Jeff Carreira: This issue has become a contemplation about spiritual activism. As we have engaged in our interviews on this subject, I see that spiritual activism is any form of activism that is fuelled by a spiritual connection. It can be activism that is inspired by a spiritual vision of some kind. And it can be an activism, like that of Sri Aurobindo, that is aimed at the evolution of consciousness through the active pursuit of spiritual awakening. In your case, you devoted your life to spiritual pursuit from a young age, and it was more recently that you became an activist.

Mary Adams: Yes, that’s true. At the same time the threads of political awareness globally, particularly social justice issues, have been with me from very early on.

Jeff Carreira: What inspired you to become as actively involved as you are now?

Mary Adams: I have been involved mainly in climate activism in the form of nonviolent civil disobedience. And to be honest, I wasn't expecting this at this point in my life. In terms of how I got here, it started early. I remember being at a family event when I was maybe 13 or 14 years old and thinking, is this what life is about? Is this it? There was nothing specifically ‘wrong’ but I felt the smallness of our conventional human lives. This got me started on a spiritual quest that eventually led to the activism I am currently involved in.

I spent many years looking for the deeper meaning of existence. I wanted to know why we're here. My spiritual seeking was also aimed at trying to make sense of the world. And much of my younger adult life was in India, including two summers with Nisargadatta which we have talked about on previous podcasts. In the end I joined the intentional community of a spiritual teacher named Andrew Cohen, which is where you and I met. Initially Andrew taught in the nondual tradition of [Eastern] enlightenment. It was all about waking up. Later he made a transition and started looking at the relationship between consciousness and the world, culture – the creative potential of being spiritually awake.

That transition spoke very deeply to me, and this was probably why I stayed in the community for so long, despite the problems that developed. I had never met a spiritual teacher who emphasised the connection between spiritual enlightenment and the ‘world’ as much as Andrew Cohen.

Interestingly, though, when I was studying South Asian, and specifically Indian philosophy at university, the idea of dharma expressed through the Upanishads made profound sense to me. This is because it is all about the relationship between the Cosmos, or the Absolute/God on one hand, and human life, human society on the other. The basis of Indian philosophy is rooted in the recognition that the ‘world’ is not separate from spirit, and one's whole life is about realising, and manifesting that higher spirit as fully as one can.

Recognizing the connection between spirit and the life we have as human beings, gave me a deep sense of purpose. When the intentional community you and I were part of collapsed, I spent two years trying to understand what had happened. Then I moved to London with my partner, Steve Brett. We started hosting conversations or salons in our living room. We began attending events and meeting different people, and we found that there are a lot of people actively doing important work in the world who are motivated by something deep within themselves. We were drawn to that, so for us ‘activism’ always had a spiritual basis.

The transition to activism was a natural one because I’ve always wanted to know how we could best live together on this planet. As I learned more about the climate crisis, I began to see that this posed an existential threat. There have always been global threats, but this felt different, especially because of the element of human responsibility. In 2017 I participated in an intensive induction into the science of the climate crisis. I wanted to know the facts.

Al Gore (former Vice President) was organising groups of scientists annually to give seminars on the facts of climate change, in order to create a body of informed public. I attended one of these. It was powerful. The data was devastating. But what impacted me the most was seeing so many scientists so deeply affected. I remember an expert on the Australian barrier reef weeping. Their deep, deep concern, and even heartbreak, made an irreversible impression. I came back to London thinking about my two little grandchildren and feeling the very real impact on their generation.The climate crisis was no longer abstract for me.

I soon began to look into the Extinction Rebellion, a climate movement building in Britain around this time. And I went to their very first action. Thirty thousand people turned up and occupied central London for ten days. It was extraordinary. But what really drew me in were the ten principles of the movement that were grounded in an ethos of non-violence.

Jeff Carreira: Can you explain what the Extinction Rebellion is?

Mary Adams: It started with a small group. An organic farmer named Roger Hallam, who's quite a controversial figure, Gail Bradbrook a scientist, and several others including Claire O'Farrell, who is still one of the central figures of the organisation. They came together from different backgrounds, but they were all passionate about the urgency for change, and wanted to create a social movement that could lead to systems transformation.

This was different to simply staging a protest. It was, and is, more about engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience as an instrument to bring about change. This attracted me partly because I had lived in India for many years, and I was aware of Mahatma Gandhi and his commitment to nonviolent action in bringing about the end to colonial rule by the British.

I'd done a lot of reading about colonialism and the movements that came out of this, so I was aware of nonviolent civil disobedience as a mechanism for social transformation. This is the philosophy behind the Extinction Rebellion. In the first few years XR (Extinction Rebellion) staged huge nonviolent actions in central London, basically shutting the city down for days. That really brought the public’s attention to the issue, which was the aim. As a result, the British Parliament declared a climate emergency, and I saw firsthand what an effect we [ordinary citizens] could have.

