Spirituality Is Not an Escape: Mind, Body, Spirit and the Responsibility to Act

Spirituality Is Not an Escape: Mind, Body, Spirit and the Responsibility to Act

In spiritual spaces, as in almost every other space, we encounter very different ideas about how we should respond to relationships, conflict, injustice and everything happening in the world around us.

You may have heard advice like: Focus on yourself. Don't engage. Don't give it your energy. Protect your peace. It will lower your vibration.

At the other end of the spectrum is a form of constant activism that can sometimes leave people feeling guilty for resting: How can we rest when others cannot? How can we turn away when people are suffering?

What guides me is balance. I try to approach life through mind, body and spirit.

And balance will not look the same for everyone. It depends on where we are in our lives, what we have experienced, what resources we have available to us, and what we believe about each of these dimensions.

Spirit: Prayer, Healing and Inner Work

I believe thoughts and prayers matter.

I believe consciousness, intention, prayer and the energy we bring into the world are meaningful. Science has explored questions around distant intention, prayer and spiritual healing, with studies starting to show the effectiveness of energy work.

For me, however, spirituality is not dependent upon science proving every spiritual experience.

Prayer matters to me.

So does meditation. So does intention. So does working toward inner peace.

Healing our wounds, recognizing our triggers, confronting our shadows, caring for our inner child and allowing ourselves to rest are not selfish acts. They can help us become more grounded human beings who are better able to show up for others.

This is hard work.

It also requires humility to acknowledge that not everyone has equal time, safety or resources to devote to healing. When someone is living in survival mode, simply making it through another day may require everything they have.

But when we begin to find greater safety and capacity within ourselves, I believe our healing can expand outward.

We can pray not only for ourselves, but for others.

We can send love outward.

We can hold intentions for healing, justice and peace.

But I do not believe that is where our responsibility ends.

Body: Spirituality Must Enter the Physical World

The body represents the physical: the here and now, the earthly realm.

Perhaps you see the body as the vessel of the soul. Perhaps you see this life as one dimension of consciousness, a simulation, an illusion, a sacred incarnation, or simply the physical reality we inhabit.

Whatever your belief, we are here.

We have bodies. We experience hunger, pain, joy, touch, grief, love and connection through them.

Imagine witnessing a car accident. Someone is injured and you are able to safely help.

You could stand nearby and pray for their healing. I believe there can be meaning in that prayer.

But if you can also call for help, comfort the person or take another safe action that could help them, why would spirituality require you to choose one over the other?

Pray and act.

For me, the same principle applies to injustice.

We cannot live entirely in the spiritual realm while occupying physical bodies in a physical world. And as history taught us not all bodies were (are) valued equally, or the respect we all deserve.

We came here to experience, to feel, to connect and, I believe, to leave something better behind us.

Sometimes spirituality looks like meditation.

Sometimes it looks like rest.

Sometimes it looks like bringing food to a neighbour, donating what you can, helping someone who is struggling, participating in your community, protecting the Earth, writing a letter, attending a gathering, or speaking when remaining silent would betray your values. Speaking and advocating and acting for change that aligns with our values.

Spirituality and action do not have to be opposites.

Action is spiritual.

Mind: Learning to Question What We Think We Know

The third part is the mind.

Our minds help us determine what deserves our attention and how we understand what we encounter.

But our minds are not neutral observers.

Everything we know has been shaped by something: our families, cultures, schools, religions, political systems, media, books, communities, languages, histories and personal experiences.

We each carry a lens.

And that lens is shaped by our many intersecting identities and experiences - culture, class, gender, geography, generation, power, history and countless other influences.

This is why humility matters.

We need to recognize that none of us experiences reality in exactly the same way.

Think about how differently other beings experience this Earth.

An elephant can detect low-frequency sounds and vibrations that humans cannot perceive in the same way.

A dolphin navigates its environment through echolocation, experiencing a sensory world fundamentally different from ours.

A bee can perceive ultraviolet patterns on flowers invisible to human eyes.

Each inhabits the same Earth.

Yet each experiences a different sensory reality.

And then there is us.

Humans perceive only a narrow portion of the information surrounding us. Even what enters our senses is interpreted through our memories, expectations, cultures and experiences.

So what is reality?

What is real?

Perhaps the most truthful answer is that we should remain humble about how much we actually know.

