The Embodying Belonging and Coliberation Frame

 

Bodhi Tree designed by Alixa Garcia. A prior version of the Bodhi Tree can be found here.

 

Our Bodhi Project is grounded in the lifelong learnings and practices of founder Sonali Sangeeta Balajee, specifically her work conducted through her senior fellowship with the Othering and Belonging Institute (UC Berkeley). The Embodying Belonging and Coliberation Frame was created as a reflection on what we need to be belonging and be coliberation, leading to collective health for all living systems. The frame is a synthesis (not an analysis) grounded intentionally in world indigenous-based practices that speak to collective health. The following six guideposts make up the frame, and as a synthesis are not a collection of things but are deeply interdependent and together speak to the essence of what is healthy and liberating for all living systems. This frame puts forward that Beloved and Bestill are the 'rooting' guideposts for any of the other guideposts and emerging strategies.

the guideposts and our organizing principles

 

beloved

What you love, hold sacred, want to protect, and what is interconnected

Remembering: Bodhi remembers that we are the Earth, and what’s best for living systems is best for us. Our freedom is tied up with the freedom of others, also known as coliberation. Our common yearning for wholeness as living systems requires relational embodied strategies, and grounding in love for all.

 
 

bestill

How we center, pause, reflect, rest, spend time with other living systems

Receiving and restoring: Bodhi knows that we are better able to receive multiple forms of knowledge and experience when in a place of stillness.  Receptive states are also better for our health and are furthered by fostering reflective spaces in our minds, with each other, in our workplaces, and within nature. All living systems depend on collectively caring strategies and structures to restore greater harmony and balance.

 
 

behold

Seeing clearly emotionally, politically, and spiritually, holding the whole

Reimagining: Bodhi grounds our strategies in the reality that everything is interconnected so that we can better integrate and act from a more accurate mapping of colonizing factors as well as liberatory solutions. We practice forming and answering questions that lead to seeing what’s in front of us from a place of balance, deep critical inquiry, and love.

 
 

believe

Interrupting and questioning our conditions, emphasizing multiple ways of knowing and being

Repurposing: Bodhi asks, ‘what are the patterns of belief and structure that get in the way of seeing and acting on behalf of the whole? What structures and behaviors control us and extract from the Earth and all living systems?’ We know moving forward with beliefs leading to belonging and collective health, while letting go of beliefs that lead to othering and poor health for all, helps us necessarily repurpose our strategies.

 
 

becoming

Building power via relationship while rooted in what is Beloved, letting go of what is no longer serving us collectively, choosing actions grounded in values, centering collective health while Becoming

Realigning and recovery: Bodhi believes that social arrangements can be created to promote energy flow, to sustain our systems, promote love and self-assertion and lead to collective health. The opposite is also true. Realigning our structures based on beliefs and imaginations rooted in liberation will lead us to collective health. And to practice what we preach, such strategies of eliminating harm and increasing life-sustaining actions must also center recovery and collective healing processes as part of the plan.