The Principles of Spiritual Activism

David Karchere

This poem, Let This Bell Ring, is from Carol Robertson:

Let this bell ring,
Resonating through body, mind and heart.

Let the Master Bell Ringer
Gently remove the quilted layers
Of protection and hurt.

Then this bell will hang
Shining and pure,
Ready to sing forth,
Awaiting the Bell Ringer’s strike.

Peal forth pure beauty,
Love and light together.
Celebrating the new order.

I am this bell.
We are this bell.
Together we resonate through our world.

We offer this weekly Pulse of Spirit for spiritual activists who are actively bringing a message into the world that changes it. We might be spiritual philosophers, practitioners, and many other things. But we are also spiritual activists, keenly interested in bringing something of a spiritual nature into the world that we know changes it. It might be thought that there are other kinds of revolutionary activity in the world—scientific, philosophical, cultural and political—that are more important. But I say that the straw that stirs the drink is spiritual activism.

So we are interested in the principles of spiritual activism. I celebrate the fact that spirituality explicitly entered the political sphere this week in the Democratic Convention here in the United States. Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, made this simple statement: Love wins. Love wins.

The Pulse of Spirit is not a political rallying cry. There are other places for that. But I do celebrate the introduction of spirituality into the political sphere, in language that any could embrace—a universal language of the common spirituality of humankind.

Joe Biden, in his speech at the Convention this past week, made reference to a quote from a civil rights activist, Ella Baker:

Give people light and they will find a way.

And in his own words, Joe also said this:

I will be an ally of the light, not of the darkness.

In a universal language, he was speaking of spiritual activism.

Last week I referenced the celebrated ride of Paul Revere. Paul Revere was a silversmith. In 1792, when his church in Boston inherited a cracked bell, he recast it for them. From then, he went on to cast over one hundred bells in his lifetime. Today, they are rung in churches around the United States.

Paul Revere’s first bells had a poor tone quality. Over time, he perfected his craft. He learned to make a bell that had a sweet sound and a clarion call. He cast bells large enough to resound through a town.

Kari Bye is a contemporary silversmith from Voss, Norway. She speaks about the significance of bells in the time of her childhood. They had no television or Internet, and the bells of the church were an important means of communication, calling people to worship, notifying the town of important events and celebrations.

When I think of Paul Revere and the casting of bells, I think of the necessity that the bell is cast truly with the right metals and in the right way. The cracked bell in his church symbolized what is broken in the human experience. The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, itself, is cracked.

A bell is symbolic of us as individual human beings and of all of us together. It portrays the fact that we are a resonating body. Our collective bell—our ability to resonate—has been corrupted. Yes, there is some resonance. But with a vibration that is not the true tone of humankind. There is another kind of vibration at work that is born out of division—separation from each other and separation from the source of the vibration that rings the bell. Our bell is cracked and unharmonious.

What is the cure? What recasts our collective bell, so it rings harmoniously? Who will strike the bell so it may peal out with a clarion call?

This clearly calls for spiritual activism. We can’t merely philosophize, or attempt to ease our human experience, without fundamentally changing it while the larger discordance goes unaddressed. That is why we are vitally interested in the spiritual principles that allow for the transformation of the human experience, individually and collectively. There is a way by which that happens. There are principles that, if followed, transform us.

First, there must be a harmonization within ourselves and between us. This is the recasting of the human experience so that the bell is tuned properly and can resonate clearly. And then there has to be the striking of the bell—deliberate introduction of an initiating vibration through thought, word, and deed that vibrates the resonating capacity of a human being.

We are interested in tuning in to the source of that vibration, individually and together. The practice of Attunement is about precisely this.

It doesn’t make much sense to strike a cracked bell. So before that happens, our personal resonating chamber has to be harmonized. Our collective resonating chamber has to be harmonized. There is heat involved in that process. If a bell is to be recast, it must go into the fire. And so we allow the very heart and soul of who we are as a person to be exposed to the Fire of Love that melts the metal of our heart, individually and then collectively. That creates harmonization, a coming together, and a re-forming of the metal of who we are as human beings, and who we are collectively.

We can then allow that reharmonized, resonating capacity to be struck by the clapper of the bell. We let it be struck from the Invisible. And then we learn to be strikers of the bell, to speak the words, to do the deeds that get the bell resonating truly—words and deeds inspired by the invisible source of all vibration.

Let’s ask this of any container we happen to be a part of:

What would it take for this group of people to harmonize? Whether it is a group of two or the whole world? What would it take for this bell to be melted, to come together into a newly cast, harmonized, resonating bell so that the sound of the resonance of that group of people is true and clear? So that it can chime out into the world in a beautiful way? And what would it take to allow that capacity for resonance to be rung so that it peals out loudly into the world?

It seems that these foundational principles of resonance have gone so far from human awareness that the possibility of transformation goes out the window, and people see spiritual things as if they are a dream. As if they are not the essential factor in what is happening in our human experience. But indeed they are. We have all had some experience of this. Health in the physical body occurs because of tone, because of the rhythm of breath, because of vibration that’s resonating through the individual human experience. That leads to a transformation personally—new forms of human experience. When vibration is resonating clearly, powerfully and beautifully in the individual, health abounds.

This is a description of transformation. But there is more that comes when our resonating chamber is functioning as it is designed. There is transmutation and ascension in that person’s experience. Things are uplifted, raised to a higher level. Frequency is moving at higher and higher vibrational levels. Awareness elevates. There is the ascension of substance coming up through the human experience.

I would be willing to bet that all who read this Pulse of Spirit have had this experience, to whatever degree. So we know these principles work. When there is real resonance, there is an increase of health and vitality, a change in the way we live, and then not only a change of form but a change of frequency, a change of energy, a change of state. There is transmutation and ascension.

I’d also be willing to bet that not only have we experienced it personally and individually, but we’ve experienced it with other people. The world changed when things began to vibrate. New forms began to be manifest in that collective, whatever it was. But not only were there new forms being born, there was a new vibration, new frequency, an upliftment, a new joy, a new level of creative expression and activity. We share new levels of spiritual intimacy and touch new levels of energy among us. Collective consciousness ascends.

We know these principles work, even if we have forgotten them or, at times, not applied them. The bell may have become somewhat unharmonious. And we might not be ringing it very loudly. But it is still all in place.

Let us now harmonize as the bell. Let us ring the bell by being an expression of the cosmic bell ringer. I’m doing everything I know how to do right now to ring our collective bell.

Truly, we are each here to let our thoughts, words and actions ring the bell. Let it peal forth throughout the land! Remember. Resonate. Harmonize together. Know that Love wins.

Love wins. But to win in our own experience, it has to be able to resonate and peal forth. We have to be willing to be both the bell and the clapper of the bell that rings it.

So, share this vibration of Love. Let Love ring to all others. Take this opportunity to let your heart melt and your soul sing. Let the bell ring out. Let your brothers and sisters know you Love them. Let your Love for them shine. Let your good wishes and your blessings, your care, your upliftment, and the vibration of Love ring out from the bell tower.

The bell tower is symbolic of the pineal gland in our body, at the highest place in us. Let it ring, let it ring. Let it ring. Let it ring.

Let our brotherhood and sisterhood ring out among us and throughout the land. Love wins.

May this bell be heard on every highway and byway. May we take it into every grouping of human beings that we are a part of. May it touch every aspect of our culture, transforming it, uplifting it, and transmuting it. Let this vibration ring out through all humankind, in ascending chords of Universal Love. So may it be now for us and for everyone. So may it be. Aum-en.