"Gentle activism can be understood as a set of practices that allow us to connect at the depths of our being with a love for the world and a desire to reflect the highest potential of human nature. While contact with the hope of a more loving or peaceful world can make us vulnerable, it is also the most powerful force for change we know."
David Nicol
Australian David T. Nicol, a trained lawyer, originally worked in environmentalism and worked in several environmental organizations in Australia. In 2000, he moved to the United States, where he began studying Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Based on this study, he wanted to be more active in politics, and in 2004 he became involved in Dennis Kucinich's presidential campaign. He sought to create a politics based on wholeness and interdependence, and began using the Internet to pioneer global meditations in support of Kucinich's campaign. From this formative experience, Nicol's concept of gentle activism emerged, about which he wrote a groundbreaking book Subtle Activism: The Inner Dimension of Social and Planetary Transformation (SUNNY Press, 2012), which represents the first comprehensive academic treatment of this topic.
The author connects the world of social activists and contemplatives. According to him, gentle activism represents a bridge between the consciousness movement and movements for peace, ecological sustainability and social justice. It is not a substitute for physical action, but rather a potentially key part of a more integrated approach to social change and a path to integrative spirituality. Nicol bases his considerations on available scientific research, on dialogue with a wide range of thinkers from the field of consciousness research, transpersonal theory and new paradigm thinking (Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry, Richard Tarnas, Chris Bache, Sean Kelly, Edgar Morin, Rupert Sheldrake, etc.) as well as on dialogue with some traditional spiritual approaches (shamanism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, indigenous spirituality, Christianity, etc.). It is the first comprehensive study to demonstrate that focused collective meditation and intention can powerfully and measurably contribute to social change.
David Nicol is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Gaiafield – Subtle Activism for Global Transformation, and co-founder of BeThePeace.com, WiseUSA, and EarthRising, which have brought tens of thousands of people together around the world for large-scale meditations focused on social change. David Nicol and his friends are working to harness the coherent power of group consciousness to support the transition to a desired new, more benign era of life on Earth, which Thomas Berry has called the Ecozoic Era. He lectures at the California Institute of Integral Studies, The Shift Network, and the Institute for Subtle Activism, which he founded. He lives in Mendocino, California, with his wife, Kate Naga. This essay was published in the journal “Subtle Activism: A Way Forward through Chaotic Times” Cosmos Journal (spring-summer 2017); translation: Jiří Zemánek.
One of the characteristics of our strange new world after the US election is that things are in such a state of flux that it is difficult to navigate the new environment and know what actions to take. It is as if many established ways of thinking have fallen apart as we try to navigate our new reality. In the process, we are forced to reexamine our most basic assumptions about how things are and where we thought we were headed.
There are real dangers lurking in this psychic vortex. In our time, we hear echoes of previous traumatic episodes in history, and many of us are trying to determine whether our situation will develop in a similar way. However, this opening also creates an unprecedented space for the influx of radically creative ideas and energies into society. We therefore also have the opportunity to make rapid non-linear progress in our collective evolution.
We are facing what chaos theorists call a bifurcation point, a moment of crisis in a complex system that will lead either to collapse or to the emergence of a fundamentally new level of self-organization. It is important to recognize that there has been pressure for some time to transform human society in a much more fundamental way than can be achieved through the traditional political system. In this context, the election of Trump, Brexit, and the rise of right-wing populism across Europe can be seen as triggering events that are pushing an already unstable system into full-blown crisis.
Chaos theory tells us that as a system approaches a bifurcation point, it becomes very sensitive to inputs. Small influences have greatly amplified effects due to the presence of complex feedback loops. A butterfly flapping its wings in China leads to a hurricane in Bangladesh.
In such volatile times, however, our interventions, however well-intentioned, can easily exacerbate systemic tensions. A variety of creative responses are certainly needed to save lives, buy time, and disrupt the momentum of destructive forces. But in the long run, new forms of subtle and sensitive action that relate to the system as a whole may be most effective in supporting intelligent systemic change.
