Grounding
Spirituality and Moving Politics
by Margo Adair
Western
culture has taken spirituality out of life and put it in the sky, to be experienced
only through intermediaries like the clergy. Compounding this, knowledge is
defined by science, whose foundation rests on separation of the observer
from the observed. The degree to which the human element enters the scientific
experiment is the degree to which it is invalidated. The message: "Don't
trust your own experience." What is deeply meaningful is not of the world.
Value-free "Facts" form the basis for decisions in the world.
We find ourselves not trusting our
own experience, looking to experts for the answers; common sense isn't so
common anymore. How often do we feel we are not qualified to speak up because
we don't have the facts straight or because we're too involved and therefore
can't be objective? With these social norms those in power have no ethical
constraints and freely exploit both people and the earth.
Exploitation has always been abhorrent,
but now the future of life itself is in question. Neither we nor the earth
can any longer afford to perpetuate this schism, which is at the center of
the crisis we face. We need to reclaim our sense of the sacred in everyday
life and at the same time let our political perspectives inform our spiritual
experience. When we function out of only half our experience, as though the
other side of the brain were irrelevant, we find that despite ourselves we
recreate societal and ecological injustice all over again. I do not mean to
assume that no one has integrated these aspects of life, but I believe that
to the extent that any of us are averse to one "side" or the other
is the degree to which we are likely to contribute to the problems rather
than the solutions.
Grounding
Spirituality
We are all spiritual - whether we use
that word to name our experience or not.
Spiritual
experience is the transcendence of the self into greater awareness - whether
we feel it by a walk in the woods, prayer, meditation, music, ritual or orgasm.
It is the experience of connection to all of life, the merging of the existential,
isolated "I" into the whole. It is when one is in a calm, receptive
state that the "Aha!" experience occurs - the sudden understanding
of the whole for any kind of problem one has been grappling with. Our spirituality
is the source of creativity and vision, intuition and psychic powers. It is
the harmonizing healing force intrinsic to life itself.
Spiritual experience can be seductive
exactly because it can bring deep healing in this time of alienation and fragmentation.
It may seem that all of society's ills would be healed if everyone simply
surrendered to spiritual experience. But while spirituality can provide us
with a vision of a just and harmonious world, its holistic nature blurs difference
and opposing interests. We find ourselves with a vision but with no strategy
to bring it into being.
Politics are important to spirituality.
Oppression is not the result of sin, karma, or ego-attachment, any more than
privilege is a reflection of godliness. Oppression and privilege are the results
of specific social relations. Individual spiritual transformation will not
change social problems which result from exploitation and the hoarding of
wealth and power - in society by capitalism, in the family by patriarchy and
in the world by imperialism. Only political struggle to gain power will. Only
then will we be in the position to transform a society which is now dependent
on relations of domination for its perpetuation.
Spiritual practice alone is not sufficient
to bring about fundamental social change because of the belief systems we
have internalized from our culture. We define the world in terms of our beliefs
which are the ordering of our past experience, and our experience is dictated
by the structure of our society. Each of the systems of oppression has a supporting
ideology. If we want to create a just world, simply changing who is in power
without transforming beliefs, we'll find ourselves recreating our old problems
with a new cast. This is where the personal becomes political.
How does one decide which beliefs are
oppressive? Often spiritually oriented people will say, "Teach them how
to meditate, and they'll get in touch with the 'truth'." But the truth
we tap when meditating is experienced directly as energy, not through the
five senses. As soon as one gives meaning, content, interpretation to that
energy, one has given it form, and this form comes from the belief structures
already in our minds - beliefs we each take for granted and assume are an
accurate reflection of reality. So the interpretation (not the energy) is
limited by our personal experience.
This was made clear to me when in an
Applied Meditation session I taught, we
did an exercise wherein everyone imagined spirit
guides and a place for their intuitive problem-solving work. One of the participants
was a good natured white man who held a high-ranking executive position. He
described his guides as a black man who took care of the grounds and a woman
who took care of his sanctuary. His past experience had never taught him that
there was anything wrong with his perception of these guides in subservient
roles. This was normal for him - that it was racist and sexist didn't occur
to him. When I tell this story people often respond by saying, "Good,
his guides will teach him about racism and sexism." That would be nice,
but even if they wanted to, they would have great difficulty finding the appropriate
thought forms in his mind with which to clothe the information. It would be
like trying to teach someone about color when you only have a vocabulary relating
to shape. A man of privilege has little experience of what it feels like to
be oppressed.
