This article was originally written back in April of 2013, but I reproduced it here as it is still a valuable asset for performing activism in the world.
Nothing gets the passionate juices flowing like being an activist for a cause, resisting evil, perceived or otherwise, by taking on Goliath in our role as David the Giant Slayer. All too often we allow ourselves to invest tremendous amounts of energy into a cause by picking a side that resonates with our beliefs, and then fighting against those that oppose them. There are many causes, some seem trivial and not a bother, some are a fad pumped by the media, many feel genuine, while others may be true but are difficult to prove because they are concealed from the public eye and thus “conspiracy theories”. Fighting for various causes can take up a lot of energy and resources, while only addressing the issues from a superficial level of causality, and a one dimensional perspective. Aline and I have discovered a brilliant new way to experience activism, one that really changes things and creates lasting results—Be the change with EFT, also known as “Gandhi Groups” and “Inner Activism”.
“Be the change with EFT” takes a tremendous amount of intellectual courage, not because we must face the daunting giant of a government, sect, cultural norm, multinational corporation, or secret organization, but because we must become intimate with the evil that we so desperately want to eradicate.
When we become proficient with this technique, we create a life of mastery, one which radically transforms all that we come into contact with, as we alchemically transmute the evil that we are faced with in our daily process. This way of experiencing what we do not like is in stark contrast to the traditional resistance model, or the current fad of positive thinking and ignoring social injustices; as the first directly adds energy into the problem by fighting it, and the second seeks to deny energy to a current reality by pretending that it does not exist.
“Be the Change with EFT” seeks to create solution energy not only in our experience, but also as an answer key that gets uploaded into the collective consciousness of humanity. In this way, we not only create new energy patterns and ways to relate, but we become walking solution keys that merely needs to BE in society in order to transform it. How does Inner Activism effect change? It follows the Hermetic Principle of “as above, so below, as within, so without”; for when we make changes within our state of being, we will be able to experience the changes in our external material affairs.
Here are the steps to altering the causes of injustice within your thinking, thus allowing you to transform the effects of your outward experience:
- Give up all hope of the situation changing or going away. It’s bad, will continue to be bad, and may even get worse in order to get your attention; use EFT to accomplish this step.
- Set the intent to allow all of your feelings on the subject, as well as your motivations for changing the injustice, to bubble up to the surface. Feelings such as powerlessness (anger), guilt, shame, inadequacy, fear, rejection, helplessness, etc., and they are typically linked to personal childhood experiences.
- Tap on each feeling and circumstance related to the perceived injustice, and find the thought patterns responsible. Make sure to examine how you have been or currently are relating as a victim, villain, and hero, and seek a deeper understanding of your feelings in each aspect. Seek to discover how this pattern may be affecting other areas of your life. Do this alone, with a tapping partner, or with a group of like-minded individuals.
- How am I using my outrage to avoid taking responsibility for my feelings?
- Am I projecting?
- Is this an unseen shadow of mine?
- How did I experience this as a child?
- Was I the victim, villain, or hero?
- Am I trying to save my inner child by being an activist and saving others now?
- What if I could first heal my relationship to my inner child, and then deal with this perceived injustice?
- Use Socratic Questioning to examine the various layers and reasons why this issue causes you to feel upset.
- After tapping with EFT on the various angles, rate your feelings on a scale between 1-10, with 10 being “highly charged” feelings, and 1 being “it does not bother me much at all”. Continue step 3 until you find that the “for” and “against” extremes of the issue are scoring low.
- Allow for the evolution of your feelings and subject matter, as they go from the original issue, and into other connected and related topics or feelings.
- Be patient, this issue may take you a few days to several weeks to integrate into your belief systems and feelings.
By the end of this process of clearing a social advocacy topic near and dear to your heart, you will find that you lack the highly charged judgment that once defined your ardent passion for taking up the cause. This does not diminish from the cause at all, but in fact, you are now carrying the solution energy within your state of being, and your new thought patterns will affect real change in your surroundings, without a battle ever being fought.
GETTING STARTED
As stated in the list above, hope must be the first thing to go. This may seem contrary to popular cultural belief, as hope is seen as a virtue within society, however, hope is the very thing that prevents meaningful change, and is cultivated by those within hierarchies to prevent challenge to their authority.
“Many people hope for change; however, hope actually prevents meaningful change.” ~Nathan
“Hope is the ultimate self-deceived feeling; as it keeps us looking to the future for our well-being instead of taking responsibility for our negative experience here in the present moment. It is more convenient to hope for something that could be real than to deal with the depression, anger, fear, and other feelings that we have right now. However, if we were to take full responsibility of our feelings and experiences, we could discover the root causes within our thinking, and transform our limiting beliefs into better serving ones. Instead of hoping for relief from our inability to attain our dreams and desires, we will actually move forward and create our dreams and desires.” ~Nathan & Aline
Just like in group activism where we come together to fight for a cause, we also suggest creating a group, but instead of fighting an evil outside of ourselves, this group will be challenging each other to go deeper within. We call these Inner Activist groups “Gandhi Groups”.
A Gandhi Group can contain as few as two people, but it helps if there is some variety of opinions and contrast within the group, even if those opinions are not fully oppositional. If everyone has the same perspective, it will be difficult to come to a synthesis of ideas, and elevate our thinking. However, many people find that after integrating their feelings and broadening their thinking on one side of the debate, that they will flip into the other side naturally, and will at least be able to see the opposite perspective with more compassion–this too will allow for more complete synthesis of perspectives.
Make sure to push each other’s buttons on the subject matter, and allow yourselves to dive deeper into your passionate feelings while tapping, asking questions, and seeking a clearer understanding of yourself in relationship to the issue. If you are in judgment of a perspective, or especially the people who hold the perspective, allow yourself to fully experience your hypocrisy, bias, and discriminatory beliefs that you may be feeling, but do so while fully observing yourself while in observer consciousness. This will allow you to fully experience your feelings in a safe manner, so that you can witness and understand the folly of your limiting beliefs. It’s all real until it’s not, therefore you must allow yourself to go into uncomfortable and politically incorrect directions, so that you can reverse engineer them, and shift into better serving and reasonable beliefs.
Stay tuned as we create potential advocacy topics to master, some sample tapping videos to get you started, and more. We’re going to watch our world turn upside down as we create social change from the inside-out.
