Again & Again - Returning to Peace in Hard Times
(Photo by Christopher Sardegna on Unsplash)
Again, horrific news here this week. Again, senseless gun violence and innocent victims. Again grief, sadness, rage, frustration, helplessness, & fear. It keeps coming back again and again and again. My heart feels like it can barely take it. And yet, it MUST keep taking it, because it keeps happening.
And so, again, I’ll implore you to return to your practice. In times of challenge and in times of trouble, practice is what can make sense. Your yoga or meditation practice is possibly the only thing that is spacious enough to hold all your feelings and transform them. Times of struggle are the reason we practice in times of relative ease.
TURNING TOWARDS, NOT AWAY
I know, it can sound frivolous when I say, go do yoga or go meditate. And in some traditions, meditation and yoga are paths of renunciation. That means they instruct people to turn away from the world. The intent is to withdrawal from everyday life and from the senses. In those traditions your aim is to pull away so much that you reach a state of detachment. If you were practicing that way you wouldn’t pay attention to world events because they’d be drawing you out of your calm. That kind of practice is not what I’m suggesting.
No, the yoga philosophy that I most resonate with is called Non-Dual Tantra and it has a very different approach. Rather than detaching from the world and our feelings, we move right into them. In fact, in Non-Dual Tantra, sages taught that life has many different emotional flavors, or rasas in Sanskrit. As we go through life, we will encounter all of the rasas. Instead of detaching from them, our task is to turn towards them. It is a deep practice to embrace them, to feel them as completely as possible and to let them transform.
If you can enter your emotional realm completely, something else is possible. Eventually as the energy of grief or disgust or any other emotion plays out it will give way into a bigger energy. In the Tantric mindset, underlying all of the pain, grief, happiness, humor and other emotions there is the one absolute reality. It has different names (including the Heart) but sages taught that each of the rasas arise from it. The Heart is describe as being Peaceful, Loving, and completely Free among other attributes. So, if you hold your challenging feelings in the spaciousness of your practice for long enough, they will subside back into the energy they came from: Peace, Freedom, and Love.
TRy IT:
Here’s a simple-ish meditation for feeling your feelings and letting them subside into Peace (or Love or Freedom if you’d rather)
Take a comfortable seat for meditation - set the stage by lighting a candle or saying an affirmation
When you notice an emotion arising in meditation, do not push it away, welcome it to stay with you
Allow yourself to feel the emotion as strongly as you are able (while remaining safe)
Instead of becoming attached to the story that brought up the emotion, stay with the feeling, the ENERGY behind the emotion
Also, imagine that you are sitting in a cloud of Peace. Peace surrounds you on every side. You breathe Peace with every inhale
Softly shift your inner awareness to allow the cloud of Peace to hold the difficult emotion (instead of your mind holding it)
Invite the emotion to soften into the Peace
Eventually as the energy behind the emotional charge runs out, it will give over into Peace
It doesn’t happen immediately. It may take several practices or several years of feeling your feelings for them to actually calm enough to give over into Peace or Love or Freedom. But it is possible. And it’s really important because when you’re settled in Peace, you make choices that are peaceful. When you’re settled in Love you make choices that are loving. When you’re settled in Freedom you make choices that result in freedom for all beings.
NOW TAKE ACTION
So there’s the other part of this, practice is only the first step. Instead of withdrawing from the world and using practice to bypass it, your invitation is to go right into the fire of your experience, let it transform, and then take skillful action. We don’t just stay on our cushions or sticky mats, we move into the world.
Taking action from a place of peace, freedom, or love can look like doing the same things you would’ve done if you hadn’t practiced. You might advocate, vote, donate… you might gather with others and console each other. Nothing may look different from the outside. But the feeling state on the inside will be deeper and stronger. Instead of being propelled by knee-jerk reactions, you’ll come from your center - where your power and consciousness are sourced. And it’s more sustainable to act from a core of Peace, Love, and Freedom than from the adrenaline that comes from the fight/flight response that we all feel when news of horrible events reaches us.
So once again, I wish I could give answers or hope or promise that tragedy would never strike our lands. I can’t do that. Instead I give you the same advice again and again: Whatever you are feeling, whatever your experience - take it to your mat and cushion - feel it completely, hold it in the light of your awareness, and allow it to transform. And from the place of transformation, take the actions you feel called to take.
This world needs all the Peace, Love and Freedom it can get - your practice helps. Thank you for practicing.
May there be Peace, May there be Peace, May there be Peace