Jeremy Mohler

Writer and meditation teacher

Give yourself permission to meditate when you’re stressed out

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I used to smoke cigarettes every day. Never more than two or three, but for long enough — a few years in my mid-20s — to be ashamed about it.

Smoking felt like an instant escape from feeling stressed. That hit of nicotine, the fresh outside air, the burn in my lungs flipped a reset switch inside of me.

But only for a few minutes. The stress came creeping back in, with an added layer of shame for doing something that was actively killing me.

Stress is killing us, particularly those who are struggling to keep jobs and pay the bills. U.S. life expectancy dropped in recent years for the first time since the flu pandemic of 1918.

The main cause? A spike in liver cirrhosis, opioid overdoses, and suicides, ways of dying fueled in part by stress.

Then there’s the stress that doesn’t kill but gnaws at us throughout the day.

The last four decades of capitalism — often called “neoliberalism” — has forced more and more people to manage their own care. Corporations have held down paychecks and pocketed record profits, while both political parties have cut and privatized support from the government.

Our lives are now filled to the brim with decisions. About which health insurance plan to sign up for. About which funds should go in your 401k — if you’re lucky enough to have one. About how to piece together enough work hours to pay the bills. About what to share on social media.

Talk about a recipe for stress, anxiety, busyness, exhaustion — a sense of never being able to fully relax.

Meditation isn’t going to fix an economy and political system that are stressing us to death. We can’t meditate our way to a “massive redistribution of economic and political power,” as Martin Luther King, Jr. called it.

But it can help take some of the edge off, and even help us make healthier choices in the midst of stress.

How? By making us more mindful, which is the opposite of escaping.

Mindfulness is paying attention, right here, right now, non-judgmentally.

Most of the time we’re not mindful, on autopilot, thinking about the past or future. I’m eating dinner and the fried chicken reminds me of a show I watched last night, which reminds me that I need a new TV, which reminds me of an argument I had with my dad one time in Santa Cruz, which reminds me that I want to live somewhere else with better weather, which…and on and on and on.

That non-judgmentally part is the key. Because what if we really are dealing with something stressful, like a shitty job or no job at all?

Stress is inevitable. What’s not inevitable is the story we add on top of the stress.

The mind not only constantly wanders but it also constantly judges things, including our thoughts. Usually this comes in the form of should or shouldn’t. Like, I shouldn’t be feeling stressed— which is yet another thought that takes us away from the moment.

That shouldn’t is what made me grab for the pack of cigarettes back in the day.

When we judge ourselves for being stressed out — or whatever emotion we’re feeling — we get further caught up in our head, ignoring what we see, feel, taste, smell, and hear.

That’s why a cigarette felt so good — it brought me back to my body for at least a few seconds. I could smell the burning tobacco. I could feel the smoke in my lungs. I was in the moment…for a few seconds.

Meditation is practicing not judging ourselves. We allow everything into our awareness equally and fully, even our stories about what’s happening— and then we let go and fall back into a present moment that is always here to catch us.

Your noses itches. You bring your attention back to the breath. Your back hurts. You bring your attention back to the breath. You think that you aren’t a good meditator. You bring your attention back to the breath.

Eventually, your mind settles into an open awareness, relaxing as pure consciousness — not grasping or pushing away or judging. Just being.

Stress becomes yet another aspect of your experience, which is far too large and expansive and whole to be summed up in a story.

Ready to get serious about meditation?

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How mindfulness helps me feel a little less lonely

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As a writer, I can’t stand adverbs. But the scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn, who’s been called the “godfather of modern mindfulness,” has a point: mindfulness is being aware in the present moment non-judgmentally.

I didn’t get that “non-judgmentally” part until right in the middle of a seven-day silent meditation retreat when I was engulfed by a terrifying, yet familiar emotion.

Loneliness has always been my deepest fear. Even as an increasingly unapologetic introvert, I worry about ending up alone in a house somewhere in the suburbs watching The Wire reruns with no one to talk to about it.

But, four days into the retreat, loneliness became just another fact of my experience. Like the blue jay that chirped every morning outside my window. And the urge to turn my phone off airplane mode. And the taste of the stale coffee at breakfast.

I was in a small group of students meeting with a teacher in one of the rare moments we could talk. A woman talked through tears about grieving for her husband’s sudden death in a car wreck years ago.

After that, I was embarrassed, but I told the teacher anyway: I was feeling lonely.

She asked whether I could feel the loneliness in the body. “Where is it showing up?”

“My hands — they’re so heavy. It feels like I can’t move them,” I said.

Normally, that my hands felt like 1,000-pound boulders would’ve triggered shame. I’m a 33-year-old man who’s afraid of being alone.

Usually, I would’ve acted out to get away from the fear and shame. Like the one time I was solo camping in one of the most beautiful parts of the country, Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona, and I drove an hour to a bookstore in the closest town just to be around somebody, anybody.

But this time I laughed. Happy tears welled up in my eyes.

