No matter what your political persuasion is, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that we’re living in a time of chaos, pain, and carnage—with many people saying it’s a “dark” time that has made them feel anxious and helpless. Many of us feel we want to do something, but we don’t know what to do on the larger stage and we’re not sure what to do for ourselves and those around us. Many people have raised the question of whether and how meditation, mindfulness, and awareness can help us right now. It can seem almost puny against such massive forces.
If it couldn’t help us now, though, what good would it be?
Before helping us with what to do, though, mindfulness first helps us with how to be. And it seems that’s where we need to start. When times are tough, we need to go back to square one.
Before helping us with what to do, mindfulness first helps us with how to be. That’s where we need to start.
4 Ways Mindfulness Can Help Us Right Now
1. Be in the Body
One of the first facets of mindfulness meditation practice to appreciate, especially in times of great stress and fear, is that it grounds us in our body. When we take in difficult news, either near at hand (a loved one dying of cancer) or from afar (such as news of war over the internet or on TV), our connection to our body can weaken. It can even feel like we leave our body. In such a condition, freed from the gravitational pull, our mind begins to race. We’re more influenced by what our mind projects than by our immediate perception of our surroundings. When our mind is galloping off, even just a little close attention to our breathing while feeling the weight of our body pulling us to earth can bring our mind back home.
One of the phenomena that takes us away so easily, of course, is media. It’s worthwhile (as many of you probably already do) to go on a news diet. Oliver Burkeman, author of Meditations for Mortals—who explores the relationship between how we spend our time and our well-being—counsels us to pay close attention to the time we spend digesting “news.” News, often in the guise of social media nowadays, is designed to activate our emotions more than inform us of need-to-know information. When we start to leave our body in response to “news,” it’s worthwhile to return to the perception of our body, and to appreciate our surroundings. As we notice a bird alighting on a branch, we can absorb a different sense of time: the tree and the bird are not part of the next news cycle. In terms of keeping up with things, Burkeman counsels being “news-resilient” by returning the news to a place where it’s just something you dip into rather than wallow in, and keeping up with what’s going right as well as what’s going wrong. I would add to engage in mindful reading: searching out reading, listening, and viewing that is reflective and thoughtful, that can generate insight, not just fear and panic.
2. Rest in Choiceless Awareness
The grounding quality of mindfulness—noticing the details inside and out—opens us up to our innate awareness, a more panoramic view that’s not caught up in chasing down every stray thought. As a result, we can be less reactive, and take a bigger view of space and a longer view of time. This deep kind of awareness is said to be choiceless: we couldn’t be rid of it if we tried.
Awareness sees our anxiety but is not itself anxious. It manifests a mountain-like settledness, as well as confidence or courage that knows that no matter what happens, awareness goes on. We can rest in it.
Being grounded in awareness is not about being detached, unfeeling, and uncaring. In fact, it’s awareness that allows us to truly feel—to have a natural reaction to something unpleasant or off-putting, such as a raving egomaniac talking about taking chain saws or wood chippers to things that help vulnerable people—and yet have space and sense of humor around the feeling. Awareness sees our anxiety but is not itself anxious. It manifests a mountain-like settledness, as well as confidence or courage that knows that no matter what happens, awareness goes on. We can rest in it.
3. Feel the Wonder of Not Knowing
When we’re sure that we know something, our awareness becomes clouded. Fresh perceptions are filtered through our fixed knowledge. Instead, like the great Zen masters, artist Maira Kalman, one-time Mindful contributor and author most recently of Still Life with Remorse, abides in “not knowing.” It is the source of her artistic practice. As she said to me in an interview, “At the end of the day or the end of a life, everybody ends up saying, ‘I don’t know what I know.’” Rather than responding to “the noise we’re bombarded with every day by those who are trying to unnerve us for our money, forcing us to form reactions and opinions,” we can rest in not knowing. When we allow ourselves to question what we know, and shy away from clinging to fixed opinions, the inquisitive quality of our awareness takes over and we perceive the world more freshly. We can be awestruck by the world’s magic.
4. Cultivate Compassion and Community
We can also be awestruck by the world’s pain and horror, and this is where the doing part comes in. Precisely what we do and how we do it naturally varies greatly depending on circumstances. Just as awareness is inherent, so is the basic warmth of compassion, our fellow feeling. It can be obscured, but it’s there for us all.
Just as awareness is inherent, so is the basic warmth of compassion, our fellow feeling. It can be obscured, but it’s there for us all.
As we become grounded in our body and rest in awareness, touching in with that warmth can guide us to what we can actually do, where we might have some agency. Not knowing brings with it a humbleness that tells us we can’t fix everything. Since we can’t be sure how things will turn out, we don’t cling to certain outcomes. The great heroes who have championed the causes of the oppressed tend to come from this stance, willing to plant seeds in a garden whose harvest they may never see and committed to—as the popular African-American expression goes—Making a Way Out of No Way.
Whatever we do, one thing we do know in the deep fiber of our being is that we’re connected unavoidably to others, so finding community is never a bad place to start.
Clinton Dunn, MD, FAAP, is a board-certified pediatrician and allergist/immunologist who practices in the Hampton Roads Virginia area. He is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the AAP Section on Allergy and Immunology. His clinical interests focus on atopic dermatitis, asthma, food allergy and applying high quality evidence-based medicine for the improvement of pediatric allergic/immunologic diseases.
