Jeremy Mohler

Writer and meditation teacher

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It’s okay to meditate, do yoga, etc., while fighting for social justice. In fact, it’s necessary.

September 25, 2019 by Jeremy Mohler


Four years ago, I left a cushy tech industry job to work alongside teachers, bus drivers, and other workers in the labor movement. Burying my head in the sand and looking out for myself hadn’t been enough.

Our society is so violent, backwards, and corrupt. I had to starting helping change it.

But sometimes I struggle to square my politics with my meditation practice. How can I sit in silence as corporations exploit workers, white supremacists march in the streets, misogynists fill the White House, and the rainforests burn?

That’s why I love this metaphor from the spiritual teacher David Deida.

It reminds me that there’s room for many approaches to dealing with life’s problems, that I don’t have to choose one approach over another, and that integrating so-called “self-care” with social justice is actually the healthiest approach of all.

Imagine yourself as a stained-glass window.

“You look at yourself and notice there are pieces broken out of you,” Deida says. “There are hunks of glass missing. You’re battered, abused, chipped, wounded, rejected.”

The first approach, therapy, is like fixing or replacing altogether the broken pieces of glass. It helps you function better by healing dysfunction.

Say, you aren’t getting along with your father. Your therapist could help you forgive him for how he treated when you were young, and over time the relationship might improve.

Meditation, yoga, and other similar practices are like wiping the dust from the stained glass so the light shines through. They increase the flow of life in the present moment.

Our minds are constantly stopping the flow by following thoughts into the past or the future. Meditation is practicing letting go of thinking and observing the flow (of thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions, sounds, all of experience), over and over again.

Doing meditation (or yoga) isn’t the same as therapy. Sure, it can feel therapeutic, but it’s not meant for investigating the causes of emotional problems. It’s about being here, right now.

“You can be broken as fuck, and still do good yoga,” Deida says. “You can be entirely dysfunctional therapeutically, psychologically, emotionally, you can be a wreck, and still be a master yogi. Yoga doesn’t fix the parts of you that are broken. It just takes the dust off.”

The third approach, spirituality, isn’t about fixing the broken pieces or wiping away the dust. It’s about realizing that you’re the light itself, whether you’ve meditated, or you’re broken, or whatever’s happening. It’s realizing you are “one with everything”—there’s no separation between you and everything else.

Prayer, looking at the night sky, being in nature, and taking psychedelics are examples of spiritual experiences.

Let’s make this concrete. Say, you don’t like your job. A therapist might help you manage the stress it’s causing you. Meditation, yoga, etc., might help you feel a little better for short periods of time. Spirituality might make you realize a job is nothing relative to the 93-billion-light-years-wide universe.

You’re probably wondering, what about quitting or getting a new job?

There’s a fourth approach missing from Deida’s metaphor, which I call “political economy.” This would be like trimming the trees outside the window, i.e., changing the environment around the window so more light shines through.

As the label suggests, this is the realm of politics and economics, i.e., addressing the dysfunction outside of oneself, in society. Examples: leaving your job, starting a union with your coworkers, protesting, running for elected office, voting, starting a business, hiring a career coach, etc.

In other words, therapy helps you function better within dysfunctional conditions. Meditation helps you flow with the conditions, whatever they are. Spirituality is unconditional, i.e., finding peace and freedom no matter what. Political economy helps you change the conditions.

Meditation, therapy, and spirituality, by themselves or even all together, aren’t enough. They aren’t going to end capitalism or white supremacy or patriarchy or [insert oppressive system here.]

We also need societal change, specifically, what Martin Luther King Jr. called a “radical redistribution of economic and political power.”

Yet, raising taxes on corporations, restructuring the economy, or ending racism—which are easier said than done—won’t be enough either.

We also need to work on ourselves. It’s not one or the other.

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.

Stop beating yourself up for not being closer to meeting your goals

September 18, 2019 by Jeremy Mohler


The last few months have skyrocketed my anxiety above normal levels. I’ve been applying to therapy graduate programs, and the combination of not knowing the outcome and likely having three years of school ahead of me (albeit, part-time) is testing my patience.

Thank God for meditation. The mindfulness it produces loosens me up enough to notice what’s going on inside of me. To stop distracting myself and running from thoughts and emotions, which only intensifies the anxiety. To pause instead of move. To feel instead of think, think, think, do, do, do.

Within the stress and tension, gratitude has been rearing its beautiful head. At times, limitless appreciation has washed over me—for meditation and everyone who’s inspired me to practice. For those who come to my classes. For you for reading this.

But this having patience thing might be my biggest test yet. Part of me wants to fall asleep and wake up three years from now a licensed therapist—to just get it over with. Another part of me knows the journey is the point, and the whole point of life.

I once heard about a boot camp training for Navy SEALs called “the box drill.” The former SEAL Eric Davis describes it like this:

They put you in the corner of the room and say you have as much time as you need to get to a doorway across the room. There are six people guarding the door. You try to fight your way through, but you get your ass kicked over and over again. Every few minutes, one of the people leaves the room. You keep trying to fight because you want to prove you’re tough. Finally, the last person leaves, and you walk through the door and they say you passed. You’re like, ‘What? I didn’t beat anybody.’ They’re like, ‘That wasn’t what this drill was about.’ What they’re doing is producing an experience where you realize you have all the time in the world.

Meditation is like the box drill. Out of habit, the mind keeps narrowing its attention to follow thoughts into the past or future. It spins stories that stir up emotions in the body, which it tries to escape by telling even more stories.

It’s when you let go and rest as awareness—as a neutral observe witnessing what’s going on inside of you—that a little bit of spaciousness appears.

Like being a Navy SEAL, this requires courage. Into that spaciousness you create—that mindfulness—anything can appear. Anything. That childhood memory you thought was locked away forever. That gut feeling that you’ve outgrown your job. That age-old fear of love.

Whatever appears—for me recently it’s been impatience—is just the next step in the journey. It’s your edge. And the hardest thing in life is sitting still at your edge and feeling its raw sensations—the tightness, the burning, the pain, the pleasure, the whatever.

It’s much, much easier to fantasize about the future or worry about the past. To beat yourself for not being further along in your journey. To try to fight to prove your tough or however you want to be perceived by other people.

As the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa said, “Meet your edge and soften.”

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.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/meditationforthemasses/JeremyMohler_44_Courage_Sept2019.mp3

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This short poem by Rumi explains the healing power of meditation

September 11, 2019 by Jeremy Mohler


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.

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