Tending The Private Self
Gaining and Maintaining Contemplative Activism
For those of us who speak, teach, and write, it is often said that we teach what we are trying to learn. The phrase is admittedly trite, but for me it is also entirely true. When I write on this platform it is because I am reaching for something. Perhaps an anxiety captures me in the middle of the night. It might be the tone of a particular dream that begins to nudge me, and before I’m even aware of it my rest has turned to restlessness. My half-consciousness is an open door for a dystopian image that becomes so real, I swear I could touch it. Maybe I’ve watched too many horrifying thrillers on the big screen—or too much daily news on the small one—but once in a while, in the wee hours I find myself with the rapid heartbeat of a fight, flight, or freeze response. My sympathetic nervous system is behaving as if I’m being chased by a saber-toothed tiger, even though I’m safely tucked into my own bed. The body doesn’t know the difference, even though I think it should. Then, lying there, tossing and turning, I’m faced with the dilemma of what to do about it.
I could raid the fridge. I could read a bit. I could return to a half finished crossword, or I might even get ensnared with a bit of scrolling. Hopefully not, but it indeed has happened. My preference is for some box breathing, a slow deep breath into the belly, holding for a few seconds, a slow deep breath out, and holding for a few seconds, repeating slowly for several minutes until I can return to a sense of parasympathetic calm that invites the tiger to leave the scene.
The Letter to the Philippians tells me not to be anxious about anything, and to pray about everything. What is more likely these days is that I am anxious about everything and unsure of how to pray at all.
In the context of human history I cannot help but feel we are marching to the drumbeat of fascism, that we are witnessing the corruption of the Executive Branch in ways that are garishly, openly, and brazenly defiant. The rule of law has become optional. Behavior that was never allowed on the playground in third grade is being accepted in the highest levels of leadership, cheered on by large groups, even large majorities in some sectors. An opposition that is admittedly hamstrung seems powerless and unwilling to challenge it in any meaningful way. There are intergenerational recriminations, blaming, finger-pointing, arguing about solutions.
I’m unconvinced of any political solution. Where activism is concerned, I don’t even know where to start. Meanwhile every new day brings headlines that are more ominous, more dire, more maddening. And we’re only four months in. So what now? What do we do now? How do we live now? It goes beyond asking ourselves about the “next right thing.” Sometimes it’s just about plotting our own survival and wondering if the damage can ever be undone.
Am I over-reacting? Am I overstating this conundrum of daily existence? Should I just relax and let the world go on and see how things turn out? After all, what can I really do to affect meaningful change? At the moment I am reduced to the one and only thing I can do, and that is to tend to my private self.
How selfish that sounds! I mean, taking good care of myself while the world goes to hell seems a bit shallow, don’t you think? What about activism? What about demonstrations? How far do things have to go before we take to the streets and make our voices heard? Am I going to hide out on my yoga mat in corpse pose and trust that things will get better?
Fr. Richard Rohr, writing from the pre-911 world in his book Everything Belongs (1999) says:
It may seem odd, coming from a Center of Action and Contemplation that works to improve people’s lives and is committed to social change, but after eight years at the center I’m convinced that I must primarily teach contemplation.
He goes on to say:
Most revolutions fail. They self-destruct from within. Jesus and the great spiritual teachers primarily emphasized transformation of consciousness and soul. Unless that happens, there is no revolution.
The question for me is not whether I should take to the streets, but when I do so, who is the “me” that I’m bringing to that effort? Is it the anxious me who is running from the tiger, or is it the centered me, grounded at the level of breath, rooted in a first-chakra awareness that I belong here, I am safe, and I am entitled to my own dignified humanity. Is it the angry me or the me that is convicted and convinced of my own moral depth, that the lessons I learned on the playground weren’t for nothing, and that I can show leadership in a world that is in desperate need of its own deliberate, steady, and sturdy self.
The answer for me in the stillness of the night is that the solutions exist within me and work their way outward, and not the other way around. To that end, I’ll be taking time here on Substack to teach what I’m trying to learn about the contemplative life. Not the navel-gazing kind, but the kind that prepares us for real and meaningful action. For me this seems the only way forward.