How to Not Lose Hope in a World That Feels Increasingly Dark | Valarie Kaur

If you feel like the world is crashing down, you are not alone in that darkness. This moment of global contraction isn’t necessarily the end of the story, but perhaps the beginning of a difficult birth.

Today we sit down with Valarie Kaur, a renowned social justice leader, lawyer, and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project. A graduate of Harvard and Yale, she is the author of the book, Sage Warrior: Wake to Oneness, Practice Pleasure, Choose Courage, Become Victory.

Together, we explore:

In a time when many feel breathless and afraid, this conversation offers a practical way to reclaim your power. Play this episode to discover how to move from paralyzed fear to courageous action.

You can find Valarie at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript

Next week, we’re sharing a really meaningful conversation with Rachel Zoffness about why pain isn’t just physical, and how we can literally retrain our brains to find relief.

Check out our offerings & partners: 

photo credit: Nina Konji

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Episode Transcript:

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] So I think a lot of us are kind of looking around right now with our heads just spinning. There’s this heavy sense of, you might even call it collapse, or the very least, a constant nagging question of what in the world is going on around us. It’s easy to feel like we’re living through tough and confusing days, but my guest today offers a different lens that has personally shifted how I see the world. Valerie Kaur is a civil rights leader, lawyer, and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project. She spent decades on the frontlines of justice and her latest work, Sage Warrior. It dives into the sick wisdom that helped her ancestors survive their own apocalyptic times. Valerie is someone who has really looked into the eyes of those who mentor harm and chose to extend a hand and not a fist. Not out of complacency or giving up, but out of strength. In this deeply moving conversation, we talk about how to find your post in the world and why letting in pleasure isn’t a distraction. It’s actually essential for the fight we explore. Victory isn’t always about the final result, but about who you become in the process. So excited to share this conversation with you. I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:21] We are having this conversation at an interesting moment in time where I think a lot of people are looking around and their heads are spinning, and they’re kind of feeling this sense of collapse or apocalypse or, you know, like what? Or at a bare minimum, they’re just asking the question, what is happening here? You know, no matter where you come from, no matter what your beliefs are, I think a lot of people are just in this moment of what in the world is going on. And it seems like there’s, you know, there’s just a lot of fear, a lot of harm, a lot of concern. Um, you have this really interesting frame on moments like this, which is more, more of like fertile ground than sort of like the the end of days. So take me into this a bit.

Valarie Kaur: [00:02:22] The future is dark. Is this the darkness of the tomb or the darkness of the womb? What if our America is not dead, but a nation still waiting to be born? What if the story of America is one long labor, a series of expansions and contractions, and we are in a severe and painful contraction? But what if this is precisely the moment to show up in the labor. What if all of our ancestors who have pushed through the fires before us, through colonization and genocide and enslavement and mass incarceration, what if all of them are standing behind us now, whispering in our ear? You are brave. You are brave. What if this is our greatest transition? The midwife says to breathe and to push. Jonathan, I believe that we are living in an era of transition, that our lifetime will be marked by this era of transition. And just as those ancestors who labored for a future they could not see stayed faithful to the labor, so too are we called to that sacred task. I don’t know how many more turns to the cycle it’s going to take to birth the America that is waiting to be born, to birth a planet that knows how to live sustainably with itself. I want so badly to see those futures, but I’ve had to reckon in the last few years, especially every day. Now I’ve had to reckon that I might not live to see that outcome. And yet I can see the task before me, the role that I have to play. And so with ancestors at back in the children of the future and their children before our eyes, can I show up every morning and roll up my sleeves and take a deep breath and make the push that I am called to make? I believe that each of us are called right now to be braver with our lives and braver with our love than ever before. And the only way that I can stay faithful to the laborer is if I’m breathing and pushing with love. That’s how I get up every morning.

Jonathan Fields: [00:04:54] It’s a frame that I think so many. Will not long listening to. And then ask themselves but how, um. How do we live with courage and joy and love. When everything feels like it’s falling apart. You know, like how, how it seems. Yes. You’re not alone. You’re like. And there’s a little voice, I think, inside of so many of us that says, would that that were the our reality. But is it really?

