Soul Boom - Valarie Kaur: How Can Love Drive Justice?

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

Rainn Wilson and Valarie Kaur explore the transformative power of "revolutionary love" and how it can heal a divided world. Valarie discusses the Sikh philosophy of oneness, the role of the ‘Sage Warrior,’ and the importance of love as a force for social change. The conversation dives into the courage required to love in times of fear, hate, and political division. Join them for a deep exploration of spiritual revolution and practical ways to foster connection in today's world. Valarie Kaur is a civil rights activist, lawyer, author, and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project. She is known for her work advocating for social justice, interfaith harmony, and transformative love as a force for personal and societal change. Her book See No Stranger and her philosophy of "revolutionary love" inspire movements focused on healing divisions, fostering empathy, and building a more inclusive world. Thank you to our sponsors! Squarespace: https://squarespace.com/soulboom Factor (50% OFF!): www.factormeals.com/soulboom50 Waking Up app (1st month FREE!): https://wakingup.com/soulboom Fetzer Institute: https://fetzer.org/ Sign up for our newsletter! https://soulboom.substack.com SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom!! https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom Watch our Clips: https://bit.ly/SoulBoomCLIPS Watch WISDOM DUMP: https://bit.ly/WISDOMDUMP Follow us! Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulboom TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@soulboom Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: [e-mail] Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Spring Green Films Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Voicing Change Media Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to Soul. Revolutionary love is the choice to enter into labor for others, for our opponents, for ourselves to transform the world around us. If we're all part of the one, there are no such thing as monsters in this world, only human beings who are wounded. And so it's up to us to decide whether we want to surrender our humanity and choose to see them as enemies, or if we choose to see the wound in them and return to this foundational truth, there's no one outside of our circle of care, not even you. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have

conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Hi, Valerie. Hi, Rain. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. I'm so happy to be here with you. Thank you for sitting down in our creative spiritual kitchen here. I feel it. I feel all the good vibes. There's some good vibes here, right? That African mask on the wall was a wedding present from my old friend Henry Stroser in the theater. God, that's 28 years ago. I still have it. I'm just seeing it now for the first time.

And is that your nursery school diploma? That's my son, Walters, nursery school diploma. Yes. He graduated. Now he's in college. So congratulations, Walter. But yeah, a homey little set. So before we get into everything that you've got cooking,

which like Soul Boom, spiritual revolution, I will say you have taken it to the next level. You are inciting an actual spiritual revolution. You are going to do a bus on the ground, a bus and truck tour. of total spiritual revolution. And I admire you so much for doing that. But before we go there, here's my first question.

In your book, Ceno Stranger, which is kind of part memoir, part manifesto, you talk a lot about your faith and how much your sick faith inspires you. What is sickism? What does it mean to be a sick? When I was a little girl, my grandfather would put me to sleep every night by reciting the Mulmanthar,

which is the foundational verse in sick wisdom. And it begins with Iq onkar. Ik onkar, sat nam karthapurik, Niripa, Nirvarakakal, Murit, a juni, sapang, good prasach. Ik on God, he would say, my dear, all of the sick wisdom flows from Ick on God, which means oneness ever unfolding, oneness ever unfolding in wondrous multiplicity. So there's only one, I am part of the one, you are part of the one, there's nothing

outside the one, there's no essential separateness between you and me, between us and other people, even between us and other species, or even us in like this glass of You are no more or less worthy. And that means if we're all part of the one, that there is truly no one outside of our circle of care. That is the heart of the sick faith. Guru Nanak saying, if you wish to play the game of love with me,

step forth with your head on your palm. Is this kind of one, this kind of oneness? And this kind of love that it inspires, it is dangerous business. Papa you used to say love is dangerous business because if I see you as my sister, my brother, my kin, then I must be willing to stand up for you when you are in harm's way. I must be willing to fight for you. So the model in the sick faith became the Sonshapahi, the sage warrior.

The warrior fights, the sage loves. It's a path that I call revolutionary love. Wow, that's fantastic. What are, and we're going to get into this revolutionary love and what that means and what that revolution looks like. what are some other core beliefs or tenets of the faith? I gave you my poetic introduction. I love it. I love it.

I'm so used to like the facts, right? Because no one knows who Sikhs are or how to pronounce it. Is it Sikh or is it sick? It's okay. We're just happy. You know who we are. The sick faith, like the Baha'i faith, is one of the youngest major world religions. It was founded half a millennia ago in South Asia, in the region of Punjab, which is in northern India now.

our first teacher, the first of ten, was Guru Nanak, and he taught this vision, sang this vision of oneness, and those who followed him were called Sikh. And, you know, sick simply means seeker or a student of truth. And the idea was that this oneness that he sang of, which is really the heart of all the mystical traditions, and all part of each other, could be experienced in the body.

