OVERVIEW
In his book “The Four Pivots, Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves,” Shawn Ginwright challenges the prevailing notion of a relentless hustle culture that glorifies constant busyness and he urges us to embrace a more sustainable and holistic approach to life. Ginwright emphasizes the importance of finding our flow, a state of being in which we are fully engaged, aligned with our passions, and connected to our purpose. Join us to explore the pivot from hustle to flow, allowing us to tap into our inner wisdom and create a more just and compassionate world.
TRANSCRIPTION
So I just wanna share a little bit, and I’m already going off on a tangent, so I’ll try to reel myself in. Um, that song, th this is an example to me of Mike, uh, what we’re talking about here from Hustle to Flow, um, Sean Gen Wright’s book, the, the fourth pivot is from Hustle to Flow. And that’s my talk today. And this idea that when we are in flow, that we are engaged and things flow effortlessly. And my experience of preparing for the talk this week, I get into my intellectual stuff. I have all the things I think I need to say and cover, but I was really practicing, how do I get into alignment with this? How can I be in flow? And uh, a friend of mine, one of my mastermind partners, Jeff shared with me that he’d been to, uh, a music festival last week and he heard Michael Franti sing and he was going on and on about him.
And I’m like, who is this guy? So, because we live at a wonderful time on the planet, when I can ask Alexa to play songs by Michael Ti <laugh> and similar artists I was listening to, to that music and that song came on and I was like, this song is amazing. It speaks to, um, meeting violence with peace, the flower and the gun. It speaks to no one taking your pride from you in letting your spirit soar. It is all the things we’re talking about here this month. So I just invite you to, to check out that song, the lyrics to it, and also, um, just to take that as a demonstration of when you’re in flow, when you align with flow. The universe sort of loved that song to me. And then that song sort of began to inform my talk. So there’s a famous photo of a young man, uh, placing the flower in the barrel of a gun in the 1960s.
Um, and this was based on the movement, the flower power. Now, I knew about that movement when I was a kid, but I don’t think I fully comprehended what it was about. I thought it was cool cuz it was about flowers, <laugh>, but it was an anti-war movement. Started in Berkeley, California, um, against the Vietnam War. And the writer, um, the beat author Alan Ginsburg, wrote an essay about how to make a march slash spectacle. And he prompted the use of flowers, handing flowers to police officers, to politicians, to spectators, um, to what they, when I was researching this, uh, fight violence with peace. Now the very idea of fighting violence with peace, there’s a little misnomer there, right? It’s, um, the challenge is when we resist something, we give power to it. But the idea was there to meet the violence with peace, to be the flower in the gun. So Mother Teresa would say, I won’t participate in an anti-war demonstration, but I will join you in a peace rally.
Ernest Holmes would say, to be for something and against nothing. And I’m gonna segue just a bit here, but I’ll tie it back together. Sean Ginright in the four pivots says, our capitalist culture has us believing that we have to work hard to get ahead and relentlessly fight for success. There’s always this fight, but what is the real expense? Burnout, depression, disease, and that divisive othering, because we’re competing, we think we have to compete with others or we won’t get ours. But that’s not the truth of who we are. That’s not who we are at our essence. It may be how we’re being. I’m wobbling here. It may be how we’re being, but it’s not our true nature. When we are aligned with spirit, when we are aligned with love, we more freely access our innate strengths and gifts. We creatively express from our authentic selves. We have the freedom to be who we are, and it is enough.
And then we find effortless flow in our pursuits when we’re willing to step into that, to let our guard down, to let the fight down and open to flow, ease comes to us. Creative insights come to us. The shift from that contracted state of fight, flight, or freeze to the more natural state of freedom our open state offers, uh, a more sustainable path to personal fulfillment. And it it ripples out into the greater collective wellbeing. So it’s presenting a path forward for our own peace, but for peace in the world, we are where peace begins.
So our only real work is to open to spirit, to allow spirit to express through us, to remember peace, love, wholeness, the truth of our being. So this book, we’re completing the four pivots by Sean Genwright, the four Pivots, reimagining justice, reimagining ourselves. We’re literally looking at justice in a new way and having to reimagine how we are in order to experience justice. Perhaps real justice, because justice is, we’ve been presented it or as it’s often presented, is a fight. And one of the big ideas in the his, his book is, uh, for me anyway, one of the big ideas is that as we do our personal healing, humanity is restored. When we heal and we come to, to, uh, our own humanity. When we accept ourselves, then we ripple that out into the shared humanity. We are in a collective state of wellbeing. So as a quick review, the four pivots as you’ve heard, and you can always go back and listen to the last few weeks.
Um, the first pivot from lens to mirror, not unfamiliar, it’s about awareness. We must go from looking out here through the filter of our beliefs and turn within for self-reflection and take responsibility. And this is how we begin our personal healing. And the second pivot is from transformational, I’m sorry, from transactional to transformative. And this is talking about connection in relationships. So rather than I’ll do this for you and you do that for me, we move into true connection and leveraging that shared humanity of how can we come to together and what can we co-create? And we generate collective care and compassion in that mindset. And the third pivot is from problem to possibility. And instead of, you know, something is wrong out here and you need to fix it or someone needs to fix it, we shift into possibility.
