Adapted from a
presentation at Schumacher College, Totnes, England July 1997 by Will
Keepin of the Satyana Institute, Boulder Colorado
In
the course of working with social change advocates and ecological
activists, we have developed a provisional set of "principles of
spiritual leadership." These are neither definitive nor
authoritative, but rather the beginning of a collective inquiry into
how we can apply spiritual teachings in social change work. These
principles are summarised below as a means for continuing the
dialogue. Feedback and comments are welcome.
First:
The first
principle is that the motivation underlying our activism for social
change must be transformed from anger and despair to compassion and
love. This is a major
challenge for the environmental movement, for example. It is not to
deny the legitimacy of noble anger or outrage at injustice of any
kind. Rather, we seek to work for love, rather than against evil. We
need to adopt compassion and love as our foundational intention, and
do whatever inner work is required to implement this intention. Even
if our outward actions remain the same, there is a major difference
in results if our underlying intention supports love rather than
defeating evil. The Dalai Lama says, "A positive future can
never emerge from the mind of anger and despair."
Second:
The second
principle is a classical spiritual tenet, though challenging to
practice. It is the principle of non-attachment to outcome.
To the extent that we are attached to the results of our work, we
rise and fall with our success and failures, which is a path to
burnout. Failures are inevitable, and successes are not the deepest
purpose of our work. This requires a deepening of faith in the
intrinsic value of our work-beyond the concrete results. To the
extent that our actions are rooted in pure intention, they have a
reverberation far beyond the concrete results of the actions
themselves. As Gandhi emphasized, "The victory is in the doing,"
not the outcome. In our workshops, we have had several environmental
leaders react strongly to this principle. As one lawyer put it, "How
can I possibly go into court and not be attached to the outcome? You
bet I care who wins and who loses! If I am not attached to the
outcome, I'll just get bulldozed!" His words underscore the
poignant challenge of implementing these principles in practice. Yet
he keeps coming back to our retreats, and he actively seeks ways to
love his adversaries. He acknowledged that, although it is difficult
to love some of his adversaries, one way he can do it is to love them
for creating the opportunity for him to become a strong voice for
truth and protection of the natural environment.
Third:
The third
principle is that your integrity is your protection.
The idea here is that if your work has integrity that will tend to
protect you from negative circumstances. For example, there are
practices for making yourself invisible to the negative energy that
comes toward you in adversarial situations. It's a kind of psychic
aikido, where you internally step out of the way of negative energy,
and you make yourself energetically transparent so it passes right
through you.But this only works if your work is rooted in integrity.
Fourth:
The fourth
principle is related to the third: the need for unified integrity in
both means and ends.
Integrity in means cultivates integrity in the fruit of one's work;
you cannot achieve a noble goal using ignoble means. Some
participants in our workshops engage regularly in political debates,
testimony, and hearings. We have them experimenting with
consciousness techniques for transmuting challenging energy into
compassion and love-right there in the hearing room. Early
indications are that this is helpful in defusing charged
psychological situations, and reducing tension in heated debates.
Fifth:
The
fifth principle is don't demonize your adversaries.
People respond to arrogance with their own arrogance, which leads to
polarization. The ideal is to constantly entertain alternative points
of view so that you move from arrogance to inquiry, and you then have
no need to demonize your opponents. This is hard to do, as we often
feel very certain about what we think we know, and the injustices we
see. As John Stuart Mill said, "In all forms of human debate,
both parties tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in
what they deny." Going into an adversarial situation, we can be
aware of the correctness of what we are affirming, but there is
usually a kernel of truth-however small-in what is being affirmed by
our opponent. We need to be especially mindful about what we deny,
because this is often where our blind spots will be.
Sixth:
The sixth
principle is to love thy enemy. Or if you can't do that, at least
have compassion for them.
