While learning “to speak up” is a lifelong journey, the time to speak up at the polls is now.
What is it to have a voice? To use it to speak in alignment with love and clarity and power. And, what is the relationship between the yoga practice and voting?
The underlying teaching, that we are all interconnected, interdependent, from One and returning to One, well, this is the relationship.
Only about 30 percent of eligible voters speak up in the U.S. midterm elections. This means that the majority of people are choosing not to participate in the very entity that governs our lives, our environment, our children’s futures, our well-being… and the well-being of those we walk this earth with.
This is staggering to me.
Those of us in the United States have the incredible privilege of a voice in our government—a voice that is not a given across the world.
I often speak of abundance and choice is one example of our abundance. We make choices in our daily lives, moment by moment, often without even recognizing what a privilege it is. But choice is also a political privilege we have in this country: a one that’s been fought for, died over, and only doled out in small bits in this world. We happen to live in a place where our voice is counted.
To maintain a yoga practice is to actively participate in what happens within us and around us. It is participating fully in our own moment to moment choices. It wakes us up out of the passivity and asks us to take part in our Being (with a capital B). This is also what living in a country that gives us the right to vote should do: Wake us up. Remind us that we have agency. Not only to change our internal reactions to the forces outside of us (that’s yoga); but to actually change the forces outside of us.
I make the assumption that anyone within earshot of me—anyone reading this—is a participating member of our human collective and uses this hard-won freedom to voice their beliefs, concerns, and hopes on their ballots. But I wouldn’t be doing my part if I didn’t use this platform to remind us all that the equanimity the practice teaches does not mean non-participation at the polls.
We are in the practice of honoring what is. That is yoga. And what is is our power—and the privilege—of choice. Of participation. Of active intention. Of helping re-shape the world we want to live in, and love in, and share in.
This sangha spans the globe. We are interconnected, and the effects of this election go beyond the borders of this country, with ripple effects to our community abroad.
On November 6th, will you be awake with me?
Are you committed to informing yourself?
Are you committed to voting?
Are you willing to mobilize those within earshot (and thanks to social media, “earshot” is broad) to participate as well?
Check out: Vote for Our Lives
ONS,
Janet