Valarie Kaur: [00:05:25] It’s a question, right? What if this is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? It is both. I think it is important when you feel that breathlessness and that despair that carries information that is so vital. It means that you are awake to the gravity of what we are losing every day with our on our planet and our democracy, the people that we are are losing amongst us. It means that we are awake. And so the sacred task is to stand in those moments when you can taste the ash in your mouth and all that grief and all that pain, and lift your gaze and realize that you are not alone in the dark, that we are right on the other side, reaching our hand. Will you take our hand? Will you take someone else’s hand? Will you breathe and push with them? We don’t go to battle alone. We don’t give birth alone. So what does it mean in that first step is to take another’s hand and then to decide what is the one step we can take together on this precious day with this one sacred life? What is the one push that we can make together and to trust it and to believe in it? Parker Palmer is a great Quaker elder who’s been a godfather to me for so many years, and he once told me after the 2016 election, I’m like, all is lost, all is lost.

Valarie Kaur: [00:06:45] It’s the tomb, after all. And Parker said, don’t measure your labor based on outcomes. Care about the outcomes. We care so deeply about the outcomes. But but the labor is ongoing, and you are part of a generation, generations who are laboring for a just and liberated world. And so our task is to measure our our labor by our faithfulness, measure our success by our faithfulness to our deepest values. Can you stay faithful to the labor? And I have found especially these days, that I cannot labor alone, like I need my beloved’s next to me. I need my husband, my children, my parents. I need my community. I need to invest and deepen, um, in those bonds of solidarity so that I can take that step together. And when you ask, like what people ask me, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? And the truth is, we need people everywhere. Every single one of you, we the laborer. The fight is happening in the streets and in the courts. It’s happening at our kitchen tables and our classrooms. It is happening in our churches and our yoga studios. It’s happening in our hearts every day. Can we stand in that despair and choose love and turn that love into courageous action? Can we see through the eyes of love? Can we see through the eyes of the sage and the heart of a warrior? And I think that is what I believe that we are, we are called to do.

Valarie Kaur: [00:08:08] Right now, when I talk about being braver than we’ve ever been, what does it mean to stretch ourselves? Um. I know that I have been stretched since we last talked, and I noticed that every time fear wants to make me contract, if I can take the hand of a beloved and breathe and push and expand, that I become more than I’ve ever been. And so that’s what I mean about all of us being called to being braver than we’ve ever been to be more than we’ve ever been. And the truth is, when we are leading with love. We can be ourselves. We can practice the world we want and the space between us as we’re laboring for that world to come. I’ve come to believe that laboring for a more just and liberated world with love can be the greatest meaning of life. And so this is an opportunity, a sacred invitation for each of us to be more awake, more loving than ever before, and to trust. Trust in the labor.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:12] You know, it’s interesting you bring up Parker Palmer as well. Um, I had the wonderful chance to sit down with him probably a couple of years ago now and just explore some similar ideas from his lens and experience. And I guess he’s got to be like around 85 ish now, somewhere around there. And it was interesting because he was also sharing his journey. And this relates to sometimes how we show up is that, you know, often the shape of that changes over time, over the seasons of our life. Like he was sharing how when he was younger, he showed up. He was on the street. He was advocating. He was a champion of, you know, the causes. Um, as an activist on the street, in a very physically present way. And over the seasons of his life, that felt like that wasn’t his greatest form of contribution anymore, that he didn’t, he wasn’t opting out of saying what he wanted to say and felt like he needed to say and bring people together in community, but he needed to do it in a different way and more in the role of somebody who thinks deeply connects people in conversation, in, in, in sacred containers and, and shares that with the world. Does that land with you?

Valarie Kaur: [00:10:20] Oh, absolutely. Let me tell you a story. When I was in my 20s, I was in the streets with the bullhorn a lot protesting the Iraq war. And I experienced a moment of police brutality that injured my arm and neck and led to decades of chronic pain. I’m still haven’t haven’t healed from it. And so I took seriously the idea that there are multiple front lines and that we all have a role wherever we are. And so I found other front lines than the streets I went to. Writing and speaking and organizing. And I thought, especially after I became a mama, I said, well, I can’t nurse my babies from a jail cell. So my babies need a mama who comes home every night. That’s the most important thing. And that was in those early childhood years that that was my post, that was my front line. And I thought that once you find it and it’s always that. And then this last summer when our neighbors started to disappear here in Los Angeles, um, as our city was selected as the first city to deploy this, um, force of masked men to abduct and kidnap people off the streets, I realized my children were now old enough to understand what was happening and that they didn’t need a mama who minimized risk. Above all, they needed a mama who showed them what courage looked like. And so I found myself. I’m in my 40s now. I found myself driving to the federal building downtown where the protests were happening.

