How I Stay Engaged with an Overwhelming World
Notes on appropriate anxiety and how to build inner resilience.
In the past few weeks, I’ve been telling you about Time Craft.
We had our first session this past Monday, and I’m genuinely excited to explore the true nature of time with this terrific crew of humans.
PS it’s not too late if you still want to join us.
Registration will close on Sunday, January 25.
However,
despite my deep belief in the life-affirming, world-changing power of this work, there is a part of me that is embarrassed to be promoting and selling anything at this overwhelming, anxiety-ridden moment in human history.
2026 is off to a fearsome start.
My hometown Minneapolis is under violent occupation (and resisting admirably).
The Trump regime is lashing out in all directions like a vicious animal injured and fighting for its life — stoking global conflict in the process.
“The era of global water bankruptcy is here,” says a new UN report.
These are just basic bullet points. There is, of course, so much more.
Sometimes I wonder if I should stop listening to all the political podcasts and unsubscribe from the YouTube channels whose information and opinions I value.
Except, for me, it seems not knowing is actually more stressful than keeping track of what’s happening. Personally, I’ve learned to prefer turning to face the demon chasing me through my dreams, no matter how terrifying it is.
And: it’s a lot. Sometimes: it’s too much.
As it is, I’ve been navigating existential anxiety since I was just a wee lad. Throughout my life, I have often felt randomly abandoned on a strange and dangerous planet.
Over the years, I tried many ways to steady myself while staying in contact with the world.
Sports helped—building courage and confidence—but they only worked inside controlled arenas with clear rules.
Alcohol and cannabis made things worse.
Psychedelics were disastrous. What heals some people detonates me.
Yoga and meditation came close, but I eventually stepped away from most lineages I trained in. Too much inward polish, not enough outward engagement. What’s the point of cultivating presence if it never meets the world?
Now, as I approach forty, I’ve found a way to stay engaged without losing my center.
The simplest way to explain it is with a metaphor.
Picture a space shuttle orbiting Earth.
To re-enter the atmosphere safely, it must approach at a precise angle—about forty degrees.
Too steep, and it burns up.
Too shallow, and it ricochets back into space.
You, too, have a field around you — a toroidal, electromagnetic biofield which functions as the exoskeleton for your internal nervous system.
In this metaphor, the shuttle is incoming information: news, sensations, conversations, crises.
When your field is well-organized, you get to decide what happens next.
What stays in orbit.
What burns up.
What bounces off.
And what lands safely on the surface of your nervous system.
Now: imagine a major news event as a comet headed your way.
You have three options:
You can deflect it entirely—never let it in.
You can let it crash straight through, detonating on impact.
Or, you can allow it into orbit for a while, observe it, then let it pass on.
That third option is the practice of Space Craft — a specific meditation technique that I've honed and perfected over 12 years to help both myself and others create powerful energetic shifts and maintain healthy boundaries using the natural atmospheric fields our bodies already create.
Space Craft allows you to let the information enter your field without letting it hit the ground. Stay in relationship without being knocked off center.
Your delicate biological nervous system was never meant to process a planet’s worth of stress, just like the Earth’s surface is not meant to absorb all the radiation of the Sun.
This is why we both (Earth and you) have atmospheric fields around us acting as a filter. The practice is learning how to receive what’s coming without losing our own center of gravity.
If we sincerely want to protect, repair and regenerate this beautiful world, we must remain engaged with it as it is.
To remain engaged with a non-stop onslaught of horrific and destabilizing events requires the cultivation of significant inner resilience.
To be clear: this is not how I was taught to meditate.
It is only in service of my own psycho-spiritual survival that I’ve discovered and developed a set of simple meditative techniques that actually work to keep me (mostly) floating upright in the midst of this maelstrom.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll share more about:
The scientific of how and why it works;
Some stories about real-life results;
Why even long-time meditators have profound experiences with it; and
How you can make it work for you.
If you’re not already subscribed, subscribe to this Substack to make sure you don’t miss what’s to come, and if you want real-time practices, I recommend getting on my newsletter where I’ll share more videos and free resources to support you in your own practice.
And if you or someone you know is feeling overwhelmed by the world, share this with them. The more regulated we are, the more impact we can have.
More soon. Until then,
I am with you.
The shuttle reentry metaphor is sharp, really captures that narrow bandwidth between dissociation and overwhelm. What's interesting is how this maps onto the broader issue of attention economy design that deliberately bypasses these natural filtering mechanisms. I've found similar practices help, but dunno if individual techniques can fully counter systemic information architecture thats built to penetrate rather than respect boundaries.