Ep. 139 – How to Not Be Exhausted by Chaos

The algorithms that feed us our online content are algorithms that try to get us engaged, and what is engaging is excitement.

And what keeps-- what c- causes excitement is hatred and fear, right? So even just the way we are, uh, getting our news and re- re- relating to o- other people online tends to lead to, to stress.

There have been studies, uh, I've quoted one of these lately, that stress does not cause inflammation and poor health or lack of wellbeing.

It's unmindful stress.

And in fact, mindful stress, being present for your stress in a way that we're gonna talk about today, uh, people in that category have better measures of wellbeing than a control group, high, medium, and low stress.

So how can we deal with all these things that are going on out there that seem to be out of control, and yet find a sense of presence and calmness in this crumbling world? Viktor Frankl says, "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." We've been talking for the last few meetings about the heart.

Uh, last time we talked about the left side of the heart, of human love rather than the center of the heart chakra, which is more spacious, even impersonal or transpersonal love.

And can we begin to find a heartfelt relationship, a mindful and heartfelt relationship with all this out of balance stuff? On top of that, our nation's birthday, 250th birthday, is coming up in less than a month.

Uh, actually, by the time...

Actually a month from tomorrow.

By the time the, the podcast comes out or the recording comes out, it'll be a, a month.

And there's gonna be all kinds of patriotic noise about which people will have probably a lot of ambivalence, a lot of excitement.

Deep healing is needed.

And going back to, to Vikor- Viktor Fra- Frankl's quote, "When we're no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves," we're talking here about the need for both individually and collectively a transformation of consciousness.

And consciousness, to be transformed deeply, almost always happens from one of four directions, sometimes a combination.

Trauma, near-death experience, psychedelics, and inner work, contemplation, meditation, prayer, et cetera.

I think it's a bit much to expect our society to everybody start taking psychedelics or everybody to start meditating.

So what we're left with in terms of collective transformation of consciousness is trauma and near death experience.

And let's hope that our society doesn't have to get to a collective near death experience.

So what we're left with here is working with trauma, working with this collective trauma that we're all feeling.

And the latest research about working with trauma is it begins with embodied mindfulness.

It begins with a collective willingness to feel what it is that's going on, to, uh, begin to feel in your body the suffering that you're feeling, but particularly the suffering that other people are feeling.

The more that we can realize that compassion is the direct result of the realization of our interdependence, that your suffering is my suffering, that my suffering is your suffering, that your joy is my joy, then the more we will begin to bring this collective transformational consciousness.

I have a dear friend in New Mexico, in fact, I got a text from her just as we were beginning this meeting, who keeps telling me, "Ramdev, you should move to Santa Fe.

It's so much more sane here.