One of my favorite professors used to offer that in accord with its origin in Latin, the word “radical” meant to get to the root of things. That is how the term is used in mathematics. Though some will try, who can reasonably argue with math? Thus it is that I go back to the origin of the term “resolution” to think about this new year, 2024.
One of my daily devotional practices is smaraṇa, which I learned from Bill Mahony’s book Exquisite Love: Heart–Centered Reflections on the Nārada Bhakti Sūtra. My interpretation of this Sanskrit word is that the -ana suffix, like that which makes asāna “seating” or “posing” rather than seat or pose, is like -ing in English. Thus it turns the word smṛti, “that which is remembered” into “remembering,” or as I like to say, for dramatic effect, “memorying.” In the Tantrik view, concealment and revelation are two of the acts of Śiva, or as Trevor Hall intones in his song “Bowl of Light.”
We forget and remember
Trevor Hall – “Bowl of Light”
And we forget again
But this life is a circle
And it’s coming back around
Coming back again
I argue that spending time each day with our memories is a devotional practice. It’s also one which marks what changes and what abides in our lives.
Along these lines I came across this gem from 2019 in my memories.
If we are to be “radical,” to get to the root of things, then the origin of the word “resolution” is an enjoinder not to rigidity but loosening. I’ve been “loose” about “resolutions” since I stepped onto the yogic path, taking inspiration to call my New Year’s commitments “intentions.” But this year, I have “resolved” to do one things among many to which I recommit myself. I’ve resolved to write more purposefully.
How do I reconcile the determination of a “resolution” with this radical sense of loosening? In conversation with a dear friend during a yoga workshop with Todd Norian this past weekend, this meant to release the sense that I had to account for everything others have said on a topic before writing down my own truth. This sentiment originates in the academic idea of a “literature review.” While I think that is a necessary step in “purposeful” writing, it is not an essential step in beginning again, of recommitting to writing.
There are of course salient ideas I need to engage in this process, most notably Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, which I’m reading currently, Conspirituality,by Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker, which I’d begun, and American Detox, by Kerri Kelly, which I’d already begun.
Part of the fire which fuels my desire to write is the project that I’ve made halting attempts toward for at least a dozen years. All of these authors speak of their personal journeys writ political. Mine has been to find liberatory perspective in both sociology and in yoga and other wellness practices. Neither has been ultimately sufficient. My desire is to articulate the systematic unity in them. As the liberation theologian Gustavo Guttierez has argued in The Power of the Poor in History, “There is a mutual dependency, and reciprocal demands, between the human heart and its social milieu, based on a radical unity.”
The modes of sociological research include exploration, description, and explanation. The authors of Conspirituality, beginning with their podcast, but extending to their book, do a great job of spelling out the “diagonalist” turn of many wellness influencers toward fascism. I think they fall short of the task of explanation as they locate the causes of these turns in the “narcissism,” for instance, of cult leaders. I think this is pop psychologically reductionist. As I will explore in a later blog post, sociological research on cult dynamics that has been available for decades shows two important findings of a more social perspective. One is the move from a focus on social characteristics of cult adherence to the organizational practices of cults. The other is the historic ebb and flow between movements of social and personal change.
I shall write on other topics as well. One great tragedy of the rise of fascism in US politics is that it detracts from globally collective problems like the climate crisis. This morning, I took the personal opportunity of documenting yesterday’s personal wellness walk, to pay tribute to the ache of Gaia, our Mother Earth, “source of all thanks” in the Haudenosaunee “Words that Come Before All Else,” that I learned of in Braiding Sweetgrass. But I documented that observance and wellness journey with a view toward shifting the politics of the climate crisis, both locally and globally.
That’s more than enough for now. I gotta go make soup.
Dance Like Fire 