The power of the inner work

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When you believe as I do
that our world is facing

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great dangers,

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then you know you need to be involved.

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And of course the word
for that is activism.

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You know you need to be an activist.

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But you don't have to go
very far in activism

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to find people who are really
frustrated and burned out.

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They don't like the hate out there.

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And so they fight against the hate

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and pretty soon they hate
the people who hate.

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And eventually, they see what's
happened to me, you know.

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I'm becoming the mirror
image of what I oppose.

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You find people who don't like
all the greedy power hungry elites

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and so they try to get
some power away from them

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and then they find themselves
in a battle for power.

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You see, you find people
who had great ideals

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but then ended up becoming a mirror
image of what they opposed.

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And then you say well how
do I not let that happen

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and not just become passive.

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And that's where I think we discover

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the power of doing our inner work.

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The power of paying attention,

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what people often call
the contemplative way,

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the contemplative life.

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And when we start to go within

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we start to have to come to terms
with what our actual vision of God is.

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Because if we go within
and we are following a God

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who has a side of hate and exclusion

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and revenge and a God
who condones torture

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and genocide and so on, that's going
to affect the way we do our activism.

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But if when we go within,

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we discover as John wrote
in The New Testament,

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that God is light and in God
there is no darkness at all,

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if we discover that that's the God
we actually believe in and love,

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it transforms the way that we
then do our activism in the world.