So, Steve and I completed training in nonviolent activism, and became very involved. We saw it as non-separate from spiritual practice. In fact, one engages in a lot of rigorous training to go out on these actions. Often, we think of activism as being ‘against’ something, whereas to me, this was really action for transformation, for positive change. And it was done with tremendous precision and attention in a very disciplined way.

When you go out on an action, it’s important to be very clear about why you're doing it. What is your deepest reason for doing this? This is what gives you the energy and creates the right mindset for actions of nonviolent disobedience, because you will likely find yourself obstructing or inconveniencing the public. You are trained to empathise with the people you are obstructing, no matter how they respond. You learn to let go and surrender to the action and whatever happens, no matter what.

Some people think I’ve become an activist and given up the spiritual life. I think this comes from a misunderstanding of activism, or spiritual activism as you described earlier, because to be honest, for me, it was choiceless. Activism emerged as a response to something larger than myself.

At a certain point, the government stopped responding to the Extinction Rebellion’s actions. The initial impact was dying down. Then I heard a talk given by Roger Hallam titled ‘Our responsibility at this Time,’ where he was calling for more radical forms of nonviolent civil disobedience. Despite myself, I felt called to participate in actions with much higher stakes. That meant being arrested, potential court hearings, possible prison time, not to mention public animosity stoked by right-wing media.

I passed Roger’s talk on to Steve to listen to. I didn't say a word to him about how it had impacted me. Steve had exactly the same response. I think the spiritual impulse is one fundamentally of love. There's an inherent intelligence in being. There's also an inherent care in being. Spiritual experience, to me, is not just about one’s personal realisation or enlightenment. It’s also about discovering what the implications of ‘waking up’ are for the world. The spiritual impulse, which is about love, is positively motivating. It's a creative positivity. It's about creating, making the manifest realm ‘better’. In this way I see it as evolutionary, but it’s also protective. And when I listened to that talk about taking more radical action because the government was doing nothing, I felt that protective impulse, a deep call of responsibility.

I also understood that I am fortunate to be in a position to do this. I don’t have a young family to care for. I'm no longer formally working, or have a career where others depend on me. Like all of us, I've been through hard times in my life, but I've also lived an incredibly privileged life where I've been able to make my own choices most of the time. I realised that I was ‘free’ to respond to this moment, and that if not me, then who?

I also understood from years of study and taking in what’s happening around us, that there's no one at the helm, so to speak. That the future is at risk, imperilled. In the face of the enormity of the climate and biodiversity crisis, and the speed at which it’s unfolding, the irresponsibility and lack of political will to take appropriate action, is extraordinary. I felt ‘I've got to do this’. And that's the connection to my spiritual past.

Jeff Carreira: I know these actions can be quite extreme, so you have to be motivated by something very deep to be willing to subject yourself to them. Can you give us an example?

Mary Adams: Well, in one way or another, civil disobedience is going to inconvenience somebody. Usually a lot of people. And that's hard. As an activist, that's probably one of the hardest things you have to come to terms with. You're doing this knowing that you're going to be putting people out, which is why you need to be very in touch with your deepest motivations for doing it. The first radical action I was involved with initially, consisted of about 100 people. (These were eventually joined by thousands.) We trained to go out with a message about the crisis, and block a particularly large arterial motorway around London, which would inevitably have a huge impact.

I undertook intensive, disciplined training. You have to; because actions can be dangerous. After this training, I was given the date of the action in order to prepare for it, but not the location.

The way it works is that on the morning of any given action, you get a call, you're given an address. You are instructed to not write this down anywhere. You leave all personal items behind – your wallet, ID cards, your phone, everything. And you do not disclose to anybody, not even your partner, where you’re going, nor any details of what you are doing, because this would then implicate them in the eyes of the law. You basically disappear with a little cash in your pocket and make your way to a designated ‘safe house’, where you meet your team. This is usually somewhere in the countryside near the freeway you are going to carry out the action on.

The very first time I remember going to a safe house there were a lot of people inside. I didn't recognize anyone. I wondered how we were going to do this as a team, given we were starting out at 5.00 am the next morning? But we had an incredibly skilled cohort leader, a beautiful older man from the north, and at about 10:00 pm that night, he got us all together in a circle. I think there were about 19 of us in that house, and he got each person to share why they were there. We all simply stood and listened. This took an hour or more and it was amazing because you could really hear and feel where people were speaking from. You could feel that everyone was being driven by a very deep calling, a sense of responsibility. There was a lot of soul in the room.

The next hour was spent going into the plans for the next day. It had the detail of a military action in terms of the precision of how you move, when you move, where you sit on a road, and who does what. This included what to do when the police arrived. The planning was impeccable.

So that was my first action, and it definitely was effective. It garnered a lot of press. In fact, we did actions like that from September right through to December. There was wall to wall media coverage all that time because the police didn't know where we were going to show up next.

