Parvati Magazine December 2014/January 2015: Consequence/Beginnings | Page 9

POSITIVE POSSIBILITIES
around the world use the
word “righteousness” to
indicate the spark that
calls a spiritual seeker to
follow divine guidance,
often such can fuel the
ego. In radical cases,
it can lead to extremist groups that justify their
acts of violence as compassion in action.

test is either for or against.
I know from the protests
I have been in that they
tend to inflate or deflate
the ego in some way.
There is a subtle or powerful rush in feeling “I am
doing good because…”
And that thought is not far
from “I am better than…
because I am doing this.”

The ego is a tricky thing
and will find any window
to slip through and express
itself. We have all heard
the popular aphorism,
“the road to hell is paved
with good intentions.”
Perhaps some so-called
cases of spiritual activism are this: an aspect
of the ego feeling a selfrighteous and self-inflated
sense of “me” who is doing “right” as opposed to
the “wrong” “they” are
doing “over there”. No
love can come from such
divided thinking.

Some protesting activists
are truly inspired, such as
the famous Rosa Parks
who refused in 1955 to
move to the back of the
bus because she was
black. She was a fiercely
courageous activist, yet
not necessarily a peaceful spiritual seeker.

Would a sincere spiritual
aspirant attend a protest?
Would the Buddha be beside him, protesting? I am
not the Buddha, but my
guess is that it is unlikely, as
the very nature of a pro-

Would writing a letter to
an MP be an action for a
spiritual aspirant? It could
be, if it were done in a spirit compassion to highlight
the way an action creates
suffering, and without attachment to outcome. A
yogi doing such would do
as Lord Krishna instructs
Arjuna in the Hindu holy
text the Bhagavad Gita:
be unattached to the
fruits of his or her actions.
True spiritual activism must

make non-duality, that is,
the sense of unity, its first
priority.
We do not want to hear
about our attachment
to “me” or the suffering
it causes. But the sincere
spiritual seeker knows that
anything that inflates our
ego (positively or negatively) leads us astray.
When thinking about
what to do in the face of
suffering, we must ask ourselves if our actions in any
way stem from feeling
separate from the whole,
or have any sense of aggression, finger pointing
or ego stroking. If so, we
are not acting in peace.
When not in peace, we
are disconnected in some
way, somehow feeding
our ego. And when there
is ego, there is suffering.
Spiritual activism is something very few can truly
do, because it can only
arise when there is no
ego. And when there is no
ego, as the great saints
show us, there is a more
peaceful way. May we
aspire to this.

Parvati Devi is the editor-in-chief of Parvati Magazine. In addition to
being an internationally acclaimed Canadian singer, songwriter, producer
and performer, she is a yoga teacher and holistic educator. Having
studied yoga and meditation since 1987, Parvati developed her own yoga
teaching style called YEMTM Yoga as Energy Medicine. Her current shows,