A Subtle Activism Exercise (to make you feel better)

This, from Isis Anderson, is well worth the read.

Subtle Activism Exercise
The key to all subtle activism is to find and stand in an inner presence of calm, peace, sovereignty, spaciousness, and love. The power underlying subtle activism lies in our ability to feel connected through this presence to the Sacred, to the wellbeing of humanity, to spiritual allies, and to Gaia—the spirit and life force of the earth. From this presence and this connectedness comes a power of blessing, what I think of as a “Grail Field.” Just as the mythic Holy Grail held sacredness in a way that was healing and transformative, so our personal Grail Field holds our sacredness on behalf of humanity and the world.

So the first step is to enter your own Grail Field. How you do this is up to you, but here is a simple suggestion.

• Find a place in your heart and mind in which you feel stable, calm, peaceful, and loving. Use whatever spiritual, psychological, energetic, and physical tools or technique to help you accomplish this.

• Imagine (contemplate or reflect on) as clearly and lovingly as you can, your connections to the rest of humanity, to the world of nature and the land, and to whatever spiritual forces and images of sacredness are meaningful to you. Feel those connections enhance your presence by enabling you to be part of a larger wholeness, one graced with compassion, love and an intelligent, wise awareness.

• Hold your sense of yourself within that enhanced presence and feel its energy go out to your immediate environment, connecting in loving ways with the specific world around you.

Once you have a sense of your own Grail Field, then focus on a quality of constructive and peaceful collaboration. Imagine people who otherwise are split apart by differences of race, politics, ethnicity, religion, geography and who may experience those differences in fearful ways leading to anger and violence now held in the spirit of this collaboration. Feel and see them held in the grace of a loving, peaceful spirit in which non-violent communication is possible. Your task is not to impose anything but to hold a condition in which this clear, constructive non-violent communication is possible. See the people in your vision able to overcome the emotions of fear, anger, hatred, suspicion and the like and able to listen to and hear one another. Your task is not to get them to agree but to enable them to listen without fear and with mutual respect.

Use this visualization with any situation of conflict that you’ve seen, heard or read about in the media.

Finally, imagine that you are a lighthouse. You radiate all around you a light of stability, peace, calm, forgiveness, love, and compassion. Imagine the subtle fields surrounding you calming and becoming clear and stable, able to receive and hold an outpouring of Light from spiritual levels. Visualize this clarity and stability spreading far and wide, linking up with the light of other similar lighthouses, other people who are reaching to express peace, compassion and love. As these beams connect, a web of light is woven over the land that empowers all of us everywhere and makes the fear less fearful, the anger and hatred less persuasive.

Do this as long as it feels comfortable. Then give thanks for any and all help you may feel you received in doing this bit of inner work; carrying this presence of Light in your heart and mind, go about your day.

As you go through your day, when you encounter either the presence of fear and its offshoots of anger and hate or you see it reflected in the media, reaffirm that you are a beacon of courage, strength, calm, love, the creator of a space in which clear communication may take place. Like Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings when confronting the Balrog, stand in your sovereignty and say to the spirit and energy of fear, “You shall not pass!” And let it be so!