The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism Hot

"The Hope" captures the very heart and soul of Andrew Harvey’s lifelong spiritual journey, and seems to be a synthesis of all the passion and wisdom he acquired along the way. The reader is caught up in a kaleidoscopic swirl of prose, poetry and prayers of saints and mystics against the background of Andrew’s extraordinary life experiences. The book can move you to tears one moment and overwhelm you the next with the torrent of prose and erudition, but always Andrew’s impassioned desire to share his hard-won wisdom shines through. It is filled with diamonds of inspiration for all agents of change wanting to help birth a world of justice and compassion.

Andrew Harvey, one of today’s best-known mystics, lays out his new vision for Sacred Activism – an amalgam of the activist’s passion for social change with the inner peace and unity consciousness of the grounded mystic or spiritual seeker. He makes a strong case for the need to merge the two into a symbiotic union – a “third flame” – in order for each aspect to compensate for the shadow side of the other:

“The mystic’s shadow of narcissism manifests as an addition to transcendence, as an escapism from responsibility from the real, as a sometimes passive and childish belief that the Divine will take care of everything, and as a subtle but devastating denial of the reality of evil and the heartbreaking misery of the world…
“ The activist’s shadow of narcissism …manifests…as a messiah complex, as a dark ego-reinforcing delight in humiliating and destroying one’s opponents, and as a depreciation of ordinary life in favor of heroic sacrifice. It also manifests as an addiction to doing for its own sake, with exhaustion, body neglect and burnout seen as signs of authenticity and badges of courage.”

He implores activists on the front lines to keep themselves strong in body, mind and spirit to avoid burnout, and gives detailed examples of spiritual and physical practices to help. He warns against being naive about the existence of evil in the world, and points out that what we detest in our adversaries is somehow also present in our own shadow side. Prayer, patience and working through one’s shadow issues, however, will make us more understanding of the other side, and more effective, and Divine Grace achieved through earnest spiritual practice is the best protection.

Andrew concludes with a call to action, and calls for readers to set up “Networks of Grace.” Using a tactic from terror cells, he suggests turning this sword into a plowshare by coming together in “imaginal cells” of 6 to12 to provide a support system for each other in the challenging work of Sacred Activism.

In the end, the book describes the path we all travel, with all the zigs and zags of a drunkard’s walk. The times we live in, however, with our demonstrated and escalating capacity for destruction, lends an undeniable urgency to the need for powerful agents of change. Andrew’s impassioned plea is that we heed the call, but that we avail ourselves of all the help and protection the Universe is just waiting to lavish upon us, if we will only ask for it.

Andrew’s website is: www.andrewharvey.net