“Service is the only possible response to a world in chaos that is falling apart in every way;” this quote sticks in my mind from the interview with author and proponent of sacred activism Andrew Harvey in the November issue of LA YOGA. This month, we’re continuing our discussion with Harvey exploring sacred activism as a means for not only responding to, but actually improving the state of the world today. To make a difference, and dare ourselves to live more consciously, Harvey says we have to fully embrace the light while simultaneously having the courage to face our shadows.
FMT: How can people become sacred activists?
AH: I recommend three steps. First, at the moment that you feel the pain of the world, pray for the peace of the world. Second, understand that mystical traditions describe with extraordinary precision the growth of the divine within the human, so make a commitment to real, sacred practice. Third, after about a week of committed spiritual practice, take a vision retreat in a peaceful place to ask the divine to reveal to you what you can do.
Wake up at three A.M., look at all the causes around you and decide on one that breaks your heart. For me, that cause is the welfare of animals. Once you have embraced it, imagine you have a torch in your right hand lit by the fire of your heartbreak, and go down imaginary stairs to a cave that is symbolic of your sacred heart. On the floor of that cave is a letter your soul is writing to you to wake you up to what you can be and do in this world. Read the letter lit up by the fire of this divine heartbreak, and have the courage to do what it says. That will start you on the road of radioactive mischief.
FMT: You talk about the necessity of the darkness allowing for the illumination of the light. People fear the darkness and the shadow: How do we look into the shadow and transform it?
AH: The divine expresses itself in a dance of opposites: as present in destruction and chaos as it is in creation, order and light. What we reject as too terrifying or horrifying to imagine contains treasures of insight, compassion and wisdom. Unless you make the darkness conscious, you will be subject to it in a chaotic way instead of integrating its wisdom and compassion. It is essential that everyone faces their own personal shadow and the collective shadow of a civilization that is cold-hearted, addicted and hell-bent on destruction.
This is difficult because it means confronting what I call the four inner horsemen of the apocalypse: dread, disillusion, denial and our death wish. We are filled with dread, the first horseman, when facing the consequences of our greed and egotism: financial markets are crashing, arctic poles are melting and the news is in that the forests of the Amazon will be gone in 25 years if the current rate of deforestation continues.
The second horseman is disillusion at humanity: our addiction, sloth and apathy. And the third is denial: denial is the prevalent reality of our situation. We have become so used to loss, injustice and corruption that we’ve hidden ourselves in mindless entertainment: sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. There are many people, who as the crisis darkens, will just step up the carnival. Denial becomes a forgivable way of coping with a depressing reality. Anybody who comes into contact with the heartbreaking truths of the corporate death machine and a culture that is exploding will be threatened with depression unless they are grounded in divine knowledge and sacred practice.
The fourth part of the shadow is our death wish; it is the most important thing we need to face and I think it is the clue why we have done so little to change. We’ve known since the ‘60s of the potential danger of environmental disaster and it would be difficult to imagine doing less than we’ve done. You can rail at people, corporations, governments, the prevalent culture, the bottom line and greed, but until you understand why this apathy is there, I don’t think you begin to get to its root.
Unless you make the darkness conscious, you will be subject to it in a chaotic way instead of integrating its wisdom and compassion.
FMT: What, then, is the explanation for the apathy?
AH: The major metaphor of our time is the metaphor of addiction. The great Jungian analyst and advocate of the divine feminine Marianne Woodman said to me, “We have to face that the world right now is an addict, and like an addict, the world is struggling with a desire to survive and a desire to die and no one knows which desire is going to win.”
Facing your own shadow and the ways in which your own shadow ties into the collective shadow are important. Jung said, “Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light, but making the darkness conscious.” Imagining figures of light is a relativity early stage of the process. To embody the transcendent, you have to travel through zone after zone of bewilderment. You have to do shadow work and confront your own darkness. If you can do so with trust, humility and surrender, you discover another level of unconditional compassion.
The very things that threaten your sanity turn out to ensure your liberation and the very things that threaten your hope turn out to be the foundations of the hope that no destruction, death nor desolation can defeat. This is the great alchemy into which we are plunged.
From the point of view of the alchemist, the fact that there is so much darkness and shadow is not depressing; it is the sign that enormous transformation is possible. Jung said that nobody can become the Christ without knowing that they can potentially become the antichrist. It is said that the last two words of the Buddha before he entered into total enlightenment were, “Oh, darkness.” An 11th century Japanese monk interpreted these words to mean that just before he became superconscious, the Buddha saw the face of the dark powers that threaten everything and saw that face was his face.
Superconsciousness can be borne only when that total awareness of the shadow is seen and integrated in total surrender to the light. When light and shadow are united, we experience a passion of enlightened compassion that longs in every moment to express itself in radical transformative heart-filled, heart-inspired, just action, and that is the third fire that we’re talking of, and that is the divinization of the human.
FMT: How do we tap into that enlightened compassion?
AH: People dealing with outrage can do a practice with the dark feminine, Kali or the black Madonna, who represent the force of this fierce compassion in the universe. Feel the outrage. Imagine it streaming out from you in black and gold lava and imagine you, giving your rage with its fierce compassionate energy to her, and she transmutes it by removing the neurotic dark from the pure gold. She streams back to you the pure gold of fierce compassionate energy dedicated to real action in the world, and allow yourself to be filled up with that pure gold.
If you suppress the anger you will be tremendously depressed; if you express the anger, you will almost always be unskillful and in extreme situations so you will actually join the demonic. Through tantric transfiguration of anger into fierce compassionate energy, you can become a wise, clear, powerful rebel of divine love. Blind rage can be transformed into agonized compassion, which can be transformed into a profound energy that underlies everything any of us do as activists.
