What does it mean to be truly of service?
Sarah Tulivu, Tai Chi/Qi Gong and Meditation Teacher, and Elizabeth Debold, evolve Editor
“I can't separate the outer work from the inner work,” says Sarah Tulivu in a recent issue of evolve Magazin. “Spiritual practice and action in the world for me go hand in hand.”
Called by her love of the world and of human beings, Tulivu left her native Italy at the age of 17 to join humanitarian efforts with street kids in East Africa. Gradually, she came to realize that the patterns that created the violence she was witnessing were also present in the NGOs that were trying to support the victims of the violence. This began a journey that led to Nepal and India, and into the depths of meditation and the flow of chi. A prolonged heart awakening gave her insight into the fundamental illusion of separation and a new way of being active in the world.
For Tulivu, being present with what is, holding a caring presence, is “revolutionary.” As she says, “Because it's not taking part in the war anymore. We are no longer in fight, pushing away and holding on. Then we are peace spreaders. It's never limited to us because we're not separate. Everything is always affecting and being affected. This understanding will inevitably bring us to the question: How do I want to affect our greater body?”
The realization that we are not separate has important implications. Then, everything we do or say has an impact on the whole. This makes spiritual practice a necessity if we want the world to be a better place. Tulivu explains:
“If we don't work on ourselves, we'll be carrying with us, and constantly participating in, the same system that we would like to transform. Without working on ourselves and the imprints that this society has had in us, we cannot transform. We created this system, but it's also creating us, because it's all one interwoven, interdependent, interbeing. As far as I can tell, healing starts within us. With coming back to the present moment and starting to take responsibility for our effect on the situation of the world. If we want to see a kinder more loving world, it starts with how we treat ourselves and those close to us. And if we don't see the patterns that are running us, they will continue to run us. These practices help us to see them, and also hopefully will give us good tools with which to meet each encounter.”
This, she notes, takes courage to be willing to see our own limitations and ways that we do create separation. This courage is not rough or full of bravado, but gentle and compassionate with ourselves and, thus, with others. It is part of the transformation of the world.
In this evolve LIVE, Sarah Tulivu will guide us in a contemplation of the relationship between the inner and outer work. Why is spiritual practice important to action in the world? Vice versa: how can action in the world deepen spiritual practice? What attitudes support transformative practice? Together, in dialogue, participants will explore questions like these while paying attention to how we are together. Can we bring our sensitivity and awareness to co-create a practice field where inner and outer are one?
Tentative Schedule
18:00 - 18:30 Welcome and introduction
18:30 - 19:30 Dialogue on the topic with Sarah and Elizabeth with dialogue with the plenary
19:30 - 19:45 Break
19:45 - 20:30 Dialogue in small groups
20:30 - 21:00 Integration in the plenum
Sarah Tulivu, or Fong Yi, (ordained name), has trained in sitting meditation for the past 13 years, and Taiji & Qigong, for the past 11 years – within the tradition of Taiwanese Master, Waysun Liao. During that time, about 6 years were passed training full-time as a monk in a Tao Temple, with about 6-7 hours of practice per day. Before the Tao Temple, she trained intensively in the Buddhist tradition for two years in Nepal, then India and Thailand. In 2019 she was advised by Master Waysun Liao and Master Chang to leave the Tao Temple and monastery, and learn how to “make the world her Temple”, to carry the practice into everyday life, and asking her to share with those interested who cross her path.
Sarah has been volunteering over the years in countries like Tanzania (with street kids and nursery schools, 2007), Kenya (throughout the 2007-2008 conflict, with street kids), Zambia (with street kids), Kossovo (shortly after independence, in an enclave, 2008), volunteering in conflict resolution projects in other Middle Eastern countries through 2008-2009, and bits and pieces in Georgia (after the Russo-Georgian War, in 2009, in the camps), and Pakistan (in a woman’s shelter, 2010).
www.taijitao.net
Elizabeth Debold, Ed.D. is a developmental psychologist, writer, activist, researcher, and co-developer of emergent Interbeing practice. For the past decade, she has been an editor of evolve Magazin, a German-language quarterly, where she writes feature articles on gender. For over thirty years, she has been engaged in discovering and exploring the potentials of collective emergence. With her partner, Dr. Thomas Steininger, she has developed a dialogical process of “Emergent Interbeing,” that enables us to co-consciously engage with differences to create unexpected synergies. Through the platform of evolve World, she, Thomas, and their team of practitioners seek, in some small but meaningful way, to catalyze islands of coherence in a fragmented world. Through events such as the 24-hour online vigil One World Bearing Witness, she is helping to bring sacred activism into the global digital age.