t’s really important to feel these hard feelings and acknowledge them. It’s also important to explore the ways that Donald Trump’s election can provide us with real time opportunities to learn to exist differently by making our material and nonmaterial needs equally important. We can do this by slowing down and taking a moment to understand how exactly Trump’s election impacts our material and nonmaterial needs, as well as our fears about not being able to meet them. When we take time to explore these needs and our fears about meeting them, we can also see our creative power to meet them in new ways as individuals and in community.

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Lagos, 1444 can be usefully thought of as the place where the systemic disconnection from our inner wisdom began. According to Zuara’s description, those men responsible for the partition of Africans were confused about what to do. Instead of choosing to follow their inner-wisdom, they chose to follow the logic of individual gain. They weren’t the first Europeans to facilitate enslavement, brutality, horror, or pursue individual gain at the expense of others. However, the choices made by these specific Europeans in this specific place and time had implications similar choices made at previous times did not. Because this specific form of slavery was racial and occurred during a major social and economic crisis in Europe, it became a building block of a new economy and world. 

 By connecting to, trusting, and following our inner-wisdom, we can create the kinds of communities, organizations, and relationships that support us to thrive as well as survive. As these experiments grow, the logic of our inner-wisdom can become conventional logic and can replace the logic and economy of PRC. When the logic of our inner-wisdom becomes more conventional and requires less practice to access, it will be easier to equally emphasize our material and non-material needs. By connecting to and trusting our inner-wisdom, we can facilitate the paradigm shift we need to exist differently.

I was introduced to the concept, “a loving practice,” from All About Love. In that book she says that loving practice is not just about self-satisfaction. It's the way that we end domination and oppression. She talks about it throughout the book but I was like,”What does that mean? What is a loving practice? What does that actually look like? So I started talking to people and exploring what it means to engage with love as a practice. I offered a course called Cultivating a Loving Practice, where I break down a theoretical framework around loving practice. I was asking people to do the work to build community and they were like, “Yeah, that sounds good. But it means I have to have a hard conversation with my best friend, and I don't want to do that.” So now a lot of my work focuses on conflict. I identify conflict as a way to practice love. The willingness to be in conflict is an act of love.

When we understand the world around us, we don’t have to react to chaos. Instead, locating ourselves in systems and history empowers us to respond to chaos in ways that align with our inner wisdom. In chaotic times we have a nonmaterial need to locate ourselves in systems and history to avoid being overwhelmed. By unpacking hegemonic transitions, we can locate ourselves in systems and history.

When we learn to equally emphasize our material and non-material needs instead of prioritizing our material needs at the expense of our non-material needs, we start existing differently than human beings have for the last 500 years. When we create organizations and communities that equally emphasize material and non-material needs, we create systematic opportunities to exist differently.

I came from a very traditional hierarchical background. I worked in corporate for a really long time and I would have stayed there if I wanted stuff easy. In the corporate world you know the structure, you know your place and there is no swaying in and out of the lines. But I wasn't learning. I wasn't learning particularly about me, I wasn't going deep about me, who I am as a person, and it was draining for me and my soul. I knew that eventually I was gonna explode out of that box. I was just turning into this little tiny, confined person. And I was like, “Nope, I have to break away. I have to find something else. I have to find something that ignites my soul.”