“Discover why soul work fuels true service” ~Crystal Wind

The world is unraveling — politically, ecologically, psychologically, spiritually. Outrage is plentiful. Wisdom is scarce. What the moment asks of us is not more noise, but a different kind of courage: inner work joined to outer service.

Read Time: 12 min | Crystal Wind Exclusive Publication | Crystal Wind News Service | Serge Beddington-Behrens

That is the ground of Serge Beddington-Behrens’ new book, Regenerating an Unraveling World: The Sacred Challenges of the Warrior Activist (Umbria Press, 2026). Serge writes as a soul-centered psychotherapist, teacher and long-time student of sacred warriorhood. His thesis is simple and demanding. The crises around us are not only enemies. They are also training grounds. If we grow the warrior inside us — heart, discipline, presence, service — we become agents of regeneration rather than casualties of collapse.

CrystalWind invited Serge to answer a written Q&A for our readers. His responses follow, lightly shaped for the page, in his own voice.

CrystalWind: You describe the idea of the “Sacred Activist” as someone who combines inner transformation with meaningful action. What does being a Sacred Activist actually look like in everyday life?

Serge: The important thing is being a Sacred Warrior activist, as this brings many more dimensions into our lives. On the surface, you won’t notice anything out of the ordinary, as spiritual warriors are not showy. But on the inside they are very different from most of us. They are more awake, more conscious, more alive to more of what is going on in the world. They are men and women who will have worked on themselves and so will have evolved a certain moral purity. They won’t have big egos. They will be courageous and have great endurance and unlike most of us, will be willing to see the transformational possibilities of being able to confront, and not try to run away from, suffering if it happens to come seeking them out.

They are therefore not attached to having to be comfortable and are much more willing to take stands on behalf of causes they believe in, be it issues of women’s rights, promoting democracy, or whatever. Carrying a sacred energy also means that their hearts are more open, implying that their toughness and resilience will have a tenderness to it. They are disciplined, compassionate and willing to support the underdog with humility, strength and compassion. But they don’t make a big thing about it.

Central to their raison d’être is the need to be of service, to see themselves as change agents, to regard their deeper life purpose as being about bringing regeneration into the world in whatever area or areas of it that they feel moved to address. The sacred warrior activist represents the fusion of the mystic’s passion for God with the activist’s passion for justice, creating a third fire which is the burning sacred heart that longs to help, preserve and nurture every living thing. Only if you are at that level can you recognize this about them.

CrystalWind: You write that many of the crises facing humanity are ultimately crises resulting from a “lack of soul.” What do you mean by this, and how do you see that loss of soul manifesting in today’s world?

Serge: If soul is the animating principle that makes all living things alive, and which links all of life together, the absence of this factor being present in many human beings lies behind almost every problem we have in the world. Our soullessness underlies wars, fascism, greed, evil, the desire for materiality and power.

What is particularly problematic is that when soul is neglected, it doesn’t go away. It appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence and loss of meaning and particularly in malignantly narcissistic behaviors. We start playing what I call “substitute soul games,” whereby instead of our being inspired to expand our self-awareness, we get obsessed with needing to expand our standard of living and all sorts of eminently un-sacred or secular activities get charged with sacred meaning. Many billionaires see their quest for money as being a sacred undertaking!

In the past when we had sacred structures in our societies, they had the effect of protecting us from inflation and alienation. Now that most of our institutions and organizations have lost their sacred mooring, many of us have also lost our connection with our deeper soul selves. For this we pay a big price.

CrystalWind: Many spiritual traditions emphasize peace, acceptance and detachment, while activism often involves confronting injustice and challenging systems. How can someone engage in activism without becoming consumed by anger, fear or hatred?

Serge: As sacred activists, our big challenge is to integrate opposites, that is to “do our being,” or to engage in our outer service work with inner strength and gentleness. We need to feel very attached to addressing those causes that touch us — indeed, the more passionately we feel about something, the more effectively we will act — but we need to operate with detachment and thus not be identified with outcomes. We seek to do our best and that is it.

We build up our “courage muscles” by choosing to move forward and engage in situations that may at times be scary. However, the name of the game is not to not be afraid but to do our best to move forward despite our concerns.

I also think we need to have a certain amount of anger about the state of the world, as that motivates us. I, for example, am very angry about the growth of fascism in the world and the way women are treated in many countries. And that fires me up. Indeed, it was anger at the injustices in the world that inspired me to write this book. But my rage does not consume me because I do my best to balance it with love inside my heart. I feel anger but I will seek to move forward with love. If we operate out of a place of respecting our fellow human beings, we can hate what some of them do and stand for, but not hate them. Warrior activist Gandhi beautifully embodied this in his doctrine of Satyagraha.

