What do you do with that terror?

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Ok so please excuse the heavy title, but yesterday I was in a counselling session which was offered to arrestees from the Rising Tide blockade. I was sharing a lot of my concerns about the future, which I know many of you share. And the (lovely) counsellor asked me – “what do you do, with that terror?”

It was a confronting & provocative question.

Which led (and anticipated by the skilled counsellor!) to some really great discussion. I talked about how hard I find these times. The cognitive dissonance, the gaslighting by the system, whilst (some) life goes on and bills need to be paid. I spoke of my desire to connect deeply to others. And that I’d have the chance in Deep Ecology, and weekly meditations (hi to my meditation teacher @MikeKelly), and in the Chaotic Times signal group (connected as readers of Sarah Wilson’s substack).. but I wanted something asynchronous that existed between those events.

And most importantly offered deeper dives into unpacking some of this stuff. You know, lengthy online chats that aren’t just emoji replies!

I want this space to offer solace to people, that any time of the night or day, you could step into the embrace of other kindred folk and share what is on your mind. Or offer an ear, or an insight to another fellow human.

So my answer to this question, is that I seek connection and I seek to learn so I can be of help to others. But it’s quite the journey ahead.

What do you do with this terror?

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Hi Ally. Thank you for sharing this question and your reflections. It is so important that we think of emotions as physical formations that need to be moved, shifted, worked through, released (or sometimes be recognised as needing to, and allowed to, hang out on our ahoulders for a time). I love that you have a meditation teacher! I think we probably all need one just like we all need a counsellor!

hmm. There was a time when “what I did with the terror” was let it control everything I did and thought and I was a right mess as a result. Reckon thats a common story. Then I thought if I worked really fucking hard then that would do the job. Then the work felt ineffective and frustrating (slow, slow, advocacy and law reform), cue my second crisis of self. Now what i do with the terror is cry sometimes, get frustrated a lot, live with solastalgia, but mostly try and make meaning in the now. Breathe in the beautiful things, slowly. Its funny how the answer is so quaint, not big or grand or energy defying… maybe i wanted to be a hero. But its finding a community near home, making a shared garden, learning how to and being ready to protect my home and local area when natural disaster strikes. Very work in progress. There’s so much more i want to do. But thats where im at and it feels more manageable. There’s always the dark ball of “but is it enough!?” in the pit of the guts, but I know that lives there because there is no end to the list, but the list is the problem, not me :laughing:

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Awww @Ally @Jacs - I love that we are here, doing this right now! Long-form, considered caring and thinking together.

Three things came up for me.

I feel to say that I don’t so much feel terror when I think about systemic collapse - I feel anger. It pisses me off, rather than scares me. I’m not sure if that’s because the outcome is so abstract I can’t imagine it, or because I’m not scared of chaos.

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I think it may have even been @Ally who said this to me.. Nate Hagens, in one of his podcasts, upon a discussion about how fraught our world is and how wrong our approach to it all as society is, simply said… “You know what I’m going to do?…. I think I’m going to buy a puppy”.

Somehow, that makes sense to me. It wasn’t because he’s looking to escape the problem. It felt like, in the face of this humanitarian meltdown, to choose to engage in an unconditionally loving relationship or care felt like the only thing to do. A revolution of softness, of slowness, of love.

It makes sense in my heart!

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I know this is going to sound very nerdy, and very meditation teacher-ey. I’m not sure how helpful this is, but this is the way it is for me.

When one understands deeply in their bones the natural laws of anicca (impermanence), anatta (no-self, no separation) and dependent arising (an interdependent, karmic sort of universal flow), it opens up to a deep kind of acceptance for what is.

The wisdom of impermanence - when one has had some sort of fundamental insight into the changing nature of reality - transforms our mind and heart’s relationship to life. We realise that not only events and objects in our lives change, but that the very premise upon which relative life is built is change.

https://jackkornfield.com/the-wisdom-of-insecurity/

Dependent Arising acknowledges how the entirety of existence exists as one interconnected web - through space and time. Perhaps something to dig into a little more another time, but essentially, when I realise everything is how it is right now because there is no other way it could be given the karmic conditioning - essentially the past’s imprint in the current moment, which then imprints into the next moment - it sets me free a little bit.

This is just how this is supposed to be, right now. I can (sometimes) fully see how and why at some level, and so I’m at peace with it (sometimes). And one thing I can be sure of is that it will definitely change.

For the better? For the worse? I don’t know. I can do my part, with all of my heart, and then surrender. If things don’t go well, I suppose that’s how it is. Everything has it’s time, and then it doesn’t :folded_hands:

Perhaps humans will pull out of this tailspin and our world will be saved. I want that! But I feel in my bones that everything has to end - I feel like my practice asks me to see that in a really fierce way. The terror of societal collapse - it’s almost like the fear of death, at a collective level. I suppose spiritual practice at it’s core is working with this fear.

I feel like I could have explained this better, but I’ve just spent the best part of an hour here and I’m out of time!

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I’ve had two very strong responses to collapse - the early one was fear, even though I think my subconscious mind had known for quite some time. I had to do a lot of nervous system work, it also brought up a lot of old trauma. The second strong response and the one that is with me now I can only call love. It took me quite some time to come to acceptance of our reality, I wonder if it is kind of like Elisabeth Kubler Ross’ Five Stage of Grief with acceptance being the last stage. Acceptance is so powerful , it kind of frees you up to just approach this with love, instead of fighting to change things. Ironically, it the love that has been missing in our world - of ourselves, each other and our beautiful earth - that has created this problem in the first place. I grow things and create life in my garden, it’s become a big thing for me. I build real life communities through my work, seeing people transform gives me so much joy. I celebrate life in all its’ forms, I’ve actually never felt so good! In a strange way though I feel lucky - I’ve been through incredibly difficult things in my life before and being present to the good things in the here and now was a survival strategy. I am ok in this moment. So I feel lucky that that I have this to draw from, lots of people don’t.

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You can nerd out as much as you like, I really appreciate the way other people articulate shared feelings and thoughts, and finding new things to read and listen to.

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This article feels like an eloquent distillation of the chaotic thoughts that run through my mind in bursts. And feels very relevant to this thread:

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