In our time of multiple crisis and disruptions and right-wing authoritarian developments, we naturally experience strong emotional responses to them. We feel anxious, insecure, helpless, scared, angry, agitated or depressed.
Our naturally occurring, mostly subconscious defense mechanisms against these strong emotions try to regulate our nerve-system, try to mitigate these intense feelings:
We might deny these facts, or we withdraw, we act angrily and aggressively, we split off or divide ourselves: into “us” and “them”, “us” and the “other.”
We fall back into child states by needing strong authoritarian leaders to protect us, or want simple solutions to very complex problems.
The head still knows, but the heart is not touched
We only need defensive reactions, if we somehow still know it – and we feel protected when we are no longer vulnerable.These all are completely human reactions, no superego judgements are necessary.
Since they tend to be more effective when they remain unconscious, the first step is to become aware of them. Only then do we have a chance of realising, that we lose a lot in this reactive defense mechanisms:
We lose contact with ourself, because we want to get rid of our emotions and our awareness. And we lose contact with reality, which we deny or withdraw from.
This robs us from a wise and prudent response to the situation: we are not respons-able, cannot find the right course of action. And we also lose the existentially ability to understand ourselves in this world, to find meaning in all of this.
Soul responsiveness
We need to shift our perspective,: from unconscious reactivity to conscious and mindful soul-responsiveness, in order to act wise and responsibly.
There are many ways to find back to our presence and our essential nature – for example by consciously pausing to breathe or remembering compassionate kindness towards ourselves and others.
And the starting point is always to be honest about where you are at the moment – without judgement, but with kindness and curiosity:
You might find that you are deeply entangled in an angry reactivity with a sense of entitlement or victimhood. Being openly aware of this creates some distance from our reactivity so that you can see and understand it better.
In this space, a deeper contact with our essential qualities such as compassion and kindness, peacefulness, clarity, courage and ability to stay present with the present feelings, for example helplessness
If we are in touch with our essential nature, there is more grounding and basic trust in these essential qualities. And there is also a sense of agency, of finding the “right action”, of what is right for me personally, by sensing what makes sense for me in doing it, what is meaningful and relevant to me.
It helps to have a partner to explore these feelings and reactions with, a partner who stays in presence while listening – then you might change roles.
For me, there is a deep trust arising, that we can keep connection to our deep essential and meaningful nature under any circumstances, when I remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote poignant verse and prose in the Nazi prisons and concentration camps where he was eventually murdered.
He told of always being in deep touch with a sense of his essential nature – he described this as a sense of a “cantus firmus”, a fundamental bass of the presence of something divine in existence – regardless of the external situation. He found meaning in his life.
At the end, he gave his British fellow prisoner a few words to deliver to his friend George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester. Bell recorded Bonhoeffer’s last message in 1945 as follows:
“Tell him (he said) that for me this is the end but also the beginning.”