The Upside of Apocalypse | Lama Rod Owens
Lama Rod Owens, a Buddhist teacher and author of "Love and Rage," discusses navigating pandemic anxiety, fear, and fatigue. He emphasizes self-care as foundational for empathy and service, viewing the current "apocalypse" as an opportunity for unveiling truth and personal growth.
Deep Dive Analysis
19 Topic Outline
Introduction to Pandemic's Third Year and Lama Rod Owens
Lama Rod's Current State of Mind and Benefits of Practice
The Importance of Self-Care for Caring for Others
Working with Fear and Regret
Guidance for Navigating Pandemic-Related Fear
Obstacles to Empathy and the Role of Distraction
Opening the Heart as a Path to Safety and Dissolving Fear
Working with Rage and Judgment
Navigating Disagreements on Pandemic Issues with Others
Lama Rod's Expansive Definition of Violence
Social Erosion and Pedestrian Deaths: A New York Times Article
Overburdened Minds and the Impact of Ongoing Struggle
Rebuilding Resiliency and the Need for Restoration
Radical Rest Practices: Saying No, Home-Making, and Fun
Skillful Use of Entertainment and Social Media
The Challenge of Finding Time for Self-Care
Questioning Allegiance to Capitalism and Overconsumption
Understanding 'Apocalypse' as an Opportunity for Truth and Shift
Constant Self-Inquiry for Self-Care
8 Key Concepts
Law of Practice
If one commits to a practice, such as meditation, and sticks with it over time, it will begin to support them in unconscious ways, helping them to meet, experience, and let go of difficult emotions like anxiety, fear, anger, and despair.
Cheesy Upward Spiral
This concept suggests that when you take care of yourself, your relationships with other people improve, which in turn makes you happier, creating a positive feedback loop that benefits both the individual and their connections.
Fearlessness as Energy
Fearlessness can become a powerful energy or force, rooted in deep compassion and the understanding that everyone is suffering. This energy allows one to engage with the world and its challenges rather than avoiding them.
Open Heart as Safety
Counterintuitively, opening one's heart is described as the safest experience because it dissolves fear and aversion. This creates fluidity and space, allowing one to move from rigid reactivity to discomfort towards a more responsive and open engagement with reality.
Expansive Definition of Violence
Violence is understood as any harm, emotional or physical, that occurs when personal boundaries are crossed. This can lead to hurt, disappointment, confusion, or a loss of trust in others and even in one's own boundaries.
Apocalypse (Broad Understanding)
Lama Rod Owens defines apocalypse as 'unveiling' or 'shift,' where truth reveals itself, often in an overwhelming way. This process disrupts the ego's need for stability and presents an opportunity for clarity amidst constant change and flux.
Resiliency
Resiliency is described as buoyancy or elasticity, referring to one's ability to bounce back and naturally recover from difficulties. When this elasticity is lost, one feels every 'bump on the road,' indicating a need for restoration.
Self-Indulgence vs. Self-Care
Self-indulgence involves going to a fun place and staying there regardless of actual need, whereas self-care is doing something restorative with the explicit intention of returning to important work, relationships, or responsibilities after being recharged.
13 Questions Answered
A committed practice helps one become comfortable with their own mind, allowing them to meet, experience, and let go of anxiety, fear, anger, sadness, and despair without being overwhelmed.
Caring for oneself is not selfish; it's essential for longevity and for being able to effectively care for others without becoming a burden or running out of resources.
Develop a direct, open relationship with fear by asking what it's preventing you from doing and what you're truly afraid of, and consider what you'll regret if fear dominates your choices.
It's important to make personal choices for self-care, such as masking or isolating, and set necessary boundaries, regardless of others' actions or perceptions, because that's what you need.
Overwhelm and exhaustion prevent people from opening themselves to the discomfort of others, as does a lack of tools for self-awareness and a cultural tendency towards distraction and bypassing discomfort.
The real obstacle to empathy is not empathizing with ourselves first; by opening to our own pain and discomfort, we realize we are not alone, which allows us to connect to others' experiences.
Recognize emotions as natural, and focus on self-care to create the space needed to hold these experiences without being overwhelmed, moving from reactivity to responsiveness.
If pushing the issue leads to violence or harm in the relationship, it's sometimes necessary to back off, hold space, and connect to the grief of others making choices you disagree with, while modeling your own choices.
