ODYFK (Episode 5)- Breaking Away From Looking Away
Hello, sweet beings. Wow. Mmmm. It's been a week. Hasn't it. It's been a week of some pretty extreme suffering in our world. And while I was initially going to drop an episode today about breaking free from negative self-talk, I just felt like I needed to do something else. And that something else was inspired by the events that have unfolded over this past week.
It's probably by the time you hear this going to be more like 10 days. Perhaps, I don't know, maybe less. You know, time and I just aren't really, we just don't seem to have an agreement anymore. So I don't know how many days it's been basically since the tragedies, the daily worsening of what's happening for the Afghan people, the women and children, since that started happening.
But if you're listening to this podcast, you probably know at this point what's happening and what's unfolding and it just felt more important to talk a little bit about something that I've been working with very pointedly this week, pointedly and poignantly. And that is breaking away from looking away.
I'll tell you. When so many excruciatingly painful things are happening at once in the world. I can feel overwhelmed and I mean, that's a privilege to be able to feel overwhelmed, right? That it's happening on the outside. It's in the outer world and not in the inner world. I have food and shelter and clean enough drinking water for now.
And, all kinds of things that mean that my basic needs are met. My safety needs are met. And my needs for love and belongingness are met. I work toward self-actualization so, those needs are getting met. And I'm referencing a little bit of Maslow's hierarchy there. Some of you may be familiar. It's something that has been used for many years, in terms of an understanding about what basic human needs are all the way through basic human needs to the zenith of the human needs, which is self-actualization.
I do think some of those need to be revamped at this point, because I think they're outdated and I think they're particularly outdated for women. Yeah. But that is another podcast episode. So, yes, I have many advantages as a white person in this world and as a person with basically enough of everything that I need.
And so I have the choice to away, right. Many of us have the choice to look away when terrible, horrific things happen to others. And I have. I mean, I'm not going to lie to you. I have looked away. I take news fasts, and that's something that I still will do from time to time. When I feel overwhelmed and I feel like too much of my attention is going toward what's happening in the world, but then there's the other end of that.
The thing that happens when we decide to disengage and decide to look away, which is not allowing the pain of the world to pierce our hearts. Not allowing it to pierce our hearts and thus not being the change. I'm sure all of you have heard this" be the change you wish to see in the world", or want to see in the world. Anyway, be the change, be the change y'all. Right?
So, the thing is we can't do that if we're disengaging and not looking at what needs to be changed in the outer world. And it's a struggle. It's a struggle because as a sensitive human being, as a deeply empathic human being, as someone who has made the choice in this lifetime to be a holder of the container for pain and suffering for people in my world, as well as my own, I feel deeply when things happen.
I actually think that it is, it is the default experience of a human being, the human being that comes in with that seed of basic goodness, to be sensitive to these things. But we get clouded over by everything that's happening. And so we become desensitized. We become desensitized and we can wind up apathetic.
And I get this. I mean, I really understand this. It's an edge that I live on. And yet when these events in Afghanistan started to unfold... And by the way, Haiti too, with the earthquake. There's so many things, right? I could be talking about so many things right here. I could be talking about climate change. Basically within the next 30 years, the summers that we're seeing now, I mean, are going to be like, "wow, those were great". You know, and not having enough water in the Colorado River. I could be talking about so many things here and I know that I'm not highlighting many of them, but all can apply to what I'm talking about here. This suffering and fear and agony and grief.
We need to be able to find a balance between looking away to protect ourselves a little bit and the willingness to look deeply. And from that looking deeply to feel deeply because that's what I believe that humans were meant to do and are meant to do. And for various reasons, we all behave differently around really painful things that happen. As with so many things, we want to be able to apply as much balance as possible.
Right. And when I say balance, I don't mean being right in the middle all the time. I mean, being able to be in the swing between the extremes. To go between the polarities, in Somatic Experiencing language we call that pendulating between these experiences, and be able to tolerate more of what's happening. To be able to get a greater bandwidth to stay.
