a beginner's guide to voting with your body

What does it mean to vote with your body?

We tend to think of political activism as writing letters to public figures, going on marches or going to the polls every few years, but I have come to realise that the most powerful political tool I have access to is me. The way I choose to live, the beliefs I choose to maintain, my choices each day, these are my ballot. My body is my ballot.

Here is a quick, but maybe not so easy, beginner's guide (because I am still a beginner at conscious living also) to voting with your body.

1. Self inquiry. Get quite. Get still. Ask yourself what kind of being you are. Are you a helpful being? Are you a kind being? What are your values? 

No one has a right to pass judgement on your values. Your values, whatever you decide they are, are your unique gift to the world. (and, by the way, your values can change as often as you decide based on whatever new information you might receive. There is a word for inflexible values, it's called "dogma")

Let your values inform your politics.

2. Recognize your power. Think about all the ways you interact with the political and economic system. Do you buy things? Do you consume things? Are you involved in organizations? What about communities or social groups? What activities do you enjoy? Who do you work for? How do you spend your time?

3. Become conscious. Critically analyse whether the activities in the above line up with your values. Where does your money go? For example, do you give your money to oil and petroleum companies (no judgement, I do it too!) or to your local municipality in the form of public transportation? 

Where do you buy your food? Where does that food come from and how is it produced? What are you actually eating (read ingredients)? 

What else are you buying/consuming? Clothing? Where is that made? What is it made of? Who made it? Furniture? Books? Other things? Do you need them? Who are you supporting and why?

Remember that every time you put a penny down you participate in a political/social/environmental act. What is your purchase saying to the government, to your community, to yourself?

Think about your choices. 

Time is a form of currency too. Think about where you are spending your time and how. Do these choices feel good to you? If so they are probably in alignment with your values. If not, then you might want to ask yourself why you are investing time in them.

Infuse your day, your week, your life with consciousness.

4. Notice and make adjustments. Only once we finally see what we are doing can we decide to make changes. Remember that you are significant! Corporations, organizations, producers couldn't survive without individuals who support them! And if you want to see change in the world the easiest way is to change how you see the world. Start with yourself. You are the only thing you can really change. Feel the power and agency in that. If you life with conscious intention, you lead with authority.

5. Never stop learning, changing and adjusting. Be open. Seek the truth, but don't cling to it.

I told you it was quick! Easy is another story. It can seem overwhelming - all of the choices, so many things to consider and so much potential for mistakes! But there is a great beauty and comfort in knowing that each simple choice we make helps to create a reality we are looking towards. Nobody can live 100% perfectly all the time (or ever!), but we can adapt, recalibrate, and use our values to guide us gradually to the path of our choosing and in time, to the world of our choosing.

I may not be the most politically literate person in the world, and you won't catch me protesting in the street, but I make sure I vote every day with my lifestyle and my choices. Gandhi said, "my life is my message," well I second that, and add, my body is my ballot. 

Love,

R

"If I cannot dictate the conditions of my labour I will henceforth cease to work:" a loving meditation on my job

I am a corporate slave. 

However, as my bum sits in the ergonomically designed chair behind the ergonomically designed computer desk, designed thusly in the recognition that the bum was not meant to withstand such violent lethargy for 8 hours each day, my mind is mostly free to wander (little mental engagement is needed for such tedious and inconsequential data entry).

It wanders many places, but as suggested by my last post, of late it's been exploring the idea of purpose. Purpose. Clearly, my job is not my (capital P) Purpose, which is the inspired action where internal purpose and external purpose merge. My job is an external purpose. That purpose being, of course, to make some money to fulfill other external purposes. My point is not to complain.

I recently dug up a CD done by Ani DiFranco with the words of Utah Phillips (The Past Didn't go Anywhere, 1996, Righteous Babe Records Inc). Phillips was a self-identified anarchist, a beautiful speaker and poet. His unique way of looking at societal structures is really blowing my mind and I am meditating on the following recollection from Phillips of a conversation he had with someone who we would consider to be on the fringes of society.

"...And that's where he said to me (he'd been tramping since 1927), he said, 'I told myself in '27, if I cannot dictate the conditions of my labour I will henceforth cease to work.' You don't have to go to college to figure these things out. He said, 'I learned when I was young that the only true life I have is the life of my brain. But if it's true that the only true life I have is the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to somebody for 8 hours a day for their particular use on the presumption that at the end of the day they will give it back in an unmutilated condition? Fat chance!'"

It made me think of this article I read in the Sydney Morning Herald a few weeks back about the "modern phenomenon of nonsense jobs."

What are these statements pointing to? Where is it all going? What does it mean? And why am I bringing it up?

These statements point to the recognition that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way much of the world operates. Because, why did I come into this human body? To valiantly serve this corporation in whom I own no stakes and to whose values I am vehemently opposed?

And where is it going? Well, it is going towards a shift. And that shift is on the level of me.

What does it mean? It means I am responsible for the freedom of my own mind and, in time, for the freedom of my own body. 

Of course, I bring this up because, lest I be a lethargic bum on an ergonomic chair, maybe I can start contributing to society in some meaningful way.

Love,

R