The Activist vs. The Mystic
Join me this Sunday for an hour of soul tending
This Sunday! February 2nd at 10am PST / 1pm EST / 6pm UK — Join me and other paid subscribers for an hour of much-needed soul-tending in these times. The registration link and more details are below.
It’s been a month since I’ve held a gathering with this community. It’s been 100 years since I’ve held a gathering with this community.
I’ve said to friends recently that the words “unbelievable” and “unbearable” no longer hold any weight. Somehow, day after day, in these times, we ultimately come to believe and bear everything that is happening.
But how do we bear it?
It may be my right and left brain in a battle, or my ego and Self wrestling it out, but I’ve been in a deep process of growth and change. I shared a little bit about this last week: the feeling of rapid morphing or transmutation. The Activist in me and the Mystic in me are in a deep process. Are they making love? Fighting? Is it couples counseling? Perhaps there is a mutual alchemical melting down to create something new.
The Activist wants to save everyone who can be saved and protect our democracy from inconceivable (yet painfully conceivable) decline. The Activist is terrified. The Activist is grieving. The Activist is worried and reading and meeting with neighbors.
The Mystic trusts that times of decline refine our connection to life itself, to the meaning of existence, the power of community, and the importance of LOVE. The Mystic knows that struggle begets greater consciousness. The Mystic has faith. The Mystic trusts the dreams that say: you are strong; this is necessary; there is life after death.
I recently received a newsletter from Michael Meade, a mythologist and storyteller whom I included as a Soul Tender in my Archetypes of Resistance. What Michael wrote so deeply reflected my own experience that I wanted—the Mystic wanted—to share it with you here.
In troubled times it becomes important to know that at every threshold there are creative energies waiting to enter the world through us. As everything else seems to fall apart, the deep ‘knowing self’ within us moves closer to the surface and seeks to become known.
Personal and collective crises may threaten our habitual ways of being on one level, while opening the doors of vision and understanding on another level. Threshold moments and transformative events can break time open and reframe our entire life, altering its trajectory and renewing its vitality.
The inner medicine of the soul is found in the creative middle way which involves the power of becoming; becoming aware of new ways of being as well as coming to know ancient wisdom again. In the timeless moments of change we come to see the world as we are intended to see it and find the genuine aims of our lives.
How does this speak to you?
Is there an inner transmutation or battle between your Mystic and Activist taking place? What is trying to come through you in these times?
I hope to see you Sunday to explore some of these questions and be together in sacred space.
This Sunday: February 2nd at 10 am PST | 1pm EST | 6pm UK
One hour of soul-tending in community and with our deepest selves.
Registration link below—beyond the paywall.* Please join us live if you can! A replay will also be available for paid subscribers if you can’t be there.
If you are already a paid subscriber, there is no additional fee to attend; these monthly workshops are a perk of your subscription. Just scroll down to register!
*If finances would prohibit you from joining, reply to this email or send me a brief note at satyadoylebyock @ substack.com.