You don't have to think it, you can feel it. You can let your body resound with that truth when you give yourself over to music and to play. poetry into song. So the primary form of worship in the Sikh faith is music called Gyrdin. Over the years, the small mystical community, like all the great liberation experiments, the Gnostics, the Cathars, Sufis began to be pose a great challenge to the forces that be. And the Mughal Empire at that time came down to try to crush the Sikh community. So my ancestors might have been annihilated, like so many liberation experiments before us.

But this community of poets did something quite unusual. They picked up the sword to defend themselves and others. So they didn't have the sword at the outset. They picked up the sword when they were on the verge of annihilation. Although one might argue that Guru Nanak, when he used his pen to write poetry against Emperor Babur in his conquest, was using his pen as his sword. So if you talk to six, they'll say, no, the Sunsapai tradition was there from the beginning. we just happen to use the sword as the tool that we needed in that time.

So when I think about what we need now, I think about like we're living in apocalyptic times. Things feel very dark. My ancestors survived near annihilation by becoming sage warriors, finding the inner wisdom for outer courage. Perhaps this particular tradition has something that the world needs now. And our voices can be our sword, our pens, our podcast microphones, whatever we need. need to be able to call people to turn around. I could bash someone over the head with this thing. Oh, rain. That's not the, you know. Yeah, podcast club. Now, do you actually know how to use a sword? Yeah, I have a coupon. It's one of the five articles of faith. And there is a martial tradition,

but I have, I myself have not trained at it, but I have it as my symbol of courage. What are the other five? What are the other four? Um, the keish, which is long, uncut hair. So this is why if you see a man with a turban in the United States, the chances are, they are, belong to the sick faith. Yeah. So many men, most men, some women wrap their long hair in a turban. The garda is a silver bracelet to remind us that truth is steel and life is one and who we are every time we act. There's an undergarment called the kutch, which reminds us of like we get to decide how to control

and control how to steer our body's impulses, including our desires. Let's see, it's three. We got the kungi, which is a little wooden comb for self-sufficiency, and then the griban. So these are what I don't wear all five. There are people who wear all five. These are just ways for us to show to the world that we have committed ourselves to walk this path. So if you're in trouble and you need food, you need shelter, you need someone to help you, you're being bullied, you look for a sick in the crowd.

You can tell by the long hair, the gut out of the turban, and they are meant to come forth and be by your side. That's so awesome. So when I was in acting school, I worked at... at the Waverly coffee shop down by NYU, waiting tables. It was horrible. And the cooks were six. Mm-hmm.

And they were dicks. They were so mean and impatient. However, they taught me a phrase, sat seriacal. Oh, Ray. And so every time I would say sat seria call to the, they, I mean, completely changed. And they stopped. They're like, got a fucking call.

And you're like, Sat-Citya-Kal, and then they would stop. And they would, Sat-Sidi-a-Kal. Like, it was really precious and powerful and meaningful to them. And then we had a bond, and it was really beautiful. What is Sat-Citya-Kal? Well done, sir. Sat-Sat-Sid-I-Kal is how we greet one another. What it means, Sat-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-truth.

city is like exalted and agal is timeless so the truth is time the truth is timeless wow the truth is timeless that's beautiful and that's a greeting kind of like namaste in the Hindu tradition yeah yes yes exactly when we see each it's a hello and a goodbye satschika the children have to fold their hands anytime an auntine you know go saskiqal it kind of blends together yeah that little but yeah it's something that you learn all the best greetings Aloha, Shalom, namaste, satirical, always are, hello, goodbye, peace, I see you, I see the divinity in you. There's probably many more from world traditions.

Isn't that interesting? It's beautiful. It's beautiful. And the truth is timeless, because we're part of the truth. There's part of us that is timeless. We're greeting that in each other. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

So, helpful hint, a lot of New York cab drivers are sick. get in a cab with a sick, say satiri a call. They will eat so much love immediately. Love and transformation happens. And why does that love and transformation happen with that greeting? Like what is it, what does it touch in those angry chefs? What does it touch in them? Well, I think it touches something in them because you said it.

Okay. Because we are so sick. So there are 23 million six worldwide. They're half a million in the United States. we have these like beautiful beliefs around our oneness, love, our call to serve, our call to fight for justice. And we are hyper-visible because of our articles of faith and yet totally illegible. Like people don't read us. People don't know how to understand us.

People don't see us. If anything, in the last 20-some years, the United States, our turbines have marked us as targets for racial violence at the highest levels. And so for someone outside of the community to see. us and say satshigal is like I am so used to not being seen at all if not just not seen but like being hated

so right for you to see something that is tender and deep and ancestral in me and acknowledge it is like it's a beautiful gift and in those moments too I'm like I always like wax poetic it's like oh and those are glimpses of the world as it could be

yeah right where we can see each other fully and acknowledge and bow to each other. Or we could see no stranger. What is, we kind of know what love is. It's funny, I was, in soul boom, I talk a little bit about the word love and how silly it is because in English, which is, I think, I don't speak a lot of other languages, but English is pretty awesome because it's so malleable. And it changes all the time.