I'm bringing in Somatic Experiencing here, and I need to be very clear that I am not a Somatic Experiencing practitioner at this time. I am in the training to become an SEP. I'm in the first year of my training. It's a three-year training. So, I will be mentioning these terms as it's something that I am doing in the training.
And I've also been a grateful recipient of Somatic Experiencing, I see an SEP. And so building that tolerance, getting a larger bandwidth is something that I've been working with profoundly over these past few years. So I will be talking about that here in terms of our practices. So, you know, this is it, it's like, we can choose to look away, deciding it's too much pain to take in and feel.
We can choose to keep looking until that's not good for us either because we feel a sense of helplessness, hopelessness, or a sense of immobility can come from that. Or we can choose to look deciding to let that pain in and let it be a call to some kind of action.
The Middle Way, or the Middle Path is a Buddhist term. I don't identify as a Buddhist, but I do appreciate the tenets and the Middle Way or the Middle Path is basically being able to avoid the extremes in life. Right. Because again, as I said, life has these polarities. Contrast and complement. Crucial to living, you know, to life on this planet. There is no light without dark. There is no joy without pain.
We get this opportunity to practice the Middle Way as we move through this world. And it's interesting. I was having a conversation with a friend the other night about how, you know, monastic folks will tell you. I was specifically talking about Buddhist monastics. They will tell you, you know, really being cloistered, being in a monastery, it's not as difficult as being out in the world and applying these practices off the cushion, outside of the hours of meditation that people who are in a monastery get to do. Right? So here we are practitioners of whatever belief system we have out in the world, not having this ability to just completely move away from everything. Right. And that's part of why this balance is so important because we will burn out if we don't find the Middle Way.
We can't look away, but we can't let the looking destroy us. Okay. So I want to talk about some practices that can help here. Before I do that, though. I do just want to say that I'm going to include in the show notes ways to help Afghanistan. I will include links to No One Left Behind. Uh, this is an organization that's chartering flights and helping with special immigration visas, or SIVs for Afghan folks.
The International Refugee Assistance Project is providing legal resources for Afghan refugees. And also Together Rising, which if you listen to Glennon Doyle's podcast, or if you have read her books, she's totally amazing and I recommend everything she does. And I'm just saying like super, super girl crush over here.
She runs, along with her sister, Together Rising, which is an organization that brings a lot of money in for really wonderful causes. And they are partnering with Women For Afghan Women and entrusting the funds that they're sending to this organization that is putting the money toward where it will best serve Afghan women and children. Okay. So I'll just say that here. And you can reference the show notes for those links. Okay.
What I want to talk about first, because I have several ways that we can talk about helping here. And because I started by talking about how much it would help to donate. I started with those links. I think that's where I'll start.
What I want to really be clear about is I know this is not an easy time financially for many, many people in this country. I just heard the other day that 61,000 people in Chicago are now part of the houseless population, overnight ,with the first day of the eviction moratorium ending. I understand that people are strapped.
I understand that it's not easy to give money for everybody. And I also just want to remind you that it can be any amount. You know, if everybody gave $3 to these causes in Afghanistan, I mean, we could, we could really probably get everybody out and get them resettled here. So to not let the idea of," I don't have much, I could only give $3 to this", to not let that stop you because that's still money for the cause. Don't discount what effect it has on an organization for you to just give a little bit of money.
Okay. To go back to the looking and the taking in of our information. Let's just come back and sit with that for a moment. I cannot say this enough. Choose wisely how you're getting your information. How you are letting it in. What you're letting in and by what means.
For instance, I can't watch live news. I haven't been able to watch live news for years. I've really kind of wanted to get into Tik Tok and watch some of the amazing things that people are doing on there. And maybe this is not how it goes, and I just haven't sorted it out yet because it's this. It's really a learning curve for me, Tik Tok.