Gentle activism
Subtle activism is a term I have coined to describe the potentially pivotal role that mindfulness-based practices such as meditation, prayer, and ritual can play in promoting change in the world. While these practices are typically used in our modern Western culture to promote individual growth, they can also be used for social and collective transformation. For example, during World War II, millions of people across the British Commonwealth observed a minute of silence every night at nine o’clock in the evening in support of the Allied war effort. In November 2016, tens of thousands of people participated in a global meditation to support the “water protectors” at Standing Rock.
While gentle activism is a new concept, authentic spiritual practice has always served the good of the whole. From ancient shamanic traditions to monastic and mystical orders within major world religions, practitioners have long engaged in spiritual work for the well-being of all life. However, in our modern hyper-individualized Western culture, spirituality has largely focused on personal liberation, often to the exclusion of sociopolitical and environmental issues.
This situation can be understood, historically, in part as a consequence of the scientific and political revolutions that overthrew the dominance of medieval religious institutions and relegated all religion and spirituality to the private and personal sphere. However, our planetary situation has become so urgent today that we can no longer tolerate this division. Of course, we do not want the dogmas of institutionalized religion to return to the public sphere. But we need to find a way to reintroduce a sense of the sacred into our public consciousness. For example, if we were to relate to the Earth as a sacred living being, it would not be possible for us to treat it in the way we currently do. To make this shift happen on a collective level, we will need to expand our spiritual vision beyond personal growth to engagement with the world at large. This will require us to develop new ways of being and seeing that are free from the dogmas of religion and from materialistic science.
Gentle activism is a step in this direction. More than a philosophy of engagement, it is a method for connecting spiritual consciousness with collective concerns and interests. It is not affiliated with any one spiritual method or tradition; it describes a wide range of consciousness-based practices intended to support collective transformation. It is also no coincidence that gentle activism is on the rise as a planetary force in the digital age. The Internet and its associated technologies are enabling new capacities for collective awareness, the transformative potential of which we are only beginning to perceive.
The connection between personal and collective transformation
It is important to realize that the processes of individual and collective transformation are deeply interconnected. The work that an individual does on himself not only enables him to become a purer and more effective instrument for collective healing, but at deeper levels can itself be a source of transformation whose effects extend beyond the individual. Jungian researcher Marie-Louise von Franz (1985) expresses this idea as follows:
Whenever an individual works on his own unconscious, he invisibly affects first the group, and if he goes even deeper, he affects large national units or sometimes even all of humanity. Not only does he change and transform himself, but he has an undeniable influence on the unconscious psyche of many other people. Conversely, whenever an individual engages in a practice that is intended to affect collective transformation, he himself is inevitably transformed. By participating in the practice, he establishes contact with a source of healing wisdom that cannot but positively affect his own consciousness..1von Franz, M. (1985). The transformed beserk: Unification of psychic opposites. Revision, 8(1), 17-26.
Skepticism and evidence
Needless to say, the hypothesis of subtle activism goes beyond the framework of current orthodox scientific theories and may arouse skepticism in many of us. The power in question is so subtle that, in contrast to more obvious forms of action, it may seem like an insignificant factor in influencing events in the public sphere; we cannot see the results with our own eyes. Therefore, we must trust that our subtle actions have an impact on the world. However, our modern scientific culture has taught us to deeply doubt the reality of invisible or non-physical dimensions.
Nevertheless, several empirical attempts have been made to assess the social impact of mindfulness-based practices, with impressive results. The most notable of these is the series of studies on the so-called Maharishi effect, conducted by researchers associated with the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement. The series includes more than forty studies (including more than twenty published in peer-reviewed academic journals) that consistently show statistically significant correlations between the presence of large groups of meditators and improvements in social harmony in surrounding cities. A detailed analysis of this research shows that, despite the assumptions of many skeptics, its results hold up to critical scrutiny. (See Chapter 3 of my book Subtle Activism: The Inner Dimension of Social and Planetary Transformation, where this analysis is discussed in detail.) More general support for the principle of nonlocality can be found in the extensive parapsychological research, which offers substantial empirical evidence of nonlocal interactions between mind and mind and mind and matter, resulting from over a century of scientific investigation.
