Artwork©Soleg/123rf

Between the California wildfires and so many other distressing events happening all around the world, this David’s Desk #178 column from Lorian.org is being reprinted from 2022.

For many reasons, there are many people in our area who are experiencing food insecurity. To meet this challenge, neighborhood food banks gather and distribute food to those in need. These food banks are invaluable not only as a place from which to receive help but also as a central place, a hub, to receive donations of food and money. If I contribute to my local food bank, that’s a way for me to reach and help those families who have needs but who are unknown to me personally. Our local food bank does know these specifics and can distribute aid accordingly.

My experience embraces the reality of a subtle, non-physical dimension of spirit and energy in which we are all profoundly interconnected, even, to borrow a word from quantum physics, “entangled.” What affects one can affect all, and vice versa.

Consciously or unconsciously, we all participate in the subtle dimension of the world. When we are aware of this as a reality in our lives, we discover we have the ability, through thought, feeling, imagination, and embodiment, to create a field of energy around ourselves that can hold a spiritual quality such as love, peace, courage, compassion, and the like. Such a field of energy, when shared with another, can be a source of vitality and blessing, transferring that quality from our life to theirs. As part of their life and subtle energy field, that shared quality can make a difference.

What we create through our love and caring can be shared through our love and caring. Most importantly, where the subtle dimension is concerned, distance is not a factor. Resonance is. If I can feel connected with someone in my mind and heart, then it doesn’t matter where that person is in the world. As far as transferring that energy field of quality from my life to theirs is concerned, they might as well be standing next to me.

Sharing a helpful, vital, spiritual, emotional, or mental quality with another who is in difficulty or who is suffering somewhere in the world, in order to enhance their ability to deal with and change that difficulty, is called subtle activism. It can envelop a person who is in despair with hope, with courage, with clarity, and with attunement to their own sacred core. Such subtle activism can be directed towards individuals or towards environments or towards collective fields of thought and feeling.

The more specific one can be when doing subtle activism, the easier it is to establish resonance between yourself and another (even when that “other” may be a collective field of energy shared by many). Simply put, a general rule of thumb is that you can share best with whom or what you know best. For example, if I know a family who is suffering from food insecurity, then I can bring them food directly, and more importantly, I know exactly the kind and amount of food that they need. I can tailor my response to their specific situation.

There are light banks in the subtle dimensions held and managed by various spiritual beings whose purpose is to do exactly what a food bank does: to receive donations of light, of prayers, of goodwill and blessings from individuals who wish to help but don’t know specifically where their good energies should be directed.

But when it comes to subtle activism, more often than not, I don’t have that kind of specific connection or information. Here is where the example of the food bank is a useful metaphor. There are light banks in the subtle dimensions held and managed by various spiritual beings whose purpose is to do exactly what a food bank does: to receive donations of light, of prayers, of goodwill and blessings from individuals who wish to help but don’t know specifically where their good energies should be directed. Such light banks do know and can distribute or share these blessings specifically with other individuals and situations that are reaching out for spiritual help, for guidance, and for blessing. In my own subtle activism work, therefore, I connect with an appropriate light bank and know that by adding my intention and blessing to it, help will be given where it is needed, even when I don’t know who or what that recipient may be.

To help you visualize this process, here is a sample example of how I might go about this. If you wish, you can adapt this example to your own unique style and way of engaging with subtle and spiritual dimensions.

I begin by imagining what quality of subtle, vital energy I’d like to share with people in California and thus which I’d like to donate to the Light Bank. Let’s say, I’d like to share the qualities of courage, steadfastness, hope, and resilience with the citizens of Los Angeles as they cope with the devastation of the landscape and the loss of their homes and businesses. The first thing I do is imagine as fully as I can what I feel like when I embody these qualities. I don’t want this to be just a mental or imaginative image but something I really feel in my body. This aspect of embodiment is important. We generate subtle energies and qualities as a full person, not just as an act of thought or feeling, a mind or a heart. Our body is definitely a participant in the process.

Once I have this felt sense and I can feel the quality or qualities I wish to share as mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical realities in and around me, then I put my imagination to work. Subtle allies can read my intention and receive my donation. I give thanks to the light bank, affirming that it knows how to both magnify and distribute my blessing and contribution of energy to the city of Los Angeles, to its overlighting angel, and to the people who are part of that city.

The important point about subtle activism is that it is rooted in the fact that we are all part of one world, which includes a shared ecology of spirit and energy. None of us is without the power to contribute to this shared world and help nudge it in directions of wholeness. We are all citizens of every country on Earth, part of nature, part of Gaia.

Subtle activism is a finger pointing to this reality as well as offering a way of acting from that connectedness for the blessing of all. May all our light banks be filled to overflowing, their blessings advancing goodwill and peace on Earth.

Spiritual visionary David Spangler is a founding member of Lorian, a spiritual and educational organization founded in 1974, committed to supporting, exploring and engaging with the sacred at the heart of all life. Read more of David’s writing along with other inspired authors at www.lorian.org.

Thich Nhat Hanh, 1926-2022, Buddhist monk and founder of Plum Village. Artwork courtesy Sujata Agarwal

Find holistic Meditation practitioners in the Spirit of Change online Alternative Health Directory.

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