Valarie Kaur: [00:11:58] This is where they keep people they’ve abducted. And as I was driving there, it was everything that you saw on the news as a helicopters and the rifles and the batons and the tear gas and the cavalry. And I, I knew what I was driving into. My whole body started to shake. I had the jail support number on my arm. I had my bandana in my bag for tear gas, I. My whole body started to shake. It was a little girl in me who was so injured by that officer who knew the cost of courage and I wanted to turn around and it was my grandfather’s voice, right? He told me when I was a little girl. My dear, do not abandon your post. Your post is where your deepest wisdom meets your words and actions. And all that time my post was elsewhere, but now I knew that the city of Los Angeles needed to see faith leaders in the streets modeling non-violent resistance rooted in love. I knew the nation needed to see it. So that became my post. And and there was that little critic, that fear in me that said, you know how dangerous this is. You can lose your other arm. You could not come home tonight, right? And the truth, that voice of fear in you is not wrong about the threat. It’s just wrong about the solution. The solution is not silence. The solution is more solidarity.

Valarie Kaur: [00:13:19] Who can you show up to that front line with? Who will have your back? And so that’s when I called my teammate Anusha. We’re both there now and it was everything that you saw. The tensions were rising between the soldiers and the protesters. And we as faith leaders put our bodies between them and started to sing the old civil rights songs, and everything started to calm down. We prevented so much violence that day and. And suddenly I get a push from behind me, a rabbi. I was like, Valerie, you pray. I’m like, oh, okay, okay. She’s like, no, pray that way. And she turns me around to face this wall of ice agents and officers, and I feel that little girl in me shake again. I look up and I, I remember that the people they’re caging can hear us if we sing loud enough. And so I take a breath and I close my eyes. I remove my shoes. This is how we pray in the Sikh tradition. I’m like, the asphalt is hot under my feet. I close my eyes holding flowers and I start reciting my grandfather Shabad. The song prayer that bad juju. The hot winds cannot touch you. The hot winds cannot touch you. You are shielded by love. And as I was reciting, the people behind me started to recite their ancestors songs and. And it was as if all of those song prayers of love were flowing through the centuries.

Valarie Kaur: [00:14:47] I really felt like it was like a force that was filling our hearts and making the shield. It was so powerful. I opened my eyes and the officer is this far away from me. The baton is a few inches away from my heart, and I realized that while my eyes were closed, they had advanced their entire line, so they were almost on top of me. You know what? I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t shaking anymore. I don’t know how to tell you this, but it was. It was as if I. In that moment, I was invincible. Like they could arrest me. They could beat me. They could even take my life. But they could not end me. Because I was part of a song of love that began long before we were born. Would continue long after we go. And that song of love was more powerful than any amount of weapons, any amount of oppression. That song of love was the freedom that I felt. The tear gas canisters go off, the flash bang grenades. A curfew was called and we have to turn back. But I remember that the people in the cages, they. They have to stay and. Right. The solution is not silence. It’s more solidarity. So one week later, the faith leaders. We returned to the federal Building. And this time we brought hundreds of people with us and we were all carrying flowers. And I’m like, what happens if not just one person? But so many of us had that feeling of invincibility and power and demonstrating love above all, what happens? And we showed it.

Valarie Kaur: [00:16:28] We demonstrated it. We were singing together. And when I spoke that day, I turned to the agents and I asked them, who do you want to be in this moment in history? What does courage look like for you? What does risk look like for you? Is this who you want to be? And we finished singing. And I knew that. Right? Revolutionary love is leaving no one outside of our circle of care, right? That’s what I declare. And so I turned, and I. We left the flowers for the families, but we also left. I turned and I placed flowers at the feet of each of these ice agents and their full military gear and their weapons and their masks. I turned around to leave. The vigil is over and I hear, ma’am. I turn around and he gestures me to come toward him. So I stepped toward him and he says, thank you. And he puts out his hand. What do I do? In this very spot. You pointed your rifle at me. You held your baton over me, and now you extend your hand to me. What do I do? I had to remember my own words. I wrote in Sage Warrior. I wrote, revolutionary love is the choice to block your actions with one hand and extend the other with the hope that one day you will take it or your children will take it.

