Essential Survival Skills for the Modern Day Activist...
Intensity, Paradox, Integrity, and navigating the wasteland that is Social Media
Where should I begin in discussing the abject horror and atrocity we’ve all been bearing witness to over the past six months?
If you’re here reading this now, I assume you’re already familiar with the poly-crises of ecocide, genocide, and large-scale apathy from the Powers-That-Be that seem to be defining the age we live in.
Each day, I open my phone, I scroll through more dead children than I thought I would see in a lifetime. I scroll down a little more, I see that once again, Western governments are endorsing the crimes against humanity that, if nothing else, are waking up a new generation of activists.
(Zoomers on Tik Tok, I fucking love you, I stand with you, you are my heroes, thank you)
I open my apps again a couple of hours later and I see more and more activists and campaigners sharing about and raging against the censorship we’re all experiencing from Meta and all its beneficiaries. I’ve experienced it too.
Accounts getting deleted, posts calling a spade a genocide getting flagged, activity bans all over the place.
It’s a straight up horror show out there, and we are getting actively punished when we talk about it, when we call it what it is.
I experienced a hilarious 72-hour activity ban myself, when I offered free sessions to anyone who was being personally impacted by the genocide in Gaza (the post was deleted, I called the US military and the Israeli nation-state terrorist groups, Very Bad Can’t Do That).
And I’ll tell you what my friends. Despair is fucking seductive right now.
Luckily though, you and I, we’re used to despair.
Activists everywhere know it’s flavour very well.
We’re accustomed to holding it, cradling it, tending it.
Never being fully consumed by it.
When despair is seductive, orienting towards hope is resistance.
Again and again I’m brought back into this Truth — cultivating HOPE, even in the face of horrors beyond imagining, ESPECIALLY in the face of horrors beyond imagining, is RESISTANCE.
Having the audacity to intentionally cultivate hope and joy is gnarly as fuck.
It’s not delusional, and it’s not childish.
It’s fucking VITAL.
But, there’s an art to it.
It involves a practice of holding paradox, expanding our capacity for intensity of sensation, and it’s a set of skills that are going to be ESSENTIAL for anyone wishing to continue hanging out on social media as a Torch-Bearer for the liberation of all beings from the oppression of colonial patriarchy.
If you scroll up a little, you’ll see some iconography of the ancient Sumerian Goddess, Inanna. She is the origin story of the sacred Rites of Rebirth. Long before Christ was crucified, died, and rose three days later, Inanna made this same journey. She paved the way of paradox and intensity for us.
I’d invite you now, before we really get into it, to simply gaze at her for a moment.
Let the poetry of Death and simultaneous Birth saturate your mind for a while.
Your rational mind will try to tell you this is a contradiction.
Your body knows that in fact this is paradox.
Remember this feeling. It’ll be important later.
The #1 Need-To-Know Skill for surviving the fight against this Slow-Burn Apocalypse…
What it comes down to is this:
Can we genuinely hold space in our beings for hope and joy, not as a numbing agent or a balm, but as a compass and an embodied truth…
…while simultaneously being fully present with the rage, the grief, the despair, the anguish, and the existential anxiety that represents the REALITY of our collective right now?
Can you allow both to co-exist, in each of their fullness, without either one cancelling out the other?
The most essential skill for our survival as activists, and for the survival of the movement as a whole, is for us to become masters at holding this paradox.
We’re going to get into more practical detail about all this in a moment, but first we need to go over what this practice is NOT.
Because paradox can often look like contradiction to the rational mind…
…and because so many of us are so accustomed to living out our realities from ONLY the rational mind (hello Cartesian binaries and early stages of colonial conditioning)…
…it’s very easy to digest work like this, and IMMEDIATELY go into rationalising the contradiction.
To be very clear, we’re not doing that here.
We are NOT “using” our hope and joy as a distraction from the pain of rage and grief.
We are NOT “extracting” from our soul’s infinite power to imagine and rewrite our individual reality as a numbing agent against the intensity of anguish and despair.
We are NOT “prioritising” an idea of hope and joy, at the expense of the day-to-day reality of our collective.
When we begin talking about how to intentionally cultivate hope and joy in the midst of anguish and grief, it’s very easy to accidentally start using the hope and joy as a sedative.
Reaching for hope as a numbing agent is NOT revolutionary.
It is bypassing.
And we are NOT doing that here.
If you find yourself beginning to accidentally pretend that the horrors we’re witnessing are not real, that it’s not as bad as you think, or that intentionally holding space for them is somehow “low vibe” and therefore “bad” or “undesirable”…
…you’ve veered off track.
You’ve gone into bypassing territory.
It’s time to re-orient.