A shared vision is possible. Like we don’t have to agree, we can just experience the possibility of a both and solution as, as they say in the 15 commitments, a win-win. And we’ve all heard that phrase, but specifically the way they describe it, which I really appreciate, is in our culture we tend to be in a competitive, like I win, you lose. And then we have learned that we can compromise and we both do okay, but according to the 15 commitments, we actually both lose when we’re in a compromise. Cuz neither one is really getting what they want. And the the prompt is to step into win-win. How?
When we align with flow, when we let those creative, I wanna say lob, is it LOBs when a softball is lobbed? Uh, yeah. When we open ourselves to that, the, the solutions come when we get out of the struggle, possibility opens the way for new solutions. And the fourth pivot is where we’re landing today. And that is hustle to flow. And it’s really about being in presence. And again, Wright challenges the relentless hustle culture, the, the culture that glorifies our constant busyness. And he’s urging us to, uh, embrace a more sustainable and holistic approach to life.
That busyness is the sort of violence to the self that um, I believe it’s Merton who was in the, the reading that Judy shared today. And an added benefit of flow is that when we are in presence and fully engaged, when we are in that opening aligned with our passions, we feel our purpose, we feel fulfilled, we can bring purpose to our experience. So this uh, pivot from hustle to flow allows us to tap into our, our inner wisdom and our inner guidance. And when we are connected that way it leads to a more just and compassionate world. And I really want us to get that when we are in hustle, we’re cut off from flow. When we are in hustle, we’re cut off from spirit, we’re cut off from our inner guidance. So everyone’s walking around or probably running around, cut off from spirit. In that struggle, peace begins with me. And that’s not just a trite statement, we are individual expressions of the one. I mean, that sounds really cool, but when you really get it, it’s big. There’s nothing I do that doesn’t impact all of you. And nothing you do that doesn’t impact all of us.
And anything that is truly good for one is truly good for all. It cannot be any other way. It is okay for us to be in our good, to receive our good. But if I’m in a contracted state, if I’m stressed out, tense, gripping in fear, struggle, I am not contributing to peace. The war within me contributes to the war out there and the peace within me contributes to the peace out there. So the simple question is, how am I being? And the way I work with this is I check in with my body, how do I feel right now? What’s happening in my body? And I invite you just to take a moment and let’s take a deep breath. First of all, cuz this is all a lot of intense information. Take a nice deep breath, let that go. Move your body, release the tension, release any gripping, any tightness, create that inner peace. You have the capacity to be at peace within your being.
So often we get into this us against them mentality, but we are all one. And in our spiritual exploration, we ultimately must come to surrender. You hear us talk often about the four states of consciousness, the, to me as the victim, by me as the manifester, where we step into responsibility through me, we drop into surrender. And as me as the truth of our being just oneness. And I appreciate this diagram so much, especially when we look at it the way they block it out in a certain format because it shows that from victim into me, we rise up into a healthier ego state in manifestor. But it is in manifestor consciousness where we can have that addiction to busyness, where we get on the treadmill thinking we have to make something happen. And it is in the dropping into deepening through spiritual practice, into through me consciousness where we experience flow, not making manifesto wrong, it’s a very important aspect of our being. But I like to drop in to surrender into flow and allow my doing to be guided by divine inspiration, from flow, receiving that gift of a song that could inform how I could begin my talk without efforting.
So in the context of our June theme, radical Inclusion, when we are dealing in the realm of social justice, we tend to be the exact opposite of surrender. We tend to resist, right? Social justice is an act of resistance in most cases. And Carl Young, the Swiss psychiatrist, says that what we resist persists. And we know that our thoughts become things through our attention. That as we focus matter forms, the more we focus on the problem, the more it takes form. So in consciousness, our work should really be to not let it matter. I love that, that phrase, it doesn’t matter. Think about it. If we’re not putting our attention on it, it won’t come into matter. It won’t turn into form.
So our work is to let it be no thing, it doesn’t matter. But this is where it gets tricky because it would be a bypass to say that I, I can’t, I I I’m not gonna address racism or sexism or genderism or ableism. That would be a form of abuse in itself in my opinion. But we do have to know that anti-racism, antis, sexism, anti anym is still giving energy to it. It still gives form to it. So how do we do this? What are we to do? This is, this is the nuance of where I’m at right now, where my work is and from where I’m standing in this moment, I never claim to have it all figured out, that’s for sure. But what’s here for me right now is that it, it is a both and it is not an either or. We must honor the experience of the one being discriminated against, the misrepresented, the unrepresented. So we have to look at it and understand it and then look within, around what is mine to do with that. Not to stand against anything but to be for the solution, to be for love, to be for compassion.
So we move from transactional to transformative. Not I’ll give up this and you give up that, but really understanding one another because more than one thing can be true at the same time. It doesn’t mean I have to be wrong for you to be right. So that looking within was pivot one, the transactional to transformative pivot two and moving possibility from problem to possibility. Asking what’s possible here is pivot three and then this moving in flow or possibly remaining in flow if you are so aligned already. And just, it’s amazing to me how unlimited the possibilities are. We can all have our needs met. We don’t have to agree the universe comes up with unlimited solutions.
