The best way to control cows and sheep is to give them a big, grazing field
Suzuki Roshi
I feel like all these silent meditation retreats have been excellent training for the next several weeks. In fact, in a lot of real ways I see all the same dynamics arising around me and inside of me as very similar.
It seems like it doesn’t matter if your isolation was a choice or not. However you’ve found yourself there, isolation forces you to sit alone with everything that makes you the most uncomfortable. The discomfort is a persistent melody, like a tune stuck in your head – you can try and drink it away, or eat it away, or drugs it away or anger it away – but it turns out to be an infuriating game of whack a mole. The truth, of course, is that it always has been – but in isolation, there is a deep and frightening realization of the truth that there’s no “doing” it away – that the old tricks don’t work the same way, or are just not available. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, no productivity tricks to rid yourself of the powerful emotions. Just you and your discomfort that rises and falls – cresting and collapsing – like waves.
We’re just getting started, and I think in this process we’ll all come face to face with our shadows of fear and helplessness and anxiety…
But as someone who has CHOSEN to fall into deep isolation somewhat regularly, I can tell you – that on the other side of this the outside world might change for better or worse – but what happens to you, and how you change, and the tools you develop to deeply be with your discomfort will serve you and the people you love for life. You can see this as a terrifying prospect, being alone and isolated – but you can also see it as a super unique opportunity to try something different.
I could write a whole tips and tricks essay on how to cope – but I can simplify it down into one prescient idea: keep your focus broad and wide and expansive.
Fear and anxiety are small and constrictive experiences. They require a heightening concentration and vigilance to maintain, which in turn creates anxiety and which can lead to a self-feeding loop of misery. But compassion and love and connection are big and expansive. They are big enough to hold it all. They are big enough to hold fear and anxiety without having to fix or change or do anything at all about it.
I feel afraid and anxious. But I also feel deep compassion, camaraderie, and friendships that are deepening through this shared experience. The positive feelings don’t cancel out the negative ones – they just give them space to breathe and move so I’m not IN them in a way that feeds the loop. The more I focus out on connection, the more space it gives all the discomfort to move so it’s not as restrictive. It’s still there, but when I can operate from a broader vantage point of connection – I can experience my monsters as companions and not as enemies that need to be fended off. The discomfort doesn’t have to go anywhere, it can just be there – an experience like any other experience – and nothing needs to be DONE about it right now.
This experience consistently arises for me on retreats. This experience of holding many large contradictory feelings at once but not needing to DO anything about them, understanding deeply that there is nothing that can be done really. No cure that makes them go away forever and permanently. They keep coming back… And there is an understanding that all that can be done is to just let them be there. In that just being there-ness opens up a new way to relate to discomfort – not pushing away or scrambling towards – in just being with and through.
In the not-doingness or un-doingness arises a deep sense of connection – an understanding that we are all having the same experience. We are all struggling. We are all sitting with some of our darkest parts that we don’t tend to look at. We are all doing this together. And it’s hard and it’s scary, but we are all here too, together at the end of the world.
I feel deeply for my friends who live alone, who will be struggling even more in this. I see you. I see how hard it is. I am lucky to not be alone, but I am not so lucky as to be unaffected – I am in it too. Being together holds its own set of challenges and fears, for some people being together might be even more isolating or frightening. But we are all here together, in many different circumstances, doing what we can.
There are many things we just can’t do – we can’t change the world. We can’t predict what will happen. We can’t control how others behave, or how whether our favorite chocolate will be at the store. We can endlessly pick apart the motives of others, or what went wrong, or what might go wrong shortly – but we can’t control any of these things. We can’t control the actions (or inactions as the case may be) of politicians – not really, and certainly not now. When we exert all our energy stores on focusing on all these things in times like this, we constrict our focus and get stuck in loops of problem-solving for problems we just cannot solve. As humans with big brains we are so conditioned against helplessness, and so conditioned into the illusion that we can personally solve anything. This is the perfect recipe for looping anxiety. The problem with this is, that if we are too dis-regulated in our own emotions, we can’t fully show up for others and connect the way that this moment calls for. We have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable to be truly present and available to other people.
