You Matter

How working with mantras can help us meet challenge and change

It matters.

That’s what a friend said to me when I was struggling with something this past week. Two words. That’s it. While they didn’t magically solve everything, they did help me realize the reason I was unsettled by the situation was because it did matter. A lot.

Words matter, which is I love mantras—those small sayings that help us see the world through new eyes. Here are a few known as lojong (or mind training) that I’ve been chewing on this week.

1). Don’t expect applause.

Have you ever been at a performance—like a concert or a comedy show—and there’s a big pause, because the performer is expecting applause . . . . . . . and it doesn’t come? Talk about awkward.

This can happen to all of us, because as Shakespeare noted, “All the world’s a stage.” We are always performing this role or that one, and if we are honest, most of the time we are hoping for applause, validation, praise.

When we don’t get it, all kinds of things like embarrassment and shame can rush in to fill that gap.

The Bhagavad Gita puts it this way: we only have the right to our actions—what we do—and not to any fruits to what we do. In other words, all we can do is do the work—without expecting the applause.

This is an important nugget to gnaw on because when we expect, we give others the power. We hand our agency over to them. Tell me I’m enough. Tell me I’m worthy. Tell me I’m okay.

You are worthy. You are enough. You are okay. Period.

2). Thoughts have no home.

I don’t know about you, but it feels like all kinds of thoughts have a home in my head. I am always thinking, always trying to read the air, always trying to figure out how people are feeling and what I should do next. It can be exhausting.

Something else—have you ever noticed how it feels like the volume on our thoughts keeps getting turned up and up and up?

That’s why this one can feel patently wrong—our heads are so filled up with thoughts that there isn’t any room for anything else.

And yet it is so very true. Thoughts have no home, because they have no substance. They are clouds, scudding across a dark sky. Or fireworks. Energy bursts that are here then gone.

This is one of those places where it can all be true. Thoughts have no home, and so they have no power. And yet we give them power—much like we give others power when we expect applause. When we give energy to our thoughts, they have more power. They can explode and shake us to our core.

Or to use another metaphor, our thoughts can be ghosts. They have no corporeal existence, and yet they can haunt us and leave us trembling and afraid. And have you ever noticed how they most often come out at night?

Which brings us to one more metaphor—when our thoughts get going, what if we imagined them as a pack of feral cats? Do you really want to invite those claws and teeth into bed with you? Which leads us to . . . .

3). Work with the biggest monsters first.

I have a mayhem of monsters in my head and heart, ready to come bursting out at a moment’s notice. Maybe you do, too, and it can be easy to be overwhelmed by their multitude, but there’s another saying that applies here—turn all problems into one.

I’m not a psychologist, but I bet that we all have one big, ol’ monster sitting in the shadows of our hearts. It might be a fear of rejection, a sense of unworthiness, a struggle with trust. And my guess is that all our other monsters grow out of this O.G.—almost like tentacles. We can do our best to ward off the tentacles, but until we get in there and work with that biggest monster, it won’t matter.

As with so many things in life, this takes courage and curiosity. Because notice it doesn’t say “kill the biggest monsters first.” It says “work with.”

Jung would point out these monsters—or what he would call our shadow sides—are simply the hurt and wounded pieces of us. What do they need? How best can we respond?

4). If it is a surprise, meditate.

Life baffles me most of the time. Diagnosis. Divorce. War. Climate change. Aging loved ones. A culture steeped in fear and rage. It can be so much to bear.

Plus, have you ever noticed how life often doesn’t just give us one big and overwhelming thing to handle at a time? Instead, life comes at us, like four football players smashing into one poor receiver all at the same time.

Whenever that happens, I’ll admit the last place I want to go is my sheepskin rug to meditate.

Because even though it looks like a beautiful and safe space, as soon as I sit down, I know big stuff is going to come bubbling up, and honestly, couldn’t life just be easy for one effin’ second?

Life will baffle us—with beauty and mystery, sure, but also with challenges rushing at us in all kinds of ways at the same time—and meditating is not a magic wand. But it is a container, a safe and sacred place where we can carry all the surprises, the ghosts, the monsters, the aches, and the longings, because . . .

Life. It will happen. It will amaze and fill us.

Life will take what is dear away.

It happens to each and every one of us.

And it matters. You matter.

So may we bow to the other pilgrims we meet on our path.

May we have the courage to do what we can, to get entangled in the good mystery and walk on with care, preparing to be challenged and changed and blessed.