So I’m talking about this particular moment in history, but I’ve also, just today I talked to two people, one who’s going to have a grandbaby by Friday. If her daughter’s not in labor on Thursday, they’re going to induce. Yay, a little boy. And I also heard last week about people in my extended family who lost a baby they expected to have, and my heart absolutely shattered for them. It was really a terrible way, terrible thing to go through.

And it made me think about these liminal periods when things are about to change, when you’re going to have a baby, when you’re going to get married, or when you’re going to move to a place you found a house you love and it may or may not come through. There are these times when really important things are happening for us and we care a lot about the results. And at such times we tend to get in this awful place between hope and fear. And I know that I’m in that awful place because I’m constantly checking my phone for news.

When Ro, my partner, was pregnant with our daughter, we would get up every single day and look at all the statistics on miscarriage. We were really, really strung out between hope and fear. And that was during the pandemic too. So it would’ve been impossible for us to go back for another round of IVF if we hadn’t been so blessed with our incredible little Lila.

Anyway, I’m thinking probably a lot of us here in The Gathering Room are in some situation where we can get obsessed with hope and fear and constantly check things and want good news and want to know what’s going to happen and want. And you can get very anxious and kind of like a junkie without a high when you’re strung out between hope and fear.

So whenever I find myself in that place, I remind myself of some of my favorite words from the Tao Te Ching, in which they say, “Hope is as hollow as fear. Whether you go up the ladder or down your position is shaky.” It’s one thing, the continuum between hope and fear because the moment you get really attached to a hope, you also are afraid it won’t come through. And when you are terrified: you’re waiting for results of a medical test or waiting to hear from a loved one who’s gone missing, something like, or even something tiny, your cat is out and you want her to come back, and you’re afraid you won’t, but you hope that they will. These two things are always the same. Hope and fear are the same ladder, and they are a very shaky place to stand.

So what does the Tao Te Ching say that we should do? It says, “When you stand with your two feet on the ground, you will always keep your balance.”

What does that mean? Well, what it means, I think, is that hope and fear are fundamentally future directed. They’re always about something that hasn’t happened yet. And so there is nothing we can do about them. We keep trying to do things about them. We get desperate sometimes to make sure certain things will happen now.

I don’t know if any of you have ever been in a relationship with somebody or even a work relationship where someone was trying to make sure something happened, something they wanted you to do. Can you remember how horrible it was to have that kind of control exerted on you? “Do it, do it now! Make me sure of things!” It’s a terrible feeling to have someone attach fear and hope to us, to your own actions. So think that’s how your vibe goes out into the universe when you’re on the ladder of hope and fear. It’s like, “Aaah!” And nothing feels at peace with that.

So what is putting your two feet on the ground? You get off the ladder by leaving the future and coming into the present. So this present moment, let’s all think of something you hope will happen. Think of something you fear will happen. You can feel the charge of those, the yearning for one and the anxiety about the other. And then come back home to this moment in the Gathering Room here, just in this little room in Pennsylvania and New Zealand and Scotland and Denmark and all the other wonderful places that we are all inhabiting together right now. Come back to this moment here.

Now, within the present moment, that magical combination: equanimity and mindfulness. I put it backwards. M-E, ME, is mindfulness and equanimity. What is mindfulness? Mindfulness is awareness of the sensory data coming into our bodies right now, right here.

So everybody, I know we’re going to do our meditation later, but let’s be mindful right now by getting in touch with our neuroception, every feeling we have in our bodies. So start by just looking around you at the walls, at the window, at anything beautiful in the room. We’ve talked about this before. Look at the glimmers, the things that cause positive feelings, the way a trigger causes negative feelings, and feel the air and smell it and listen. I can hear a loved one typing. I can hear a dog breathing. This is mindfulness, be here now.

And equanimity is where you say to yourself, and I do mean inwards, saying in your own mind, “This is fine. This is okay.” I’ve never met a person as good at mindfulness and equanimity as my son Adam. In his thirties now, he has Down syndrome, for the one person who didn’t know that, and when something changes with him, he likes routine. People with Down syndrome like routine. People on the spectrum like me like routine. I think Adam has both. So he really likes routine. But if something changes, he doesn’t like it. Say if we went down to our family time and we said, “You know what, Adam? We’re going to go for a drive during family time.” Instead of sitting sometimes on the patio, sometimes in our living room and just being with each other. If we said, “We’re going to go for a drive,” he would be like, “Wait,” he’d do this double take. And then he makes this little sound, and then it changes. He says, “I’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. I’ll be okay.” And I found myself using that. I watch him readjust, and it’s a lesson to me.