This time, the loneliness was just another phenomenon. I didn’t have to make it go away or wrong or a sign that I’m not a “man” or anything at all. I didn’t have to resist it — I could let it just be.

My heavy hands were also just another phenomenon. Just something to notice and observe.

That’s what mindfulness is — allowing everything into our awareness equally and fully.

Our shoulder itches, a bird chirps, we think about that email we need to send, our back starts to hurt, and on and on and on.

We let sensations, sounds, thoughts, whatever pass like clouds in the sky. We accept any and everything, even our unconscious, snap judgements about whether whatever happens is good or bad, right or wrong.

We pay attention non-judgmentally.

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Listen to the podcast version with more content

My podcast, Meditation for the Masses, is mindfulness for the 99 percent. Listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and everywhere podcasts are available. Stream this episode below.

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Want to stop holding back? Learn the difference between pain and suffering

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Word has it, the ancient Indian radical and spiritual master known as the Buddha once asked his students, “If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful?”

“It is,” they answered.

He then asked, “If the person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?”

“It is,” they answered.

“In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. And with this second arrow comes the possibility of choice,” he said.

What the Buddha was getting at is that there’s a difference between pain and suffering.

Pain is the obvious stuff, getting fired, wrecking your car, waking up with a hangover. It’s the not so obvious stuff for some of us, being pulled over by a cop because of the color of your skin, getting catcalled while walking down the street, opening the envelope of your student loan bill.

It’s also something we feel inside, emotionally, when life doesn’t live up to our expectations.

“The first arrow is our human conditioning to cling to comfort and pleasure and to react with anger or fear to unpleasant experience,” writes meditation teacher Tara Brach, in her book True Refuge.

We live most of our days in a “trance,” Brach calls it, wishing that life, our job, our boyfriend, this country, were different.

All it takes is a few minutes of watching where our mind goes during meditation to see that we’re often somewhere other than the present moment. We’re fantasizing about a crush, and then zing…we’re worrying about asking our boss for a raise.

This trance is painful because it holds us back from being present. When our mind is in the past or future, our body clenches up and we miss out on the very thing we’re searching for: the deep connection we feel when we’re fully open and alive, not holding back.

But pain is inevitable. Everyone experiences some level of trauma as a kid, which shapes our emotional reactions.

And underneath all the stories about greatness and dreams, this society is exceptionally violent, overworked, uncared for, overmedicated, unfulfilled, overpoliced, underpaid, and barreling towards climate disaster. No wonder we want things to be different.

What isn’t inevitable is suffering, caused by the story about ourselves that we add on top of the pain — to explain it, to get away from it, to indulge in it.

A colleague recently emailed me criticizing how I had been communicating with them about a project we were collaborating on. It wasn’t just a miscommunication — they described my behavior in a way that was extremely different from my experience.

I felt angry, then sad, and then, most painful, a deep sense of doubt. My mind filled with stories. Do I have any idea how I come off to others? Are all my friends just pretending to like me? I’m too busy always trying to be “nice” rather than honest.

Notice what’s at the center of these stories: me, a “self,” an ego. When this “self” is at the center of the story, we suffer.

Why? Because telling stories about a “self” turns us into a frozen, unchangeable character in a movie. It separates us from the everchanging flow of life, from the fact that we’re always learning and growing. It disconnects us from the connection we seek. We blame ourselves because we are just the way we are — broken, unworthy of belonging, unworthy of love.

I spent two days firing more arrows into a fresh wound by blaming my “self” for what happened.

That’s not to say I wasn’t to blame. We must take responsibility for our role in the pain, especially if we hurt other people.

But beating myself up didn’t help anyone — as the Buddha said, it was even more painful. For two days I felt as lonely as I did in my early 20s, the loneliest time of my life.

How do we stop the suffering? By going to the body.

When you notice that you’re beating yourself up, when you’re lost in a story of self-blame, ask yourself, “Where and how is this showing up in my body?”

Maybe it’s a clench in your stomach or a dull pain in your chest. Feel the raw sensations that accompany the story. Give them time and space, allowing them to just be as they are.

If the feelings are too overwhelming, put your attention on the movement of your breath or the sounds around you. Many of us carry untreated trauma that needs time and professional therapy to carefully unpack.

Usually, through being mindful of what’s going on in the body, we eventually see the stories for what they are. Then we can investigate where they came from so we can notice them even quicker next time they appear.

Talking with a close friend or therapist can help. Learning about capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy can help us see how those in power turn us against each other.

The Buddha’s whole jam was enlightenment, the end of suffering. I don’t think that’s a healthy expectation.

But learning the difference between pain and suffering can give us, as he told his students, “the possibility of choice,” also known as freedom.

Ready to get serious about meditation?

Sign up for my weekly email on meditation and bringing mindfulness to the stuff that matters most — work, relationships, and politics.

Listen to the podcast version with more content

My podcast, Meditation for the Masses, is mindfulness for the 99 percent. Listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and everywhere podcasts are available. Stream this episode below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | RSS | More