The Most Radical Activism Happens Within.

Instead of turning on one another, can we turn inward and start there.

If only it were all so simple. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Along with many of you, we have been in quiet contemplation since Hamas unleashed its brutal attack on Israel on October 7th. Over the past six months we've watched with heartbreak as the world responded in kind to the horror playing out in Gaza. The long arc of this unrelenting conflict still resulting in the reinforcement of the good guys/bad guys narrative where no one wins and we all lose. While we can each play a small part in speaking out, making phone calls to our representatives, sending money and using the tiny bits of leverage we have to move the dial in a larger sense, we feel that our greatest power lies in the change we can effect within our own selves, our families and our communities. To us, this is where true potency lives for real change and true peace to be realized. 

I have a story I'd like to share from a couple years ago about a giant moth we discovered flying around in our bedroom one evening as we were getting ready to turn in. All the sudden our dog, Marlow went after it and watching her dart around trying to catch the moth struck us both as hilarious until she DID catch the moth and I instantly realized that it was not funny at all. I was horrified that I had been so detached and callous toward the moth's plight so I desperately pried Marlow’s mouth open and fetched the soggy yet unchewed moth from her mouth. I gently dried it and placed it outside upon which it flew hopped away. I do not know whether the moth survived the experience. 

When I went back upstairs I felt an upwelling of emotion and realized that each of us will play out the part of the person (in this case, me), the moth and the dog. We will each play the victim, the puppet and the perpetrator. These are archetypal themes that we inhabit to understand and integrate the whole of our humanity. We are going to screw up in ways that feel unforgivable. We’re going to cause deep pain to others and were going to feel appalled and humiliated by it. We will play out the perpetrator by projecting shadow parts onto others that we’re not conscious of. It’s inevitable. What we do with that fact is up to us to illuminate and make meaning of. We are also going to get deeply wounded by people in life. We will play out the part of the victim. We are going to unintentionally throw someone under the bus or adopt an unkind narrative about someone because of something someone said. We will play the puppet. Until we make this conscious within ourselves we will cause unintended harm to ourselves and those around us. As Carl Jung says, "That which we do not bring into the light of consciousness appears in our life as fate." If we don’t illuminate what we reject internally it’ll appear in our lives and force us to integrate it. Or we can do our shadow work and choose. The unacknowledged perpetrator within will get projected onto another until we face it. We will also take on others projections until we know who we are and who we aren’t. Until we get right with ourselves we can’t get right with another. This is the call of this time in our humble opinion. The most radical activism is the one that happens inside. Then we can participate in outer activism that is rooted from love and forgiveness rather than scorn and hatred. 

How we each metabolize and respond to the pain of the world is personal. Those of us that are called to contribute to the creation of peace in the world must start with ourselves. We must listen to our own call to action. There are infinite ways our world can be healed and restored. Shaming anyone for their process is adding to the violence that already exists. If you are bringing scorn, judgment, or vengeance, I gently and compassionately urge you to go sit in stillness and let the deepest parts of your heart speak to you until you are ready to listen.

Until we see the innocence of our enemies, how easy it would be for us to be them and for them to be us, how the conviction of their perceptions are not so different from our own, we will be doomed to repeat the past. Until we can collectively integrate that the dehumanization of our enemy is the actual enemy – not each other, we will continue to justify war in the name of peace.

No technological, scientific, psychological, or spiritual progress has yet to override or crack the code on how to tame these young and feral parts of who we are. Until there is a tipping point of consciousness, whereby enough of us take responsibility for our own pain rather than indiscriminately flinging it towards whomever is in our out-group, the devolution into the archaism of war will always be a threat.

Children will be sacrificed because of our ignorance, and we will bear the heartbreak as well as karmic implications of such needless tragedy. Our barbaric parts will keep running the show until enough of us choose to evolve beyond them. How much carnage will it take to realize that the only thing that can tame our primitive parts is love?

So the question is, can we be courageous enough to sit with our heartbreak without turning on one another? Could we be willing to see that the dividing line between foe and friend runs through each of us? And finally, the most audacious question of all: are we willing to perceive that it can only be through compassion, forgiveness, and the recognition of our fundamental oneness that we can begin to build a world that is worthy of our children. They are looking up to us every day, watching what we say and do, and will ultimately inherit our legacy of pain or our legacy of healing. Rest assured that whatever it ends up being, our choices will be emulated and will ripple out into future generations to come.

The work ahead is to make all of this visible within ourselves. Protecting the inner victim as well as the outer ones. Not adopting truths unless we’ve fully vetted them and determined their validity. Not closing our heart to those that we've determined are within our out-group. It’s the very act of armoring our hearts to our inner and outer perpetrators that keeps this cycle of vengeance looping. We must forgive ourselves to forgive another. 

We must evolve beyond the good guy/ bad guy narrative both internally and externally. We all have both inside and it’s only through compassion and forgiveness that we depolarize the binary and redeem ourselves and each other. The time is now to sow peace within so we can sow it without. 

I've been thinking a lot about Ghandi's approach to liberating India from England and it reminds me of one of my favorite Ghandi stories where he was getting chased down by the press as he was trying to catch a train and they wanted a statement so he handed a piece of paper out the window as his train took off that said this:  My message is my life. 

How we spend our moments is our message. May we spend them wisely and skillfully with an open and compassionate heart towards all, most especially ourselves. Please join us in finding another way. The onus is on each of us to pave a new way forward that doesn’t denigrate, destroy or dehumanize.

May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings awaken to the light of their true nature.

We are One. We are One. We are One. Say it until you can hear it.

In peace,

Jocelyn Rahm

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