Staying engaged when inaction appeals
Considerations for Election Day
I am part of this Awareness in Action program from Upaya.
It has run for the past year and is remarkable for bringing practices, community, and information forward as to how we can stay engaged in these times - correction, how I can stay engaged in these times.
“To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (they don’t mean me) or by despair (there’s nothing we can do). Each of us must find our work and do it.”
- Audre Lourde
What comes next will take time.
I believe in tiny increments. One decision at a time.
It may not feel like progress but they accrue, even if some days feel like going backwards and some forwards.
We are in motion with every choice.
My work is to keep listening to what’s right here, right now. To keep clearing my own channel of the Way It Has Been Done and meet the present options as fully as possible.
What can I do? I can stay in active communities and remember I am not alone. Upaya has been - and continues to be - an incredible resource of defiance and wise action at both personal and collective levels.
I can stay aware of practices and teachers that help me stay open. What comes next will require political and personal imagination. There is a tremendous load of unresolved despair and fatigue and turmoil in our fields right now. My personal work is to continually re-stabilize myself so that I am as present to possibilities of the moment as I can be. Țara Brach’s work is a great tool in the daily human hygiene of residing in what’s Now, letting the rest fade and settle, so I can find my perspective.
There is a replay available for Sunday’s lecture if you can’t listen live.
Sending love and thanks and hopes you are out in the golden autumn sunlight xx Martha
THIS WEEKEND: Join Tara Brach “Disarming the Heart—Practices for Bridging Divides” (FREE, Online) at Upaya Zen Center
A resource I turn to: Tara Brach’s weekly podcast of lectures and meditations.