Time to turn back to the Mother, and receive guidance and Grace.
Holding the paradox of Embodied Hope and Authentic Rage takes intention, and practise.
It’s not going to be something that happens automatically, or without effort, because our nervous systems will always choose the illusion of certainty over a chaotic and confusing reality.
Clunking ourselves into apathy and despair is seductive to our dopamine-hungry bodies, because apathy suggests a fixed point in our reality.
If there’s no point to anything, and nothing we do will ever make a difference, we are automatically absolved of all responsibility to take any action, in any direction.
Mmmm. Yummy.
(Side note here: if you’re finding yourself polarising towards apathy much more frequently than you’re used to… you’re burnt out. You need rest. You need to be witnessed in community, and you need to give yourself space to rejuvenate. The fight for our liberation is a marathon, not a sprint, and romanticising your self destruction only serves the agenda of the oppressor.)
Despair and apathy represent a kind of certainty that keeps us in an illusion of safety as we witness the unfolding of more and more unpredictability.
They are hallucinations.
Watch them come, make room for them, allow them, but get curious about what it would mean to hold them lightly.
Don’t clutch.
The Change-Maker’s Paradox: an exercise in Embodiment…
What follows is a short and accessible meditation exercise. Listen to the audio version of this piece for full effect (scroll up to the top of this page). If you’re here reading this, read through to the bottom of the exercise to familiarise yourself, and then put your phone down, and get into a quiet place so as to practice it.
We’re going to begin with a few gentle breaths.
Wherever you are, take a moment now to drop your shoulders away from your ears, soften the jaw, soften the belly, stack the spine.
Notice your weight holding you down on the Earth. Notice the grounding sensation you begin to feel in your sit bones.
As you breathe in, imagine your spine beginning to lengthen, and strengthen. With each breath, you become more aware of a sensation of “unbreakable”-ness, emanating from your sit bones, reaching up through your throat, and towards the top of your head.
As you breathe out, imagine your belly and your heart beginning to open, and soften. With each exhale, you notice yourself sinking more and more deeply into the vulnerability, the TRUST, of pure, agenda-less, openness.
With each inhale, the spine strengthens.
With each exhale, the belly softens.
Notice now, how easy and natural it is for you to simultaneously embody both of these sensations.
Notice how joyfully your body leans into this reality.
Notice how your mind wants to jump between one sensation and the other, never quite landing in either. Allow that. This is what the mind does.
But notice too, that in your BODY, paradox is easy and joyful to hold.
Strengthened spine, softened belly.
Stay with this here, for three more breaths.
When you feel ready, bring your focus into your heart space. Begin gently calling to mind all of the anger, the rage, the grief, the despair you feel. Call on the collective cries. Feel the terrible heat of it moving through your heart, and allow all stories the mind makes to come. Let yourself sink into the Knowing that we’re too late, that there’s no point, that nothing we do will ever make a difference in time. Feel the weight of death, destruction, decay. Let it flood your consciousness for a while.
Hold all of that excruciating anguish in your heart for a moment.
Strengthened spine, softened belly.
See if you can turn up the volume on the sensations in your heart.
Notice where your mind wants to run away from the intensity, and gently pull yourself back.
Gently place your left hand on your left knee, palm up.
When you feel ready, use your breath to gently move all of that pain, all of that hopelessness, all of that despair, through your being, and into your left hand.
You notice your hand begins to heat up, or tingle, as all of the intensity you’re feeling settles itself there.
Two more breaths, and now, all of those sensations are nestled in your left hand, over your left knee.
Stay with that a moment, notice how that feels.
On your next inhale, you’re going to return your awareness to your heart space. The intensity is still present, in your left hand, over your left knee. Once you’ve settled back into the heart, begin calling to mind the HOPE you cherish. Allow clarity to wash over you. Feel the strength of the movement, the joy of vindication and victory. Let yourself feel the joy of community, the wonder of our collective power. Let yourself bask in the Knowing that no matter what happens, no matter how it might look, it’s always going to be alright, because we, collectively, will make sure of it. Feel yourself held, in a movement of fierce change-makers. Feel the power of ancestors, the ferocious activists of our past. Feel our brave descendants, who will pick up the torch when we are done. Allow yourself to feel fully, properly, HELD. Allow yourself to sink into the sensation of certainty in Hope.
Once again, let yourself be flooded with this sensation. Allow it to overcome your consciousness, and allow your mind to present whatever stories and memories it likes. Welcome it all, and feel the warmth over your heart space as you do.
Turn up the volume on these sensations. Feel the intensity of hope beginning to increase.
When you feel ready, gently place your right hand on your right knee, palm up.