So everybody come into the present. Mindfulness is part of it. Be here now. There’s nothing here but us. And then your mind says, “But oh, don’t you hope this will happen. Aren’t you afraid that would happen?” And just say, “I’m okay. I’m okay right now. I’ll be okay.” And then think of advantages that could come to you one way or another if something happens.

For example, I watched this wonderful little video clip of Jane Goodall, the anthropologist who studies chimpanzees, the legendary Jane Goodall. And someone asked her, “What’s your next adventure?” And she said, “Well, I’m in my nineties. I’m really looking forward to dying. I think that’s going to be a big adventure. And it may be that you’re just nothing. But I’ve had some experiences and others have had experiences. So I happen to think something happens after.” And that is, “I’ll be okay.” Yes, I could die and go out like a light or yes, I could die and have the most fabulous adventure of all time. I’ll be okay.

And if you can learn to do that, I’ve been doing the work of Byron Katie for many, many years, and it really helps you. She talks about how you’ll get terrible news and your life will never be the same, and you’ll rend your clothes and lie on the floor, and then, you’re going to want a sandwich at some point. You’re going to get up, you’re going to go get a sandwich and on your way to get a sandwich and on your way to get a sandwich, you’re going to see a cat in a sunbonnet or something. She didn’t say this, this is me. And for just that moment, you’re just going to be somebody looking at a cat in a sunbonnet and going, “Huh. That’s interesting.” And in that moment, you’ll forget that the terrible thing happened or that the wonderful thing didn’t happen. You’ll be present for that moment in mindfulness and equanimity and you will be okay.

And if you look back over your life, some of us are very young, others like me have had a little mileage on the old tires. I can look back at 10,000 times when I had to know, I had to be in control of something, it had to turn out one way or another. And it didn’t. And I’m fine. And in the meantime, I wasted years, weeks, months, just going on and on in my mind about, “Okay, what are the odds of this happening? What are the odds of that happening? What can I do to control the outcome? What can I do to control the outcome?”

Trying to control the outcome is standing on the shaky ladder. Having your two feet on the ground is mindfulness and equanimity. And then we see in mindfulness and equanimity: “What can I do?” I decided I will wear a shirt announcing my political leanings, even though some people might be upset about it. That’s okay. I want to be an ally and a supporter for anybody who I think is going to create a more compassionate world. That’s the way I happen to believe right now. So I did that. I’ve been public about my political opinion and I have donated money to not just political causes, but to many causes, many things that are trying to heal the world and heal people. I have donated my time, my efforts, books, speeches, because in a place of mindfulness and equanimity, I could see what felt peaceful to do.

And that’s having the courage to change the things, the courage to accept, what is it? “The serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” From mindfulness and equanimity you have the wisdom to know the difference, and then you change the things you can and the things you can’t change, you find serenity to accept it.

And then you are in the place where Lao Tzu says, “You can see the world as yourself and have faith in the way things are. You can love the world as yourself, and then you can care for all things.”

That’s the opposite of being strung out between hope and fear. Come home to the present: “Well, I’ll be okay.” Then change what you can, accept what you can’t, and settle into this ongoing wild adventure where we seem to have decided to experience such intense hope and fear, such intense emotions, and just be grateful for the human experience you’re having because either it’s all going to go out like a light, or you’re going to have even bigger adventures later.

So with that, I would love to do our little meditation and then answer some questions. Though I’ve noticed sometimes after the meditation, everybody’s so zen, they have no questions. That would be okay. That would be a fun adventure too. So anyway, here we go.

You know, or maybe you don’t, you know our weird little trigger phrase, get calm, start to breathe and say inside your mind: Can I imagine the distance between my eyes? Can I imagine the distance between the surface I’m looking at and my eyes? Can I imagine that the empty space in front of my eyes is also in every one of my atoms? Can I imagine the empty space in the atoms between the top of my head and the bottoms of my feet? Can I imagine the silence under every sound that is always there and will always be there? Can I imagine the stillness that holds the activity? Every little subatomic particle that makes up me? Can I imagine the space between me and everyone else on this broadcast full of compassion and love and joy and laughter holding us all at the same moment? That’s intense. I love you. You’re amazing.

Yesterday I was out with my little one, Lila, and she was on her scooter going round and round the driveway under the trees. And then she came right up to me and she stopped her scooter and she said, “Muffy, can you hear it? Can you hear that sound?”

And I said, “The trees?”

