D  e  s  e  r  t     E  x  p  o  s  u  r  e     May 2005

Spiritual Activism and our Community

By Tom Gibbons

Spiritual activism is an idea that has roots in the great human rights movements, as well as roots in the great religious traditions and expressions. It has two parts—spirituality and activism. These two parts express the personal and the community aspects of life. Spiritual activism attempts to recognize the unity of these two parts. It is an inclusive outlook on interacting with life.

Let us talk first of the spiritual aspect. It has been said that 95 percent of the world's population believes in some type of omniscient creator. These belief systems are commonly called religions. The spirituality we are talking about is different. It is a personal set of values and beliefs that inform one's behavior in the world. It may be compatible with some religious beliefs, and not compatible with others. At its core are values and beliefs that have been at the core of every major religion.

In the United States, over the last couple of decades there has been a movement toward religious participation in public life. The last presidential election underlined this movement. There must be a wide range of reasons people become involved in this shift, some love-based and some fear-based. Much has been written about the sense of spiritual impoverishment of the modern Western culture, and perhaps this desire for spiritual meaning, along with a general despair about its possibility in "the other," has been a motivation for this phenomenon.

A central component of my notion of spirituality is everything that is, is connected. There is no thing that resides apart from another. Historically, the Western world has been on a "separation" streak. The sciences of discovery, and as these discoveries are related to our world, have broken into many different parts with each part focusing on its own particular aspect. This separation has spread throughout our culture. This has been the trend, which in some fields has lately been challenged by the awareness of interconnection. A new scientific awareness is being created that comes about through a belief in this interconnection. Spiritual activism attempts to bring this awareness into our culture and community.

My notion of spirituality asserts that within each individual resides the essential goodness of creation. Since all that is, is interconnected, then there is no "out there." We are not separate from this goodness and cannot express this goodness through non-loving means.

If we desire to experience peace, joy, love and compassion, we need to be peace, joy, love and compassion. All great prophets and people who have impacted the world positively have said in one way or another, we need to be the change we want to see in the world.

So part of spirituality is doing the personal-growth work that will bring us back to this essential awareness—that we, and others, are good. This is the work of removing layers of socialization and experiences that created the belief of separation and the belief of a hostile world. For if we see the world as hostile, when will it become loving? Who will take the first step into compassion? When we allow our fears to rule our actions, love is not present. We cannot achieve love through hate, peace through war, or compassion through intolerance.

We all have emotional reactions to events around us, and some of these reactions are non-loving. The next step is to realize we have choices about how we behave—choices defined by our values and beliefs. Our own personal work is to examine these choices and see what beliefs and values motivate these choices, and if these beliefs and values truly reflect what we claim our values are.

This is not about making someone believe anything in particular. It is about, and the spiritual activism I talk about is about, asking ourselves and others what we do believe, and if our actions represent those beliefs. The spiritual aspect of spiritual activism gives us the opportunity to define our values and goals in alignment with essential goodness. Then we can choose actions that work to reflect and support those values and goals.

Now let's talk about the activism component. Spiritual activism moves beyond the political realm of right, center and left to support an alternate way of relating. It rejects the "us and them" mentality and supports a "we" consciousness. It is a way of living, a way of being in community, and not confined to the "political." Even the most reclusive of us must interact with others, with the community. What one does affects each of us, perhaps in ways not immediately noticeable, perhaps in ways very noticeable. Activism is the set of choices we make on how to respond with these impacts.

These choices come on the family and community level, as well as the regional, national and world levels—they are public choices. Not everyone responds on all these levels. Yet spiritual activism is appropriate at all these levels. Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Mother Teresa are modern world examples of people operating from a spiritual activism. Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna and the Buddha are historical examples of people operating from a spiritual activism in their time.

For those of us who choose to interact on a widely public scale, spiritual activism provides an opportunity to be the change we want to see—to "walk our talk." It requires rejecting the often popular beliefs of "fighting fire with fire" or "the survival of the fittest" with actions reflecting the world we want to bring into being. Activism can sometimes be a negative activism—anti-abortion, anti-war, anti-gay, anti-establishment. Spiritual activism is an activism that shows what is possible. It is for something that brings into being a reflection of the essential goodness of creation.

Spiritual activism is an important component that brings spiritual practice into our activism. Ritual that empowers our faith in the essential goodness is practiced. Sometimes this may be prayer, or meditation, or visualizations of what we are attempting to create. There are many activists who operate from a personal spiritual awareness. Spiritual activism is beginning to talk about that personal awareness.

For example, in the issue of whether to post the Ten Commandments at some public buildings, there are some for and some against. Some raise the issue of a violation of the principle of separation of church and state. An alternative is to praise the content of the Ten Commandments and support a discussion of adhering to their essence, rather than just posting them. What would a government look like that adhered to these commandments? What policies would change? Are we really ready to embrace the essential meaning of these commandments? Adopting the values behind these commandments, as opposed to merely posting them, would radically alter our government and the way we are in the world. This is the kind of discussion spiritual activism promotes.

The discussion of spiritual activism is ongoing and national in scope, and includes various people and organizations. It has been sprouting for many years, a little here, a little there. Some examples of organizations are The Global Family, Evolve and The Global Renaissance Alliance. Some people who are exploring the nature of spiritual activism are Marianne Williamson, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Neal Donald Walsh and others. In July there is planned a national conference to strengthen this perspective. Visit the website www.tikkun.org for more information. In Silver City there will be ongoing efforts to draw people together to explore this way of being, through meetings, talks and other public efforts. Contact Tom Gibbons at tommygibb@hotmail.com or Siri Dharma at siri@irc-online.org.

Tom Gibbons lives in Silver City, where he
has been a leader in promoting spiritual activism.

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