Using the breath now, take all the intensity of hope and clarity in your heart, move it through your being, until it comes to rest in your right hand, over your right knee.
Notice your right hand beginning to soften as you move all of the sensation there.
Keeping your eyes closed, and using your mind’s eye, gaze down at each of your hands now.
In your left hand, you hold all the intensity of authentic anguish.
In your right hand, you hold all the ferocity of audacious hope.
Notice that your mind wants to jump between them. Gently pull yourself back to the wisdom of your body now.
Witness the intensity in both of your hands.
Your heart is open, and clear.
You are holding all of it.
Both are real and true and felt.
Neither are real and true and felt.
You are holding all of it.
Strengthened spine, softened belly.
Stay here, holding up the vastness of your human experience in both of your hands, for five more breaths.
Feel the serenity that comes when you allow yourself to witness your grief, and your joy, simultaneously.
On your final exhale, ask your Heart, “what would you have me do, if both were true?”
Wait for an answer. Don’t rush this. Don’t let your mind cancel it out. Your body knows.
Once you have you answer, gently take both of your hands, and place them over your heart.
Feel all of the intensity, the sensations of rage, of anguish, of hope, of victory, swirling back through your being.
Breathe into the fullness of that for three more breaths.
When you feel ready, open your eyes.
Effective Activism and Holding the Paradox…
Unless we can become masters at holding the paradox of simultaneous hope and grief, we CANNOT HOPE to be as effective as we could be in our work as activists.
Learning how to skilfully hold this paradox is VITAL.
Unless we can ground ourselves into the reality of the moment, AND the reality we’re fighting for, we’ll always be lost in the chaos, and therefore highly susceptible to the conditioning of the colonial paradigm we’re working so hard to dismantle.
The COST of NOT prioritising our capacity for paradox is (obviously) twofold…
If we don’t cultivate space in our beings for the duality at play here, we will INEVITABLY end up either…
Polarise towards APATHY. We’ll burn ourselves out, make ourselves sick, and deplete ourselves entirely of creativity, inspiration, and desire to organise and be in community — all essential resources for effective change work.
…or…
Polarise towards BYPASSING. We’ll numb ourselves out to the disaster of our times, making us AT BEST, not very effective or regenerative as activists, and at worst… accidental mouthpieces for the colonial capitalist patriarchy.
Unfortunately, much like anything sacred and worth learning, there are very few shortcuts here.
It really does take practice to learn the skill of holding paradox.
But! Rejoice!
It takes practice because it’s a skill that can be cultivated, tended, and sharpened.
No one is born innately amazing at holding the tension of paradox.
(On another level, of course we are all born innately amazing at holding the tension of paradox, but you get it)
If you struggle with it a little at first, that’s okay.
It doesn’t mean you’re “just not cut out for it”.
It means that, like anything else sacred and worth learning, you’ll need to commit the time needed to master this skill.
This is where devotion comes into play. We must DEVOTE ourselves to the movement with enough ferocity and truth to hold us in the discomfort of learning the skills we need to learn for our work to be regenerative and effective.
One more VERY IMPORTANT note before we finish up today…
It’s highly likely that at some point during the course of practicing the art of expanding your capacity for holding paradox, your brain will chime in about how this is a waste of time.
Your brain will tell you that the stakes are too high, the work is too urgent, and you’re a terrible person for spending your precious and limited time on such frivolous things as somatic practice and ego-wrestling.
And I get that. I really do.
It feels weird to be prescribing a daily meditation practice when the world is on fire and multiple ongoing genocides are being livestreamed into our phones.
But remember:
Expanding your capacity for paradox is ESSENTIAL.
This is you RESPONDING TO the urgency of the moment.
The fight for our liberation is a marathon, not a sprint. If we don’t prioritise learning the skills we need to learn for regenerative and LONG-TERM work…
…we’ll never make it.
Bookmark this page, prioritise that practice, try it every day or so for a month, and watch as the way you begin to rise to the call for liberation expand, DRASTICALLY.
Watch as your energy begins to flood back to you, and get channelled into what actually matters.
Watch as your creativity starts exploding out of you, and watch how easy it becomes to channel that creativity into the movement.
Watch as your enthusiasm for organising in community starts to grow, exponentially.
Watch as your capacity for holding yourself in your rage and your grief WITHOUT NUMBING OUT begins to expand at dizzying rates.
Watch yourself suddenly having the ability to gracefully hold others in their rage and grief without shutting it down because YOU are uncomfortable.
And all of that will come after just one month.
Imagine the activist you’ll be after a year of this practice.
Imagine the activist you’ll be in a decade.
THAT’S what we’re doing here. THAT is what it’s all for.
Love, ferocity, and fierce solidarity,
Leila xx