The news came just as an article I wrote—Meditation:  Neuroscience Shows How It Can Change Your Life for the Better–was chosen to be the cover story for a regional publication. I had been meditating for about two years, twice a day, about half an hour to two hours in a sitting. Two and a half years earlier, I had also lost my job. I had begun meditating about four months before. Now this was a poignant moment to experience my own brain on meditation. In both events, the situation was out of my control and I was essentially “laid off.” In both job situations, I felt it coming. Something didn’t feel right and had to give. No matter the reasons, our brains perceive and evaluate losing one’s job as a big threat. It ranks among the highest stress events, right up there with death of a loved one, divorce and serious illness. It is a blow to our base chakra, survival senses kick in. Most people go through an emotional cycle of denial, fear, anger, blame and eventually adaptation. I went through this same cycle both times. But the speed at which I cycled through these emotions to adaptation was radically different the second time, after two years of meditation. On the first round, I had been the sole source of income for my family for over 10 years, and that career had a substantial retirement fund. I felt I was carrying everything for my family’s survival on my shoulders. I had moved my family to this new place for that job. I knew no one and no one knew me; I had no support network there. I reached out to strangers, some of whom were kind and helpful, and some who betrayed me for their own sense of security. I feared that I had really messed up making this move. The constant scanning for the source of threat was living in a soup of anxiety. We know that under stress our brains release stress hormones and chemicals, like cortisol. I experienced all the signs of too much stress:  anxiety, aches and pains, difficulty sleeping, etc. I started meditating, and praying, just to deal with this stressful daily scene. In neuroscientific and psychologic terms, I was ruminating. My brain’s Threat Center and Me Center were in close cahoots to evaluate threats. They were turning events over and over in my head, trying to understand myself vis-à-vis everyone else. Trying to understand seems like a logical route to solutions, but in a threat-induced loop, I was susceptible to taking things personally, all input was evaluated in a self-referencing loop. That’s not objective or balanced. My Me Center was over-riding my Executive Center, the part of my brain that actually can help me understand in a balanced way. Rumination plays a big role in depression, and in the worst-case, suicide. It can lead us into the illusion of a tunnel without options. When we meditate, we continually [...]