As terrible events unfold around us and anger and hate become more intense and widespread, doing the spiritual practices that will protect our hearts and cleanse them of anger, fear, and hatred becomes ever more necessary. Hate being contagious, its outpouring can be like getting caught in a flood, and if we don’t keep our wits about us and hold fast to our faith in Love, we can be swept away. If we harden our hearts, compromise or lose our integrity, or yield to the temptation to inflict moral injuries on ourselves, hate wins, and we lose. If we succumb to the temptation to demonize—to declare that those people are the People from Planet Wrong—we only diminish our own humanity, alienate people who might otherwise want to help, and, worst of all, we frighten our own selves by picturing our adversaries as terrifyingly larger than life. The truth is our best friend: if we hold fast to it, even when it isn’t flattering to ourselves or our cause, we get to keep our integrity, and that is a victory all by itself. Of course we want to win, but we don’t get into any struggle to feel dirty.
We cannot work to bring about peace effectively if there’s no peace in ourselves. The spiritual practices in this book aren’t necessarily “one and done”; sometimes we need to double and triple down on them. When our inner peace is disturbed, we can take the time to pray on it, meditate on it, tap on it, journey on it—whatever works for our own healing. Just breathing in “cool head” and breathing out “warm heart” could be a good immediate practice when we might be finding ourselves getting just a little teeny tiny bit angry in the moment. Breathing in “One Love” and breathing out “One Love” is also helpful—as is simply being aware of our breathing.
Besides bringing a cool head and a warm heart, there are a few things to know that can help when we’re going on into some action. For example, White people volunteering for the first time with an organization, especially if it’s an organization that is primarily of people of color in general and Black people in particular, can first of all heed the wise words of my dervishy friend Sandy Modell, whose advice for entering any new situation was, “You keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut.” It’s a golden opportunity for practicing awareness that we aren’t smarter than other people and don’t know everything—in other words, to enjoy the great gift of knowing that we have good reason to be humble.
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