I mean, just trying to watch it is a learning curve for me, but the moment I open it up, something just shows up and I don't know if it's something that I can handle seeing or not. And when I say, I don't know if it's something I can handle seeing, I mean, I don't know if my nervous system can handle seeing what somebody is going to show me.
So I feel like I really need to choose very carefully what I'm going to watch in live action. There are movies I can't watch. There are really, really amazing movies that I will never be able to watch just because the live action of it. And even if it's not real and you know, it's, it's a, it's a portrayal it still comes right in the same way as if it's true and it's really happening. So I have to be very careful about that. And I would invite you to do the same if you have a similar sensitivity,
I do read articles. I read articles and I can look at still pictures. There is powerful information in still pictures. I imagine many of you saw that photograph. 60,000 Afghan folks were trying to get through the airport and onto planes and out of Afghanistan. It just really cuts to the bone, a photo like that. It's just very clear what's happening. You've got to be able to let your mind process it, right? So I can look at still pictures. Perhaps you can too. You can read articles. Figure out what your nervous system can tolerate that isn't going to dysregulate it too much, that isn't going to send it into a place that's activated in some way. And, and thus makes it unhappy and makes you unhappy. Okay. I'm not saying that we want to be able to be happy when we look at these pictures, let me be clear about that.
I just mean that we don't want your nervous system to get so distressed that you can't move through your day with at least a little bit of ease and contentment and peace. Okay. Make the decision to look at what's happening in a way that's tolerable. Okay. This is a way that you can be balancing the looking and the looking away. Okay. All right.
Find resources that give you ways to be helpful. Feeling helpless is just going to make you feel worse. And it's going to make you potentially want to look away. There are ways to be helpful. If you can call or email a lawmaker, that is something. And as I said, if you can donate even $3 to a, cause that's something you're contributing to the alleviation of suffering.
It's also really important that you don't poo-poo what effect it has on you and your corner of the world and all of the universe, the multiverses. However you want to say it. If we just sit for a couple of minutes and contemplate what's happening, I want to talk a little bit about the practice of Tonglen.
Tonglen is a Tibetan Buddhist practice for sending and taking. Again, you do not need to be a Buddhist to participate in this practice. This is such a beautiful practice. And I really want to invite you to consider this as a way to help you out of helplessness here, if that's something that might be prompting you to look away.
Okay. So the practice of Tonglen. Some of, you may have heard of this before. If you follow Pema Chodron, she's an American Buddhist nun in the Tibetan tradition. And she talks about this in her teachings. It's just so powerful. And basically what it is, is you sit and you think of somebody who is suffering and you breathe in their suffering and then you breathe out relief.
You're saying, I'm going to take some of this burden in and no you don't know them and no they're not going to necessarily know that you're doing that. But I do think that this does something. Research has actually shown that people who have prayer circles or thoughts circles, or energy circles, where attention is being put on their healing, they actually have better outcomes.
I don't know how it works. I do think that everything is ultimately energy. And I think that this is that. I think that when you breathe in the suffering of someone and you breathe out relief in their direction, that is an energetic practice and a kind gentle, compassionate, beautiful practice. If you listen to Pema Chodron, she'll talk about doing this for people out in the world who are suffering like the folks in Afghanistan. Then she'll talk about doing it with someone closer to home that you love.
Then she'll talk about doing it with someone who you feel kind of neutral about, and then someone you don't like. And then someone who don't really wish the best things to happen to them. We all have people like that in our lives. I'm working on it. I am far from being enlightened. Uh, so she talks about that.
I'm not giving any kind of instruction on that here. All I want you to do is to be able to do that for people suffering in different parts of the world. In Afghanistan, in Haiti, you know, wherever, I mean, I could go through the list, right? I'll leave it to you to determine who you want to do that for. That's all you do.
You breathe it in, you breathe in the suffering and you breathe out relief. It doesn't hurt you. It certainly doesn't hurt them. It doesn't hurt anything. It can only be good. Right. And at the very least it's neutral. When you compare neutral to really awful, that's pleasant, that's positive. That feels better.
