Liberation as a practice, not a destination

Part one of a two-part introduction

I experience liberation as a practice, not a destination.

If we have a yoga or meditation practice we know that every day of our practice is different. Some days our practice flows easily and effortlessly. Some days it is hard or painful. Some days we refuse to even try. It’s a practice. It is the same with any other practice, such as parenting or resting. Maintaining our practice requires that we cultivate a relationship with Liberation: the state of being in movement, partnership, and co-creation with the aliveness of life. Life is in a constant flow of movement through seasons and cycles. To maintain our practice, we learn how to show up and move with the changes. We learn to endure the constant newness of being in movement with life. It is our engaged acceptance of life’s movement that allows us to stick with our practice and produce the results we want over time.

Partnering with Aliveness means cooperating with and supporting cycles of change. In contrast, practicing oppression means refusing to cooperate with life and attempting to force life to stay the same or stay still. With oppression, we force relationships to stay the same and they stagnate. We force power dynamics to stay the same and society stagnates. We force ourselves to stay the same and we stagnate. When people stagnate it becomes a source of depression.

By refusing to move with life we remove ourselves from the flow of life’s change. This has three devastating consequences.

1. We feel profoundly alone.

We do not simply feel separate from our communities, which is bad enough; we feel alone in the universe. This is a colder, deeper form of feeling alone that is harder to endure. Humans are resilient and can bounce back from unthinkable pain, especially with community support. But this all-encompassing aloneness is unbearable. To cope, we self-soothe with numbing behaviors like binging. We binge drink, binge eat, binge exercise, binge technology, binge sex. We are desperate to soothe this devastating aloneness. When we self-soothe alone we can find ourselves trapped in the cycle of numbness (binging) and overstimulation (caffeine, chemical fertilizers, uppers). As we continue to numb out, we increase our tolerance. We need more and more of any substance to feel numb or alive. What we really need is the soothing balm of connection. We need relationship. We can find relationship, at the deepest level, by reconnecting to life itself.

2. We remove ourselves from the flow of life which can change the circumstances we dislike.

We eliminate the opportunity for life to do the work for us. We rob life of the space to bring change to us. If we refuse to move with this flow of change - impermanence - we must force the world to give us what we want. We dominate, control, suppress, and strategize like demented chess players, trying to orchestrate life when we are merely chess pieces ourselves. We expend immense amounts of energy (time, money, physical effort) trying to force life to move while inhibiting life’s movement. We pretend we are more equipped than life to be the conductor of life’s orchestra.

3. We use oppression as a life strategy.

We become a source of oppression rather than an antidote. When we use Oppression: the domination control, and suppression of the Aliveness of life, we create more of the problem we want to eradicate. We cannot force other people to be less forceful. We cannot fight oppression with oppression. This profound truth has been spoken by well-respected thought leaders and stood the test of time. 

“Hate cannot drive our hate, only love can do that.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” - Audre Lorde

“The serious problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” - Albert Einstein

“You cannot fight fire with fire.” - colloquialism from The United States of America

The good news is we can choose liberation moment by moment because liberation is a practice.  Regardless of what others choose, no matter what we chose the moment before, in this moment we can choose to be in movement, partnership, and co-creation with Aliveness.

Cooperating with Aliveness gives us the gift of change, the deep and profound intimacy we long for, and personal integrity as we act in alignment with our values. We may not see the societal change we crave today, but we can honor ourselves, each other, and our collective Aliveness by seeing liberation as a practice - a living, dynamic strategy - not a destination.

When we view liberation as a practice rather than a destination, we can live liberated lives, even in an oppressive world.