Spiritual Activism

Mindfulness & Presence: Activism in the Now
By Carla Goldstein, co-founder Omega Women's Leadership Center

< back to Spiritual Activism main page

Principle 5. Mindfulness and Presence

We cultivate mindfulness and the capacity to be present for others so that our relationships and actions are coming from intention and awareness.

People marvel at the way children live in the moment. Yet from the time we are young we are taught to abandon our direct experience and move lock, stock, and barrel into the abstract land of the reasoning mind.

A reasoning mind is a great wonder! It helps us analyze, classify, learn, and plan; it is key to our survival. Yet, the older we get, the more lost in thought we become. We contemplate the past, we dream about the future, we worry, we anticipate, we fantasize about our lives. Our minds grow filled with an endless stream of chatter.

The Buddhists call this phenomenon the “monkey mind” because our mind jumps from thought to thought the way a monkey jumps from tree to tree. When you say, “Oops, my mind was somewhere else,” that’s monkey mind.

As renowned spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle said in his landmark book, The Power of Now, “The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don't use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. . . The instrument has taken you over.”

The antidote to monkey mind is mindfulness, a technique in which a person becomes intentionally aware of his or her thoughts and actions in the present moment, non-judgmentally. Being mindful is having a big picture awareness that gives us a measure of objectivity about what we are thinking. It helps us step outside habituated responses and solve problems more creatively.

As a lawyer, trained to use my mind for analysis, it has taken me a long time to understand that we can cultivate an awareness that is beyond our mind; an awareness that uses all aspects of ourselves to “know” what is going on. It is a different, more whole and spacious kind of knowing than what we get from the mind alone.

When we are fully present in the moment and we quiet our dominating monkey mind (which takes practice and discipline), we make room to experience our lives through the rest of us— our heart, our body, and our mysterious spirit. Presence opens the way to directly experiencing our deep connection to the rest of the world. The more we experience “unity” or “oneness,” the less of an abstract idea it becomes. The goal is not to experience some fantasized version of unity that is naturally harmonious. Instead it is to fully grasp how interconnected everything is, which helps us bring into focus that the consequences of all of our actions, big and small, impact others and the planet.

Through the practices of presence and mindfulness we begin to see how the process of our own activism for seeking change matters. If we are using a peaceful process we are creating more peace. As we become more aware of the impact that our own actions have on others, we can become more committed to the whole and be motivated to shift our activism approach away from the dominant adversarial ‘us versus them’ framework towards a unifying ‘we’re all in the same boat’ framework.

Presence and mindfulness also help us clear away our defensiveness, negative assumptions, and habitual ways of seeing and hearing things, opening new paths for dealing with conflicting points of view. When we are opponents from the get-go, we can’t listen to each other with a truly open ear. When we have made the shift to working from the perspective of the whole, on the same team or in the same family, trying to solve a problem we open up a world of new creative possibilities for solving problems and living non-violently.

This is not easy, by any stretch. And it isn’t for every circumstance. But inroads are already being made with this emerging approach to social change. Early this year I attended a unique gathering of women leaders from across the political spectrum convened by Reuniting America (http://www.reunitingamerica.org) to have a “transpartisan” dialogue on a wide range of pressing issues. I didn’t know what to expect, but was intrigued to be in a circle that included representatives of organizations I had long considered foes.

The best thing about the meeting was the freedom to drop assumptions and be fully present for the discussion. The ground-rules requiring “openness, acceptance, curiosity, discovery, sincerity, and brevity,” created a safe space for us to listen to each other rather than position ourselves for a debate.

The goal for the meeting was not to create a new policy agenda (that would have taken more than a few days), but instead to help build a new foundation for civil discourse. We focused on the how of our communication, exploring whether improving the quality of our dialogue could improve our ability to work together as problem solvers. While we had serious differences of opinion, I was encouraged to find that we had substantial common ground.

The meeting validated my growing sense that our time calls for moving beyond seeing each other as enemies when we disagree. Spiritual activism invites us to cast off old adversarial habits and assumptions and meet each other in the healing and creative field of presence and mindfulness.

As Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the great western teachers of mindfulness, says that being mindful, meaning, living in the present is “the only time you ever have in which to learn anything or see anthything or feel anything, or express any feeling or emoition, or respond to an event, or grow, or heal, is this moment, because this is the only moment any of us ever gets. You’re only here now; you’re only alive in this moment.”

Many months have passed since I sat in that room with women representing a full spectrum of beliefs and opinions, some of which I have lifelong disagreements with. But in the process of breaking bread with them and listening with a more open ear than ever before, I feel called to do it again and again.

Practicing presence and mindfulness

You can bring your mindful attention to the present moment either through a regular practice of prompting yourself to attention through cues, following your breath, listening to the sounds around you, focusing on each step you take…anything that is occurring in the present that you can pay attention to. As the witness to your own life, you can always ask yourself, “what’s happening right now?” and allow yourself to come out of your monkey mind and into the present moment.

Carla Goldstein, J.D., is Omega's Director of External Affairs and Director of The Women's Institute at Omega. Carla is an attorney with 20 years of experience in public interest advocacy and has worked extensively in city and state government on issues related to women's rights, poverty, public health and social justice. She has contributed to over 100 city, state and federal laws. Carla has appeared on local and national radio and television and makes public presentations to a wide range of audiences on issues related to women’s empowerment and activism. Prior to joining the Omega Institute, Carla was the VP for Public Affairsat Planned Parenthood of New York City where she directed the agency'sadvocacy and strategic communications work. She also served as the foundingdirector of the PPNYC Action Fund, the political arm of PPNYC. For eight years Carla was an adjunct professor at CUNY Queens College, where she taught, “Law and Social Justice,” a course designed to empower students to be effective advocates for progressive social change. As part of Omega’s Faculty, Carla teaches “Spiritual Activism,” a workshop designed to help people develop their activism in creative ways that align with their values and lives.

Founded in 1977, Omega is the nation's largest holistic learning center whose mission is provide innovative educational experiences that awaken the best in the human spirit, providing hope and healing for individuals and society. Every year more than 20,000 people attend workshops, retreats, and conferences on its 195-acre campus in the countryside of Rhinebeck, New York, and at other sites around the country.

The Women’s Institute, a dynamic new component of Omega, is dedicated to empowering women around the world. It has grown out of the momentum created by the annual Women and Power conferences that Omega Institute has presented in partnership with V-Day since 2002. It seeks to sustain throughout the year the community and inspiration generated at the conferences. Women’s deep wisdom is essential to the creation of a more sustainable and loving culture in every facet of life, from the personal to the political. The Women’s Institute provides opportunities for women and men to inspire and strengthen their visions and authentic voices through unique learning and community building experiences.

For more information, visit www.eomega.org.