Right. So if you're in a place of feeling helpless or hopeless, that little practice might be able to pop you out of that and get you into being able to look again in a way that feels more generous. Okay. I'm not trying to dissuade you from taking breaks. I think it is important to take breaks from the looking at times. When you do take breaks, I encourage you to take breaks that involve not scrolling through the socials.
Unless what you are choosing to take in, because again, this is like food. This is food for your head. It's like, am I going to have a Twinkie? Or am I going to have an apple. I mean, I'm not going to lie. Sometimes I have the Twinkie. I mean, I don't really eat Twinkies, but I do eat. Crap. Sometimes I do let myself have crap sometimes.
And I think that's important. The point is you give yourself a choice. And I do think that if you're taking a break, the choice to look at the apple versus the Twinkie is important. If you're really going to make the looking at the suffering sustainable. If you're going to scroll, look at nature, beauty of nature.
Look at something uplifting, find things, find news that's good. Cat videos. Interestingly enough, there has been research on cat videos that it helps mood. All right. So go for it. I also try to get up and move around. Put your feet on the ground, move your body. Get outside if you can, even if that just means on a quickie break, just walking the perimeter of your home.
All right. I do that sometimes. I just will take a quick break and just kind of, I live in a, cul-de-sac just kind of walk, walk around the cul-de-sac and come back. If I don't have time to go for a walk walk. I have to be careful when I say W A L K when my D O G S are around, because then they look up and they're like,W H A T. Question mark, exclamation point ?!.
Okay. So also really important here Do not. Okay. Wait, that sounds really. Sorry. I don't mean to order you around. I really don't. I want my language to be invitational. Please be careful about guilting yourself. I really want to invite you not to guilt yourself for taking breaks.
When you take breaks, whether it's momentary or you need a day off or a week off or a month off or whatever, that boundary is really important. And it's, it's paradoxical because the taking the break actually makes you more available to others to engage and to be a helper when you come back to it. The fuller, your cup is the more that spills out to others.
And that's how we want to look at that. Okay. So again, I'm not telling you not to take longer breaks. Full disclosure here. When a friend of mine texted and told me she was heartbroken about Afghanistan. I think this was maybe Monday of last week. Again. All right. I dunno. Right. I told you about my relationship with time. It's just like, it's pretty conflictual right now. Yeah,
I saw this text from her about her being a heartbroken about Afghanistan. And I was like, okay. Yeah, I know, you know, we, the, the administration pulled us out, but I, because I hadn't been looking at the news for a few days, I didn't know what was going down.
I didn't know that the Taliban was taking over. I didn't know that they had toppled Kabul. So then I looked and just was, you know, of course devastated, but I was in the middle of a little break when that happened. So don't guilt yourself for that. Okay. And do take breaks. It's a boundary. It's important. Okay.
Also, this is, I think this is so important just because you may not be able to do anything directly for folks in other parts of the world, don't forget the ways that you can show up locally as a helper in your little corner. Small ways are no less important. Right? I think Mother Teresa talked about doing small things with great love, right? That's really important.
Another thing too, that I really want to make sure it gets said. Having conversations with your peeps about what's going on in the world is important. It keeps you connected and it keeps you looking for ways that you can be a helper. You know, I had a friend the other day that was talking about really feeling like they wanted to take in an Afghan refugee.
That's something that crossed their mind. You know, having a conversation about this means that the person you're having the conversation with might say "well, actually, wait, I hadn't thought about that, but I could do that" or, you know, "I want to start talking about this. I want to start talking about a way that I can help." The contemplating it is something too. Okay.
Oh, lovelies. I wish there was less suffering in the world. It's hard. There is so much. If you are suffering, in any way you are suffering, I will take some breaths in of that suffering for you and breathe out relief for you this coming week.
All right, my dears. So try all this on. See how it feels. Let's keep doing this together. Mmmm. How wonderful that is. See you soon.