One thing that has shifted in my adult lifetime is the way we receive the news.  These days, it seems that each headline and report is designed to increase fear and anxiety about what’s happening around us and in the world in general.  Because of this, many people move through their daily lives filled with fear and anxiety, if not downright hopelessness, about the condition of the world.  In recent weeks, there have been many people in my office afraid about the election, the economy, the world situation in general and I’ve spent a good deal of time offering possible options about how to handle these activating feelings.

And so, I’d like to offer, for this week’s experiment, one of the primary resources I’ve mentioned to many people in the past week.  I’ve written about Tonglen before, and would like to revisit it as this week’s experiment.  Tonglen is a Buddhist practice that has to do with engaging difficult and challenging feelings with the energy of the heart.  There are several elements to the practice of Tonglen.  The first is that any feeling you or I may have, of any kind, is felt in the same moment by countless people all over the world.  It’s part of the human experience and we are never alone in our distress.  This is one way we recognize that we are all in this together.

The second element is that our hearts are filled with the fire of love and this fire has the capacity to neutralize negative or challenging feelings.  In the practice of Tonglen, we breathe in a difficult feeling and allow the fire in the heart to transform it.  Then, we infuse that transformed energy with whatever quality we want to breathe out, be it love, ease, peace, compassion, etc.

The third element is that, as we breathe in the feeling that challenges us, we breathe in not only our own, but that of all the people in the world who are feeling the same way in this present moment.  The fire in the heart is strong enough and big enough to transform all the challenging energy we breathe in.  The fact that we breathe in the feeling, rather than push it away or attempt to hide from it, shifts our relationship to it from struggle to actively engaging it in a constructive way.

Then, as we exhale the energy of love, peace, ease, compassion, or whatever other positive feeling we wish to experience, we first exhale it into our own body-mind being and then on out into the world, to touch all those who have suffered as we have.  We offer support and healing to others, even as we offer it to ourselves.

The key opportunity here is to notice what happens when you actively engage a process of shifting fear into ease or calm or peacefulness.  It’s a practice I use every day, and over the years I’ve discovered that it can shift my experience from one of fear, worry, anxiety, anger, shame or any other troubling emotion to one of calm, ease, compassion or peace within the space of relatively few breaths.  Also, when I feel helpless in the face of what’s happening in the world, I use Tonglen to allow me to feel I’m doing something.  When there is violence in the world, I spend time breathing in hatred and fear and breathing out ease and compassion.  If I’m on a subway train and people become angry with one another, I immediately shift into my heart space and begin to breathe in anger and breathe out calm.  Whether or not it actually changes anything in the world, it profoundly shifts my own experience, as I no longer struggle with something that threatens to overwhelm me.  Instead, I bring it into my heart and feel the experience of that energy transformed into something much more comfortable.

And so, for this week’s experiment, I invite you to practice Tonglen whenever you find yourself gripped with fear or worry, and notice what happens.  Remember to focus on both your own feelings and the same feelings that are out there in the experience of countless others.  If you find you’re uncomfortable breathing in difficult feelings, there’s another version of Tonglen on the Meditations page that offers an alternative experience that may be more comfortable if you’ve never practiced Tonglen before.

As with all the experiments, please engage this one with open curiosity and leave judgment behind.  Compassion for yourself – for your humanness – is a great gift you can offer yourself as you explore Tonglen.