Jeremy Mohler

Writer and meditation teacher

The life-changing power of allowing yourself to be sad, angry, and afraid

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I recently bought marijuana for the first time in years, and on the way to the shop I was reminded of the power of mindfulness.

Playing in bands in my 20s, I used to get weed from a friend or bum off friends of friends. Drugs and alcohol were always just hanging around.

After it was decriminalized in D.C. in 2014, I began to wonder how to buy it. A friend told me, while shops can’t sell directly, they skirt the law by giving it away as a “free gift” with the purchase of merchandise, like a t-shirt. Supposedly, shops are routinely raided by the police.

Walking through the Columbia Heights bustle, anxious thoughts raced through my mind: what if the shop gets busted when I’m there? What if a cop sees me leaving?

Then came ego: I’ve got this. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

Then came self-judgement: why am I afraid of buying pot at 33 years old? Why am I smoking again? When am I going to grow up?

Then came logic: I’m a college-educated, white, heterosexual, cisgender man. Cops don’t care about me.

None of the self-talk helped. My shoulders and stomach were still tense. I still felt a little claustrophobic and off-kilter. I wasn’t going to talk my way out feeling anxious.

But then I remembered a story the spiritual teacher David Deida tells about his own teacher feeling jealous at a party. Deida sees the teacher’s wife across the room enjoying a conversation with an attractive man and asks his teacher, “Aren’t you jealous?”

His teacher responds, “Yes, but the fact that I’m jealous isn’t bothering me.”

In other words, the teacher was aware of how he was relating to his jealousy. Instead of making it a problem, he was allowing it to just be.

Mindfulness is often associated with focus and paying attention. But it also involves accepting rather than resisting what’s happening inside of us.

We often deny, ignore, or repress emotions we don’t want to experience. The mind tries to calm us down by telling stories (There’s nothing to be afraid of).

But think about what makes you feel better when you’re sad or afraid. It’s when your partner or friend or relative gives you their undivided attention without giving advice or trying to change how you feel. When someone let’s you be yourself, with all your messy emotions. When someone just listens.

Once I acknowledged that I felt nervous and a little silly about buying pot at 33 years old, the tension in my body dissolved, and I saw it as yet another of life’s adventures.

Free meditation cheat sheet

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries,expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

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This short poem by Rumi explains the healing power of meditation

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The 13th century Persian poet Rumi wrote:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

The hardest thing you’ll ever do in your life is see yourself as a home—to feel okay no matter what’s happening inside of you.

If you’re like me, you’re almost always checking on yourself. Am I okay? How do they see me? Am I being “mindful?” And on and on and on.

It’s so much easier to change things externally—by losing weight, getting a new job, quitting an addiction, which are all still difficult to do. But to treat all your thoughts and emotions “honorably,” to accept and welcome them, will challenge you all the way up until your last breath.

That’s what makes mindfulness meditation so powerful. It’s a practice for welcoming the guests.

You relax your body and watch your mind. Thoughts appear. Wild thoughts. Sad thoughts. Evil thoughts. Boring thoughts. Emotions follow and show up in the body. A burning chest. A tense stomach. A scrunched face. You just watch.

You let it all be, and then you let the thoughts go and return your attention to what’s alive in the present moment. You refocus on the movement of your breath, sensations in the body, and/or the sounds around you. You come back home.

Don’t worry about someone breaking in and stealing everything, because whoever comes in is an old friend (as Rumi says, a “guide from beyond.”)

If you’re like me…

…part of you gets anxious and grabs a beer (or a cigarette, or Netflix, or Facebook, or…) for distraction.

…part of you beats you up inside, saying you’re never good enough and that only never-ending, hard work will make you happy.

…part of you wants to be worshipped by others so that you’ll finally feel the love you’ve always thought you deserved.

…part of you is terrified of being alone, so you manipulate others into wanting to be around you—often to no avail.

Just like me, you have habitual patterns that have been part of you since early in your life, which you created in an effort to protect yourself when you felt vulnerable.

Mindfulness allows you to see these patterns for what they really are. They aren’t you—they’re guests. Welcome them all. Hell, love them if you can.

When you can love the parts of you that were previously unconscious, that’s when real, deep, lasting change can happen.

Free meditation cheat sheet

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries,expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

Just like trees need wind to survive, you need distractions to be more mindful

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Meditation teacher and therapist Tara Brach often refers to Biosphere 2, a huge glass dome built in the 1980s in Arizona for scientists to study the earth’s living systems in a closed environment.

She writes in Psychology Today, “As it turned out, when designing the [Biosphere 2,] the scientists didn’t account for the absence of wind. What they learned was, without enough wind to develop their [stress wood,] trees cannot grow.”

The takeaway: without some level of difficulty, we can’t grow into our full potential.

Or, put another way: as the ancient Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote, “What stands in the way becomes the way.”

This might be the hardest thing to remember when you’re meditating, to be grateful when your mind wanders from the present moment because it’s an opportunity to practice.

Gratitude is the last thing I want to feel when I notice my mind flitting away to worry about my loaded email inbox or what to make for dinner.

Instead of guiding my attention back to the sensations of my breath and body—which is the practice—I tend to judge myself for not being present, for not meditating the “right” way, for thinking “too much.”

That’s understandable. In our dog eat dog, individualistic, capitalist society, there’s so much pressure to get everything right, to be perfect. Especially since the economy—how we fulfill our basic needs in capitalism—has shifted towards using the mind more than the body.

We’re supposed to be on all the time, paying attention, making the right decisions, managing a perfect life. We’ve got decisions to make—healthcare plans to choose, cable packages to pick, Instagram profiles to curate, resumes to build, side hustles to manage.

If we’re not paying close enough attention, we might fall behind and miss out. Fall behind on what? Everything.

Here’s some good news: mindfulness is not about staying present 100 percent of the time, always, 24/7, 365. It’s simply noticing when your mind leaves and bringing it back—over and over again. It’s a practice.

This noticing is what develops your stress wood, your ability to stay present a little more often, especially when the shit hits the fan.

Your constantly wandering mind is the wind, which strengthens your mind’s muscle for showing up fully in your life.

More and more practice will allow you to handle stronger and stronger winds without getting swept away into your habitual patterns of escape (drinking, social media, etc.).

Your wandering mind is the way that stands in the way. Try having some gratitude for it.

Want to be more mindful?

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries,expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.