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Hi friend,
In my weekly, live Wednesday Talk & Meditation on November 6, I spoke about four ways we can respond after the election, and if you missed it, you can click the links below to check out the recording.
If you find the talk helpful, you may want to join me for this free offering every Wednesday, by signing up for the Wednesday Meditations. You can do that easily by just CLICKING HERE.
If you like, please share this with others, and invite them to sign up for the Wednesday Meditations here.
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Watch the Talk + Meditation
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And here is the written summary of points covered:
51.7% of American voters have reelected Donald Trump. Many are celebrating his victory. And many – including me – are not. We can accept the result of an election, while worrying about its consequences. If that’s how you feel, here’s a short summary of some reflections and suggestions.
(By the way, you might be celebrating Trump’s victory – and still have compassion for people who are not. If so, what you’ll find here could be useful for them. Otherwise, no need to read further.)
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Strengthen Your Heart
When the bottom falls out, turn to the heart.
For starters, be kind to yourself. Let yourself feel what you’re feeling, slow down, and take your time. Be loyal to you. Get on your own side. Get a sense of your own fundamental goodness, the deep sweet nature in your core.
Protect your heart. Pull your attention away from toxic influences. Try not to ruminate. As the Buddha taught long ago: all kinds of painful thoughts and feelings can pass through awareness, but we don’t have to let them invade the mind and remain.
Also of course, try to keep your heart open, love your friends and family, and love our big beautiful precious world. Love heals and feeds us whether it is flowing in or out. With others who are draining or upsetting, you can have compassion for them while stepping back or standing up for yourself.
We are all wounded. If you are like me, people have let you down or directly attacked you. We make mistakes and feel regret and remorse. We’ve had losses, such as doors closing, loved ones dying, and dashed hopes for a better future. We can be honest about our wounds . . . . and feel them along with love. Carry your wounds into love. Then they soften and are more bearable, and we open out into a field of love.
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See Clearly
Recognize misinformation and lies. It’s easy to get basic factual information from Wikipedia, university websites, and credible news organizations that correct their errors.
Recognize facts that are relevant to you. Close at hand, how are people doing who you care about? How are you doing, really? Your health? Finances? Well-being?
Further afield, are actual harms heading your way? As Maya Angelou has said, when people show you who they are, believe them. The first time.
I and many others have underestimated the movement toward authoritarianism in America, and overestimated the guardrails against that. Let’s not make those mistakes any longer. It’s a plain fact, not alarmism, that America is already several steps down the well-worn path historically toward tyranny.
We don’t know their timing and shape, but we do know that storms are coming.
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Do What You Can
Nkosi Johnson was born with HIV in 1989 and died soon at age 12. He became an advocate for those with AIDS, and once said essentially:
Do all that you can with what you’ve been given, in the place where you are, with the time that you have.
The more uncertain and potentially threatening the wider world, the more important it is to invest in yourself and the circle around you. What feeds you? What protects you? What makes you happy? Boring but true: we get back what we put in . . . to what we eat, to exercise, and to meditation and other inner practices.
Also, I remember seeing a YouTube clip of a big grim former Special Forces expert on survival who was asked, “Under the worst conditions, what’s the most important thing to have?” He replied: “Friends.”
Talk with people. And listen. Know your neighbors, find common ground. Consider important relationships and what could be repaired or deepened in them.
Out in the world, pick the causes you care about, and support them. The petitions you sign or dollars you send may make no discernible difference for the world, but they will definitely make a difference for you.
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Find Peace
Throughout history, most people have lived under tough conditions while still finding their ways to be happy. If they could do it, we can, too.
Know that most things are beyond your control. Try to accept this fact, and uncertainty, and not always knowing.
What brings you to peace? Neurologically, it helps to raise your gaze, look out a window, take a bird’s-eye view. Take some breaths, with the exhalations longer than the inhalations. Tune into the internal sensations of breathing, which will help to quiet inner chatter.
Look around and see so many things that are unaffected by the political ups and downs: trees reaching for the sky, birds flying, friends cooking dinner, good music, laughter, love flowing. Turn toward whatever are reliable sources of well-being and comfort and wisdom for you: perhaps the simple taste of a banana, the hug of a friend, the eager look in your dog’s eyes, the vastness of the night sky, the onward developments of science, the perennial insights of the great teachers, or the simple rainbow beauty of an oil sheen in a puddle.
In your mind, there is always the peaceful stability of awareness itself. To paraphrase Pema Chodron, you are the sky and everything else is just the weather.
And even deeper is a fundamental stillness in your ground of being. Slow down, be gentle with yourself, and you can find this quiet between and beneath all the busy thoughts and feelings and desires. This innate peacefulness, infused with love, is our true home, a reliable refuge and source of strength under all conditions, including sometimes an unreliable and scary world.
Your own practice and efforts will help many others besides yourself. Rippling out into the world, touching many lives, known and unknown, seen and unseen.
From my heart, thank you.
Rick
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