A Word On Harm
December 2020
In The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, the first agreement is simple: Be impeccable with your word. Words are powerful, and the ones we choose have the power to heal or to harm, to bring us together or divide us.
Full disclosure: I love words! I love the exploration of pairing them together and how it feels to learn new ones. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to best use words. Some people seem to value being “civil” over naming the person or entity that has caused harm—I’ve even seen the refrain that being civil means refraining from holding anyone accountable! (Note that accountability is different from call-outs in cancel culture, which can look like being shamed or, real talk, trolled. That is very different from my meaning here.)
To the people who value silence over communication, I say, miss me with that BS. If you’re causing me harm—even unconsciously—due to race-biased bias or for any other reason, then I may lovingly take you to task as the person being harmed. Being “civil” should never come at the expense of my humanity.
With Grace —Sinikiwe
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5 Radical Dharma Practices
Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger, Lama Rod Owens beautifully ascertains how love and rage can co-exist in a balanced way. His five radical Dharma practices are ones that I am continually integrating into my own practicum, and I wanted to share them with you:
Contemplative Approach: Being in a relationship with the material of our minds
Embodies Approach: Practicing not just with our minds, but with all the ways that we show up in our bodies
Liberatory Practice: The work of understanding what it means to be free and to exercise self-agency in making choices to experience more spaciousness, wisdom, and compassion
Collective Practice: The recognition that I am connected to countless beings and an awareness of how I impact these beings
Prophetic Praxis: Establishing a practice that tells the truth of who and what we are, and the situation and context we are living through