FROM THE INTRODUCTION

I didn't set out to write a book. I wanted to write a training manual, a guide for what I thought would be a small group of people who shared my passion for the integration of spirituality and activism. As I began to write, the project grew. When I disseminated the early fruits of my labor, the audience grew as well. And then I saw that this connection between inner journeys and outer commitments was actually quite relevant to many people.

This intention of this book is to share a perspective on an ancient belief, a simple idea that makes for a more challenging reality for each of us in the short run and a healthier overall existence for all of us in the long run. The idea is that as we develop spiritual and reflective practices within the context of our personal lives and the pursuit of social change, we create a more solid and secure foundation for a new world. We build lives with greater expressions of love, more authentic relationships, and a deeper articulation of truth. We become less afraid of fear and less afraid of life.

When we turn inward, we find stillness and chaos resting together. We find craving and contraction and the seeds of liberation from both. We can ignore what we find or we can embrace it - all of it. When we turn outward, we see levels of suffering the mirror and exceed our own. We know this world is not what it could or should be for far too many beings, human and non-human alike. It takes courage to face the world with compassionate attention, to be candid about the injustices we understand, and to probe those we do not. We try, stumble, and try again. Consciousness is a daily walk.

And it is not a choice any longer.

We need a national culture of reflection that bends towards justice. We must develop the capacity and infrastructure for deliberate, ongoing, profound reflection, so that we might bring balance to the other forms of national culture we seem to be infinitely more comfortable with, namely the cultures of action, of military response, of traditional religion, of avoidance.

Religion and spiritual practice will help ensure that our actions as human beings yield benefits to a sphere far beyond the horizon we can easily see.

When my scholarly uncle read an earlier version of the manuscript, he congratulated me on my "how-to book." At first I shuddered. With my love of ideas, the written word and the interplay of theory, had I really written an instruction manual? Yes, perhaps I had. And then I realized that spiritual activists are always interested in the questions that begin with "how." We hunger for practicalities. We see how desperately we all need to know how: how to find that refuge where we can nurture our core, how to deepen the union we feel with others, and how to embrace life beyond our immediate experience.

The path may not be easy, but it is not rocket science either. (In college I had a friend who majored in astrophysics; she was the only one in our graduating class of two thousand. This is not that.) Living a life where values manifest in daily actions - actions that promote the basic health and welfare of all we can possibly imagine - is within reach for each of us. It is not something that will rest only in the hands of a few master teachers, enlightened beings, or revered clergy. It is our birthright, and our responsibility. Spiritual activists move more freely between the inner quest for peace and the outer quest for justice, and we feel some comfort knowing it is a permeable membrane that joins our struggles, our commitments, and our transformations.

We are all seekers. In the midst of an ever complex, ever quickening universe, we crave the pause in which we remember what matters most. In the face of suffering, we desire new and better ways to respond. This book is inspired by these convictions. Welcome.

Claudia Horwitz
Durham, North Carolina
February, 2002