Ways of Training

Take in the big picture; in long-term battles, being prepared, calm, and clear are essential. Any action you might take is but one in a mryiad influences in a situation. make your influence count timing it to take place in concert with other factors.

No matter what happens, keep aligned with your intentions.

Reactive emotions are ineffective and draining. Train in the ability to remain embodied, intentioned, and willing but not impetuous. There are no emergencies, just varied circumstances, and varied appropriate responses.

Don't get embroiled in daily news and partisan squabling; clarify your deeper intentions, and be willing to refrain from the "pleasure" of constant conflict. The clearer and firmer one's intentions, the less one gets derailed. Don't be thin-skinned or prone to tilting at wind-mills.

Protect and nourish your own communities; don't depend on government or corporations. Energy sources, food, health care, culture: make them local, creative, resilient.

Lovingkindness: Recognizing that all are equal in wanting to be happy, wish even "your enemies" well.
Compassion: Recognize and appreciate the confusion and unhappiness that causes "your enemy" to misbehave. 

Sympathetic Joy: Appreciate good things that happen; rejoice when others are happy; cultivate gratitude for all that's received through no virtue of your own.
Equanimity: Recognize, accept and appreciate the reality of ceaseless change, of ups and downs, good and bad, wins and losses.

Surround yourself with people of good intentions, of compassion, of wisdom, and support each other through thick and thin; help your allies remain calm, clear, and intentional.

Train deeply, at all levels. If thoughts and emotions are racing in circles, training the body to settle and move smoothly is effective. Yoga, taiji, walks in the woods -- they affect our thinking and emoting.

Self-care: eat, sleep, exercise, work, play, social support. The worse the situation, the more we need them.

Other-care: empower the small, the weak, the needy, the unheard.

Forgiveness is not weakness toward evil; forgiveness is purifying one's thoughts and emotions so that one is free.

Don't reinvent the wheel. Read the historians of social change, the philosophers of nonviolent action; the poetry of spiritual activists. Dorothy Day. The I Ching. Martin Luther King Jr. Rosa Parks. Walt Whitman. Gandhi. Vinobe Bhave. The Suffragists. Lao Tzu. Mandela. Jane Addams. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Marshall Rosenberg. Gene Sharpe. The Art of War. 

Learn to use Nonviolent Communication, especially in conflict. 

Practice consensus decision-making with diverse groups.

Learn about and encourage restorative justice.