But when we group together in our categories, the categories of our isms, sometimes we are coming together in honor of separation. So we just have to be aware of that. It can just be more trauma bonding. So you hear folks ask, well why do we go into separate affinity groups when we, when we do d, e, i and B work? That’s, you know, if we believe we’re one, why would we separate? And again, it’s a both and we can’t spiritually bypass what is happening. We can’t spiritually bypass the experience of the people who are underrepresented. It’s not sexism unless there is a person who is e experiencing power over the other. It’s not racism unless there is one who’s having power over the other. It’s just, uh, uh, prejudice and bias up until that point. But when you have power over someone else, when you are in an authoritative state over someone else, then it becomes an actual ism.
So we have to look at how we are being, what is our responsibility. And when we separate into, uh, affinity groups, we do that to create ease for people to do that so that we don’t continue to harm someone by our lack of understanding of something or so that we can be vulnerable and admit that we don’t know what we don’t know and not be afraid to talk about it. And in doing this, we open ourselves up, we accept ourselves and, and have more compassion for ourselves so that we can come back together and do the work. We don’t separate to stay separate. We separate, separate as a, as a, an assistance to coming back together in new ways. So as a cisgender older woman, <laugh>, this body is not what our current culture reflects as ideal. So I’m talking about sexism and ageism. Our media reflects the ideal hetero woman as young, sexy, slender in tone, flawless skin. If I compare so much attention,
I
Told Amy the other day in one of our conversations, sometimes I feel, uh, invisible. I know it’s hard to imagine that someone in ruffles and polka dots feels invisible <laugh>. But it goes on in here, right? And Reverend Ruth and Reverend Champion in our workshop, they left us with the idea that we have to accept ourselves. You have to accept yourself before you can do any work out here before you can accept others. It always comes back to love. And love always starts here. So when it comes to our anti ism work, the invitation is to be in the inquiry of can I fully accept myself? Do I fully love myself as I am? What am I afraid of? What am I afraid of losing? Do I feel like I don’t have enough, that I won’t get my share? All of the things that come up inside of us that have us gripping, that put us in that state of resistance
So we can begin there and let down the defense or perhaps the offense and be the flower in the gun. We open to flow. Cuz if I’m in that contracted state, I am not contributing to peace. And when I create peace within, I invite the pathway to peace in the world. So, because I went off on a few tangents, I’m just kind of scouring my notes to see where I wanna go next. <laugh>. And I think where are we on time? Okay, great. I’m gonna just do a little bit of practice. I think that’s a fine place to, to complete. So
I just wanna invite us because this, this is, this is heavy, this is a heavy conversation and I know I was sharing with with Judy earlier, like, I feel like I’m, you know, gonna just get up there and talk about heavy stuff and I’m not gonna be light enough, I’m not gonna be funny enough, I’m not gonna be joyful enough. And it’s like, it’s another example of how we judge ourselves, how we harm ourselves, how we hold ourselves in the place of what they are calling violence within, right? So I’m just gonna invite us to each do our own check-in right now. So just taking a moment to turn your attention within and notice any contraction you have in your body. Notice any tightness or gripping and if you’re not feeling that, God bless you.
<laugh>.
And just an invitation to sort of scan your, your mind and your body for thoughts, feelings that are resisting flow. And perhaps it’s an awareness of something that occurred earlier someday this week or this morning or just something I said that may have triggered a feeling in your body. And just noticing and what is the belief that is in back of that physical sensation? What is the emotion that is in back of that physical sensation? Is there a fear? Is there an anger? Is there sadness? And just breathing into it and expanding it, allowing it to open and asking what’s there for you? What is mine to do here? How do I bring peace to my being? How do I bring love to my being? How do I bring compassion to my being and breathing into that feeling, the opening, allowing ease to begin to move through the body. And if needed, moving the body, shifting the body. You can tighten and release. Stand up if you choose, you can practice the, the butterfly hug that Ruth and champion taught us the tapping. What moves you into a greater state in, and I’m gonna just take a few words from the song.
No one could ever take your pride from you. Speak your truth and let your spirit fly. Because we can be the healing when you’re feeling all alone. We could be the reason to find the strength to carry on in a world that’s so divided. We shall overcome, we can be the healing, we can be the flower in the gun, and in this consciousness of the presence of love, the presence of peace, the presence of harmony within. I affirm that this ripples out into the collective experience. That we are the peace, we are the love, we are the harmony that is wanting to be expressed in the world. We are the answer. We are the love we seek, we are the peace we seek. And I’m just affirming that each of us is allowing ourselves to, to do the rest, to, to take the time for ease and peace and, and play. And, and as skin right says to explore the wildness of ourselves, the the part without social construct to explore who we really are and to step fully into that expression, to be the most free versions of ourselves, the most loving versions of ourselves. And to say yes to that divine expression, to that flow and allowing it to ripple out.
We are the peace, we are the peace we seek. And I simply release this word into the law knowing it is so I call it good. And so.