Fear of the Future + 9-Minute Meditation

And finding a grounded place to stand in the present.

Click above for this week’s guided meditation

Hi Friends –

War freaks me out. It makes me feel like a dumb animal, in a species of dumb animals (no offense to the other animals). Big emotions in my body: grief and fear and helplessness. I can’t think clearly. The thoughts I do have tend towards bad outcomes, with good reason. People are dying. War by its nature tends to go off the rails, an ever-expanding train wreck that kills innocent bystanders and smashes through international borders and agreements.

Image Credit: Kouichi Chiba

That’s already happening. What other roll-on effects may be incoming? I think about scenarios. I think about my friends in the Middle East and in Europe. I think about –

Whoa, mind. There you go again. Prapañca, the Buddhists call it, Sanskrit for “conceptual proliferation.” The whirling flywheel of thinking that overheats our brains and sends us into our various fight-flight-fawn reactions and rationalizations.

Let’s not go there right now. Let’s drop into our bodies instead, and acknowledge what’s here. Let’s ground our attention in something concrete.

This week, we work with fear of the future. It’s no disrespect to the seriousness of any situation to take a few beats to get sane and settled. If anything, sitting in a community of people who care about each other – and the world – can have a net positive effect on things. It can open the way for clear thinking and compassionate action – to help us build the future we want, instead of the one we fear.

As always, this is the practice I myself need right now. Let’s do it together.

Much love,
Jeff

A few quick notes—

• The Do Nothing Project (DNP) is now happening on Substack. The next one is this Sunday, March 8 at 8pm EDT. Link here.

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  Many thanks!

Congratulations to my awesome friend and pod co-host Lama Tasha Schumann! She’s about to launch as a new teacher at the Happier app, a big deal for her. The past few months, she’s been working on a new system of teaching with them, one that’s now shaping the direction of the entire company. Tasha’s teaching is rooted in the Tibetan Buddhist lineages of Dzogchen and Mahamudra, traditions that have been mapping the human mind for over two thousand years. At the heart of her offering is the understanding that the places where we get stuck, are the same places our deepest wisdom is hiding. She is super gifted at unpacking what that actually means in our day-to-day experience.