The Legacy of Spiritual Leaders: Inspiring Unity and Compassion in a Divided World
We can learn a lot from the teachings that have transcended time.
While I vacation in Ireland, enjoy this excerpt from my book, Embracing Alone: Finding Peace Through Solitude.
Yoga teacher Ana Forrest thought she was delusional. She was praying alone by the Columbia River when she had a profound vision. She saw a towering version of herself with rainbows coming out of her limbs and surrounding her. She realized that for so many years, she had seen herself as unworthy and small. Her vision told her that she was much more than that. Her vision told her to take part in the healing of the world.
She later learned that Oglala Lakota healer Black Elk had a similar vision. The vision would empower him with a mission to restore the “hoop” of his people.1 He had hoped he could lead all of his people back to the “red road,” the road of good. Forrest herself would adopt this metaphor into her own life’s work, “Mending the Rainbow Hoop of the People.” She encourages people to tune into the healing power within. This healing isn’t for personal gain. It’s so that we can restore the broken hoop of our communities.
This concept of repairing and restoring echoes in other cultures. The Jewish mystical phrase tikkun olam refers to the need for social justice in the world. It starts by remembering the sacred in our world and taking social responsibility for the various injustices. The African concept of ubuntu recognizes the influence of our actions on others. Rather than believe in a separate identity from others, ubuntu sees the self as socially constructed. Therefore, you do things for the good of humanity.
Thomas Merton calls it “resetting the bones.” He believed that so much of the world has been broken, and resetting the bones to heal properly is painful. We have to move in painful ways, give up our selfish habits, and remain firm in our “cast.” This means reconciling ourselves with the many ways we hurt ourselves and others. It means taking a good, honest look at ourselves and asking what we’re doing to contribute to the problems of violence, hunger, and inequality. It means replacing hate with love. Hate destroys, but love unites.
We dissolve the separation of the ego, the false self, in solitude so we can take part in the unity of the world. By being content with who we are in solitude, we move beyond the problem of hyperindividualism and move toward connection. Through our desire to “find” our authentic self, we realize that what is left is the essence of oneness with all living things. We carry our solitude, our non-clinging nature, with us as we move about the world. We see each moment as an opportunity to restore wholeness in the world, even if it’s as simple as holding the door for someone. We become constant reminders of this wholeness as we move about the social world.
It means taking a good, honest look at ourselves and asking what we’re doing to contribute to the problems of violence, hunger, and inequality.
One thing that is not often seen in Catholic teaching is its mission on social justice. We might see the media overly consumed about its stance on abortion and homosexual marriage, but if you look back not too long ago, you’ll see that many Catholic clergy stood strongly against the Vietnam War and the nuclear bomb. Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan was on the FBI Most Wanted list and spent many years in prison for destroying draft records. He saw the world quickly losing its heart in his day, and he couldn’t stay silent, even though it was inconvenient.
Even though Merton enjoyed his solitude in the countryside in Kentucky, he remained very opposed to the Vietnam War and to the bomb. Although his books on spirituality have inspired millions, including myself, you can see his disdain for injustices such as racism in much of his writings. His book, Seeds of Destruction, supported the Civil Rights Movement, even though he knew passing the law didn’t necessarily mean an end to racism.
Merton wrote, “where minds are full of hatred and where imaginations dwell on cruelty, torment, punishment, revenge and death, then inevitably there will be violence and death2.” In other words, hatred starts within and looks for expressions outside the mind. It’s up to us to transform this hatred by starting with the hatred within us.
Merton could have simply stayed in Kentucky and remained quiet, but it was his deep spirituality that empowered him to speak Truth with a capital T. He felt compelled to denounce the evils in his society. He writes,
No man can withdraw completely from the society of his fellow men; and the monastic community is deeply implicated, for better or for worse, in the economic, political, and social structures of the contemporary world. To forget or to ignore this does not absolve the monk from responsibility for participation in events in which his very silence and “not knowing” may constitute a form of complicity.3
When spiritual leaders such as Merton, Berrigan, Martin Luther King, Jr., The Dalai Lama, Pope Francis and Gandhi take a position, it’s because they know in their heart that it speaks to a human truth, not a cultural or popular one. Reading the works of all of these leaders makes you see one True North—that we are all one people. It’s not about virtue signaling to gain more followers on social media. It’s about reminding others how human truth eventually prevails if we remain steadfast in living it.
Therefore, our solitude doesn’t give us the excuse to stay home and stay out of the issues of the world. Instead, we seek to address these issues in ways unique to us. This might not mean getting arrested or burning draft cards, but it does mean recognizing which battles are petty, and which battles speak to the soul of humanity. It means recognizing the hypocrisy in ourselves before we point it out in others.
1 This vision is depicted in the book, Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neilhardt, who spoke with Black Elk through a translator.
2 Merton, T. Seeds of Destruction. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
3 Merton, T. Seeds of Destruction. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.