It signifies a loss of resiliency or 'suspension,' where one feels every bump on the road, often due to trying to manage too many things at once without adequate attention or energy, leading to depletion.
Focus on restoration by figuring out what sparks joy, inspiration, or rest. This includes setting boundaries, saying no to excessive demands, and investing in personal practices like yoga, exercise, and creating a comfortable home.
Entertainment (like streaming shows) can provide a temporary break from the world for restoration, but it's crucial not to get lost in it (self-indulgence). Social media requires strong boundaries due to its potential for depletion and emotional toxicity.
Question why lives are so overextended. Reinvest in communal living by sharing resources and support networks (e.g., childcare) and prioritize even small blocks of time (30 minutes to an hour daily) for personal enjoyment and restoration.
Develop a rich, direct, kind, loving, caring practice for oneself. When self-care is handled internally, one is less likely to use material things to do emotional labor, allowing for conscious choices about what is truly needed.
30 Actionable Insights
1. Commit to Daily Practice
Commit to a daily personal practice (e.g., meditation) to build resilience and prevent difficult emotions like anxiety, fear, and fatigue from becoming overwhelming over time. This practice helps you meet emotions, experience them, and let them go, rather than getting caught up in reactivity.
2. Prioritize Self-Care
Prioritize self-care, as it’s not selfish but essential for your well-being and ability to effectively care for others. By understanding and meeting your own needs, you become less of a burden and more capable of service.
3. Engage in Regular Rest
Engage in regular rest and self-care practices to ensure your longevity and ability to remain helpful over the long term, rather than burning out by investing everything in immediate responses to urgency.
4. Open Relationship with Fear
Develop a direct and open relationship with fear by asking what it’s preventing you from doing and what you’re truly afraid of. Consider what you will regret if fear dominates your choices, but also discern if fear is signaling a lack of resources for an endeavor.
5. Cultivate an Open Heart
Cultivate an open heart, as this vulnerability can dissolve fear by reversing the energy of aversion and rigidity, allowing for fluidity, interconnectedness, and space to respond rather than react.
6. Empathize with Yourself First
Begin the practice of empathy by first empathizing with yourself, acknowledging your own pain and discomfort, which then allows you to recognize that others are also experiencing similar struggles.
7. Set Personal Boundaries
Create clear boundaries around your accessibility (e.g., public work, personal interactions) and personal needs to protect your mental health and ensure you have time for self-care, especially if you find yourself overextended.
8. Avoid Destructive Conversations
Avoid repeatedly engaging in conversations or pushing others to change their beliefs when you know it will lead to conflict or a ‘dead end,’ especially with family members, to prevent harm to the relationship.
9. Model Choices, Don’t Force
Maintain important relationships by modeling your choices around safety and health without forcing others to adopt them, allowing them agency while still expressing love and reducing harm.
10. Know When to Back Off
Be clear about your boundaries and how far you’re willing to go in influencing others’ choices; sometimes reducing harm means backing off and holding space, connecting to your own grief about their choices.
11. Recognize Emotional Violence
Expand your understanding of violence beyond physical harm to include emotional harm, recognizing when personal boundaries are crossed, leading to disappointment, confusion, or a loss of trust in yourself or others.
12. Shift to Responsiveness
By creating internal space through practices like an open heart, you can shift from habitual reactivity to thoughtful responsiveness, enabling you to choose actions that are helpful rather than merely avoiding discomfort.
13. Invite Discomfort for Freedom
Rather than avoiding discomfort, invite it in, as this counterintuitive approach can lead to greater freedom than constantly trying to suppress or escape pain.
14. Accept Outrage and Anger
Accept outrage, anger, and fury as natural emotions, rather than judging or getting mad at yourself for experiencing them, as this acceptance is key to developing resiliency.
15. Consult Loved Ones
Consult with people who love you and are invested in your well-being about their perception of your choices, especially when navigating tricky emotions like fear, to gain external perspective and support.
16. Empathy Needs Self-Care
Cultivate empathy by first ensuring you have enough self-care to feel safe and open to reflect on others’ discomfort, as being overwhelmed with your own discomfort can shut down the capacity for empathy.
17. Practice Mindful Driving
Be highly aware and attentive while driving, as being overwhelmed or distracted can lead to dangerous choices and a loss of focus on basic safety, causing you to ‘coast’ on critical tasks.