Instead of trying to solve unsolvable problems, I would encourage you to focus out – specifically… focus on connection and creation. I’m also not just talking about connecting with other people – which we should be doing and many are. But we don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket – we want to broaden the scope of connection so we aren’t only dependent on one technique. Take a moment to explore other ways of connecting outward – to place, to story, to the earth. You can spend some time really seeing your own little place in the world in a way you might not have paid attention to before. The plants and trees and ground on your block. What lives here? What is the story of this place – and how are you a part of it? You can feed the ground with growing things, and watch life bubble up.
You can connect into story too – the story of where you live goes further back than you might have considered – who lived here before you? Not the last tenant in your apartment – but the last person who lived on your land before it became what it is. Before it was concrete and steel and commerce. Who were the people that walked on your block centuries go? There is a story in your land and your place that you are a part of – and those people and this land have seen pain before. We are not a separate story from history, or from the place we put our feet on the ground – we ARE the story. We are the story that the world has always told. We are not accustomed to listening to the stories that our places tell, but we now have this opportunity to listen and see and learn in ways we never have before. We are playing out the story of our places, we are injecting them all with meaning in every moment. Our stories will burrow into these places like the stories of those that came before us.
You can connect into your OWN story as well – your family back and back and back in time, to stories of their struggles, in times they thought the world was ending. To caring for 10 children while tending a fire so that it never went out, to illnesses and wars that your genetic story has persisted through. You are the triumph of your ancestors, your story is the story that they dreamt of while they fought in trenches, and tended to sick loved ones, and journeyed by choice or by force to far-flung lands. You are the dream they carried on those ships, or those planes or trains or barges. You were there when they fought for their freedom when they escaped – when they hid. You were there when they sheltered in place as the bombs fell. You were there even further back too when the land had more space to breathe – when daily life was a fight against nature – every day. You were there way back then in a tribe of some sort – somewhere – on lands that hold stories that still beat through your veins.
So we laugh with each other on the phone, and we love, and we connect with friends we haven’t seen in a while. And we feed the earth with growing things as that long lost ancestor did. We shoot through the isolation and destruction with creation and creativity. We show up every day ready to connect in ways we haven’t considered before. And we learn new ways to invite our monsters to tea, to talk to them and learn from them, and tuck them in at night beside us. We invite them to come with us to skype with our friends who are sad and struggling. We give them a little room to run around and laugh at how overly dramatic they can be. We sit, and feel, and breathe through it. We plan and take stock, and do what needs to be done – then we breathe through it again.
This is our only job. Our only job in this, the only thing we can do about any of this right now, is to love each other and the planet and the animals around us a little more. To recognize our story, and connect into and honor the stories of those that came before us. Our job is to have more compassion for the anxiety and fear and anger others are projecting out… because it’s in us too.
This is it, you aren’t just being called to “sit on your couch and watch Netflix”. You are being called into compassion and connection. You are being called into community even if you have to make it yourself. If you’ve always felt you were on the outside of life looking in, waiting for someone to reach out – we’ve all felt that way. Reach out to your community, whether it’s friends or neighbors or coworkers – because chances are they are hoping someone will reach out to them too. In normal times so many sit in social stalemates, wishing someone would reach out first. Now you can practice being that person – we all can. I guarantee you that every friend you don’t talk to much will be happy to hear from you, and maybe they’ll reach out to you first next time.
You are being called to be a part of the project of being human on a scale that most of us have never had to reckon with. We are all here. It is our job to see each other. It is our job to learn how to focus out and in at the same time. It’s our job to learn what the shape and contours and textures of our demons, to befriend them and invite them in as companions on this road. When we can sit with our discomfort, we can be there and present to sit with other people when they need it.
It’s our job to not let the darkness win – it’s our job to love it to death.
I’ve got this. You’ve got this. We’ve got this.
May all beings be peaceful
May all beings be free
May all beings have hearts as wide and wild as the world.
I love you, keep going.
the Good Heretic 