Jeremy Mohler

Writer and meditation teacher

Had any luck dating during the pandemic? Asking for a friend.

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I met somebody interesting a few weeks before the shutdown—before I holed up at my parents’ house on their rural farm. Hours of FaceTime and hundreds of text messages later, she’s an irresistible mystery I’m dying to figure out in person.

But what’s my crush based on? How much about her has my mind invented? How much have I projected on to her? Probably a ton. Probably so much that I’ll hardly recognize her in “real life.”

Once, at the end of a meditation retreat, the writer and Zen Buddhist teacher Natalie Goldberg told us students, “Watch out. You might think you know each other, but you’re projecting so many things.”

I’d spent that week crushing on one of the retreat center staff members. Everything about Molly added up to perfection. Her sunbaked skin and snow-white teeth. Her glances in the kitchen, which broke the retreat rule of not looking at each other. Her California accent when I broke another rule by striking up a conversation one morning. (There’s actually a name for this instant obsession, the “Meditation Crush,” which Portlandia nailed in this sketch.)

In my head, Molly and I ran off together to buy a cabin in the nearby Sante Fe mountains. But, as I walked away from the retreat center on the last day, Goldberg’s advice came in handy. I’d probably never see Molly again, which hurt—but I knew, in my gut, that I’d fallen for a projection.

Here’s how projection works: “Your brain fill[s] in the gaps in an otherwise incomplete story and the way it does that is through use of your own past history—positive or negative,” writes the psychiatrist Paul Dobransky.

Key words: your own past history. We know ourselves more than anyone else. So, when we meet someone new our brain fills in the gaps based on this self-knowledge. Molly was more than just an attractive face—she was the wild, earthy free spirit that I’d wished I could be.

See, when we’re young, we get messages from parents, teachers, family, and friends that certain things about us are unacceptable, wrong, unworthy. We internalize these messages as shame, which causes us to hide and lose access to parts of ourselves. When we lose access to, say, our joy, we’re bound to idealize others who are unabashedly joyful. When we feel shame about, say, our tendency to get really anxious, we’re easily irritated by other people who get really anxious too.

The other day, I was flipping through one of my favorite books, Pema Chödrön’s Start Where You Are, and saw a note I’d made: “Molly, Sante Fe, May 2016.” Here’s the text beside it:

“Our sense of being defeated means that something got in. Something touched our soft spot. This vulnerability that we’ve kept armored for ages—something touched it. Maybe all that touched it was a butterfly, but we have never been touched there before. It was so tender.”

And that’s the thing. Even if the Molly I fell for was a projection, there’s a reason she got in. There’s a reason I made up the story that I did. And there’s a reason it hurt to let her go.

In other words, whether my pandemic romance turns into something real or not, I’m learning about myself. I’m peering into a mirror who also happens to be using me as a mirror, and we’re both growing together, as long as we stay openhearted—which is the whole point of falling in love in the first place.

I’m a writer, meditation teacher, and host of the Meditation for the 99% podcast. If you’d like to work with me on your meditation practice or being more mindful in your life, reach out.

Download my free ebook on starting and sticking with a meditation practice here.

Meditation helps you step up when the sh*t hits the fan

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I meditate because otherwise I’d overlook the small things that are practice for the big things.

Waking up in the morning, my mind rushes to worrying about my to-do list, protesters hurt by police, the ache in my knee, coronavirus cases spiking, the countless Zoom calls on my calendar, the absurd cost of rent in D.C.

But then I sit on the edge of the bed, set my phone’s timer, and close my eyes.

I notice the movement of my breath, from my rising chest to the cool air at the tip of my nose.

I notice the tension in my shoulders, inside my stomach, and around my eyes.

I notice the tight grip of my hands.

I notice that I’m thinking about my to-do list—so I find my breath again. As the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn says, “Our breathing is a stable solid ground that is always there for us to take refuge in.”

I notice an urge to try to manage my experience, an impulse to get this right.

I notice my watch ticking and a spoon clanking the sides of a bowl downstairs.

I notice birds singing outside the walls.

I notice that I’m imagining what someone looks like naked—so I check my body again for tension.

I notice pain in my lower back, so I straighten my posture.