Valarie Kaur: [00:18:15] For the brief high of domination is nothing compared to the infinite love and joy of true community. So I took his hand. I don’t know whether that officer will stop hurting our people, but I want to be the one who believes in that possibility. That is who I want to be in the story. The story of what we did in LA that summer of resistance started to spread, and as troops and Ice agents began to be deployed in cities across America, people began to show up. And this time thousands of people brought flowers, thousands of flowers left at detention centers and given to agents. People in Portland. They added the the chicken and the frog. Right. We were we were embodying a new way of resisting that was itself showing the world that we wanted a world of, of, of, of love and joy and courage above all. And and here’s the thing that the front line is not only in those streets, the front line is anywhere where we get to choose to be brave with our love. And so my question for all of us right now is, what is your front line in this moment, in your life, in this season, in your life with the sphere of influence you have the courtroom, the boardroom, the classroom, the living room, the kitchen table, the what is your front line and what does it look like to come to your front line with flowers?

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:59] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. You use the phrase, um, sage warrior in there, which is also the name of your, um, your newest work. And you also.

Valarie Kaur: [00:20:12] Can I just say, I found those words in your book! When you asked, like you define the sage as someone who awakens insight and the warrior as someone who gathers and leads. It was so beautiful to see those archetypes, you know, across time and place and in different forms. But yes, my, um, my, my, my, my last book is called Sage Warrior.

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:36] Yeah. Um, and it’s really powerful. And you’ve used, I mean, you just shared it deeply, deeply compelling moment. And if we went back and looked at the transcript of like the, this entire story that you just shared with us, I would imagine the word that is repeated most is love. Um, and, and I don’t want to, I don’t want to just blow past that, you know, and this has been a core part of your philosophy. Um, you know, like for, from the very beginning and it’s, and it’s also, it involves this notion of reframing the quote capital O opponent, you know, um, And also weaving in this notion of oneness, you know, um, these, these kind of really core elements of not just your beliefs, but how you show up in the world. And these are, again, these are these aspirations that a lot of people look and say, well, what if I could see my opponent as not an opponent, but simply somebody else? Like where there is some way that we shared beliefs or values and we wanted the same thing. Like for and from each other, but we just couldn’t get to a place where, um, the mechanism was agreed upon. Um, and in fact, it may be almost violently different the way that we perceive it. What if I could see the other as not another, um, but simply just an extension of me and I an extension of them. These are ideas were like, I think all of us have heard them. All of us have read them. All of us have been preached them.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:13] And, and probably most of us nod along and saying, would that I wish that this was the world that I live in. But is it really. You know, and. I was fortunate to sit down with Ani DiFranco a couple of months ago on the podcast of Dear Sister. Right. Of course, you come up in the conversation because how could you not? Right? And we were talking a lot about her and her relationship to your work and how she tries. And in the early part of our conversation, she was referencing the opponent. By the time we came around, towards the end of the conversation, she was saying, my work in the world right now is basically to stop doing that is to acknowledge the fact that we see the world differently. But how can I see them as me and me as them and stop even using that that label? Um, powerful aspirations. You know, we this undertone of love and connectedness into even moments like what you just described. And then the big question I think so often is how do we operationalize that? Like, how do we go past thinking, that sounds awesome. Wouldn’t it be cool if that was really the way that it worked? But how do we how do we make this an actual part of our day to day reality? I think this is a lot of what you go into in Sage Warrior. So, um, let’s actually just talk about that phrase even like, let’s start out there with like the notion of sage warrior. Take me to what this actually means.

Valarie Kaur: [00:23:46] Well, I’ve spent 20 years of my life organizing around hate. I have made a promise to spend the rest of my life organizing around love. And so your question about how do we operationalize this is the question that I am designing into and organizing around and building. Um, the revolutionary love compass is a tool that we put into people’s hands about how to love others and opponents in ourselves. And we have this beautiful learning hub with free curricula and meditations and guides for how to take the compass into your life, wherever you are. Um, I when we hold the compass in our hands, it requires that bravery. And I had designed the compass, um, when I wrote my first books, you know, stranger. And then when I wrote that book in 2020, it came out in 2020, I didn’t think the world, the world didn’t feel like it was ending. And then it did feel like it was ending between the pandemic and the and the and the racial reckonings. And, um, now the rise of authoritarianism capturing our country and countries around the world with climate catastrophes upon us, it has felt like so breathless. And I realized that if I was going to hold this compass, if I was going to keep leading with love and organizing around it, that I had to go deeper. And so I spent time in the rainforest, with my family, and every morning I would sit next to a river and close my eyes and ask myself, how did my ancestors survive apocalyptic times? How did they confront authoritarian regimes and still walk this path of love? In the Sikh tradition, it’s a tradition.