Coherent group consciousness is the gateway to the next level of human evolution
In my academic research, I found that not much was known (or at least not publicly written about) about how to actually practice gentle activism. There were snippets of this wisdom to be found in various traditions, but overall the field seemed to be completely undeveloped. In 2006, I launched the Gaiafield project with my colleagues Leslie Meehan and Sean Kelly, to advance the study and practice of gentle activism. Early on, we formed a Wisdom Council of eight to ten leaders in the field, each of whom brought considerable independent experience in facilitating spiritually-based activism. We began in 2008, meeting weekly via teleconference to practice gentle activism together. These conversations became a kind of living laboratory in which we experimented with different approaches to collective transformation. Over the years, we developed a standard practice that we called Gaiafield Attunement, which involved holding a pressing collective issue in a group field of deep contemplation. This practice reliably generated deep intuitive insights and became a solid foundation for our approach. However, I was convinced that much more had to be revealed about the art of collective healing.
In 2014, after finishing my book on gentle activism, I was able to take a long break for the first time in many years. During this time, I had a sincere prayer to better understand how to facilitate collective transformation through the practice of gentle activism. A few months later, after a significant spiritual breakthrough in my personal life, I received a message about a specific creative way to harness the power of group consciousness to support collective transformation. It was a very exciting time of discovery and revelation.
Many spiritual traditions subscribe to the idea of a subtle body that underlies the physical body. A central part of the method I was shown is the co-creation of a subtle group body. Participants are guided step by step through the process of merging their spiritual centers and co-creating a group heart, group mind, and group will. This process consistently leads to a deep level of group cohesion. A new subtle group “organism” is created with higher spiritual abilities. In particular, it becomes an extraordinarily powerful transmitter of the sacred into the collective.
The conscious group "organism" or group field possesses a complex blend of spiritual qualities that enable it to absorb and metabolize collective events and to respond to them intentionally in ways that are beyond the capabilities of most individuals. Where one person in the group is weak, another is whole. In this way, the group field has a harmonizing effect that compensates for the deficiencies or egoistic distortions of any of its members. Participants are thus simultaneously engaged in the process of co-creating the higher capacities of group consciousness and at the same time are themselves healed and uplifted by these capacities.
This last point is important because creative responses to the enormous collective challenges we face will not emerge from the same states of consciousness with which we currently identify. In addressing these challenges, we must be willing to undergo fundamental transformation ourselves. We are all called to higher levels of integration, both personal and collective. A cohesive group field accelerates this process by supporting all its members to rise in consciousness together.
When we encounter fanatical or fundamentalist forces in the world, we can often be confused about how best to relate to them. It is not always clear whether to confront them with unwavering strength, to show them extraordinary compassion, or to respond to them in some other way. However, the group field seems to “know” how to respond to these forces with the right combination of qualities—sensitivity and strength, love and power, joy and sorrow. By meeting these extreme manifestations with such attuned consciousness, the group field performs a service that has a profound, if imperceptible, effect on external reality. That which cannot be felt or faced persists. That which can be faced with wisdom and presence is transformed.
The implications of this perspective for those engaged in spiritual work are profound, as it shifts the goals of the journey and opens up many new and expanded possibilities for spiritual fulfillment and expression. The spiritual path is less focused on achieving personal liberation and more on exploring the world-healing abilities that arise in highly cohesive groups of spiritually sovereign individuals. I believe that such groups have the potential to exert a powerful magnetic influence on collective consciousness; they become attractors at a deep level around which human consciousness and society can self-organize in new ways that are much more deeply in tune with the whole of life.
The Gaiafield Project and the Institute for Gentle Activism
For those who want to explore the path of gentle activism more deeply, the Gaiafield Project provides a range of free public programs and events. We currently offer the Global Shift meditation series, held on the first day of each month (in partnership with the Shift Network), and the Earth Treasure Vase Global meditation series, held every month at the full moon (in partnership with the Earth Alliance). We also send out a monthly e-newsletter.
Through the Institute for Gentle Activism and the Shift Network, I lead online courses on gentle activism using the principles outlined above. We also serve a growing global community of gentle activists through our Gaiafield Community membership program.