “positive mindset.” Or that feeling bad is our fault because we aren’t strong, resilient, or positive enough.

So, what is true?

Are we simply victims of our circumstances, or our neurochemistry, or both?

Or can we exercise control over our states and emotions to reduce our suffering and make ourselves happier?

I would argue the truth is more subtle, complex, and nuanced than either of these questions implies. I suspect that total control over our inner states, if possible at all, is a skill reserved for Monks who spend their lives meditating in the wilderness. For the rest of us, it is not happening.

Neither is it true that we are at the mercy of our circumstances.

In reality, our internal states and external conditions are engaged in an ongoing ballet of sorts, each creating the other. Sometimes our unconscious response to an external event creates inner turmoil. Sometimes, it’s our inner turmoil that creates external conflict and strife. And there are times when our inner and outer worlds seem to dance independent of one another.

But it’s the very nature of this ballet and the understanding that it is always changing, that offers us the greatest opportunity to protect our emotional well-being in the face of circumstances beyond our control.

In the words of Viktor Frankl, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”

The inner work of greater peace.

We can, as Frankl suggests, create space between stimulus and response with practice (some of the time). Creating that space does not give us control, it gives us influence and sometimes leverage.

Sometimes, we can pause and notice that our resistance to our suffering is making it worse. We can stop resisting and listen for the wisdom in our suffering. It might be offering a signal that we need to rest. Or we need to face a hard truth. Or we need to act. It might be telling us that we need to surrender to our grief.

Sometimes we can acknowledge and shift to a more empowered state of being so that we can greet the world with more steadiness, calm, and compassion.

With practice, we can attune our attention enough to find a small joy hidden inside our grief, or an unacknowledged sorrow co-mingling with delight. We can welcome a fuller experience of what it is to be human.

And yes, I believe we can improve the state of the world around us, by becoming more skilled at working with the state of the world within us.

Inside this pause, we can become more judicious and discerning about what we take in. We can become more aware of how, what we read, watch, and listen to can distort our understanding and may be shaping our experience in ways that aren’t healthy. We can resist the urge to be drawn in to the addictive drama and spectacle that is our politics. We can interrupt the impulse to fight on our phones with our thumbs.

We can let go of our righteousness and stop looking for evidence that we are right. We can seek, instead, to understand how we might be wrong. We can pause before amplifying, writing, or saying something inflammatory or hurtful. We can ask ourselves, what am I spreading?

Or we can ask one of my favorite questions, “How am I perpetuating the very thing I most want to change?”

We won’t always get it right. But we can use our awareness to create a better dance between the world around us and the world within us.

The best advice I know for working with our inner states comes from the 13th century poet Rumi in his poem, The Guest House.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.¹

Here are three tiny things I have learned from my own practice of the art of inner work. There is much more to the work than what I’m about to share. But these three things are as good a starting point as any.

• When the world feels out of control, I do better when I slow down.

• When my heart is jumping out of my chest, it helps to breathe deep.

• When I want to improve the world around me; I’m more effective when I can gently shift the world within me.

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May you become a welcoming and compassionate host to all your states and emotions. May you dance skillfully with your unruly houseguests.

And may you greet an ailing world with peace in your heart.

Take care,

Cathy

1. From Rumi: Selected Poems, trans Coleman Barks with John Moynce, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson (Penguin Books, 2004)