Conscious Activism

This Editorial precedes Volume 17, Issue 1 of Kosmos. Scroll down to access featured content.

“Silence is not an option,” said Martin Luther King while war raged in Vietnam. Now as wars proliferate on every front—political, economic, social, environmental, and in our own psyches, our hearts are breaking. We see the values we cherish and fought for being tossed aside for material gain. We long to create the enlightened society we envision. And we know that action is the way forward.

Silence is not an option.

Kosmos has once again gathered together a group of leaders who are defining the new conscious activism and answering the call to engage. From reactive and raging protests and resistance, activism has now evolved to deep self-inquiry into how we, ourselves, might be complicit in perpetuating the conditioned values of a materialistically dysfunctional society. We are asked to look at our motivations, to use our hearts as well as our heads, to become courageous defenders of our values, and to become creators of a world that is in harmony with all Life.

Aware and conscious engagement begins with ‘me.’ We cannot hope to manage a complex world if we have not learned to man- age our own thoughts and feelings and have not examined our own assumptions and worldviews. Personal change and cultural change go hand in hand. How do we cleanse ourselves of societal conditioning to enable us to be present in the Now? Self-inquiry and meditation are ways to personal peace, but also the precursors to effective action in the world.

Kosmos Journal Volume 17 Issue 1

New Approaches to Healing Collective Conflict and Trauma: Our Responsibility as Global Citizens*

By William Ury and Thomas Hübl

Thomas Hübl and William Ury "This is the beginning of what we need, a vocabulary for how we talk about a process that we don’t even have words yet to describe—what actually is happening at the biochemical, genetic, psychological, and spiritual levels as the process of peace is being made." -Ury

Subtle Activism: A Way Forward through Chaotic Times

By David Nicol

Subtle activism is a concept I have introduced to describe the potentially crucial role that consciousness-based practices like meditation, prayer, and ritual may play in supporting change in the world. Although in our modern Western culture these practices have more typically been used to support individual growth, they can also be harnessed for the purposes of social and collective transformation.

Pilgrimage: A Path of Practice for the New Activism

By Valerie Brown

To be a pilgrim is to be committed to a vision that is truly your own, to a vision that may not necessarily be defined by external values of society but by a deep and tenacious, close-to-the-core belief in yourself and in living your values in the world, to make a better world possible.

Entangled with the World

By Báyò Akómoláfé

The questions we ask trigger the entire world. They are the world examining itself. Even more, the space between a question and an answer is not empty and void. It is troubled and littered with many obstacles, many beings, and many forces we are called to engage with but often avoid in our rush for answers.

Returning Home to Our Place in the Cosmos

By Mark Phillips

This has been perhaps the essential lesson I’ve taken from my time at Genesis Farm: that we humans have the possibility to awaken from what Berry deemed the ‘technological trance,’ a deep fixation and obsession for progress through technological development and unlimited economic growth.

Thomas Hübl’s The Pocket Project: Facilitating the Integration of Collective Trauma

By Julie Jordan Avritt

Where economists seek to understand repeating cycles of financial and political unrest, Thomas Hübl sees simply “collective chunks of shadow trying to process themselves.” Inspired by his discoveries, he founded The Pocket Project, whose subject of care is ‘one client,’ or humanity as a whole.