And from Shakespeare onwards to slang to hip hop to, you know, urban English. And it also can be used very technically. I'm a big fan of the language. But one way that we've really shit the bad is the word love. Because we only have this one word, love. It's like, I love green tea. Oh my gosh. I love my wife.

I love God. I love pickle. pickleball. Like, it doesn't, there's not a differentiation. And in other languages, there are so many different nuanced words for love and different kinds of love. There's, there's, you know, in ancient Greek, it's agape is like this divine love. And then there's a different word for like love that's between friends. And then romantic love is different from really liking something. Like, I love lasagna. And so, um, what is revolutionary love? because I think you're trying to grasp for something

that's not quite there in the language. What is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Revolutionary love is the choice to enter into labor for others, for our opponents, for ourselves, to transform the world around us. And it did me a long time to come to this way of inviting, people into love precisely because what you have named. I grew up in this tradition where my grandfather

taught me to love like a warrior, that love wasn't a placebo or a rush to forgive or a rush to reconcile while leaving injustices on address. Like love, the kind of love my ancestors gave me, my grandfather gave me, was muscular and robust, radical, ultimately revolutionary. I'm like, if we're all part of the one, No one's outside of our circle of care. That means there are no such thing as monsters in this world. Only human beings who are wounded, who have forgotten the one. And so it's up to us to decide whether we want to surrender our humanity and choose to see them as enemies,

or if we choose to see the wound in them and return to this foundational truth, there's no one outside of our circle of care, not even you. I mean, that's hard, courageous work. And as I came up as an activist, you know, in these circles, anytime I talked about love, like my allies, my fellow travelers, like people I really respected will look at me and think I was naive or unsurious about power. And I, and it's because the word, the word has been so abused as a bludgeon, you know, as a panacea, as like, we're all one and let's all love. And so I have. And so I have. had to do the work of reaching deep into like, oh, I'm, I'm hitting the limits of the English

language. And so how can I capture what love is? Like, love is not a rush of feeling that comes and goes, ebbs and flows. You know, and the feeling is important. Like, I love, like, when my son was placed on my chest for the first time, I was, like, shaking and sobbing from that rush of oxytocin, like, coursing through my body. I'm like, this is love. I'm falling in love. And in the meantime, my mother is like opening up her bag and taking out her doll and ch'ul and feeding me. Like she's feeding her baby as I'm feeding my baby. And I look at my mother and I'm like, oh, you have never stopped laboring for me from my birth to my son's birth. You know what I am just beginning to learn that love is more than that rush.

Love is sweet labor. fierce, bloody, imperfect, life-giving, a choice we make every day over and over and over again. And we know that, you know, we know that with your son, with my kids, our friendships, our partners, our families. And so my question is like, oh, in a death-obsessed society where all we see is, you know, the forces that are in control of our society right now are running on the energies of fear and cruelty and anxiety and scarcity. it's loveless. So what if there were enough of us to take that way of loving our closest beloveds and say, if we can just not all of it, just a fraction of it, if we can take a fraction of it out beyond our inner circle,

to someone we might not know, to a community who is suffering, to people, who everyone has discarded because they're monsters to, then love starts to gain this revolutionary force and rain. That's what birthed soul boom. I mean, like your book, you cite these beautiful spiritual revolutionaries, these social reformers for thousands of years. What have they been calling us to? Like on all of their lips, their songs, their scriptures, their sayings, it's all calling us, returning us to this love without limit.

And so now the question is, like, we've heard it for thousands of years. Our very future as a society depends on whether we can put this love ethic into practice, Like on a scale we never have before. And so that's why I believe revolutionary love is the call of our times. And that what you're doing and what I'm doing in the trenches with you as your sister, right? With other, we can see other people in the movement. Love has never been popular. Calling for love in a time when everyone wants war has never been popular.

But when I see like a brother across the table, you know, then I know like, oh, I'm not alone. And I can last. I can keep singing the song for my love. And I may not live to see it in my lifetime, but maybe, maybe your son, maybe my children. That's what keeps me in the labor. That's so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. You're getting some hate online for what, specifically?

Do you get it from the political right or political left? Both. Both. That's what I mean. Love has never been popular. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think on the left side, want to talk about this a little bit. You know, the phrase, more Malcolm L. Martin, you know, that's a popular phrase. Like, we need to get more militant. And it was outrage when Nikki Haley was on Saturday Night Live recently. He just did a little cameo. But how dare you have someone from that party on the show, you know? It was a moderate Republican and like or don't like or whatever.

