We don't change the world by forceful striving, pushing, pulling

If you want to make a change, start with yourself. To revolve: to turn it around. To evolve, to become. That was the sentiment when I set up my Facebook page The Art of Inner Revolution in 2015 (the same year I participated in the first The Laboratory of Dissent with my fellow CAS Associate Artists).

The inner work is can be a very effective route to discovering different life experiences. Yet it’s so much easier when you turn inwards if you aren't trying to change but willing to respond to what is. The thoughts, the emotions, the spaces between. The landscapes of perception.

Before, I always thought that there was a massive disconnect between the external world and my inner experience.

As I integrate more of my self into my daily awareness and expression
calling my parts home from the nether regions of inner deserts and bogs...

as I stop guarding myself against notions of good and bad, desirable and undesirable
or maybe just because I have relaxed...

there is less of a gap.

I don’t have to shove parts of myself aside to function in the world.

I don’t have to be understood by everyone to show up in a way that is true for me.

Why is that news?
​(good question)

​I thought I was a change maker.
I have always been able to act
and do something to create a shift or make happen.

My ego thought I was so in control.
And then I wasn’t.

I had to learn a slow way.
Multiple deaths, multiple passings.

​Like the sun imploding and exploring at the same time, birthing and dying
Some times it was so fast it was disorientating, sometimes it felt
like a cliff face might feel in a
l a n d s l i d e
​large chunks of rock dropping into the sea as the eroded ​soil gives way.

And yet not like that at all, more like a snake who sheds its skin by getting too big,
a process that isn’t complete until every last stuck piece sloughs off.

Even my artwork seems to reflect the layers of inner and outer experience in one frame,
no longer compartmentalised, more and more whole unto itself.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, I just started writing.

Revolution sits less comfortably now.

In the beginning I was calling out for a change and committing to be part of it.

But now the whole world is shouting from the rooftops that we are in the midst of a global crisis and all my fighting spirit is disinterested in the bluster and urgency of striving.

Going back to “change starts within”
All I’m interested in is taking responsibility, and working with others in service of life-supporting things.

I’m not interested in forcing other people to do anything, nor even persuading them.

This is a time for us all to be leaders in our own individual ways.
And if you must follow, pick your leader and go where your are led.
If something needs doing, find the people who will do it with you.

But there’s no point bullying each other and hiding from our other faces until the nether deserts and bogs and teeming with shadows.