Integral Activism (Part 1)

As I have grown older I have noticed that I have changed. My consciousness has been altered by the accumulation of years, experiences, hardships and the proximity of death. The losses and gains have piled up and rebalanced the scale of my awareness. This has caused me to rethink many things, and to make choices that are surprising me. My self-image isn’t what it used to be. I’m finding that all-in-all, these changes are leading me towards a deeper, richer life, a life that is more connected with the mystery of the greater immensity I am embedded in.

As I’ve realized this is the case, I find myself reviewing my life and realigning it.  This is a description of an important part of that process of redefinition.  The words and ideas that follow represent a work-in-progress. They reflect a transformational flow that has swept me up and is delivering a more sensitized, and older, being back into this world. What I see now is not what I saw before. What I feel called to, is only partly what I felt called to before. I am in flux, and my world is changing.

I have found a very interesting and unexpected phenomenon occurring in my life. It is one I am unprepared for. As I am aging, I am moving from having an external focus to a more internal one. This shift has befuddled and intrigued me. My inner life is growing — adding perspective — and complicating my self-image, and the world I live in. Unbidden, I am feeling and noticing things I once overlooked.

This movement is causing me to pay attention like never before. I am changing — becoming someone new in my experience — and struggling to find an adequate way to describe myself. As a result, I live unbalanced in a new way, in a world that is familiar and strange at the same time.

The most unexpected change has been to my outlook. In the past, I have seen many environmental and social injustices that were the catalyst for a lot of my actions. Now, I find myself acting in new ways, guided by my burgeoning internal awareness. This shift has caused me to reevaluate. I have some doubt about the activism I now participate in. It is closer to home, more in the moment, and a lot more circumspect. I don’t really know how to talk about it. Am I just getting old and tired, or seeing things with wiser eyes?

Recently, a new awareness has come to me. I call what has come of it, “integral activism.” This is a form of action that integrates and combines "inner" with "outer" awareness. It preserves my deepening sense of integrity. And opens me more to Spirit’s power. There is an inherent balance in it, because it calls for transformation without recrimination.

 

This form of activism emerges naturally from the realizations that are coming through my “inner” life. Engagement is organic, by that I mean unplanned, spontaneous, and authentic. Basically, I exemplify a value rather than promoting it. My form of integral activism creates pressure for change by my being the change desired. The choice to be active is not stimulated by any desire to influence or persuade another. There is no intent to change. That is left up to Mystery.

It is important to me that I am constantly acting on behalf of my values each and every moment, in all my relationships with strangers and within myself. To do that, I have had to redefine inner work and make it more robust and engaged. I find that when there is no boundary between what is within me, and my actions in the world, there is much more likelihood, that I am going to be connected to the moment, others, and the Spirit. All of this comes to pass because I practice what I call an inner form of activism to complement my actions in the world. 

Unrest

I’ve been feeling a lot of grief in recent weeks. I think I’ve had good reason to be in grief most of my life, but now is the time when I’m experiencing it most acutely.

Maybe it’s the election season, climate change, income inequality, or the fact I’m growing old in an ageist culture. I’m sure all of those things contribute to a sense of on-going melancholy, but I think that the grief I feel is the world groaning under the weight of so much confusion and hurt. I can’t sigh enough. The weight of global and personal unrest presses upon me, threatening to flatten out my existence even more than it already is. So, today, in this writing, like a broken prayer beseeching Mystery, I want to give my thoughts completely over to the restless heartache I feel within.

I can’t quite pin down what haunts me. There is a lot it could be. It could be the 40% of our nation that is suffering change so harshly that they are afraid and angry. Too many are willing to trade an illusionary wall, for the statue of Liberty. Idealized greatness is falling. It seems that the nation’s most central infrastructure, its citizenry, has been neglected for too long. And — I’m aware — the ice caps are melting, extinction goes on daily, and children are starving. As Leonard Cohen has said, “it hurts in the places where I used to play.”

This isn’t a litany of planetary suffering, nor a description of existential angst. It is simply a human cry. I don’t have the capacity necessary to hold the miraculousness of this existence, side-by-side with the sorrow I experience. The price of this ride is beyond my means. My eyes and heart are open, I am awed into reverence by all of this beautiful, and inexplicable foment. I am shaking. Shattered even, yet, there seems to be more. I don’t know what it is. But, I can feel its presence.

The landscape of the grief I feel leads me toward compassion. But, even there I am confused and overwhelmed. Compassion for who? Those who are under someone else’s boot, those who stick their necks out, those who don’t even notice, those who are aware of more than they can handle? My heart breaks for all of them, and because I’m human, sometimes, my heart breaks for none of them.  I am privileged enough to know the massive privilege of awareness. The foment doesn’t seem to notice — and cares in no way I understand.

