Listening to the news the other day, I found myself again pondering the need for strategies that allow us to deal with reports of potential terrorist attacks, war, storms, and other sources of fear and uncertainty.   A strangely clarifying thought I heard someone say in a talk I attended is that humanity isn’t doing anything different from what we know about our history across time.  What is different is that we have technologies that allow us to be *aware* of all the challenging and destructive things our species seems to have a tendency to do.  In this talk, the speaker also reminded us of the constant presence of creativity and beauty in human history, the other side of the equation of being human.  That got me to thinking about the daily choices we make about which aspect of our humanity we choose to emphasize in any given moment, and how we respond to the fear and uncertainty that are in our face, as it were, each and every day.

Fear drives many unfortunate and cruel behaviors, so it seems to me that learning to be skillful in the presence of fear is a worthwhile practice.  I may have shared this story in the past, but I remember a time when my grandmother ran outside to help a neighborhood dog who had been hit by a car.  She knew this dog very well, and went right up to him to help.  In this fear and distress, he bit down on her hand and wouldn’t release it.  My grandmother was startled, but she knew that the dog was responding from fear and told us all about her experience as a way of demonstrating the power of fear to generate hurtful responses toward others.

In the hopes of helping all of us become more skillful in the presence of fear, I’d like to revisit some ideas I’ve shared over time.  Recently, an experiment reminded us about Tonglen breathing – a way to help center ourselves and feel that we are at least doing something in response to world conditions.  This week, I’d like to add two more approaches we’ve touched on before.
 

The most important practice, for me, is to constantly return to the present moment.  When I can remember to stay in just this moment, and bring myself back from thoughts about future disasters or past events, I discover that I can again settle into my “home base”.  For me, that’s the bowl in my belly where I find support and a feeling of being grounded.   Wherever you find home base in your body, notice what it’s like to practice constantly returning to just this moment, just this breath, and to that place in your body that feels settled and centered.

Another useful practice is to carry with you an image, word, or symbol that embodies a sense of comfort and ease.  It can become a place to return to when the stresses of fear-based messages finally get to you.  The key is to know your personal responses to fear and stress – to be aware of how your body and psyche express themselves when you’re afraid or uncertain.  Then, when you notice these sensations and states of mind and emotions, they can become a signal to invite you to return to the comforting image, word, symbol you carry in your awareness.  It’s best to practice spending time with what comforts you when you are relaxed and calm, as you can then develop a habit of turning to this resource, rather than beginning the practice when you’re already stressed and afraid.  Notice that this practice also brings you back into the present moment and into your immediate relationship with your source of comfort and ease.

And, finally, remember that – as strange as it seems – each moment presents an opportunity to either feed fear or shift toward recentering yourself.  Sometimes, we become swept away by a fearful event or thought and it takes a while to recenter ourselves.  Sometimes, we can shift gears relatively quickly.  Whichever happens in any given moment, the key here is to have strategies available that help make it possible to shift when you recognize that you’d like to do so.

As with all the experiments, the goal here isn’t to become immediately proficient at shifting away from fear and uncertainty and dropping into the present moment.  The goal is to practice and to develop at least the possibility of being able to do so from time to time.  With more practice, we become more reliably able to drop fear and re-enter the present moment, and that’s a great gift to ourselves and everyone else.