Spiritual practice will not reveal
the particular attitudes in our belief systems that perpetuate relations of
domination - men don't discover which beliefs are sexist, nor do people of
European descent discover their own racism through introspection. We need
each other to point out particular limitations of our individual attitudes.
Feminist perspectives are essential in revealing what we personally need to
transform for political reasons. But intellectual understanding alone is of
little use. Upon discovery of any sexist or racist attitude and the behavior
it produces, change is much easier when one has rapport with one's inner life.
For it is inside the deeper portion of our psyches that we store our beliefs.
When we reclaim our subjective life we don't need to wish we were different;
instead we can actively transform ourselves.
We live in a society that socializes
us to be oblivious to social relations. There is a causal relationship between
the rich and the poor, yet we're told this is a result of individual talent,
motivation and personality. Privilege is made possible by exploitation. It
is taboo to look at questions of power. As long as we don't see systemic injustice
then there is no need to do anything about it. This is why political analysis
is vital for revealing the roots of social problems. Without political framework
we will be ineffectual in bringing about a better world regardless of the
extent of our spiritual experience.
Moving
Politics
Spirituality is as important to politics
as politics is to spirituality. It has been a serious mistake of the left,
in response to Marx's dictum that religion is the opiate of the people, to
fail to distinguish between organized patriarchal religion and spirituality.
Spirituality is central to effective political work. When our lives are devoid
of any kind of experience which connects us with the sanctity of life, it
is as though we have lost the very ground of our being and we become fully
alienated - and, I might add, alienating. People who have lost contact with
a sense of wholeness - their communion with the spirit of life - not only
become unhappy but have an abrasive and hardening effect on others.
If we don't legitimize other ways of
knowing and sharing and instead take seriously only rational approaches we
constrict the context we create together. The results are that despite our
intentions the very behaviors we struggle against become all too common. Rationalism
as the only modality evokes competition and objectification, for the nature
of rational thinking is to separate and linearly order reality. We find that
the atmosphere supports debate, not exploration, and the rule for entry is
to already have your position clear. We're supposed to get clear separately
and then expose the inadequacies of other views to win people over. In the
end we fail to tap the rich creative energy each of us can offer.
In our secular, "rational"
society we are taught to ignore the awareness that comes from our inner consciousness,
our spirituality. When we trust our deeper awareness we discover our visions
of a better world. It is our spirit that enables us to feel connected to each
other, to the earth and to our convictions. It is our spirit that is the antidote
to stress; it sustains us and gives us the strength to struggle for a better
world. It is spirituality that provides the fuel for a political movement
to move. When there is a shared spiritual practice, there is community where
people go out of their way to take are of one another. Let us welcome the
changes that are taking place in political culture: conference openings and
closings with ceremony, meetings that include moments of silence, new rituals
of play, celebration and grieving, candles that
honor our dead, storytelling of our heritage and
many more examples.
Without spirituality, individualism
rules because people don't experience their connections and have no context
for their social responsibilities. Without spirituality, cynicism and powerlessness
grow because there is no vision of a better world. Activists become dogmatists.
Rigidity sets in. Pettiness and ego protection dominate for people have lost
a sense of the whole. People get burned-out because they feel as if they alone
have to do it all, and on top of that they have lost access to healing powers.
Without spirituality, technology dictates creating a society that smothers
the life of the earth with its carcinogens.
Spirituality gives us our vision and
our courage to struggle for a better world. It is vital to solidarity. Politics
gives us the tools to analyze what's wrong - whom to struggle with and whom
against. Without clear politics, we may find ourselves moving in the wrong
direction; without spirituality we may understand what's wrong but there's
no movement to change it. Let us reclaim the wholeness of life and empower
ourselves to heal the future.
Thanks to Sharon Howell and Casey Adair in
editorial help for this article.
Margo Adair conducts trainings for empowerment.
She is the author of Working
Inside Out: Tools for Change and coauthor
of Subjective Side of Politics and Breaking Old Patterns, Weaving New Ties:
From
Changing Men: Issues in Gender, Sex and Politics,
Issue #23: Spirituality, Fall/Winter, 1991.