Why Your Practice Matters in the Polycrisis, Part I

Why do we meditate? These days, a lot of people are seeking “stress relief” - and yes, it can help with that.  But the state of relaxation and openness many seek is really just the starting point, the necessary prerequisite for us to do the real work of practice, which is the healing and transformation of pain, suffering, and trauma.

You may have heard that in response to Elmo’s (of Sesame Street fame) recent post on Twitter, “checking in on how everybody’s doing,” he received thousands of responses exposing the anxiety, depression, and despair that so many are experiencing these days. In case you haven’t noticed, we are facing multiple existential issues at this point in our collective human history, from climate change to a rise in authoritarianism. There’s a term for this: polycrisis. These are the effects of generations of global market capitalism, fossil fuel extraction, human trafficking and enslavement, colonialism, patriarchy, and more.

At the root of the continuing impact of many of these histories and systems is unprocessed trauma and emotion:

• ancestral traumas such as the enslavement, colonization, and genocide of swathes of humanity (these traumas affect those in the dominant/ perpetrating groups as well as those on the receiving end of the traumas, though the impacts look different);

• traumas related to our separation from and exploitation of the natural world;

• individual traumas from our personal histories;

• strong emotions we experience and are bombarded with daily, e.g., anger, fear, and outrage driving on these streets and freeways; these same emotions plus grief and more elicited by the daily news; or simply from watching television or movies (so rare to have light, heartwarming stories these days - much more common is horror, violence, and salaciousness that we may even become numb to);

• not to mention run-of-the-mill strong emotions that can come up in relationships, jobs, and just daily life.  

We need meditation to process and metabolize life, really. But instead all the unprocessed emotions and experiences get stuffed somewhere in our physical and energetic bodies (think of how the world’s landfills are overflowing with human-made garbage). Our collective psychic garbage is baldly visible these days - and is related to all that is unprocessed within us individually. As in the macrocosm, so in the microcosm - and vice versa. This is why we say that we don’t just practice for ourselves, we practice for the world.

Luckily, most of our internal ‘garbage’/ unprocessed emotions are biodegradable. With attention, awareness, deep compassion, and often with the support of community (or sangha), there is a way out. And that way out, the only way out, is through. Stay tuned for Part II, where I’ll share more about how meditation and presence can help us unearth and process our accumulated garbage.