Valarie Kaur: [00:25:29] 550 years old, our ancestors called us to be Sant Sipahi sage warriors. The warrior fights, the sage loves. It is an ancient doorway into revolutionary love. I believe that I feel strangely prepared for this moment in history, because I had spent all that time in retreat, retrieving the stories of those ancestors and what it meant to be a sage, to see through the eyes of wonder, to be able to look upon the face of anyone and say, you are a part of me. I do not yet know. That is a practice. Our minds are wired to see the world in terms of us and them. And it’s especially rigid in the culture that we live in now. And so to practice seeing all others as kin is a revolutionary practice. It begins within. To imagine our connection to everyone and everything is to produce a sense of awe inside of you. And we can’t live into it all the time, but we can drink from it. And our tradition is called vsmith. Those ecstatic moments where you realize, I don’t know where I begin and you end. I had that a lot when I was nursing my baby daughter.

Valarie Kaur: [00:26:42] I don’t know where I end, where you begin. Lately I’ve been feeling it. As we’re marching in the streets. Singing and the song. Prayers go on and on. Right. I don’t know where I end and you begin. And so those moments of oneness are not throwaway moments, not incidental. There they are insights into the sacred nature of things. And so our task then is to remember what we drink from when we have those sage moments into what we do, and that then drops us into the warrior, the sipahi to, to, to be able to, um, put that love into action for the people who are in front of us and those we are accountable to. My grandfather taught me that my task was to face the hot winds of the world with the eyes of a sage and the heart of a warrior, and that means our ethics and the Sikh tradition are not. It’s not any list of rules or commandments at all. It’s. It’s an orientation, a way of being, a way of seeing that leaves no one outside of our circle of care. All that came down to me through from the ancestors, the the gurus, the mothers and the babies. And so this book became a compilation of stories and scriptures and song prayers that I needed to fortify the sun sipahi in me.

Valarie Kaur: [00:28:02] And truly, you know, because what I do is sometimes really dangerous, especially now, there’s a comfort I have in knowing that my children have now an inheritance that I most wish to give to them so that they can play their role when it comes to be their time and their moment in history. To be as brave as awake, as free. I believe that we all can become sons, Sipahi. Oh, we all can be sage warriors. That this is the deepest ancestral wisdom across time and place to be. To be brave with our love. And I think when we call ancestors saints, we, uh, drain them of their power because we’re saying that we cannot be like them. But to believe truly, deeply that love is our birthright, that you already know how to do this, that we came into the world thirsting for love. We came to the world with eyes of wonder, right? And we know how to be brave. That first time we spoke or did the hard thing or defended someone. We have these capacities within us and our job is to simply to surface them and fortify them, to become more of them. And that’s why we’re building this movement of revolutionary love across the country, why we’re inviting people. Like you said, this is not the world that it is. And you’re absolutely right. But it is the world that could be.

Valarie Kaur: [00:29:22] And the invitation is to practice that world in the space between us, every part of my life. Now, whether it’s my husband coming home and he’s really tired or my children throwing a tantrum, I mean, they’re out of tantrums now. Now it’s more like bedtime, bedtime, bedtime. But there are all these moments right inside your own home, inside your daily life, and then out in the streets and then out in the world and with your public in all the ways, everything I see now, as as an experiment, as a practice space, I have come to see my life as a series of experiments with revolutionary love. And I think that’s the best we can ask of each of us now. It’s like, what do we have to lose? Can you take this compass in your hand. Can you experiment? And you might be surprised by what you find. I’ve been braver than I’ve ever been, and I didn’t know that. That also would mean being freer than I’ve ever felt. In a time when they want to control us, colonize us, suppress us, silence us. I feel so free and so powerful. And I want that for each and every one of us. Who cares? And there’s a way to do it. And our deepest ancestral wisdom shows us how. And sage warrior is one invitation, um, to take that into your life. Mm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:34] I mean, so powerful. And I think it actually makes sense to talk about that word actually powerful. Um, power, because this is a central part of what we’re talking about. Power is intimately involved in everything here. Um, and we have, we have a complicated relationship with the notion of power and also the word power. It’s so often associated with dominance. Yes. Power over. Um, you know, like I get to, quote, control, um, you invite a different frame around power, which is if I’m understanding right, built more around, um, protection. Is that a word that lands.

Valarie Kaur: [00:31:19] Care.

Jonathan Fields: [00:31:20] Care. Tell me more.

