| FIRE IN THE LAKE By Ko Imani [email protected] "DOCTOR, DOCTOR! IT HURTS WHEN I DO THIS�" Many Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender activists approach their activism the way Rod Tidwell, Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s character in the 1996 film Jerry Maguire, approaches football. As Tom Cruise's character, Jerry, puts it, "When you're out there it's all about what you're not getting! Who's not giving you your contract. Who's not giving you your 'kwan.' And that is not what inspires people." As Ram Dass tells Mark Thompson in Gay Soul, "If I have a model that society should act a certain way toward me and they don't, I suffer. If I don't have that model, I don't suffer-they act the way they do, and I'm responding like a tree on a river. The tree doesn't have a model for how the river should be." Queer people actually participate in the creation of our experiences through our reactions to our circumstances. When we deny this truth we tend to get on a very high horse, and out of that perspicacious feeling of superiority it is easy to wag a finger and say, "Society, you should treat me better!" and then experience existential suffering because of the lack that we perceive. We would not experience our condition as innately unsatisfactory if we did not cling to the idea that we were 'without.' With external forces, we are complicit in co-creating our psychological suffering, and the existence of such suffering reflects an attempt on our part to exercise traditional power by dominating, judging and separating. Marianne Williamson enlarges this point in Illuminata: A Return to Prayer: "There is an old clich�, 'You can see the glass half empty, or you can see it half full.' You can focus on what's wrong in your life, or you can focus on what's right. But whatever you focus on, you're going to get more of. Creation is an extension of thought. Think lack, and you get lack. Think abundance, and you get more." This idea is the elder sibling of what social psychologists call the "saying-becomes-believing" effect. When we speak or write on behalf of a certain point of view, we come to believe that point of view (positive or negative) more strongly. How we think, what we say and how we behave directly effect how we feel, and we can use this knowledge to help ourselves avoid suffering and become the people we've dreamed of being. Similarly, like some kind of behavior or cognitive therapy, donning the "Shirt of Flame" reduces our self-defeating patterns, or schemas, and co-created suffering (induced by our own attachment to ideas of what we're not getting and the ways we are abused or disappointed). It encourages us to relinquish our 'victim mind' and interact with self and others in positive ways. Positive thoughts, words and actions are the only way for us to develop communion with others-true Power. With or without "a model for how the river should be," the tree in Ram Dass' example cannot effect the river. The tree cannot exert any external force on the river [traditional power] and has no internal influence because it is not part of the river [genuine Power]. We LGBT people, on the other hand, are part of human societies and cultures, and so we have the opportunity to develop the genuine Power that can change our "river's" course. Extricating ourselves from the thoughts that cause our existential suffering (i.e. "society isn't treating me as it should" and all the afflictive emotions that come up with such thoughts, including alienation, disappointment, anger, grief, malaise and so on) does not mean that we deny our understanding of a better way for society to function or that we do not work to create positive change. The motivation for our activism is simply re-languaged: We do not engage in social change work because we lack anything; our activism is an expression of our desire to help ourselves and others achieve genuine happiness and avoid suffering. GLBT people who put on the Shirt of Flame are conscious of the selfish component of our work-that we desire the cessation of our own suffering and the development of our inner capacity for genuine, long-lasting happiness (and what could be wrong with that?). At the same time, without deep compassion for self and others, and for the natural world, we cannot behave in ways that develop communion, trust and understanding: true Power. Queer activist and author Ko Imani lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with his partner and their puppy. This article is excerpted from Ko's must-read book, Shirt of Flame: The Secret Gay Art of War which will be available soon. Visit Ko online at www.geocities.com/newlgbtactivism. [Return to LGBT Columns] [Return to Spirituality Columns] [Return Home] |