FMT: Are meditation, prayer and service part of this transformation?
AH: Of course. And the work of the shadow is so important. The deeper you go into the shadow work, the more you come to understand the hidden loneliness and sense of meaninglessness that underlies your own violence and the violence of others, your own cruelty and the cruelty of others. You have far more compassion for those trapped in violence.
As you work on the sources of your own violence, healing them through prayer, meditation, service, shadow work and constant calling out for grace, you become more skillful and calm in knowing what to do with others.
A limitation of outrage, simply expressed, is that it can potentially drive you to demonic behavior, mirroring the darkness of people that you are opposed to. It can also burn you out. You have to protect yourself from the fire of outrage that can lacerate you and make you bitter and self-destructive. Transmutation of anger into fierce compassionate energy is good for everyone else and profoundly good for you in that it initiates you into deeper levels of compassion and enables you to stay strong in the middle of chaos.
FMT: Compassion, then, is part of the answer.
AH: Only action born out of unconditional compassion is truly holy. Unconditional compassion does not mean that all evil and horror are accepted, it is not passivity and brainlessness.
FMT: What would you say to people who insist the world is a projection of our ideals so we can’t put our attention to the negative things going on in the world today, we have to attract to ourselves things that are positive?
AH: If your doctor said you have leukemia, you’d have to pay profound attention to it to have any chance of being healed. You have to align yourself totally to divine light while being completely, soberly and lucidly aware of the dark. Otherwise you will not be effective.
We have to grow strong enough to do three things: face the extent of the crisis, face the extent of our responsibility for the crisis and then do the real inner work of becoming a being in whom the opposites of light and dark can marry to birth a new human – powerful, lucid and humble enough to fight peacefully for a new world. If we cannot do those three things, we will die out. I’m convinced there are enough of us to mirror those three things so this sanctification of greed and evasion that is the refusal to look at the suffering of the world will lose its banal appeal.
FMT: The consideration of the shadow makes me think of the latest Batman movie with its exploration of the shadow, of the good and evil existing within one person.
AH: Heath Ledger’s Joker was stunning in the accurate analysis of our world that his cynicism illuminated. He was the most awake and intelligent person in the whole film. Batman is crippled by his own limited understanding of himself. Batman has more of the Joker in him than he ever understood, and the Joker already knows this. What is really fascinating is what Batman could become if he integrated the wisdom of the Joker.
When Jesus says that the divinely enlightened being combines the innocence of the dove and the wisdom of the serpent, he’s pointing to the integration of the shadow and suffering. Without the wisdom of the serpent, the sacred activist is going to be lost in the dark forces of destruction. Without the innocence of the dove, the sacred activist will be destroyed because his or her heart will not be able to stay clear enough in the middle of so much pain. The way to go forward is to fuse those two.
Wisdom does not become nihilistic because it’s fused with unconditional compassion and grace. The mystical knowledge of grace and illumination doesn’t become naïve because it’s fused with a radical understanding of darkness on all levels, including cosmic archetypal levels. This fusion forms the authentic mystical warrior.
FMT: In considering the authentic mystical warrior, I think people don’t always understand the difference between joy and white bread complacency.
AH: I think it’s a culture that’s reduced all of the glorious words to tofu.
FMT: There’s an idea that happiness equals comfort and complacency.
AH: When people have been rotted by prolonged addiction to comfort and security, the sources of inner joy have been cut off.
Deepest joy comes from recognizing our divine nature and from embracing the ordeals and sacrifice demanded by working toward
goals we deeply believe in. This joy laughs in the face of defeat and persists in the face of division; nothing can destroy this joy. The Dalai Lama clearly works from that joy, and it’s in that joy that Jesus traveled from crucifixion to resurrection. This joy gave all the great sacred activists of history the strength and patience to work in humility to transform their world. The way out that leads us to the joy that transforms is through reconnecting to our sacred origins and consciousness. Sacred activism’s beginning and end is joy.
FMT: More joy is needed.
AH: If it’s not joyful, how can it be sacred? The paradox is that joy is not opposed to heartbreak; it’s born out of heartbreak. Once your heart shatters open, you discover a fountain of passion for life, energy and passionate compassion that will never run dry.
That’s the key. That’s why we will not be helped by mystics praying on the top of mountains or by activists denouncing things. We can only be helped by a fusion of those two in the crucible of great joy. By connecting with the central sacred force of joy, you have the strength and stamina to continue on without becoming embittered and hate-ridden. Finding this joy is necessary for our survival and if we do, we will transform.
FMT: At this time, there is both the potential for transformation and the pressure to do so. It is frightening as well as exciting.
AH: This is the greatest epic of all, the transformation of the human into the divine human. All great epics have tremendous difficulties, and I think it’s helpful to see this as the supreme adventure. If you see it as an adventure and draw on your deepest divine powers, whole vistas of excitement and possibility open up. Our culture has so degraded us by convincing us that we are passive couch potatoes who need to be fed endless entertainment and glittery technological goods.
We are pioneers of divine incarnation. Sacred activism is dedicated to helping people see what they’re meant to be on the Earth: pioneers co-consciously co-creating with the divine a new world.
Andrew Harvey is spearheading an Institute for Sacred Activism. The Institute for Sacred Activism is beginning a four-part initiation preparation to create a curriculum. People who are sacred activists are invited to participate. Visit: Andrewharvey.net
If you are interested in participating in a monthly prayer and meditation circle to stimulate more joyful action, please write: edit@layogamagazine.com
By Felicia M. Tomasko, RN
Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.