I notice that my mind has drifted to what the next year might be like, to stressing about when things will get back to normal—so I listen to the birds again.

Then, for a few seconds, I notice all of it, the sounds and sensations, the movement, the aliveness, nothing standing out more than anything else, my thoughts drifting by like clouds, uninteresting, annoying even, compared to the richness of experience. Some part of me, deep inside, smiles and says, this is it.

The reason I do this—sit and do almost nothing for 40 minutes every morning—is because later in the day, out of nowhere, that aliveness will come find me again. It might come in the most trivial of moments, when I’m scrolling through Facebook. It might even come when I’m standing in front of the toilet.

But it might come right when I need it. When a friend calls and they’re afraid because their mom just got sick. When I’m blindsided by loneliness, anger, or fear. When thoughts about how things should or shouldn’t be, how I should or shouldn’t be, are pointless. When the only thing to do is to show up fully for this life.

I’m a writer, meditation teacher, and host of the Meditation for the 99% podcast. If you’d like to work with me on your meditation practice or being more mindful in your life, reach out.

Download my free ebook on meditation here.

Is it wrong to feel compassion towards cops?

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I recently bonded with a friend over the work of meditation teacher and psychologist Tara Brach, who just published a new book called “Radical Compassion.” We kept coming back to the same question: Is it wrong to feel compassion towards the police?

I’m angry at the cop who killed George Floyd. I’m outraged about cops harming protestors. But I’m also a little empathetic towards the police. It’s embarrassing to admit, but it’s true.

Let me be clear. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something about police brutality. I’m with Black Lives Matter: #DefundThePolice. Fire cops and hire more social workers. Build public housing instead of sending cops to terrorize the homeless. Give people well-paid work so they don’t have reasons to commit crime.

If anything, humanizing cops highlights the systemic nature of the problem. Cops are just doing their jobs — and that job is a violent tool used by the rich and powerful to control poor and working class people.

We might think that cops “protect and serve” the public. But modern policing began with slave patrols in the South. After slavery, cops helped break up labor strikes, regularly shooting and killing workers.

Today, cops are asked to do way too much. For decades, we’ve cut public budgets for things like education, housing, and social services while spending more and more on policing. Kids don’t need cops in their schools — they need higher-paid teachers, safer buildings, and more counselors.

That is to say, there are no “good” cops. There are good people who are cops. But policing in America is inherently violent and racist.

So, here’s my issue. I’m mad about the cops, white supremacy, capitalism — yet I know in my bones that compassion is the strongest catalyst for change.

I can’t just turn off my empathy. I used to hate the hustling part of myself that’s always striving to do more and more work. But then I started listening, trying to understand why that part wanted me to work so hard. Turns out it was trying to protect me. It thought that if I wasn’t always working hard, I’d be worthless, a loser, a nobody. Once I empathized with that part, I gained the ability, for the first time in my life, to actually, truly, authentically rest. (See Chapter 2 in my ebook “How to Get Out of Your Head” for more on this.)

And you know what? The more compassionate I‘ve become towards my workaholic part, the more empathetic I’ve become towards others who can’t stop working. As Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön writes, “By being kind to ourselves, we become kind to others. By being kind to others — if it’s done properly, with proper understanding — we benefit as well.”

She goes on: “So it is with aggression. When you get to tell someone off, you might feel pretty good for a while, but somehow the sense of righteous indignation and hatred grows, and it hurts you.”

I’m not going to lie. It feels really good right now to hate the cops. I felt a complicated sense of joy watching the Minneapolis Police Department 3rd Precinct building burn. But I’m also feeling compassion. Not towards police buildings, or for that matter any property. Towards the human beings who think they’re protecting but are in fact hurting us.

Again, that’s not to disarm your anger towards cops or whoever has hurt you. I’m just laying all my feelings out on the table, hoping that allows you to give yourself permission to do the same.

For now, all I’ve got are questions. Does compassion make me a less effective fighter against injustice? Is it just making me feel better in a fucked up, broken society?

Or better yet, here’s writer bell hooks: “For me forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”

Get my free ebook on meditation

My ebook, How to Get Out of Your Head, will help you start or stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast

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