Valarie Kaur: [00:31:25] I remember the moment my son was first born and landed on my chest, and I was shaking and sobbing from that rush of emotion. And I thought this was love. I was falling in love, and I was there was a role for the falling. But as I was feeling this rush, I looked over at my mother and she was opening her her bag and taking out her doll and Joel and feeding me like feeding me as I’m feeding her baby, as I’m feeding my baby. And that was the first time I looked at my mother with new eyes, and I realized that she had never stopped laboring for me from my birth now to my baby’s birth, and she had never seemed so powerful. She was teaching me that love was not simply a feeling that comes and goes, ebbs and flows. Sentimental, fickle. Anemic. Right? That love is sweet labor, fierce, demanding, life giving. A choice we make again and again. And when we make that choice again and again, it has the power to transform the world around us. When I think about how terrified I was those early years raising these small brown children in a nation more dangerous for them than it was for me, and realizing that for all my tools as an activist, I couldn’t protect them from the racial slur in the street or the schoolyard, that I might not be able to protect them for what’s coming from them.

Valarie Kaur: [00:33:05] That was I was beginning to learn what black and brown and indigenous mothers on the soil have long learned that we can only give our children a sense of freedom within. In a world that would deny them. We. We can only give our children a sense of their belovedness in a world that wants them to hate themselves, we can only give our children a sense of their power in a world that says that they’re powerless. And then when we do that, when in our in the space between us as mother to child, as families, as communities, as neighbors, we we begin to plant liberation experiments that model what the whole world could one day be. And I believe that these liberation experiments are not like soap bubbles that pop and disappear. I believe that there are sound waves that carry far into the future, just the way I’m talking about hearing those ancestors who practiced that beloved community on the riverbeds of Punjab 500 years ago. I hear them, I hear that music. And now I want to ask, what does that look like now here in the space between us, right? So two so two, 500 years from now, will they hear our song? Will they practice? Will they be inspired? That is powerful.

Valarie Kaur: [00:34:23] That kind of power outlasts any actions that are driven by domination and aggression and oppression. I truly believe this, and I believe that it is up to each of us to to hold fast to that conviction now, to our own sense of agency, right? Otherwise, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we believe we’re not powerful, then we will not be. But if. And that’s what they precisely they want. They want us to feel like only those who hold the reins of wealth and weapons in this world hold power. Only the authoritarians who are willing to inflict violence, to kill civilians, to let rogue agents take the lives of innocent people like they want us to believe that they are the ones who have the power. But it only becomes true if we deny our own. And I notice that when I look at my mother and think about her power and how she has shaped and changed and set me into this life, everything I am, I can access my own power to do that with and for the people around me. And that is how imagine multiplying that and building that. And that’s what movements are made of.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:38] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. And when you frame power in the context of care.

Valarie Kaur: [00:35:47] Yes.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:49] Nobody. Nobody’s excluded. You don’t have to wait.

Valarie Kaur: [00:35:55] Our circle of care. That’s it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:57] Right. You know, it’s like. Because everybody can show up and offer care in even the smallest way. Um, and if that is power, it can really never get taken away from us.

Valarie Kaur: [00:36:07] No, it’s to love is our birthright. And that is the most powerful gift we’re given as human beings. And so why deny yourself the one gift that fills your life with joy? Mm. That’s what I’ve discovered, too. As deep as the despair goes. As the grief goes. As the rage goes. When I continue to return to the labor with love. It always brings the joy of community and connection. Of being alive here and now. In motion in this conversation with you, Jonathan. Oh, that’s what it means, right? To be awake as a sage. To take the wonder and mystery magic of being alive and to be in the current of action together brings all the meaning that makes life worth it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:53] I mean, which also makes me think about the word pleasure, which again is something else that you you dip into. And because oftentimes in moments where we feel like there’s a lot of struggle around us, whether it’s this moment or ten years ago or something very personal in your life, we feel that we actually we don’t have access to pleasure. And in fact, sometimes it extends beyond that. We feel like we shouldn’t have access to pleasure. The moment is too heavy. The moment is too important. This is not a moment about pleasure. Pleasure is taking the energy away from where it should be directed, which is, you know, some some form of progress. You see it differently.