She said, “No.”

“The wind?”

“No.”

“The bugs?”

“No.” She said, “It’s the sound of peace.”

I was like, “Yeah, there it is.”

Under all the other sounds, the sound of peace, the ultimate peace that we all can rest in, we can all rest in it no matter what happens.

So let’s go to some questions they have come in. PC Longston says, “Does joy, the topic from last week, fit in with hope and fear?”

I think joy comes when you’ve got both feet on the ground. I think when you’re just here feeling what you feel, sensing everything with touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight, and allowing yourself to experience this world, there’s a joy in that. And even if you’re grieving or angry, which are very valid emotions and very powerful positive emotion states if we use them correctly, there is joy that holds—and I said this last time—it holds anger, it holds grief, it holds us. It’s deeper than happiness. And that has to do with keeping your feet on the ground, being in mindfulness and equanimity. So yeah, joy can hold you in hope or fear, but until you get your feet on the ground and get peaceful, you won’t feel it. You’ll just feel the hope and the fear.

Dr. Donna says, “What do you do to gain mindfulness and equanimity and hope when you’re confronted with hateful, selfish, and cruel people?”

Well, I don’t see any in the room with me. If there are hateful, selfish, cruel people in the room with you right now, leave. I would leave. Try not to go back to those people. Find a way to get away from them. That is something you could maybe start to change. And if there’s nobody in the room with you like that, look at who is in this room with you. Hundreds of people joined in love, compassion, silence, and stillness, this powerful vibration that I can feel every time we do our meditation, just pay attention to that. The rest is going away. It doesn’t last, right? It doesn’t last. And believe me, those hateful, selfish people that we see as hateful, selfish, and cruel are afraid. And probably if we were in their position, we’d feel the same way they do. It’s all right. I’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.

Okay. Avesena says, “How do you find hope when you’re in your deepest, darkest frozen lake of fear? I’m reading your amazing book of the integrity, but the fear is too deep that hope doesn’t dare to enter.”

Thank you for the sweet words about my book. And here’s what I would say, sweetheart. I want you and anybody who feels that kind of fear to literally hold on to this energy here and look at the, I have a number: It says 183 eyes on the top of my iPhone screen. There are many, many people with you here, and we have all been to that dark lake. I don’t think anybody would keep watching this who hasn’t been to that dark place. All I talk about is the how to keep going in the darkness. Winston Churchill said, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” And never forget that that model of the frozen lake is in The Divine Comedy, and Dante finds it at the very pit of hell. And how does he get out? Does he run away? No. His guide tells him, “Keep going. Go down, go deeper into your fear.” And he is like, “There is no down.”

And he ends up having to climb onto the monster who is at the center of hell and climb down his huge, frightening body. And when he passes around the hip area, he goes through the center of the earth, and suddenly gravity works the opposite way and he has to turn around. And now he’s climbing the legs of the monster because he’s gone straight through the earth. He’s gone down so far that he’s passed the center and going down has become going up. So they say in therapy, “The only way out is through.” Reach out and imagine holding hands with everybody. We can all—can we imagine the space between us and each person here who’s afraid?

Can we imagine reaching out with our energy and holding those who are afraid and those who are grieving and those who are angry and those who are bereft? You’ll get through this. And the last few lines of the Inferno, Dante’s Inferno, are almost uneventful: “Then there was a clear path, and once again, we came out and once again beheld the stars.” It happens very quickly. You’d be amazed. So don’t despair. You’re getting through this.

Microdosing Art says, “How does numbness collide with hope and fear? It seems like it’s off the ladder, but still not great.”

I think what that really is is when you curl up in a fetal position on the ladder, I think you’re so strung out between hope and fear. You’re just like, “I hope there’s a reason to be alive, but I’m afraid there isn’t.” And you just are like, “Arghh.” It’s a phenomenon of the nervous system when you believe you have no way out, you just go into flop-and-faint. And sometimes you have to stay in a fetal position for a while. Sometimes I just let, if I wake up in the morning and I’m a bit anxious, I know how to get out of it. But the way to get out of it is to be very kind to the part of you that’s afraid. So what I do on those days is during my meditation, I sit up and I wrap myself in the furriest blankets and the warmest, in the winter, the warmest comforter I can find, and I’m very, very aware of the part of me that’s scared. And if I’m numb, I just say, “You got this. There’s nobody in the room attacking us. I’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.” And just kindness, a blanket to wrap yourself up in a cup of hot tea, a few words from a book will inspire you. I have my little paper mentors, my paper mothers all over my bookshelves. And you’ll come out of the numbness. You’ll be all right. We’ll be okay. We’re all kind of okay right now. See? It’s over, and we were okay for that moment. Oh, there was another one. We were fine for that moment too. So many.