CrystalWind: Your concept of the Sacred Warrior draws inspiration from traditions including the Samurai, Zen Buddhism and the Knights of the Round Table. What can these seemingly different traditions teach us about courage and conscious action today?

Serge: While none of these traditions were into “activism” as we know it today — that is, they were not concerned with political reform or social revolution — each of them, in their different ways, were a force for change, expansion of our awareness, and regeneration. Each of these traditions stressed that we human beings need to work to give birth to that deeper nobility of soul that lies inside each of us. We recognize that choosing to be ourselves and not put on any face to please or accommodate others requires a lot of mindfulness and courage.

CrystalWind: You argue that meaningful change begins with personal transformation. Why is inner work so important before — or alongside — attempts to change the world around us?

Serge: The world outside us today is a reflection of humanity’s collective dysfunctionality. All evil, all tyrants, all wars, all greed, all inequalities, racism, hate, injustices reflect our wounding, our human dysfunctionalities and our lack of being connected to who we are. We cannot regenerate outwardly if inwardly we are still full of hate, ego, fear, envy, greed, dishonesty, as we cannot give out to the world what does not yet exist inside us. So if we are to have our lives make a real difference to the world, we need psychologically and spiritually to be in as integrated a state as possible. And this can only come about by our continually working on ourselves, confronting our complexes and fears, growing our soul lives, opening our hearts and learning to be ever more aware of our dark or Shadow sides.

CrystalWind: In a time of increasing political polarization and division, how can people stand firmly for what they believe is right while still maintaining compassion for those with opposing views?

Serge: I will answer this personally. It is very challenging. Those two great warrior activists Gandhi and Martin Luther King managed it, although I wonder if they had compassion for those who stood against them, but more a respect for the fact that they were also human beings. I don’t know.

Personally speaking, I oppose everything that Trump and MAGA stand for. I see the violence in men like Hegseth and the late Charlie Kirk. I am appalled by the way that Netanyahu and Putin behave, and I am not afraid of putting out exactly what I stand for. I cannot say I like those human beings who I think are plainly evil and I certainly have no compassion for them. I have compassion for those who suffer because of them.

That said, I respect the fact that evil or the oppositional forces are part of life. There could be no warriorhood if there were no big challenges like these evil people present us with. I therefore recognize that these men have a role to play in the great cosmic drama and are flesh and blood like myself and that inside them, very deeply hidden, lies their soul life and I respect the fact that they have the right to be. While I do not love them or feel moved to open my heart towards them, I do not hate them and do my best to not send them negative energies.

CrystalWind: You identify eleven different paths through which people can become activists. Does activism necessarily mean political involvement or public protest, or can someone make a significant difference through much quieter forms of action?

Serge: We all have different contributions to make, different capacities and different ways to be of service. Some people like the great Greta Thunberg are great movers and shakers. Others, like the great mystic Ramana Maharshi, changed the world through his silent prayers and meditations. Beaming powerful thoughts of love and peace into the world, as these adepts were able to do — and still do today — is a powerful regenerative form of activism. So yes, we can be an activist as much through the power of our being as with our doing.

I have never been on a demonstration or been politically involved. My small way of being of service is to help people grow their soul lives, and through my books and lectures, shine light on those shadowy and evil areas of life in the hopes that the more people become aware of the evils in the world, the more they might feel moved to play some kind of healing role in addressing them.

We all need to deepen and expand our understanding of what activism means and realize it occurs in many different ways and at many different levels. Each of us have a different kind of work to do and need to let go our conventional views of what we see activism to imply. I see all forms of activism as being different ways of actively expressing our desire to have change come about in the world.

In the book those eleven paths include the Radiator, the Initiator, the Creator, the Investigator, the Infiltrator, the Proclamator, the Innovator, the Educator, the Protestor, the Agitator and the Dissident. You may find yourself on one path, or two, or several.

CrystalWind: What role do spirituality and higher human qualities such as compassion, forgiveness, courage and wisdom have in addressing issues such as war, authoritarianism, inequality and environmental destruction?

