A Pillar of Calm in Chaotic Times

These turbulent and uncertain times remind me of that cold and dreary night in March, 1972 in Boston.

3 friends and I went to hear Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra perform a sold-out tribute concert to jazz legend John Coltrane. We had tickets for the 10 PM show but arrived early, finding ourselves in a swelling crowd waiting for the 7 PM show to end.

Time passed. No one knew what was happening. The mood started to shift from upbeat — to anxious — then to menacing!

The crowd started to become hysterical unruly as hundreds of people pressed from the outside shouting, "I have a ticket! Let me in!"

People trapped by the doors in front screamed: "I can't breathe! I'm getting crushed!"

The wall of glass doors were close ahead, and we feared they would shatter. The chaos surged and the crowd was getting dangerously out of control—pushing forward and back.

It was terrifying. We were about to be trampled.

We were all beginning meditators and practitioners of Aikido, a Japanese martial art based on harmony and non-resistance. In that moment of panic, we instinctively formed a tight circle- standing strong, aligned with sky above and grounded in the earth below.

We concentrated on our hara (dantian), the energy center in our low bellies. With our arms wrapped around each other's backs, we became a pillar of stability amidst the terrifying storm of fear.

As the intense pressure mounted we were nearly pushed over many times — but together as a pillar we could resist the pushing and stayed upright and strong —psychologically and physically.

People were shrieking and falling. It felt like an eternity.

Suddenly — the side doors burst open. The dark night flooded with light as people from the earlier show poured out and dispersed. We entered the theater, shaken yet intact.

And the concert was fabulous!

I hadn't contemplated that night in decades... until recently. As I observe today's escalating conflicts — environmental destruction, political polarization, social upheaval — I wonder: Did our small pillar of strength and calm due to our "embodied mindfulness in action" help stabilize the energy that night? We will never know for certain, but I believe it did.

And as Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine said: "When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small shifts of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order."

Now, more than ever, we need to cultivate that same non-aggressive higher order by joining together the powers of Heaven and Earth - within ourselves... and with heart-full communities.

And as the great Jewish Renewal founder interfaith Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi said: “The only way we can get it together is together!”