Laura and Dawn Coaching says, “Can you manifest something on behalf of a loved one or does that need to come from them?”

Yeah, you can’t. You can help. I have had people who literally said to me, “I know that you can’t believe in something that wants to happen for you, so I’m going to hold it for you instead.” And I do that all the time for friends, clients, coworkers. I love holding energy for something, and I love telling them, “I’m sending all the energy I can.” But ultimately, the person who decides what happens to you and the way you receive it and the way you work with it internally has got to be you. Being you—what did Oscar Wilde say? He said, “Always be yourself. Everyone else is taken.” So really, you’re not here to live your life for your children or your spouse or your parent. You’re here to live your life for you. And their suffering is their birthright, and you cannot take it from them. It is part of the gift of being human, which doesn’t always feel like a gift when you’re going through it.

So I’m holding the very best for all of you, and I hope we all do it for each other because it makes it easier when you hold it for me, me to do it myself.

Just Hillary says, “My cat would cut me if I put them in a sunbonnet.” That is a very wise cat. I grew up having sunbonnets put on me to celebrate Pioneer Day in Mormonsville. Yeah, this little lesbian did not enjoy the sunbonnet, and I wish I’d been as brave and fierce as your cat. I’m inspired.

Leah, the sleep lady who taught me to sleep, yeah, she says, yeah, Sleep Works, they taught me to sleep. It changed my life. Leah says, “I know I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing, but I have fear about not doing enough to help other people in trying to balance my own life with that.”

Oh, yeah. That’s a typical fear that comes up. If you were in therapy, your therapist would say, “Yes. That’s just part of being human.” So let’s just run through it again. Come back to the room. This room here. You can’t help a lot of people in the room where you are right now, but you can help some. Get calm. Start appreciating the little things around you. I was just reading today about something called cheerfulness meditation, where you literally say out loud throughout your day, “That’s a really nice window.” Or, “Oh gosh, I just saw the cutest baby” or something. You literally just say them out loud, and it primes your subconscious when you get to the end of the day to remember the good things in the day instead of the negative things that your brain preferentially picks out. So yeah, you can look around you now, get mindful, get equanimity, and realize that there is only so much you can do. So have the courage to do the things you can, and I know you can do, Leah. Have the wisdom to know the difference between those and the things you cannot change. And then have the serenity to say, “There are a lot of things in this world I’m not going to fix in this go round in this body, and that’s okay. I’ll be okay.” I love it when Adam says that. He really doesn’t have to do much to be okay.

Okay, just a couple more. Janice says, “If you’re frustrated and hurt by someone and there’s been no resolve, do you find peace until there is some?”

Yeah. Or until there isn’t some. It’s not up to them whether you heal or not. That’s up to you. If you can be mindful and equanimous, if you can get your feet on the ground and start living in the cheerfulness and joy of everyday moments, if you can start going deep into your own spirit and into your own consciousness the way we did with that meditation, and start realizing the incredible adventure that is always unfolding inside you as a soul, there is so much more going on in you than anything in our culture would ever let you see. You have to start tuning in to the adventure, to the space traveler who’s wearing your body and who is going, “Wow, that’s cool, man.” And then whether other people resolve a situation or not, really, it doesn’t even come into view. It’s nice if they do, but it’s fine if they don’t. You’re off the ladder of hope and fear.

Okay, and then Jasmine says, finally, “How do we mother ourselves?” And everything I’ve been talking about here is about mothering yourself every time you say, “I’m okay.” Or notice something like, “I really like this cup. It has a painting from Hokusai, my favorite Japanese medieval artist, Hokusai, water is inside it. How awesome is that?” Every time you actually say that, the part of you that is making the choice to say it is mothering the little ones inside you, the broken ones, the ones that are your own age but hurting.

Just climb down off the ladder a few times a day. You can live on it if you want, but at least take a break. Climb down, put one foot in mindfulness, the other foot in equanimity. Love the world as yourself, which means love it because you love yourself. Love it at the same time as you love yourself, love it as if it were the same thing. Love the world as yourself, and then you can care for all things. So I hope we meet again in a week. I’m afraid we won’t, but I’ll cope with that in the ways previously specified. Thank you for coming on the Gathering Room. I’ll see you soon. Hear that sound? The sound of peace. Yes.