Valarie Kaur: [00:37:31] I wish I learned this much earlier when I was a 20 year old activist in those streets. You know, I my first, oh, all those years where I only knew how to push. I didn’t know how to breathe. I ground my bones into the earth and I called that service. I was always comparing my suffering to the people I was serving. And so of course, I was not worth that. I, um, measured my worth by how little I slept, how much I produced, and how quickly. And it was, of course, that leads to breakdown. Right? And it was, I realized that, um, this is again where community saves you. I just remember back in 2016, after that election, that moment again, I when you continue to not deny yourself the kind of life that you wish for everyone around you. It is probably the greatest act of violence one could commit. And I remember a voice in my head saying after that election in 2016, you’re not strong enough to live in this world. And I’m so glad I said those words out loud because it was my husband who caught me and my mother who caught me. And that’s how I first left the country. For the rainforest to think and write and breathe. And the rainforest, they say, is in many indigenous cultures, like the womb of the earth, like it’s warm and wet and safe and generative. And I know many women, women of color don’t have that option. And I’m so grateful that I was able to save my own life there, to breathe and to know that I was worthy of breath.

Valarie Kaur: [00:39:21] That was the first step. Not pleasure. Just breath. Just rest was the first step for me. And that was the beginning of me understanding that that, you know, my babies in my arms. You are so good. You are so beautiful. You are so beloved. You are worthy of all the gifts and joys and pleasures of this world. You are brilliant. He’s a newborn like you are. And my husband’s like, why don’t you speak to yourself that way? I’m like, oh, I married too. Well. And I realized I had to practice, right? That little critic was so loud in my head. I had to practice. I had to find the voice of the wise woman in me, the way I do this and talk to my beloved baby or my beloved, can I talk to myself that way? And so I got a journal and it says every day, wise woman here, wise woman says, oh my love, that’s what I call my children. Oh my loves, I call my, oh my love, you are tired today. It’s time to rest. You’re gonna pour yourself a cup of tea and you’re gonna sit down. I know the protests are happening. I know you got to speak at that vigil tomorrow, but. And you don’t know how to prepare for this conversation with Jonathan. But you don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be present. She’s talking to me every day. That wise woman. It’s been ten years now. My eldest is now 11, so it’s been 11 years now of practicing listening to her voice.

Valarie Kaur: [00:40:46] And it’s how it’s why I don’t have to continue to be in the rainforest. Now I’m back here. The rainforest is inside of me. The wise woman tells me. Oh my love, rest, breathe. And then the last few years, she’s been challenging me. Let in pleasure. And it was only going back to the ancestors that I understood that pleasure wasn’t a nice to have a modern convention, that actually our deepest ancestral wisdom was about letting in the experiences that would awaken your senses. That pleasure can actually be a conduit to the divine and the beloved. There’s a whole chapter in Sage Warrior called Practice Pleasure, and it tells the story of the guru, Guru Ahmed.s, who’s was sitting in meditation and all. You know, we’re just longing for that connection, that feeling of connection to the oneness that always is. And as he’s connected, as he’s feeling it, you know, the word that comes to his lips. Anand. Anand. Anand. Anand. Which means ecstatic, divine pleasure to be enlightened, to be connected to the one is not a detachment from the body, a mind only experience in my tradition. It is fully embodied. Your body quakes with the waking up, right? The sweat beads. The the heartbeat. The the aliveness of the senses. You are here. You are now and across time and place. All of these traditions are wise as tools call us to pleasure through music and meditation and movement and song and certain substances. Mine is chocolate. I can say cacao is my substance. 100% cacao from the rainforest, right?

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:34] Same here, by the way.

Valarie Kaur: [00:42:38] And sensual pleasure too, right? How many of us as women especially, have been taught to, like, cut ourselves off from that desire, that need and to be able to know that all of these are conduits to the oneness that is around us. One not worth more or better than the other. You get to choose the practices that are most meaningful to you, the practices of Anand. And so once I discovered that, I’m like, well, my gurus tell me that now I’m so much more intentional. We got a record player, I got my instruments. If I’m going to show up in the streets and fight authoritarian forces, and I got to be, I got to double down on my game when it comes to the sage in me so I can be the warrior, right? So now I have music in my life. Every day I have sung it. I have community that I bring into my house all the time. I have my cacao in my desk and I have my mints that I inhale for the deep breaths. Like to be able to take these in. I used to feel so guilty about them. But know my loves. They’re not just like it’s not just okay, it is actually essential. How. How did the. How did our black ancestors stand in those fields and sing songs of freedom that gave them wings, right? How.

