The Election as an Opportunity to Exist Differently
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.
The Nurturing Logic of Inner Wisdom
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 feel Deeply free” Kiana Elkins on a Loving practice
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.