like can't a comedy show who's, you know, you know, poking fun at Trump have, you know, Trump's, you know, current nemesis on there? So how do you answer the cries of the political left for more Malcolm Lest Martin to not have Nikki Haley where love is seen as weakness, where we need to attack and where the clarion call to social justice doesn't necessarily line up with revolutionary love. How do you, how do you navigate

that? How do you, because you've, you've been in both worlds, you've been in the spirit world of the sick community and you have been, you know, on the front lines of, you know, so many social issues, women's rights, reproductive rights, you know, faith rights, black lives matter. You've been on the front lines at the same time. How do you navigate that? I have a hard time. I have a hard time with that. I think the political left can be so unforgiving. And there's a very funny joke. Neil Brennan says this amazing joke. It's so good. He's like, here's a difference between the political right and the political left in the United States. And the political right, you know, someone says, hey, I want to be in the political right. I'm a Republican. They're like, great, come on. Welcome. And the political left, they say,

Hey, I'm a liberal too, and I want to join the progressive movement. And the answer is, we'll see. That's it. That's it. And so my response is like, how is that, how has that been working for us? Yeah, how's that working out? How's that working out? Yeah.

What I have seen in the movement is that we are now witnessing the costs of running only on the fumes of hostility. We are seeing how we are starting to become what we are fighting against. We are seeing how many of us are opting out, getting sick, burning out, taking our lives. If our movement is loveless, then it is not sustainable. And so when I say revolutionary love is is the choice to enter into labor for others. Okay, that's forms of solidarity. So the left is, you know, for our opponents, that means can you fight them without refusing to surrender

your humanity or theirs? And for ourselves, that means can we love ourselves enough, love each other enough, to keep breathing as we're pushing in the labor? People are coming, you know, it's been a few years since the 2016 election, season. And that's when I first came out with the call of revolutionary love. And that's when, I mean, you could feel this hunger for people wanting words as strong and bold as what we were seeing on the other side. So that's when the movement started to build. But I also had a lot of allies saying, no, I'm ready for war, not love. Now fast forward all these years. Oh, we're becoming what we're

fighting against. Oh, we're not lasting. Like, we need, we need to build love into our movements in order to last. And if we do that, we can see that if we're only about resistance, we're actually never changing anything. It's almost like you read Soul Boom. It's like don't just protest build something. Yes, that's right. That's one of the, that's kind of one of the soul boom laws that I come up with at the end because I do think that people working for social change on both sides, but especially on the left,

you know, we live in a culture of protest. Like we hear about an injustice. Oh, this cop shot an indist. black man. How dare he prosecute him? That's terrible. Maybe there's even a march or two. You know, there's a candlelight vigil. There's a town hall meeting where there's a Twitter campaign. And then it's done. And we wait till the next great injustice. And we protest. And this can be in climate, in race, in health care, in economic disparity. You name it. It's just a culture of protest. It's way harder to build something.

And that ultimately speaks to the political left's laziness in terms of like, build a coalition. Get a bunch of people who are like, yeah, we'll see if you're progressive. Yeah, we'll see. You know, and bring those people together and get them working together to build something at the grassroots. It's a lot harder than it sounds. And in that sense, we need a lot more Martin than Malcolm because he was able to build. through churches, through church coalition starting with like church to church because they had the infrastructure, you know, they were able to feed people, they were able to move people around,

they had buses, they had cafeterias, they had lines of communication. He was able to build the civil rights movement through the church and through the idea that when we're marching in Selma, dogs will be jumping at our throats and we're going to be loving the people as they spit on us. And that's what did it eradicate race? Of course not, but did it make the world a hell of better place? Yes, 100%. I think the invitation is to practice the world we want in the spaces between us. So there are those who, and there are times where we must resist in order to survive,

we have to protest, we have to submit our dissent. And if there are enough of us who are finding spaces where we are, the neighborhood, the living room, the school, the house of worship, where we can take the tools that you give us, take the tools of revolutionary love along with the package of soul boom and create community that embodies the multiracial, multi-faith, democracy where everyone belongs. Like if we know how to feel it in our bodies, then we're starting to, we can only live into what we imagine, right? And we can only further our imagination. if we start to live into it where we are.

And so even even in the wake of the horrors of Gaza, our people in the movement, you know, one of our calls is like to grieve together. And we had Jewish, Israeli, and Palestinian Muslim people come together in front of the White House and shared grief. Not like my fears more than your fear, my aggression, your aggression is worse than my aggression. My grief is more than yours ever will be, right? As long as we're doing that, we'll never be able to see the wound of the people who we ultimately need to live with at the end of the day. And so to create practice spaces, they came together and they shared scripture

and song and poetry from both traditions and they named the dead and they had a shared vision of peace. So that on the other side, side of so much death and destruction. There's somebody holding up that vision because we've lived into it. Standing together is the group in Israel that is actually doing that work, bringing people together in that way. And they're getting death threats every day, way more than us here in the U.S., right? And they're embodying the world that could be. And in those glimpses, we're seeing like, oh, that's what wants to be born. And so for those of us who are able to, who have the ability to live into it where we are, it might mean picking up the phone

and calling that friend or that relative or that cousin. It might mean setting the table and inviting people over and having this conversation rooted in like what's what hurts. You know, these little ways that seem they're not small. Like they are everything. They are the seeds for what we eventually want to grow. And if no one's planning them now, nothing will grow then. Wow. That's beautiful. What is this new revolutionary love tour that you're going to undertake this fall? What does that look like? And are there specifics from what a revolutionary love revolution looks like?

