Feeling Safe

from “Living Life Well”

A brief version of this article first appeared in The Kenwood Press April 1st, 2026.

Many of us are frightened now. Bad news arrives every day, like the horrific storms plaguing our nation. We have changed the social and political climate as profoundly as we have changed the natural climate, and storms of instability and anxiety have eroded institutions we once assumed were permanent. Fear makes sense in a frightening world, but when it hardens it becomes something much more dangerous— despair.

I’ve spent fifty years now sitting with people as a counselor, facing their fears, and I’ve learned that the antidote is not the absence of danger— it is feeling safe in the presence of danger. Safety, at its most fundamental, is not about what is happening “out there.” It is about confidence in knowing where you stand within the greater order of things.

There is a simple clinical framework I call the Ladder of Hope— a vertical spectrum, not a hierarchy of achievements but a map of the emotional territory when addressing the uncertainties of life. At the center of the ladder stands Hope, the still place and pivot around which everything turns.

We may climb above Hope to Belief, a more certain view that things can steady and hold. Beyond the stability of Belief we may reach the highest rung— Trust. This is not trust in any particular person, institution, or even outcome, but trust in the whole— what the Islamic tradition calls tawakkul, the deep reliance upon a wisdom larger, and greater, than any personal thoughts.

Beneath Hope we may descend to Doubt, but Doubt is not the enemy of Hope; it is its steadfast, supportive companion. Doubt knows that we do not control outcomes, and is realistic— as long as we keep Hope central. If we do not keep Hope central we will slide further, past Doubt, into the dark cellar of Despair. Despair is not doubt about outcomes. It is the conviction that nothing good is possible, a place where we have given up Hope. Hope must remain central.

The entire range, from Hope to Belief and to Doubt, is normal. As long as Hope remains the center of gravity, we are navigating, not drowning. We may consider the glass of water half full or half empty, depending upon our mood. The only clinical danger is in abandoning Hope as the center and letting Despair become the organizing principle of our inner life.

Anas ibn Malik, a student of the Prophet Muhammad, once asked him, “O Messenger of Allah, should I tie my camel and trust in Allah, or should I leave her untied and trust in Allah?” The Prophet replied, “Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.” Tying the camel is Hope made practical by what you do, rather than wishful thinking and passively permitting things to take place. Trusting Allah releases the grasping for what lies beyond your hands. Together they describe a sane and grounded human life: do what is yours to do, and then open your fists.

This is also the very foundation of Twelve‑Step recovery. The First Step, admitting that we as individuals are not in absolute control, is not a defeat— it is a liberation. It relocates us correctly as part of a larger order. In that tradition, a “higher power” is intentionally left open‑ended: it may be God, Nature, the group, or what some people simply call the Higher Self— a wiser, more spacious awareness within us that is greater than our everyday attitude and transient ideas. We only need to know that it is larger than our isolated individuality, and that it includes us within it. We are part of the power to which we surrender.

Modern physics has quietly arrived at the same address as these ancient wisdoms. The physicist John Wheeler proposed what he called the participatory universe— the radical idea that the universe requires conscious observers to become fully real, that seeing it does not merely detect reality but actually participates in creating it. In this frame, your presence in the cosmos is not incidental. Above my desk hangs a note I once wrote to myself: “I am part of a sentient cosmos, and without me it is less complete.” This is not vanity— It is solace.

Quantum consciousness theory extends this further. Penrose and Hameroff’s Orchestrated Objective Reduction model suggests that the moments of our awareness are not merely produced by the brain but are events within the deep structure of spacetime itself— that consciousness is something the brain tunes into, rather than manufactures. And quantum entanglement— particles instantaneously responsive to each other across any distance— suggests that at the most fundamental level, reality is not made of separate, isolated units. Separateness is the delusion of a local appearance; connectedness is the deeper truth.

This brings us to the question most often asked in times as overpowering as these storms: How can we remember this, and stay present to what is happening without becoming consumed by it? How can we be neither ignorant about what is happening, nor overwhelmed by what is taking place? As I’ve written before, there is a healthy place within you that exists between ignorance and overwhelm, but it requires constant attention and adjustment. Engage and rest; observe and discern. Attend to what is said and done, sense what is implied and intended, and above all notice what it means to you. Then, act. Make your presence part of what is taking place— or it will most certainly take place without you.

This middle ground is not a passive place. It demands discipline. Research and clinical experience alike suggest that civic engagement, when undertaken with intention rather than compulsion, can reduce depression, increase resilience, and build a sense of purpose that buffers against Despair. But engagement driven by anxiety rather than by agency produces its own kind of overwhelm. The antidote is rhythm— the natural pulse of engagement and rest, each in its turn as needed.

I organize this practice around three capacities: being attentive, being sensitive, and being effective. Pay attention to what is actually happening, not just to opinions about what is happening. Listen beneath the surface, and be informed rather than manipulated. Then do what is yours to do, in the way that you are able. That is tying the camel. That is sufficient.

The tawakkul in the Prophet’s reply names this relationship. Safety is not provided by trust in yourself alone, nor in any particular human leader or institution. It is trust in the field itself, the sentient, entangled whole of which you are a living part. This is that “higher power” that is greater than ourselves, Muhammad’s Allah— not a distant sovereign to be appeased, but instead the ground of being that includes and embraces the camel, the rope, your hand, and the journey, all at once.

If you are frightened by what is happening, please know that your fear is not a sign that you are weak, or faithless, or failing. It is a sign that you are paying attention. But when fear becomes chronic and disabling, it is supported by the delusion that you are alone, that you are a separate self facing a hostile universe with only your individual resources. This fear is not dispelled by courage in the heroic sense but by something quieter and humbler than that. It is found in finding your place in a field of fractals, each echoing the one that it contains and the one that contains it. You are not alone, you are nested. The cosmos that would be less complete without you arranges itself around your presence. You belong here— and you are being gently held.

So— be attentive, be sensitive, be effective. Engage, and rest. Climb toward Belief when you can, and know Trust is available from there. Hear the counsel of Doubt, but do not let it displace Hope. Keep Hope central, and do not enter Despair’s dark prison. Tie your camel, and trust— not in the outcome, not in any one agent, but in the whole to which you have always belonged— and then, you will truly feel safe.