Once I was at a dinner with a group of professors that my partner (at the time) was interviewing with. While chatting with someone next to me, I got distracted when I heard one of the professors say, “I can’t believe people still think racism is even an issue. I mean, slavery ended over 100 years ago.” Excuse me?
I turned towards that side of the table and pointed out that in fact, while slavery had ended in 1865, segregation didn’t end until 1964 (and that was only on paper), and many Americans in a recent poll said they’d rather be blind than Black, which says a lot about where racism is right NOW. Then I took a sip of wine from my glass and waited for a response. The rest of the dinner is fodder for another time.
Was it scary to do that? In some ways. But really, the passion I felt about speaking the truth overcame that.
Staying true to ourselves even if we “disappoint” others is essential. Always – but especially now.
So today we’re diving into Spiritual Audacity, not just for our personal well-being, but for the collective moment we’re living in. What it really means to stay awake and grounded in a time when fear, polarization, and political chaos are pulling people into what seems like either collapse, chaos, or numbness.
If you’ve been sensing that the moment we’re living in is asking for a deeper kind of courage from you, you are reading the room correctly, my friend!
The phrase “spiritual audacity” comes from Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and he wrote to President JFK and said that the moment called for “moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.”
So spiritual audacity is really a kind of love in action, right?
The courage to speak and act clearly, lovingly, and honestly from our open hearts. It’s courageous, compassionate, and committed to the liberation of ALL beings.
In our own lives, spiritual audacity is the energy that lets us take risks that are aligned with our deepest values and longings.
You’ve probably noticed that in yourself, this kind energy starts to arise more easily when something matters a lot to you.
But we can lose our connection to it when we buy into “the lie of separation,” because then we feel cut off from our wholeness – and from each other. And this leads to more violence, authoritarianism, and othering, like we’re seeing right now.
So this ziji for spiritual audacity actually comes from remembering our connection.
And authentic Spiritual Audacity will require us to often disappoint others in order to stay true to ourselves.
Now as you might have guessed, I’ve disappointed a lot of people (like my dinner party example). And it was not comfortable.
But you know what? It was totally worth it, because it was absolutely necessary in order to stay true to who I am and what I believe in. To stay aligned.
It can be hard to disappoint others to stay true to ourselves. But you know what’s even harder in the long run? Disappointing ourselves.
So here’s the deal: no matter how we choose to use our Spiritual Audacity, a huge part of it is will require this capacity to be with the discomfort. That’s part of the price for evolving and moving towards the life and society we want to create.
And if we aren’t disappointing others, the truth is we aren’t really in the game. That’s one thing I’ve learned for sure.
So consider, “Who will you need to disappoint to move one step closer to the world you want to live in?”
Another thing to remember is that spiritual audacity doesn’t come from anger or hate – although for sure anger can give us the energy to take action (initially).
Spiritual Audacity ultimately comes from love of life, our compassion, and our sense of justice, otherwise the anger wouldn’t arise!
It doesn’t need to be loud or dramatic or heroic. It might just look like the willingness to stay with the present moment when it’s tempting to run, tune out, or turn away. Or like the willingness to tell the truth without also trying to use it to punish someone. It can look like setting boundaries and saying no, or HELL YES!.
And right now, in this moment of history, it seems to me that this kind of courage isn’t optional. It’s essential.
We’re living through a political landscape in the U.S. that is strained in ways we haven’t seen in generations. The rise of extremism, the erosion of basic social norms, the way truth itself has become contested terrain.
And I don’t know about you, but emotionally, socially, spiritually, we are tired. Like a soul-level fatigue. The kind that comes from being inundated with crisis and conflict for so long that numbing out is a kind of self-preservation.
In times like these, our nervous system goes into survival mode. And survival mode has two main settings: collapse or reactivity.
When we collapse, we become passive, hopeless, cynical. When we react, we lash out, polarize, and dehumanize. And we’re watching how both of these reactions are happening across the entire country right now.
This is why spiritual audacity matters. It’s the middle way between numbness and aggression. It’s the capacity to stay rooted, awake, human, fierce, energized, and present while this is happening.
And it starts with the willingness to turn toward our own lives instead of away.
We can see it in our Buddha nature – that part of us that’s never broken; our basic goodness and ultimate wisdom and compssion. You might think you haven’t ever experienced that part of you, but it’s there when we are out in nature and feel connected to everything and everyone. When our heart opens as we watch someone we love passing away. When we choose to take a risk to believe, once more time, that it’s safe to forgive.
So spiritual audacity isn’t about performative courage. It’s about refusing to betray ourselves.
And the thing is, in these times, staying connected to ourselves is an act of resistance. Because the reality is, people who are grounded and present are much harder to manipulate, divide, and scare into silence.
What makes spiritual audacity powerful is not that it fixes everything, because it definitely doesn’t. It’s that it interrupts us when we’re locked into the lie of separation, our old stories.
It wakes us the f*ck up. It says, “I’m not abandoning myself, and I’m not abandoning reality. And I’m not abandoning you or humanity.”
I think it’s important to say that you don’t have to be an activist to embody spiritual audacity. You don’t have to lead a movement or give a speech or change the world. You just have to be willing to meet your own life and what’s happening in the present moment without running away. Each moment.
Because when we stop running from ourselves, we stop running from each other. And when we stop running from each other, we can actually build something based on trust, community, love, care, compassion, and even resilience.
Spiritual audacity is the inner foundation that makes our outer courage possible.
And we need both, right? We need inner steadiness and outer integrity.
Not one or the other. Both.
So my friends, the shape of the future depends on the thousands of small, often unnoticed choices we make every day about whether we will meet each moment with fear or with presence. With love.
This is why spiritual audacity matters.
Because right now, the moment we’re living in requires us to stay awake. Not comfortably numb, not even comfortably awake.
Courageously awake.
You will learn:
- Why speaking up matters when truth is being distorted.
- How spiritual audacity becomes love in action.
- How the lie of separation weakens us, and connection strengthens courage.
- Why disappointing others is often necessary to stay aligned.
- How anger can catalyze action without taking over.
- How collapse and reactivity keep us stuck, and what the middle way looks like.
- How spiritual audacity interrupts old stories and reconnects you to your basic goodness.
Resources:
// Episode 37: How to Disagree Like a Buddha
// Episode 154: Off the Cushion – Activism + Spirituality
// Episode 252: Resistance Calisthenics for the Rebel Ones
// If you’re new to the squad, grab the Rebel Buddhist Toolkit I created at RebelBuddhist.com. It has all you need to start creating a life of more freedom, adventure, and purpose. You’ll also get access to the Rebel Buddhist private group, and tune in every Wednesday as I go live with new inspiration and topics.
// Want something more self-paced with access to weekly group support and getting coached by yours truly? Check out Freedom School – the community for ALL things related to freedom, inside and out. We dive into taking wisdom and applying it to our daily lives, with different topics every month. Learn more at JoinFreedomSchool.com. I can’t wait to see you there!
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