Valarie Kaur: [00:43:50] How did our indigenous elders continue to to gather around the fires when their children had been shipped to boarding schools and sing and shake and drum? Right. How how do people all over the planet survive mass graves and the impossible? Their children disappeared. And this is what I did. I traveled to Brazil and Guatemala and South Africa to study other authoritarian regimes this last year. And every time there was a horrific story, you know, the women would do they would. Then the Mayan women, the elders, they would take out the drums and they would start dancing like they would dance with the graves just a few feet away to declare their sovereignty, declare their freedom to let in the pleasure of being alive and saying, we are free. We are liberated. You cannot take that away from us. We are sovereign. And that that is the kind of way we are called to show up now. And that’s why I say the sage who leads with wonder and joy and lets him pleasure is just as important, as vital for the warrior to be braver with voice and action than ever before. And so as you’re listening, like, what do you need more of in your life? Do you need to deepen the sage? Do you need to show up as the warrior? And who can you do that with?

Jonathan Fields: [00:45:02] And I guess part of that is also taking the time to really create the space and pause and, and ask of yourself, um, what is and isn’t showing up? Um, what part of those, you know, like is there, am I all warrior? Am I all sage and what am I? What harm am I doing to myself and to others, or to the causes that I believe in? By basically becoming the embodiment of one half of this really beautiful, powerful stance. That’s not all of it together.

Valarie Kaur: [00:45:43] That’s it. That’s it. To be whole. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:45:51] One of the other things I did want to dip into, and I think it kind of touches on what we’re talking about here also is this notion of, um, and this is from your last book too, um, becoming victory because you kind of referenced it a number of times in a conversation, but not directly in the way that, that you invite people to show up. Um, the phrase is powerful and curious to me. Take me into it.

Valarie Kaur: [00:46:20] This was another thing I learned from going back to the ancestors. Um, guru Gobind Singh was our 10th guru, and he was the one who was charged to fight an emperor who is ruling with authoritarian violence. And there’s a story about how the city of Anandpur was under siege. And the emperor granted the guru who swore on the Quran that he would have safe passage, him and his family, and he’s crossing the river Sirsa in the middle of the night with his children and the last of his warriors. And as they’re crossing this icy river, arrows start to fly and they are under siege. And all of his children are killed, and his mother dies in a tower, and he’s separated from his family, and he’s lost everything. He’s lost his city. He’s lost his family. He has a few people left. He wanders through the wilderness and he’s singing in the wilderness. And we still have these songs that he composed. And when he emerges from the wilderness, he writes this letter to the emperor. That’s called the Zafarnamah, the Epistle of Victory. And it says, essentially, you took my city. My children are dead. I seem to have lost everything. But you are the one who broke your promise. To Allah, to the beloved. And so who is one who does victory belong to? The guru was giving us a new definition of victory. So many people asked me, what do I do? What do I do? And I asked them, well, who do you want to be? Who do you want to be in this moment in history? And if we are showing up with our integrity, our deepest values, our humanity.

Valarie Kaur: [00:48:13] For insisting on love above all, then we are becoming victory no matter what happens here and now. And that’s why I think that moment for the first time in my life, I feel like I had a taste of what that was when I was facing those those officers and the baton, and I felt invincible. I think I finally experienced what it felt like to become victory in that moment. And there are moments now since then, I wish I could say, and I felt invincible, since there are plenty of moments where I’ve been afraid, afraid for my family, for the non-profit that I run, for the people I’m serving. We’re talking in the wake of the most recent murder, and we’re about to show up in the streets again. And so there are plenty of moments where I’m afraid, but I hold that memory now of what it meant for me to choose courage. And I’m a little bit braver than I’ve been before. And I know that those moments of invincibility, of becoming victory, are the lasting truth. And I rest in that. And this, too, is an invitation for everyone. What does it mean for you to become victory?

Jonathan Fields: [00:49:23] That feels like both a good question and a good moment for us to come full circle in our conversation. I asked you this question once before, five or so years ago. Maybe at this point, maybe longer. I’ll ask it again. Some time has passed and this container of Good Life Project.. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up.

Valarie Kaur: [00:49:45] Is to love.

Jonathan Fields: [00:49:47] Mm. Thank you.

Valarie Kaur: [00:49:52] I love you, Jonathan. Thank you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:49:54] Love you too. Hey, before you leave, be sure to tune in next week for our conversation with Rachel Zoffness about why pain isn’t just physical, and how we can literally retrain our brains to find relief. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss an episode. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. Kris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you’re still here. Do me a personal favor. A seven-second favor and share it with just one person. If you want to share it with more. Hey, that’s awesome. But just one person even then, invite them to talk with you about what you both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time. I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.

The post How to Not Lose Hope in a World That Feels Increasingly Dark | Valarie Kaur appeared first on Good Life Project.