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  • Do activists really make bad things stronger?
  • Reinventing your active-ness
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the armchair activistDear Active One,

Someone on the neighbor app for my area said there was a demonstration going on nearby so I hopped in my car on impulse and drove to a big parking lot I knew was near there. Sure enough, there was a gathering with signs, starting to move. Something felt right about it and I moved with them. Without preplanning, I’d joined the protest.

The feeling of it was calm but determined, certain but compassionate, the anger was active and positively directed into taking this action rather than being explosive and unfocused.

Cool people were there. All types of people, all colors and classes, but all acting their best, most coolest selves. The signs being waved were truth simply spoken. I felt at home. I’m really glad I followed my impulse.

Am I an activist? Well my nature is more quiet, contemplative, and gentle as a rule. So you could say I’m not really an activist. But I can get active. I can take a stand, I can stand for something.

I was thinking, maybe we can quit parroting that tired old saw that says an activist gives energy to what they resist, making it stronger. It assumes that activism is all resisting. That’s not even really true.

For some people it might be about resisting, but for many it’s about standing for something, usually for the need for change. To resist taking action because of that old incomplete thought could almost seem more of a cop-out than a truth. Why? It tends to negate action, causing us fall back and let our energy go neutral and wasted.

We don’t need to stand against things when we can just as strongly stand for things. We can take a stand for something, for change, and do that completely without fear of becoming some weird bummerang (mis-spell intended!) in the universe. And without fear of making a bad thing worse by “giving it energy.”

No need to give the bad thing energy, just give full force active interest to the new way for the old thing to become. Go ahead and think about that as much as you want, get on a soap box for the good thing if it suits you, hahah. Obsess about the new good thing. Think about it, dream about it, talk about it, look forward to it. Go ahead! That’s all being active.

Let it rise up in you, this better way for things to be, like a force of nature. It can be simple. It can be fun. Let it be active in you. It’s a change maker! Maybe you won’t run out and join a nearby demonstration, but that’s not the only way. Be creative – let something new create in you. Activate your inner activist.

Let the new way interest you and bother you and keep you up at night and make you excited, maybe even uncomfortable. Let it stretch you and challenge you. Feel it, cry it out, or shake it out, or dance it out. Whatever comes to mind. And let it alter you, let it change you in anyway the new good thing needs to, transforming your life too, for your own highest outcome and greatest good of all. Let the new times come right into you.

I’m marching in my heart, to the steady beat of the certainty that good change is upon us and is coming here, gradually and wisely, to stay.

That is what I stand for, insist on, take interest in, that is my prayer, that is the joy of my active heart in action,

Love you so much!
Ma HuLiLi
My sessions are on sale. 

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