Serge: The more light we emit, the more darkness is starved out, so people vibrating with compassion, forgiveness, courage and wisdom have a powerful role in incinerating hatred, a desire for revenge, fear and stupidity. Take war. Of course we need to do many concrete and practical things to bring it to a close, but the more we build up the soul force of those four qualities inside ourselves — I’ll also add the quality of peace — the more we also bring into being the idea of a new, more unitive story for humanity and the more our current stories built around hate, the desire to kill and steal from others — mindsets which lead to war — become weakened.

I repeat. Activism needs to happen at many levels and what makes it sacred and thus greatly empowers it, is if the activist will have built a good storehouse of higher-human qualities inside themselves. We need to remember the wise words of the great visionary Teilhard de Chardin when, just after the bomb was dropped in 1945, he suggested that “there is more power inside an awake human heart than inside an atomic bomb.”

All of us activists or would-be activists are connected at deeper levels and all of us have our unique missions. Some of us are more the mind of regeneration — those scientists who come up with new ways of seeing the world, the paradigm shifters. Some of us are more the body of regeneration. Our role is to bring into being new institutes, new ways of engaging in politics and economics. Some of us are the heart. Our role is to bring in new ways of relating and healing and living in peace together as one global community.

CrystalWind: Your message is ultimately hopeful despite the many crises which you explore. What gives you the greatest reason to believe that humanity can move toward a more conscious and compassionate future?

Serge: Firstly, a deep knowing which I share and which I am privileged to share, with some of the great mystics and visionaries from the past and the present. I believe the great adepts like Jesus and the Buddha have planted the new seeds in our society and we need to wait for them to blossom.

But on the way towards this blossoming and over the course of this century, humanity will need to go into very, very dark places, as the unraveling of our current “world order” is happening very quickly and I believe the pace will only increase over the next 75 years. In other words, I believe that crises will continue to rain down on us, all of our own creating.

However, out of the collective suffering, a new way of seeing the world will gradually come into being. The very struggles and crises we are all dealing with today are creating the right atmosphere to allow the lost soul of humanity to begin emerging. I like to call these times we are living in times of Fierce Grace, as I see a blessing hidden inside all the destruction and suffering that will continue to go on all around us. Next century we will start seeing many phoenixes arise out of the ashes of our past.

Just as the addict who reaches rock bottom realizes there is only one way to go and that is in a new direction, so when we as a species reach rock bottom — and yes, we are moving in that direction — we will realize the absurdity of those values that we have been living by, and the result will be that enormous quantum shifts will appear and a whole new kind of warrior-fied human being and a whole new quality of society will begin emerging, much more quickly than anyone could believe possible.

So yes, this is not the final end. It is the death rattles of a highly dysfunctional system that will lead to the birth of a whole new species of human being and a very, very different kind of unitive society that in my book I describe in detail. In the long run, therefore, I am optimistic. This is not the end of humanity. AI won’t gobble us up. Nukes are not going to be used. The ecological crises we will probably have to confront are not going to destroy us all, and fascist leaders are not going to take over the world. The more you and I learn to grow our warrior muscles, the more we work at letting go our old wounds and traumas, the stronger and the more resilient we will become, and the easier it will be to live at a time when all of us will be confronted by challenges at every level.

CrystalWind: If someone reading this feels overwhelmed by everything happening in the world and wonders, “What can I possibly do?”, where would you suggest they begin?

Serge: Begin where your feet already are. Do not wait until you feel large enough for the whole planet. Sacred activism starts as inner honesty and one clean act of service.

Tell the truth to yourself about what breaks your heart. That ache is a compass. Then work on the instrument: a little stillness, an open heart, a willingness to meet your own fear instead of exporting it. Choose a scale you can inhabit — kindness in the room you are in, one true sentence, one person helped, one beautiful thing made. Presence is activism. So is friendship. Detach from the outcome and stay attached to the work. Do your best. Then do it again tomorrow.

About the book
Serge Beddington-Behrens
Regenerating an Unraveling World: The Sacred Challenges of the Warrior Activist
Umbria Press, 2026
ISBN 978 1 919974 52 7 (print)
ISBN 978 1 910074 53 4 (ebook)
sergebeddingtonbehrens.com

Part One maps inner activism. Part Two turns outward — including the eleven sacred paths of the warrior activist, war, evil, fascism, and a vision of a regenerated society. Endorsements include Andrew Harvey, Philip Carr-Gomm, Steve Taylor, David Lorimer and Fernando Feliu.

Disclaimer: The information in this article is presented for educational and informational purposes only. Views expressed are those of the contributing author and do not necessarily reflect the views of CrystalWind.ca, which makes no claims regarding the accuracy of any content herein.

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