Beyond just kind of trumpeting love and saying, hey, we all need to get along and, you know, and see the cosmic unity between us and work together a clarion called. beyond the clarion call, what are some tangible, practical things? How does it manifest? Yeah. So first, I'm really excited about the tour. In September, this feels like our big coming out. In September, we are launching a revolutionary love bus.

Okay. There will be a bus. Okay. On the ground. Starting on the West Coast, we'll be going from city to city, from town to just when the world feels like it's on fire and there's so much hate in the air, we will be calling people to love.

We'll be bringing storytelling and music and art. There'll be space for children. There'll be space where we're going to experience longer, the sick practice of eating together as equals. We'll be embodying in these little spaces, we'll be embodying the world as it could be. Multi-faith, multicultural, multi-everything. And then we're not just going to be like, okay, goodbye.

we'll be collecting stories of revolutionary love because love is not, you know, love is our birthright. We're just holding up a mirror to what so many of us have forgotten. Like we're all hungering, longing for love. And to be able to say you're not alone and tell us your stories of when an act of love has changed everything. That's beautiful. So you're going to record stories of when an act of love changed everything. Yes. Do you have a story like that from your life?

Oh, so many. They're all in C-no stranger. Oh, but let me think for a moment. I have a story. I'll fill one in first. You go first. I have like so many. I've told the story before, but it's really kind of how I became an actor.

I had a high school acting teacher named Suzanne Adams. She's still out there. She doesn't teach acting anymore. She's like 89. She's an incredible dynamo of a woman. And I was in kind of acting. in class with her in my senior year and I had these kind of secret closet dreams of becoming an actor and I was doing pretty well in the class I was just captivated by acting and uh I went into her office

I was so nervous I was shaking like a leaf and I went into our office and it was kind of between classes the bell had rung she was getting some papers like um is that I'm sorry could I speak to you for a minute and she's like yeah yeah sure like uh listen I I I I don't know how to say say that, how to say this, but do you think that maybe one day, you know, if I, if I work hard and keep studying that one day maybe I could be an actor? And, and she looked at me and she goes, oh, yes, yes, you could be an actor, but you need to study hard and you need to read books and fall in love and travel the world and study and take classes and have lots of different jobs and make sure you travel and live a full rich life.

Don't just jump right into it. But absolutely, you've got the talent and you should pursue it. And oh, yes. And that was, it really was revolutionary love because the appropriate response is, kid, you've got some talent. It's so hard. You have no idea how hard it is to make it in the business or to support yourself or to get a paycheck even as an,

actor. Good luck. It's the theater world is fucked up. Film and TV is fucked up. Good luck, but stick with it, kid. You know, that's the realistic response, right? But her enthusiasm and encouragement, seeing kind of my vulnerability, like, I hung on those words for years thereafter. Even when I struggled in college and, you know, wasn't sure which way to go, I remember that conversation, and I still remember to this day, it's galvanized into my memory. And that is an act of revolutionary love in that it was just a fire hose of support, encouragement, and enthusiasm to someone that was really low self-esteem and struggling and nerdy and pimply. But who had a little modicum of talent. And it set me on my path. And I've gotten to thank her many

times for that conversation over the years. Does she remember it? She does? Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Just like it probably, you were just one of many students and she decided to take a moment

and see the genius in you and hold up the mirror. And it's like all the other things. You don't let them get in the way of connecting with this and pursuing it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, your story is making me think of, I was like, oh, should I give you an activist story? ancestor story, I was like, I was a little girl, right? I was a little girl. And I was, you know,

growing up in the farmlands of California with these stories from my grandfather. And it was, now there's a lot of sick farmers in central California, right? Yeah, actually my, my other grandfather, so my family came, my other grandfather, Kehars Singh, traveled by steamship from India to California in 1913. So he was one of the first few thousand to come from South Asia. Wow. 110 years ago, and he settled in Clovis in the Central Valley. So I grew up on the land that he farmed and the orchards and the stars and the tractors, the whole thing. What was he growing?

Oh, oranges and peaches and plums. It would rotate. So it was always so abundant. Some almonds. I believe some almonds. Yeah, it was a small farm, and it was enough. And it was on that land that I was so connected. You know, I say that, okay, one-ness, how do you experience it?

Well, you can look at anything and say, you are a part of me. I do not yet know. Mm. And that's how I felt rain with the stars, with the cows across the street. They were like with everything else. This mystical little child, right? And then I started to go to school, you know, at six years old. And it was like, oh, it was my first, my first racial surer.

