The Practice of Being the Change You Want To See In The World

Believe it or not, there was a time, for about a day, when I wanted to be a lawyer--just like Mahatma Gandhi. I was a young man at the time and under the spell of reading Gandhi’s autobiography, “The Story of My Experiments with Truth.” This was the book that hooked me for life on India’s timeless verities. It took a deeper reading of his inspiring life story to realize that Gandhi’s power as a leader had nothing to do with his law degree and everything to do with how he lived his truth and mission.

Within social movements, we often hear Gandhi’s phrase, “you must be the change you want to see in the world” as an admonition to “walk our talk.” But the longer I do this work the more convinced I am that there is a deeper truth to Gandhi's call to action that better explains why this unimposing looking figure became such a memorable messenger for this timeless advice.   

I’ve come to believe that, regardless of our mission, to be a truly effective spokesperson for it, we must become the full living embodiment of that message. Our body, mind, and spirit must in effect become a finely calibrated instrument through which our message resonates to the world. How we are, what we feel, the energy we radiate, the way we think and act, and how people experience us determines how effective we are as this instrument

To take this one step further, imagine if you had to walk into a room full of people and convey your mission without ever saying a word. Whatever you wanted others to understand had to vibrate energetically in your being, with such depth of force that everyone there would feel your truth on an unconscious level. From where I sit, possessing that level of authenticity is why Gandhi and other great leaders whose lives became synonymous with their missions, are such emblematic messengers. Far more than simply walking their talk, they allowed their mission to live in their bones and inhabit every cell of their being with full and complete conviction. In effect, they surrendered to their purpose and mission allowing it to breathe through their lives.

To really get this on a deeper level, pause for a moment and think of your own changemaker mission. Now visualize a point in the future when your mission is perfectly achieved and lives fully in the world. Go within and feel how this realization of your inspired vision makes you feel, emotionally, energetically, in your gut, in your spirit. If your vision is as compelling as it needs to be, you should feel completely uplifted and vibrantly energized. This is the experiential feeling you must have today, in your present reality, as you work towards your mission every single day. That’s the true meaning of being the change you want to see in the world.  

A fair question to ask ourselves is how do we get from here to there, if that vision doesn't live fully in us to the degree we’d hope it could. That’s where our meditative mindfulness practice comes into full play. By design, all visions and missions are somewhat aspirational. Their potency derives from their ability to make our current reality feel uncomfortably small and unsatisfying when compared to the envisioned future reality. Feeling this discomfort we are unconsciously driven towards our aspirational vision. From an inner perspective, what that means is that as you hold and feel your mission in your being, you should become aware of tensions, blocks, avoidance and even pain in your psychological being. These feelings will surface more as you ponder all the people and situations that stand in the way of reaching your goals.

To become the embodiment of your mission that you need to be, your job, your inner transformational process, is to use all the tools of your meditative mindfulness practice to dig into those blocks wherever they live in your inner being, and release and shift the energy around them. As you breathe deeper into this practice, gradually you move into an ever greater feeling of openness, expansion, and power. Where you feel fear, anger, doubt, sadness; clearing those feelings becomes your transformational work. As you do this dharma work, your vision, your mission, your purpose will have ever greater space to more deeply inhabit your body, mind, and spirit, allowing you to become the full-bodied instrument of that mission in the world.

The really good news about doing this inner work is that, as you do this clearing, your energy, inspiration, creativity, and passion steadily expands, and your intuitive ability to discover innovative pathways for achieving your hoped for outcomes steadily grows. 

So the next time you hear the phrase, “be the change you want to see in the world,” hear it as a call to practice. Take a deep breath and follow it within to feel how deeply your purpose and mission vibrate within. Then rejoin your transformational practice of becoming the living instrument of your mission, as Mahatma Gandhi was calling all changemakers to be.