18. Rebuild Resiliency Through Restoration
Actively seek restoration to rebuild your resiliency, which is your capacity to bounce back from stress and overwhelm, by figuring out what sparks joy, inspiration, or provides rest.
19. Expand Personal Practice
Supplement meditation with other personal practices like yoga, exercise, and creating a sense of ‘home making’ to cultivate a restorative refuge, especially for introverts who recharge in solitude.
20. Protect Home as Refuge
Actively protect the boundary of your home as a refuge for restoration by saying ’no’ to external demands and scheduling time for stillness, silence, and enjoyable activities.
21. Reconnect to Fun
Make a conscious effort to reconnect with activities that bring you pleasure and fun, even if traditional outlets are disrupted, by finding alternative ways to experience restoration.
22. Use Entertainment Skillfully
Utilize entertainment (e.g., streaming services) skillfully as a form of self-care for temporary breaks from the world, but avoid self-indulgence by ensuring you return to important work and relationships once restored.
23. Share Resources Communally
Foster communal living by sharing resources and support with friends, family, and neighbors, especially for parents or those feeling overwhelmed, to create opportunities for breaks and mutual care.
24. Question Overextended Life
Critically question why your life is so overextended that you lack time for self-care or family, and consider making different choices to prevent work from dictating your life.
25. Disrupt Over-Consumption
Disrupt patterns of over-consumption by asking what you truly need and what you can do without, recognizing that materialism often serves as a substitute for internal emotional labor.
26. Internal Practice Reduces Materialism
Cultivate a rich, direct, kind, and loving internal practice of self-care to reduce reliance on material consumption for emotional well-being, allowing you to engage with the material world more mindfully and disrupt over-consuming habits.
27. Reinvest in Restorative Things
When consuming less, reinvest your energy and resources into things that are truly restorative for yourself and others, which can lead to more authentic engagement and the ability to hold space for people.
28. Redistribute Excess Resources
If you find yourself over-resourced, consider how you can authentically care for people by offering extra resources to others in need.
29. View Apocalypse as Opportunity
Reframe ‘apocalypse’ not as an end, but as an opportunity for profound shift, unveiling, and the emergence of truth, especially during times of multiple, simultaneous changes, to touch into underlying reality.
30. Practice Constant Self-Inquiry
Practice constant self-inquiry throughout the day by asking ‘What do I need right now?’, ‘How am I doing?’, ‘How’s my mind/body?’, and ‘What do other people need around me?’ to maintain self-awareness and ensure you are resourced.
8 Key Quotes
I don't bite the hook as much as I used to, right? But if you keep biting the hook, then there's a kind of like overwhelm that we experience.
Lama Rod Owens
It's the old trope of, you know, put your own oxygen mask on. First, there's a reason why cliches become cliches, because they're true.
Dan Harris
My Open Heart Keeps Me Safe.
Sebenay Selassie (via Dan Harris)
Aversion takes a lot of energy. Aversion is also hate, right? Hate, aversion, that takes so much effort to maintain because you're actually creating this experience of rigidity.
Lama Rod Owens
Reactivity to discomfort is always going to create more discomfort. Like there's no way to create comfort and safety and openness when we're just habitually reacting to the pain.
Lama Rod Owens
I can hold that because there's a lot of space to hold, right? And when there's a lot of space, I can move from reactivity into responsiveness.
Lama Rod Owens
We don't have enough care to feel safe enough to actually open our eyes, to open our hearts to the experience of others.
Lama Rod Owens
Apocalypse means shift, really. It means unveiling, particularly, right? It means that just truth, truth, like truth unveils itself.
Lama Rod Owens
2 Protocols
Skillful Practice with Fear
Lama Rod Owens- Get curious about what fear actually feels like in your mind and body.
- Identify the narratives associated with that discomfort.
- Connect to experiences of feeling cared for (e.g., through loving-kindness practice) to feel supported and less alone.
- Start with a basic, manageable fear and slowly build capacity to work with much more intense experiences of fear.
- Avoid jumping headfirst into intense fear without developing skillfulness and wisdom to manage the experience.
Daily Self-Inquiry for Resourcefulness
Lama Rod Owens- Ask yourself: 'What do I need right now?'
- Ask yourself: 'How am I doing?'
- Ask yourself: 'How's my mind?'
- Ask yourself: 'How's my body?'
- Ask yourself: 'What do other people need around me?'