I was only sick. I'm thinking my kids now. My kids are at that age. I was like, oh, my goodness, I was small. And it was a little boy who, you know, ran up to me during, the school yard. I was on my knees. And he said, I was playing a baby. We're playing family. And he said, get up, you black dog. I wanted to correct him. Like, no, we're playing family. We're not playing. And then I saw the cruelty around his mouth. And I said, he was giving me,

and I wasn't mad. He was just giving me information about how the world saw me. And they call it internalized depression. But what it feels like is like shame, like stinging under the skin. You know, so I went home crying. And it was my grandfather who like scoop me up and, you know, he wasn't going to lecture or tell a story. All he said was, my dear, don't abandon your post. I'm this little girl in two long braids who rides tractors and talks to the stars, right? But my grandfather saw me as a warrior. You know, and in that moment when he was called, what he was calling me to was like,

Don't let him make you hate. Like, don't let him have that power over you. There's a line from scripture, do not incite fear in anyone and do not let anyone incite fear in you. Like, you are going to hold your post to love above all, to not let yourself get as small ever as him.

And so, yeah, I think that was the beginning of me going on to study religion and violence in college and then study law and then go to divinity school and then try to articulate this really simple thing that my grandfather gave me as a kid, like, with all these words to the world. That's beautiful. What else are you doing on the revolutionary love tour? Yes, yes, back to that. It's in the, it's during the election season. Yes.

So it's going to be such a divisive, hate-filled time. Yes. Which just drives me crazy. You know how much I hate the American political system and the partisan system. We don't have to do it this way. We don't have to have two parties flush with hundreds of millions of dollars, spending all this, wasting all this money, and people berating and belittling each other, calling each other names and tearing each other down.

And it doesn't have to work that way. It just doesn't. It's so crazy to me that Americans, Americans will question everything. They'll question everything. Like, well, health care should work like this and tech should work like this. And why is education like this? And we should be like this. But they don't question the political system. They're like, yeah, there's two parties. And they can raise unlimited amounts of cash. And then they yell at each other and insult each other. And we're going to go through this every two to four years. And that's just how it. That's just how it is. It's absolutely astonishing to me that there isn't a larger kind of electoral revolution of saying, hey, it doesn't have to be this way. And people are like, well, how should it be? It's like, we'll figure that out. But maybe we figure out a way that isn't filled with hundreds of millions of wasted dollars

that are being spent on local television and radio and internet pop-up ads and campaigns. and maybe we get away from something that is so toxic and calling each other names. I went off on a tangent, but you're touring a revolutionary love tour in the middle of that. So what are you all doing? Even as you were talking, I could just feel like my body gets small.

Like I feel like my chest contract. Don't let anyone make you afraid. Right. Stand your post. Well, if that's the thing, need someone to call you into it, right? And all of us are feeling this. All of us are feeling like the despair and the depression and the fear and the frustration and the confusion and the fatigue. I mean, we've already lived through so much. Now we have to live through more toxicity,

more hate and the, like every, we're scrolling and all we're hearing is the noise of, of hate and cruelty. Like, that's all we're hearing. And you could feel that in our bodies. and yet like your teacher, like my grandfather, you need someone to like take your hand and call you into your higher self. You know, and so that moment where the world feels like it's going to be on fire, and let me be clear, like revolutionary love is not a four-year campaign, it's a 40-year vision. So we're starting in September, what we're continuing is just part of this larger culture shift that we'll be weaving together. And in the fall, what everyone feels like, this, our goal is for the tour to ignite people to choose courage. So I believe that the

diagnosed, like the problem is disconnection. We're disconnected from each other, disconnected from ourselves, disconnected from the earth. I trust that if we create an experience where people are connecting to each other, Satzitya-gal, we're connecting to each other, we're connecting to the earth. We're connecting back to ourselves. It releases so much energy. The joy of connection, the joy of being alive right now and saying, I have a choice of what I do with my voice and my hands. Do I want to drive people to the polls? Do I want to bring them water up their long lines? Do I want to call my grandmother and to have that hard conversation? Do I want everyone? I can give you a list of what I think you should do during the election season. But my bet is that you

already know. You already know what would be the courageous thing. to do, how to be brave with your life. And so if we can create an experience of revolutionary love, where people are acting out of the sense of love and possibility and showing up and knowing that you're not alone, that there are going to be thousands of people who are showing up and have this larger vision of the America that is yet to be born, America and America where we see no stranger,

where you see my babies as yours and I see your son is mine, right? That love beyond the circle. Remember, I pluribusunum out of men. many one. We failed in that right off the bat with our Native American brothers and sisters and with slavery. But the idea is good. The standard is good. This is something that even our founding fathers wanted us, the North Star, they wanted us to aim for out of many one. And that is the America that is yet to be born. And I think of the era that we're living in. Like our lifetime is taking place in this era of transition. Like in birthing labor, transition is the most painful, most

dangerous stage. It is breathless, the contractions, the crisis coming so fast you can barely breathe. And yet it is the stage that precedes the birth of new life. So if we can find the courage to labor through the fires of this moment and say, this is what I've been lifting up is like, the future is dark. It is dark. Is this the darkness of the tomb? Or the darkness of the womb. What if this is our time to listen to the wisdom of the midwife who says, oh, my love, don't give up, breathe, and now push. You know, and no one goes to battle alone.