Learning and Unlearning

If there is one lesson I continue to return to, it is this:

I need to keep learning and unlearning.

It was only later in my life that I began discovering how incomplete the history I had been taught about my own Slavic ancestors was.

I learned almost nothing about their pre-Christian spiritual worldviews.

I wasn't taught about the depth of their relationship with forests, water, fire, land and seasonal cycles. I wasn't taught to understand their deities as expressions of a worldview deeply intertwined with nature and the forces upon which human life depended.

Much of that world was simply absent from the story I received.

Later, living on Turtle Island, I also had to confront how incomplete the history I had learned about this land was: colonialism, dispossession, residential schools, assimilation and the ongoing consequences of those systems.

The same process of learning and unlearning has happened as I have learned more about enslavement, racism, patriarchy, class and other systems that shaped the world we inherited.

History had often been presented to me as though it were simply a collection of facts.

But history is also about who was allowed to tell the story, whose knowledge was considered legitimate, whose voices were recorded and whose were silenced.

Learning about my own ancestors, the experiences from people with near death experiences, and learning from Indigenous worldviews has profoundly changed the way I understand my relationship with the Earth and with other people.

And it has given me hope.

We Are Related

One of the teachings I find particularly powerful in many Indigenous worldviews and through the stories of people with near death experiences is relationality: understanding human beings not as separate from creation, we are all one and interconnected

This resonates deeply with what I have been rediscovering in my own ancestral traditions.

We belong to something larger than ourselves.

And if we truly believe that we are connected, then another person's suffering cannot always be dismissed as someone else's problem.

Our world is carrying enormous suffering.

Palestinians continue to endure devastating loss and humanitarian suffering in Gaza and ongoing genocide.

Sudan is experiencing what the World Health Organization describes as the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with tens of millions of people requiring assistance.

Communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo continue to experience armed conflict, displacement and grave human-rights abuses.

In the US, we are witnessing human rights violations, including deportation, detention and violence inflicted by ICE.

But neither do I believe spirituality asks us to become indifferent.

Protecting Your Peace Does Not Have to Mean Looking Away

There is a difference between protecting our peace and protecting ourselves from ever having to feel uncomfortable.

There is a difference between rest and disengagement.

There is a difference between refusing to participate in endless cycles of online outrage and refusing to acknowledge and advocate for another person's humanity.

Sometimes we need to put the phone down.

Sometimes we need to go into the forest.

Sometimes we need to sit beside a river, breathe, pray, sleep, laugh with our children, tend a garden or simply be quiet.

That is not abandoning the world.

That may be exactly what allows us to return to it with something meaningful to give.

It enables us to give, to speak up and do what we can in this world to uplift the voice of those suffering and help make change, to the systems, structures and laws that enable it. Many of our current structures and systems enable extraction, oppression and injustice and we can change them. 

Prayer and Action

So yes, I pray.

I pray for people who are suffering.

I pray for children.

I pray for the Earth.

I even pray for those causing suffering - that something within them awakens to the humanity of the people in front of them.

But I also want my physical life to reflect those prayers.

I want to learn.

I want to unlearn.

I want to listen.

I want to speak up and take action where I can.

I am grateful for people who use their voices when doing so would be easier to avoid - especially those whose platforms allow them to reach millions.

One example that has moved me is children's educator Ms. Rachel who has continued speaking publicly about Palestinian children despite significant backlash. She continues to participate in advocacy concerning Palestinian children and immigration detention, using the enormous audience she built as an educator to draw attention to children experiencing suffering.

Thank you to those speaking for Palestinian children.

Thank you to those speaking about Sudan and Congo.

Thank you to Indigenous land and water protectors.

Thank you to people defending migrants, refugees and marginalized communities.

Thank you to those challenging racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and every ideology that asks us to see another group of human beings as less worthy than ourselves.

And thank you to the people doing work that will never become a viral post - the person feeding a neighbour, caring for an Elder, protecting a forest, helping a stranger, teaching a child compassion, organizing within their community, or simply choosing not to participate in hatred and speaking up against it.

Changing the world may require all three things:

The spirit to imagine and pray for something better.

The mind to learn, question and unlearn.

And the body to bring those beliefs into the physical world through action.

For me, that is spirituality.

Not an escape from this world.

A deeper commitment to how I am learning to live within it.