How Can We Hold On When The World Is Going Crazy?
...When the world is going crazy, when there's little peace, where friends and family are losing jobs, and the fear grows steadily around us - what can we hold on to?
If there was one answer, we would be living in hives. And it's no answer to say it's "just in our human nature" to be agressive and to lack self-discipline. We needn't stop our thinking there. We have agression in our make-up, just as we have the capacity to develop compassion and empathy and the more mature expression of patience in our life as well. To get to solutions, we use moral rules, law, religion and order to manage the chaos and calamities. After all, if we were content and peaceful, we wouldn't need rules, would we? But in a purely spiritual sense, we yearn for inner "calmth" - the word my family coined to merge "calm" with "warmth".
How to hold on? How to be connected with something more than ourselves? What can give us strength and courage?
That's a challenge which meditation fills. Dr. Daniel Siegel's new book Mindsight integrates this understanding of meditation with our culture's ways of helping others. Meditation gives us an internal space to gain perspective, become more flexible and more in touch with our creative and problem-solving nature. Meditation is a way to find that "calmth" in the "the full catastrophe" (thank you, Zorba the Greek!) of daily and family life. Taking time for brief meditation (and I suggest to my clients even one minute of mindful experience and meditation every other day can be a good beginning, especially if stilling the mind is scary and hard to do). Meditation can help us face our challenges and pain with strength and - dare I say it? - even laughter and humor. Take it from a professional of over 25 years in the field, as well as a mom of an 18 year old young woman with Intellectual Disabilities (the new "pc" name for "special needs"), who continues to experience life-threatening chronic medical health problems. The benefits of meditation are increased satisfaction and perspective on what is truly meaningful in life, physiological side effects such as lowered blood pressure and decreased stress, and better management of anxiety-related symptoms.
Want more "calmth" in your life?
Try these links: Jon Kabat-Zinn
Thich Nat Hahn - Plum Village (particularly the book Mindful Movements)
...May you find more Calmth in your life. May you find Peace.
