Barefoot Vegan Mag Jan_Feb 2017

Our “shadow side” is anything we dislike about ourselves
that we’d rather others did not know about us. It can
range from a sense of entitlement and righteousness to
feeling incompetent, like a failure or a fake.
In 2012, I met and conducted an interview with author
Andrew Harvey who coined the term “sacred activism,” a
mixture of radical action/activism and spirituality. What
I like about Harvey’s philosophy is his acknowledgement
of the need to do intense work around the personal and
cultural shadow (our own private wounding as well the
shadow cast by a society that is “narcissistic, selfabsorbed
and utterly suicidal in its pursuit of
domination of nature ” ).
Harvey believes that positive social change will not
be achieved by activists fueled solely by anger or by
“bliss bunnies” who meditate and do little else. In
addition to personal and group shadow work, one of the
more confronting aspects of sacred activism is learning
to love and forgive the perpetrators of oppression,
cruelty, and horrendous injustices. This is a challenging
one, and I am not sure I am quite ready to embrace this,
yet intuitively it rings true.
“It doesn’t mean you don’t act against their policies,”
Harvey told me. “Gandhi didn’t hate the British, but
acted systematically to unseat them. Martin Luther King
didn’t hate white Americans, but fought with sacred
power to bring in civil rights. Not hating people, and
instead forgiving them, doesn’t mean you let the policies
or actions continue, but it does mean your whole action
is not action against; it’s for a vision that includes [the
perpetrators] and their healing. Gandhi believed the
British were killing themselves by gunning down the
Indians, so his action was on behalf of both. King
understood that white Americans pretending to love
Jesus while dishonoring their black brothers and sisters
were destroying a part of their soul, so his actions were
on behalf of White Americans and black people.”
It is a tough one. Attempting to love and forgive
those who carry out the most heinous atrocities on
people, animals, and the environment is not a place I
have reached yet, but I am teetering on the edge of
compassion, with the awareness that the perpetrators of
violence, cruelty and destruction are acting from a place
of fear, self-loathing, and unconsciousness. When I was
around nine, I deliberately killed a centipede. For no
particular reason other than I could. I suppose I felt
powerless, and this was a way I could feel powerful over
another being. I felt guilty and ashamed for many years
afterwards. I have also been reactive, unkind, and harsh
to various people throughout my life—as most of us
have.
We all seek love, significance, and belonging. In that
search we may hurt others. It is because we do not love
ourselves that our ego needs power over others, rather
than empowerment. As social change makers, we owe it
to ourselves, and to humanity, animals, and the planet,
to take action that comes from a place of compassion:
for others and ourselves. BV
This article is an extract
from Circles of Compassion:
Essays Connecting Issues of
Justice, edited by Dr. Will
Tuttle. To
order your
copy, click on
the cover
image.
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