The point is not just to get press. You need the press because it allows you to get into the media rooms, to have the conversations that can bring the issue to the government and raise public awareness. The whole point is obviously to pressure the government to change its policies, and you can't do that without the media.

When drivers are obstructed on the road, understandably they can get very upset. That's why we do a lot of training because it’s easy to doubt what you are doing when you're stopping someone from getting to work, or whatever. This is why one’s motivation for doing an action has to be very strong and clear. There are also de-escalators on the team, a role which I have been in at times. As a de-escalator, you put yourself between activists and motorists. If things get heated, you step in and try to defuse the situation. But sometimes people are very angry, and you can have an SUV literally just ten inches from your face, with an enraged person behind the wheel.

At every action we hold a banner clearly identifying what the action is about. Some people will rip this from your hands. At that moment of confrontation, you are trained to let go. The whole point is to let go. Even if someone attacks you, you let go. You surrender. Some may attempt to drag you to the edge of the road. But it’s important then that the line (the blockade) does not open up, or break, because this can be very dangerous if cars start charging through a gap. So, if someone gets dragged away, others move calmly and quickly to replace them, to maintain the line. Even if attacked physically, you don't break the line. You can reach out to support somebody if they're being roughed up (which is rare), but you don’t get up. Things can get extreme, but they don’t tend to.

At the same time, there are conversations going on with motorists that can lead to remarkable turnarounds in people’s attitude. There was one conversation with a truck driver, who at first was very irate, but in the end, when he understood why we were there, drove away giving us a thumbs up of approval. When you can have a conversation with someone about why you're there, everything changes. As many times as there are negative or challenging situations, there is the opposite. It’s the same with the police. There must have been hundreds, if not thousands of conversations with arresting officers. You often end up in conversation about what's happening with the climate, and why you’re protesting. They’re often very curious because they realise we are not ‘criminals’. They naturally wonder why we would put ourselves at risk.

We obviously don’t begrudge the police for arresting us. That's their job. Afterall, we are breaking the law. But how the police do their job matters. Some are very unpleasant, brutish, but others are supportive. They can't overtly express their support, but I would say 8/10 times, you feel tacit support from arresting officers once they understand. A lot of them have young families and it turns out they are very concerned about the environment themselves. An interesting alliance can emerge with some of the police.

I've been arrested 15 or 16 times but one can’t be detained in a cell for more than 24 hours. At a certain point though, if the police decide to charge you and prosecute, that starts a whole other process. You can go back and protest again after an arrest, but I have been to prison, as have many others, and that's different. There are a range of consequences. Last year, the Tory government in the UK introduced some very repressive legislation against climate activism.

Jeff Carreira: You said initially that the movement saw some success, then it slowed down, and you started organising more radical actions. How do you feel it's going? Do you feel hopeful about the planet, about the environment, about our future?

Mary Adams: It's a good question, and I do feel hopeful. Although I don't know if ‘hopeful’ is the right word, but I feel positive. It's not because there's been a lot of change at the political level. There's clearly a lot that needs to happen, but I feel positive because all kinds of activism is being taken up, especially by younger people. Steve and I started a forum called 3rd Space where we are profiling people who are making changes to the system and expressing that deeper impulse. Even though I know we're on an incredibly dangerous course, and there's still enormous political apathy, what gives me hope is seeing that a lot of the changes that need to happen, alternative ways of thinking and behaving that are crucial whether in economics, energy, agriculture, or community building, are starting to happen, and not only on the fringe.They're all connected.

The problem is not the climate. The climate crisis has come out of a deeper ideology that affects everything. So, it's that ideology that needs to change. If you want to take it to a spiritual level, you could say it's an ideology that's devoid of the recognition that we are one, that we are a single living, breathing, interconnected entity. That disconnection has created policies, it's created theories, it's created systems that have led us to where we are, and that has not changed. The people who are ultimately directing things are still operating from that ideology. But at the same time, what gives me hope is that there are many more people in the North and the South, in the East and the West, who are waking up to the fact that we've become so disconnected from our source, from who we really are, and in different ways, in different cultures, and in different contexts, are starting to respond. And that includes the kind of activism we're talking about, but it also includes people just creating new ways of doing things in their communities, their cities, and in their countries.

This is coming from the ground up. It's coming from experts who understand complex systems, and it’s coming from ancient wisdom that's being brought into contemporary forms. There’s a melding of the innovation of the West with the wisdom of the East. And there are multiple ways that this is happening, but it's coming from the human spirit as it recognizes that somewhere we've gotten off course. And because of that, I feel hopeful. But I also realise there's a time element, and I think, to be honest, we're going to go through a lot more intense suffering on this planet before we get to the other side. Because things are degrading quickly, and our future is largely in the hands of people who are operating from an outdated worldview. That’s why we are all needed.