Sacred Activism (article by Andrew Harvey)

note: harvey’s definition of sacred activists working with the Great Polarities puts Taoist alchemy at the top of this skill. -michael

The following are excerpts from Andrew’s new book The Hope. After the excerpts you will find a link to listen free to Andrew’s amazing uplifting speech given at The Prophets Conference University of Oxford, England.

“The Sacred Activist will have to encounter two highly evolved forms of narcissism in himself—the narcissism of the mystic and the narcissism of the activist. One of the reasons why the mystical renaissance is not as powerful as it should be and activists are not as persuasive and skilful as they need to become is because both groups, though made up of intelligent and concerned beings, suffer from their own forms of narcissism that only shadow work can expose, transform, and heal.

“The mystic’s shadow of narcissism as an addiction to transcendence, as an escapism from responsibility from the real, as a sometimes passive and childish belief that the Divine will take care of everything, and as a subtle but devastating denial of the reality of evil and the heartbreaking misery of the world. In the course of my path I have succumbed to all of these forms of narcissism; I see now how resourcefully I justified and even celebrated them with the same ingenuity that a drug addict uses to justify his addiction.”

“The sign that you are beginning to enter into communion with the One is that you experience the beginnings of what I call the Great Joy, with its triumphant Yes that dances through, wisdom, and above all the One’s terrible and amazing games of opposites. This Great Joy is known by all authentic mystics as the ultimate reality of God and, therefore, of all realities created from that ultimate reality.

“Sacred Activism at its highest and deepest is this Joy, this Yes, in action.”

Andrew Harvey Oxford scholar and visionary, believes that our survival depends on Sacred Activism, a fusion of profound mystical awareness, passion, clarity and sacred practice with wise, dedicated, radical action. This fusion, he warns, may be the sole key to preservation of man and nature.

“It has become increasingly clear that only Sacred Activism—the fusion of the deepest mystical knowledge, peace, strength, and stamina with calm, focused, and radical action in every arena of society, culture, economics, and politics–can be of help in our growing world crisis. Neither a purely “spiritual” nor simply “activist” approach can solve our enormous problems. The core teachings of all the major mystical paths make it clear that there is, within human beings, an enormous unused reservoir of pure divine power, the pure power of sacred wisdom consciousness, passion, and compassion–the power of what Jesus called the kingdom of heaven, and of what in Hinduism is known as bliss-consciousness. These core teachings also reveal that if we can learn how to use this power—or rather how to let it use us as its luminous instruments–we will harness the “energies of love” and discover for ourselves how a clear, focused, purified, divine passion devoted to transformative action on all levels can birth a new world.”
http://www.andrewharvey.net