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November 16, 2022

How I reply when someone tells Elephant to “Stay in your lane!”

Every. Single. Time. For 20 years now. Whenever we post about “politics,” we get comments lecturing us what we’re about. “You’re not about politics, stay in your lane, Elephant.”

That’s like a friend of yours (or a bully) coming up to you and telling you what you should be more, or less, like—without having taken the time to get to know you.

“I come here for inspiration (escape, really), not caring about others or the world I’m living in.”

We’re not about politics.

But politics are about us.

They affect life: food. Education. War. Peace on Earth. Climate crisis, which affects us all. Healthcare. Pollution. A fair economy. Equal rights for all—or not.

So yeah, we care.

Yesterday I sat down with a multi-millionaire who has more influence than 1,000,000 of us together and I said something about the elections and how we still had a working democracy, whew! He said, whatever, I don’t care about that stuff. I said, you don’t care about your children (climate crisis)? You don’t care about gay rights? He hemmed and hawed and avoided eye contact until we talked about him and his genuine, powerful spiritual journey.

But as I write in my new book, “It’s Never too Late to Fall in Love with your Life,” genuine spirituality has to result in caring more, not less—or it ain’t genuine spirituality. If our path is making us more self-absorbed, our path is based on trying to get away from our and others’ pain. That’s something I call “Gated Community Spirituality.”

Which is exactly what the Buddha had to escape before he could wake up. ~ @waylonlewis

 

 

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