This means moving from an
"us-them" consciousness to a
"we" consciousness. It means recognizing that I am the
logger: when I write these principles of spiritual activism and
publish them in this newsletter, I give the command to the logger to
fell the trees, to produce the pulp, to produce this paper so that I
can publish these spiritual principles about how best to save the
trees. It is seeing the full circle of our interconnected complicity,
and discovering all the problems of humanity in our own hearts and
our own lives. We are not exempt and we are not different. The "them"
that we speak of is also us. The practice of loving our adversaries
is obviously challenging in situations with people whose views and
methodologies are radically opposed to ours, but that is where the
real growth occurs.
Seventh:
The seventh and
eighth principles are a bit contradictory. The seventh is that your
work is for the world rather than for you.
We serve on behalf of others and not for our own satisfaction or
benefit. We're sowing seeds for a cherished vision to become a future
reality, and our fulfillment comes from the privilege of being able
to do this work. This is the traditional understanding of selfless
service.
Eighth:
But then the
eighth principle is that selfless service is a myth.
Because in truly serving others, we are also served. In giving we
receive. This is important to recognize as well, so we don't fall
into the trap of pretentious service to others' needs and develop a
false sense of selflessness or martyrdom.
Ninth:
The ninth
principle is: do not insulate yourself from the pain of the world.
We must allow our hearts to be broken-broken open-by the pain of the
world. As that happens, as we let that pain in, we become the
vehicles for transformation. If we block the pain, we are actually
preventing our own participation in the world's attempt to heal
itself. As we allow our hearts to break open, the pain that comes is
the medicine by which the Earth heals itself, and we become the
agents of that healing. This is a vital principle that is quite alien
to our usual Western ways of thinking.
Tenth:
The tenth
principle is: what you attend to, you become. If
you constantly attend to battles, you become embattled. On the other
hand, if you constantly give love, you become loving. We must choose
wisely what we attend to, because it shapes and defines us deeply.
Eleventh:
The eleventh
principle is to rely on faith.
This is not some Pollyannaish naiveté, as many "realists"
would interpret it. Rather it entails cultivating a deep trust in the
unknown, recognizing the presence of "higher" or "divine"
forces at work that we can trust completely without knowing their
precise agendas or workings. It means invoking something beyond the
traditional scientific worldview. It implies that there are invisible
forces that we can draw upon and engage, firstly by knowing they are
there; secondly, by asking or yearning for them to support us-or more
precisely, asking them to allow us to serve on their behalf. Faith is
understood not as blind adherence to any set of beliefs, but as a
knowing from experience and intuition about intrinsic universal
principles beyond our direct observation, and relying upon these
principles, whatever they are, to support us in creating what we
aspire to create. This actually brings great relief when we realize
it really isn't up to us to figure out all the steps to manifest our
unfolding vision, because we are participants in a larger cosmic
will. Nevertheless, it is our job to discover what our unique gift
is- our unique role-and for each person to give their gift as
skillfully and generously as possible, while trusting that the rest
will all work itself out.
Twelfth:
Finally, the
twelfth principle is that love creates the form.
As Stephen Levine says, "The heart crosses the abyss that the
mind creates." It is the mind that gives rise to the apparent
fragmentation of the world, while the heart can operate at depths
unknown to the mind. So, if we begin imagining with our hearts, and
work from a place of yearning as well as thinking, then we develop an
unprecedented effectiveness that is beyond our normal ways of
understanding because it doesn't have to do with thinking. When we
bring the fullness of our humanity to our leadership, we can be far
more effective in creating the future we want.
In
closing, as we enter the third millennium, we are urgently called to
action in two distinct capacities: to serve as hospice workers to a
dying culture, and to serve as midwives to an emerging culture. These
two tasks are required simultaneously; they call upon us to move
through the world with an open heart-meaning we are present for the
grief and the pain-as we experiment with new visions and forms for
the future. Both are needed. The key is to root our actions in both
intelligence and compassion-a balance of head and heart that combines
the finest human qualities in our leadership for cultural
transformation.