No one gives birth alone. We need to midwife each other in that labor. So the tour is about bringing people together around the shared vision of the America we want a birth. And then say it doesn't stop after the election. We continue the tour through the spring. Yeah. And the years after.

And what we're leaving people practically is we have these these toolkits for how to take. You know, we were talking about it can't just be resistance. It has to be what you build. We have toolkits that people take back into their communities, into their lives to start practicing together. That's amazing. And I would, I love that, the tomb versus the womb. I think of it as humanity is 16 years old. humanity itself is in its turbulent adolescence, as they would say in the Baha'i faith.

So what happens in a turbulent adolescence? My kids are not teenagers yet. So you've lived through this. You've got to tell me. Brutal. It's brutal. People told me when I was raising my son, they're like, just wait until he's a teenager. And my son was just so sweet.

He was just like this little radiant little angel up through 10, 11. and 12. I'm like, what are you talking about? My time is a perfect age. It's like 13 hit and it's like, boom, it's like this bomb went off.

And it was like, oh, shit. Holy moly. It's real. It's real. But humanity, yeah, so I have lived, I have lived through that

and throw COVID on top of it. I have lived through it. But humanity is in its turbulent adolescence. And, you know, what happens when you're an adolescent, you know, battle against everything, you resist everything, you push, you fight back, you fight against authority, you, you know, you get drunk and crash your car, you know, you, you know, you, you, you,

you binge, you don't have, you know, checks and balances and wisdom and how you live your life and humanity is headed towards rehab. So, and that's okay, because there can be great transformation and there's also great energy in adolescence. And we've just got some lessons to learn collectively. And I, you know, sorry, I keep name-dropping my own friggin' book, but It's that good. Well, no, but one of the thesis is I think that we share, which is kind of rare to people that are operating in kind of what I would call a spiritual space is the idea that there are spiritual tools for social transformation. Yes. That spirituality is not just going to a yoga class or meditation or incense or a crystal or a podcast or a meditation app or an inspiring quote from,

you know, Rumi on your Instagram feed or a Eckhart Tolle book. Like those are all wonderful to help you feel more aligned, peaceful, calm, connected, maybe make your day 10% better. You know, Dan Harris has that 10% happier podcast, brilliant podcast. And that's all well and good. but then how do you take some of those same tools that we're using for personal transformation and the reduction of anxiety and increased tranquility and serenity? And how do we take some of those tools from the great world's faith traditions,

including sick, and put them into practice for, I hate to say social justice because it has such a negative connotation on those two words put together, but social transformation and increased balance and connectedness across a culture. So any ideas there because you're very much in alignment with doing that. How do you? I mean, you should see my copy of your book. Like there's a section where you talk about, I was like, I've never put it in these terms before.

You talked about the Kung Fu model of spirituality. Yeah. For self-actualization. And then the Star Trek model for bettering the world and how we need both. And the whole, in the margins, I was like, rain, sans sapahi, sage warrior. Like this was the wisdom from the Sikh tradition is that you can't just be the sage, the kung fu model, the spirituality, for your own self-beye. for your own self because you are actually not benefiting from that because you're part of the collective. So you're not well if the collective is not well. So even that is an illusion that you

could meditate yourself into happiness. You are uplifted when the collective is uplifted. And if we're just worrying without any capacity for rest and pleasure and connection and the sacred, you talk about the sacred not as a place that we go, but a condition that we can live into, then we run out of steam, like, and we become what we're fighting against. And so the sage and the warrior, the kung fu and the Star Trek, they have to go together. When things started to get heat up for me, I was like, I was breaking down every three hours, you know? I knew it when I was on the bed and I was bowled over after the latest thing. And my kids saw me. And that was the thing. I was always protecting myself, protecting them from seeing any cost I was bearing and what I did in the

world, but they saw me. And first it was like my daughter and then my son, they like literally put their bodies on top of me and kissed me. And they brought me back to life. But I was like, oh, I need to up my spiritual game. I need to deepen my spiritual practice in order to be this courageous out in the world. They mirror each other. So if this time calls all of us to be as courageous as we can out in the world to serve, to love, to fight for humanity, then the practice in some of the side has to go as deep. And so I started, I mean, I could never, like small children, I could never wake up before them, but I had to force myself to. I started to wake up before dawn, walk along the ocean, listening to my ancestors' prayers, breathing, opening my senses, letting joy into my body,

calling forth the wisdom in me, doing my whole practice. I come back before they woke up and then I could manage anything that the world throughout me during the day. The sage, prepares the warrior. The warrior fortifies the sage. It has to be bold to really live into what this time is calling us into. That's beautiful. That's so great. This is the title of your new book. Sage Warrior. Yeah, coming out this fall. Coming out in the fall. I don't have a copy here. Pick one up. Sage Warrior. I haven't finished writing it yet. But yes, you will have a copy very soon. But it's coming out September. Yes, it is.