And so it is, I exist in this seething miasma, lamenting a day that doesn’t go well, or sometimes, brought to my knees by an unexpected kindness. The moment holds more than I can take in. Still, I theorize I’m here to be a witness.  A kind of poster child for PTSD, I exist in a cauldron of dark goo, stuck to an unfolding, I cannot grasp. Being human, bearing the portion of awareness allotted to our species, is a gift I handle every day. Only today, right now, I think it is handling me.

My compassion extends to me. I’m getting old, and I’m seasick, from seeing too much. I find myself looking forward to death. In a cowardly, perhaps wise, stupor, I long for release. Like good bread dough though, perhaps I would best serve, if kneaded a little more. Existence seems to be buffeting me around, doing a good job of working me into a kind of malleable, unknowing haze. Fatigue was yesterday, today is just a hopeless openness.

I’m doomed to wonder. Questioning is so limited. What is coming is already here. I just have audacity enough to write these words, and to think they mean something. I’m not sure I could tell you what. But, I will marvel with you awhile, as the moon comes over the horizon. These tears, I find coursing down my cheeks, burn me with awareness, and remind me anew, this isn’t happening for my sake alone. I feel this unrest, this terrible blessing, because I’m made to bear it. The lamentable is so beautiful.

l/d

I’ve been feeling a lot of grief in recent weeks. I think I’ve had good reason to be in grief most of my life, but now is the time when I’m experiencing it most acutely.

Maybe it’s the election season, climate change, income inequality, or the fact I’m growing old in an ageist culture. I’m sure all of those things contribute to a sense of on-going melancholy, but I think that the grief I feel is the world groaning under the weight of so much confusion and hurt. I can’t sigh enough. The weight of global and personal unrest presses upon me, threatening to flatten out my existence even more than it already is. So, today, in this writing, like a broken prayer beseeching Mystery, I want to give my thoughts completely over to the restless heartache I feel within.

I can’t quite pin down what haunts me. There is a lot it could be. It could be the 40% of our nation that is suffering change so harshly that they are afraid and angry. Too many are willing to trade an illusionary wall, for the statue of Liberty. Idealized greatness is falling. It seems that the nation’s most central infrastructure, its citizenry, has been neglected for too long. And — I’m aware — the ice caps are melting, extinction goes on daily, and children are starving. As Leonard Cohen has said, “it hurts in the places where I used to play.”

This isn’t a litany of planetary suffering, nor a description of existential angst. It is simply a human cry. I don’t have the capacity necessary to hold the miraculousness of this existence, side-by-side with the sorrow I experience. The price of this ride is beyond my means. My eyes and heart are open, I am awed into reverence by all of this beautiful, and inexplicable foment. I am shaking. Shattered even, yet, there seems to be more. I don’t know what it is. But, I can feel its presence.

The landscape of the grief I feel leads me toward compassion. But, even there I am confused and overwhelmed. Compassion for who? Those who are under someone else’s boot, those who stick their necks out, those who don’t even notice, those who are aware of more than they can handle? My heart breaks for all of them, and because I’m human, sometimes, my heart breaks for none of them.  I am privileged enough to know the massive privilege of awareness. The foment doesn’t seem to notice — and cares in no way I understand.

And so it is, I exist in this seething miasma, lamenting a day that doesn’t go well, or sometimes, brought to my knees by an unexpected kindness. The moment holds more than I can take in. Still, I theorize I’m here to be a witness.  A kind of poster child for PTSD, I exist in a cauldron of dark goo, stuck to an unfolding, I cannot grasp. Being human, bearing the portion of awareness allotted to our species, is a gift I handle every day. Only today, right now, I think it is handling me.

My compassion extends to me. I’m getting old, and I’m seasick, from seeing too much. I find myself looking forward to death. In a cowardly, perhaps wise, stupor, I long for release. Like good bread dough though, perhaps I would best serve, if kneaded a little more. Existence seems to be buffeting me around, doing a good job of working me into a kind of malleable, unknowing haze. Fatigue was yesterday, today is just a hopeless openness.

I’m doomed to wonder. Questioning is so limited. What is coming is already here. I just have audacity enough to write these words, and to think they mean something. I’m not sure I could tell you what. But, I will marvel with you awhile, as the moon comes over the horizon. These tears, I find coursing down my cheeks, burn me with awareness, and remind me anew, this isn’t happening for my sake alone. I feel this unrest, this terrible blessing, because I’m made to bear it. The lamentable is so beautiful.