fear

I am launching a major new course for 2026, on the topic of how we deal with political turmoil.

Here’s why:

It sometimes seems that the world we’re living in is falling apart in terrifying ways.

I feel oppressed by the knowledge that the world is on a very wrong track at the moment. My fears of where things might go are a heavy burden to carry. The events unfolding around me were once unthinkable and are now shocking and I view them with a sense of disbelief. It’s like one day I woke up and found myself in the wrong timeline. How can all this be happening?

Much that we value is being lost or is under threat: a livable climate, free speech, the rule of law and due process, the reliability of the US as an international partner, our expectation that the world had learned “never again” with regard to genocide, the assumption that larger countries should not invade smaller ones just because they can, the belief that all human lives matter and that racism and xenophobia are wrong, economies in which ordinary people can better themselves, trust in science and medicine — even democracy itself.

n so many ways a familiar world (imperfect though it is) seems to be crumbling around us, being replaced by something crueler, less human. The forces of authoritarianism and fascism, although largely defeated, never went away, even in liberal democracies, but they’re undergoing a dark resurgence.

Change is coming at us so fast that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. We might feel paralyzed with terror. We might feel tempted to give up in despair. We might find ourselves consumed with rage.

I have to say, some of you might be sick of politics. You might want to just hide.

But that’s what authoritarians want. They do and say outrageous and cruel things at a breakneck pace so that we’ll feel overwhelmed and hopeless, and so that we’ll stop paying attention. We can’t let that happen, because things will just get worse. Many, many people will suffer.

We can’t directly change the upsetting things that are happening in the world around us. But we can change how we respond to them. And if we want the world to change direction, that’s what we’re going to have to do.

A new course

For the last few months I’ve been working on a new course on how we can learn to stay calm, open-hearted, and optimistic as the world is falling apart.

The course is structured around three broad headings for spiritual practice:

1. Feet On the Ground: This means learn to calm ourselves even in the midst of chaos and outrage. This involves not just mindfulness, but the sense of calm empowerment that comes from knowing we’re doing the best we can with the resources available to us. We practice self-care to keep ourselves in balance. We get smarter about reading the news and using social media.
2. Heart Wide Open: This includes actions such as supporting ourselves with self-compassion, staying open to the sufferings of others, and cultivating joy as a form of resistance. It includes becoming more fearless. It includes reconnecting with the good that exists in the world and remembering that there are more people who want peace and unity than want violence and division. It includes connecting with and working with those people.
3. Keep Looking Up: This includes developing and maintaining our faith in a better world. It involves becoming clearer about what a better world would look like. It’s about learning to work with other people of good will to make that a reality.

Taking action — which is one of the emphases of this course — doesn’t necessarily mean becoming an activist. It might mean encouraging those who are. It might mean holding a sign at a rally. It might mean contributing to groups that are working for good. It might mean staying in touch with others who know that what’s going on is wrong, and offering each other moral support. It might include smiling at strangers, and showing that you’re not cowed. It might mean reading an inspiring book with friends. However little we can do, it’s important we do it.

We can push for the creation of a better world, starting here, starting now. In the future, you’ll want to be able to say, “We couldn’t stop them. But we slowed them down. And when the insanity collapsed in on itself, we’d already worked out how we wanted to rebuild things.”

How it works

This course is based on others I’ve run in the past — especially “Love Your Enemies” and “Politics As a Spiritual Practice” — which many people found helpful. I’ve been substantially reworking the materials from those courses and creating new content to make sure I address the renewed threat of fascism and authoritarianism, how we resist it, how we live with it, and how we make it less likely to happen next time.

• The course starts Wednesday, 28th of January.
• This course has a weekly email, which will go out on Wednesdays at 5 AM US Eastern Time. Each email contains a substantial essay, or a part of one.
• There will be meditations, but the emphasis is more on the readings, reflections, and practice suggestions.
• The number of emails isn’t finalized, but the course will probably run for the whole year.
• There will be live Zoom discussion groups every two weeks where we can talk about the articles, our thoughts and feelings, and our lives. I’m aiming to do these at two different times, to accommodate people in the US, the UK and Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. Bear in mind it’s not possible to suit everyone’s schedule. Details to follow.
• We can also have written discussions in the community website. Participation and sharing are important.

Our world falling apart is an opportunity

The title of this course is not meant to be alarmist or depressing. In a sense the world is always falling apart. Our own bodies are falling apart, right now. The leaf in the photograph above is falling apart. What keeps things together is the ongoing work of building and sustaining. As well as falling apart, your body is constantly healing and growing. The leaf’s very falling apart is the condition that supports the growth of new leaves. Old institutions die, and new ones are created.

The falling apart of the old world is like the death of a leaf. It looks like a loss. But it’s also an opportunity for new growth. We know that the world we lost, no matter how much we mourn its passing, can never be put back together again the way it was. And it shouldn’t. It fell apart because it was a bad world for too many people. What we grow in the leaf litter has to be something better, fairer, more just, more human. It has to be a world in which all people can flourish. That’s what we need to aim for. What is that world like? How do we get there? We’ll talk about that together.

This course is only open to those who sponsor Wildmind, thereby giving me the opportunity to reflect and write. But it’s easy to become a sponsor, and it’s only $8 a month. That’s a sound investment in an exploration that will help you feel happy and balanced amidst the turbulence, and that will help you be of more use to our suffering world.

With love,
Bodhipakṣa

👉 Click here to become a sponsor and to join me in “As the World Falls Apart” 👈