Tell us about it. Oh, I'm so electrified. I'm so electrified to put this in you. Remember I was talking earlier about how if you're a sick person, probably like a Baha'i person or a Jain person, you're just so used to no one having any idea who you are, what you believe, what your ancestors were about, right? So I wrote my first book, So, you know, Stranger, and it was this memoir, this manifesto. And then people started to ask me about, like, but how, when the world feels like it's

ending how and I felt like you know the things things have gotten so so bad in the last few years that you know I was talking about I had to I you write the book to save your own life like how do I keep showing up when it is dangerous and also when I can feel so depressed and afraid by how much the world is unraveling so I had to go back and ask you myself, how did my ancestors survive near annihilation? What was the wisdom that they needed to keep showing up when things felt so dark? And how did they not just resist? How did they birth a new people, a new way of being? How did they live into the world that they wanted? And so that led me onto this beautiful spiritual soldier in the last two years where I was reimagining my ancestor stories.

So the book, sorry, the book. Clearly I haven't spoken about the book out loud before. Been in the writing game. So the book is a 200-year epic chronicle. It's like, it's a story of war and mysticism and magic and healing and connection and survival and flourishing. This really dramatic story over the course of 200 years and interwoven with me going back to Punjab, taking a pilgrimage with my kids, going to the place where Gudunaniq meditated and the place where he does. disappeared in the river and the place where the battle took place and writing about what that wisdom means for me as a mother and as an activist and what that wisdom might mean for all of us. So at the end, you have this experience. It's not just like, it's like an experience. Like you experience the story where by the end of it, when you hear the words revolutionary love, you feel it in your body in a completely new way. And hopefully you feel inspired and

equipped to walk the path of the sage warrior. So along with everything else, you've got a revolutionary love bus tour, like the Partridge family, only social justice love and healing. Although my kids might come with me, so. That's what happens in the Partridge family. So teach him the tambourine. Actually, my son plays tabla, and he's been practicing with me as I've been telling the stories.

Oh, that's so sweet. I know. And Sage Warrior, Warrior Sage book that's coming out. World of Wonder is another project coming out this fall. What is that? Oh, it's a children's book. Yeah. It is the most delicious of them all.

You know, I was like, oh, I believe revolutionary love is a call of our times. I have to teach my children. You don't have to teach your children about love. Like they can teach you maybe. They can teach you. They can teach you. Like we go on walks. And I'm like, my big discovery.

about love was that it begins in wonder. It doesn't necessarily begin in empathy or compassion. Those things come and go afterwards. But when it's hard to love, you begin with wonder. You ask, why? Why do they say that? Why do they do that? What do they need? What do they want? If you can wonder about the face in front of you, that is the starting point for how to love them. So I thought, oh, I need to teach my children how to wonder. No. So we, during the pandemic, my daughter, two-year-old daughter and I started to walk to the beach and I can see, I just, I just need to affirm the wonder she already has. So this book started to spill from me singing to her and it became World of Wonder. Do you want to hear a verse or two?

Of course. Okay, okay. So, but you have to pretend that you're four. Okay. Wait, you got it? Like, you really have to pretend you're four. Because I can't do it unless you're four. Oh, yeah, I see it now. You must, you should go into acting. I should. I really should.

Okay, ready? Yeah. And sun a leaf Birds in the sky Sweet little bee Tree's so high Wonder Baby says Wow

Well You're a part of me I don't yet know People walk by Faces are new So many colors Points of view Where have they been

What have they seen Their stories show me me everything. Wonder Baby says, wow, well, you're a part of me. I don't yet know. Sad stories make me turn away. But I keep listening, I get brave. I speak, I march, I dance, I sing. Justice is what we can bring. Wonder Baby says, wow. Whoa, you're a part of me. I don't yet know. And when I'm feeling hurt or sad,

raging tears, very mad, it's hard to wonder about anyone else, and so I wonder about myself. And then it happens like a surprise, the feeling changes before my eyes. as a special part in showing me how to love my heart

Wonder Baby says Wow Whoa You're a part of me I don't yet know All right And it goes on and on and on Oh that's great

That's great First of all you've got a trademark Wonder Baby because you could have Wonder Baby as like a line of clothing and books It could be an animated series Wonder Baby, I haven't heard. Maybe it's out there. You got to think about that.

You got it. It would have started here. And the book is called what? World of Wonder. Okay, great. And also in September? Also September. Fantastic. Yeah. Valerie, thank you so much. I love you, right.

I love you too. The Soul Boom Podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.