There’s always this careful dance going on in me. Internal swinging and spinning telling me to move and create. To get up and make noise and shout and act on the unjust. But just like my body, my mind and internal wanderings tire and I’m forced to be silent and still. The stress and anxiety of late-capitalism has emptied consumers seeking more spiritual satisfactions. Just like humanitarianism, so too does self-care, mindfulness and yoga all become hijacked by commodification practices, absorbed into the ideological landscape of neoliberalism. We digest a product meant to be good for us but it’s causing blockages and diseases.
Meditations and mindfulness get used as more tools for mindlessness. Like reality TV we are put to sleep by the overwhelming necessity for detachment. But detachment for The Buddha is a mechanism used to remove oneself from the control of our environment, so we can rise above as observers more able to see and speak clearly about the ways we truly exist. And the truth is, we exist in struggle. We struggle to be sentient beings in a world that constantly portrays an overly physical form of reality, trying to become authentic in a world congested with manufactured consumption habits that perpetuate exploitation and violence in each purchase. Detachment is not meant to be a sleeping utensil. We are meant to tune in so we can see the ways we’ve tuned out.
Tuning out is not meditation. Meditation is for focused attention. Pay attention to the way we shake for each other. Watch how we assault and abuse one another. Feel how disruption over there is disruption in here. Mindfully settle that shaking just enough to manifest the energy to confront it. We are not meant to live in fear and anxiety. Post-Traumatic disorders plague too many communities. Disregarding this violence is not healing. We must be uncomfortable with it.
Seeking comfort is not revolutionary and if self care is truly about love then it must not be reactionary – love is transcending and radical; it is the awakened spirit that seeks collectivism and harmony. It is good to feel anger from our calamities. Anger does not rise within us for us to ignore it. Sickness is a sign built by our organism telling us to change. Stillness is not unchanging. Love is not ignorance. Love is growing.
Stillness is not non-adaptive. Stillness is not silence. Stillness is the momentary heightened awareness of our collective vibrating. Stillness is a tool to recognize it’s own paradox, that nothing is ever still. Silence has never participated in revolution. Silence always promotes disintegration, social fracturing and apathy. Silence is not the same as listening. Listen to your heart. Listen to other’s hearts. But do not be silent about the ways your hurt. Do not be silent about the ways we hurt each other.
Shake and awaken in your practice. Tune in to speak out. Slow down to speed up. Mindfulness for action. Breathe in for someone else’s lungs. Lunge for someone else’s life. Take your time to be still so you can give time to those who can’t stop moving for the fear that they’ll be shot at. Remember our collective anxiety is built in histories of trauma. Sleeping will continue the nightmare. Resting will heal and rejuvenate, so rest – but you will never be healed if you are not simultaneously healing others. Be still only so you can move.
Our health is in each other. It is in our planet, our land, our water, our air. Now is not the time for individualized escapes. Now we must participate. Learn about your neighbours, learn about their hate. Talk to the strangers who pass by when you have that collected light to share and regurgitate. Gather your spirit, build up your energies, practice your powers, because we all need them right now. We need you here. We need you to show up.
We need you to love everyone like we love escaping into our mat at the end of a long day. Love each other like those deep breaths that ground you. Let the grounding root you and move you so that you can grow up and reach out. Intertwine your love with each other. This is our movement. This is our health. This is spirituality for the masses. I want to call this, Sacred Socialism. But then again, I don’t want to call it anything at all – for these are not my thoughts alone. I speak because we learn. I know because you show. I am me because of you. Without you, I am nothing.
kingplacid 