Being Peace in a Time of Shaking Ground
Written by Radhule Weininger
In a time when the ground is shaking, becoming a source of stability, warmth, and kindness may be the most powerful gift we can give.
Many of us feel it in our bodies before we can put a name to it. There is a sense that the foundations we unconsciously relied on are no longer stable. In the current political environment – with its unpredictability, institutional erosion, and megalomaniacal expansion – this feeling manifests itself as something physical, like the ground beneath us is trembling.
What is often less apparent is why we are so deeply affected, both emotionally and physically. In psychological terms, we tend to understand healthy attachment as finding a secure base in our lives through personal bonds with family, friends, and romantic partners. However, human beings also form attachments to culture, country, and civic life.
Our sense of security is rooted in shared norms, functioning institutions, and the continuity of a world we recognize. That underlying stability is a form of attachment. When it is suddenly threatened, we experience a real loss that leaves us feeling unmoored.
When this occurs, protective mechanisms resurface. We may not realize what is happening or why our distress feels so intense. It’s like growing up with an inconsistent caregiver. Children develop a specific type of anxiety and hyper-vigilance when their sense of safety and security is destabilized by a parent’s mood swings or not knowing whether promises will be kept. The current threat and the old wound intensify each other.
One natural reaction is to quickly reconnect with anyone who offers safety. In politics, this often appears as tribal identity: finding the group that shares our values, our anger, and our sense of loss. This is understandable and creates a sense of community. It can also align us with important moral commitments.
However, it does not, on its own, provide freedom. Instead, it can leave us feeling even more distressed. When we allow ourselves to be defined mainly by opposition — meaning our sense of belonging focuses on what we are against — we remain stuck in a cycle of reactivity. Even when our cause is just, this can lead our activism to be influenced by hate, disgust, and even greater polarization, making it hard for our engagement to originate in wise and skillful action.
A Deeper Ground
Contemplative traditions offer alternative ways for us to regain and sustain stability that go beyond political identity, tribal affiliation, and distinctions between right and wrong. The poet Rumi expressed it this way: “Beyond ideas of right doing and wrongdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
John Makransky, a Buddhist scholar and meditation teacher who will be leading a day-long Mindful Heart Programs retreat in Santa Barbara on April 25, calls this the Field of Care: a warmth woven into the very nature of awareness itself, accessible to all humans and belonging to no one exclusively. Indigenous peoples across cultures have always recognized this foundation as a sense of being held within a web of belonging larger than any nation or ideology. Contemplative traditions guide us to return to it through practice.
The Field of Care practice is simple yet profound:
Recall a genuine moment of being cared for. It may be by a family member, a teacher, or a pet offering unconditional love.
Let that memory settle into your body — the breath, the chest, the felt sense. As you do this, you will begin to experience authentic warmth.
Allow this warmth to suffuse in your body.
Recognize that this warmth has always been there and that it is always available. It rests within your fundamental awareness, even though it may be temporarily obscured by fear and the accumulated weight of difficult times.
Practicing like this is not an escape from the present moment. It is a return to a ground that the present moment cannot shake.
Compassionate Presence to Feelings
One of the most powerful practices for challenging times is what Makransky calls Compassionate Presence to Feelings. Follow these steps:
When feelings of fear, grief, or outrage arise, as they inevitably will, do not try to suppress or bypass them. Do not demand them to change.
Notice and welcome your uncomfortable feelings. Give them the space they need to move and process in their own time.
Gently rest back into open awareness, the deep ground of being that has always been larger than our emotions.
This “allowing” is not passivity; it is a radical act of deep courage. Vastness, knowing, and warmth are qualities of the Field of Care — the qualities that hold all experience without being consumed by them.
Being Peace Is a Political Act
In a world where destructive emotions hold great power, cultivating inner non-reactivity is one of the most radical actions a person can take. Resting in the Field of Care and acting from that place is like defusing a bomb from the inside. It interrupts the cycle at its root. Then Gandhi’s words, “being the change we wish to see,” are not just a slogan but a lived intention.
As we experience the qualities of this deep ground of being, the grip of our reactivity subsides. Then we can begin to step off the wheel of reactivity. Doing so openly — through our words, by deeply listening to others, and with our actions — encourages others to follow. Slowly, our world changes and peace trickles in. In a time when the ground is shaking, becoming a source of stability, warmth, and kindness may be the most powerful gift we can give.
