Journey into Spiritual Activism

I am writer. I am yogi. I am HIV positive. I am a sexual creature on this earth. These conditions and states of being inform who I am and how I act. They have come together in my activism—my writing, teaching of yoga, and my speaking about the AIDS pandemic and the remarkable and compassionate work being done worldwide to alleviate suffering and prevent the spread of sexual ignorance and the HIV virus. My main work of activism has been to travel to six countries and record the stories of activists, healers, doctors, clergy, artists, and others affected by the AIDS pandemic. My travels and reflections on my journey both through these countries and my struggles living with HIV as a bisexual man are the subject of my memoir: The After Death Room: Journey into Spiritual Activism. This narrative begins in South Africa at the AIDS Conference in 2000 where I taught a workshop on the benefits of Yoga. Here I met AIDS activists from around the world and across South Africa. But it wasn’t until I met a 19 year-old woman from Soweto that my heart was pierced and my mind emptied. At the end of the workshop I gave on yoga, she came up to me, picked up my hand-outs and web addresses for more information and asked me a simple question: “Would you come to my church in Soweto and give this workshop to my friends and church members who are living with HIV?” And then hearing her request, another woman followed with the same request and then another: “Can you come to Johannesburg, can you come to Nairobi, can you come to Cape Town?” I was at first flattered, but then looking into their sincere faces, desperate to hold on to what they’d just experienced in their bodies I saw how empty my offering to help really was. I told them that I was leaving in a few days but asked them to write down their contact information. But I knew I couldn’t do it. Yes, I was leaving in a few days. But the real excuse was that I was simply afraid to accept their invitation—the spiritual challenge to act on what I believed. If I wasn’t afraid of losing my job and maintaining health insurance, I could have stayed in South Africa and delivered scores of yoga workshops around the country. In fact, several activists had also asked me to stay. (Some of these people emailed me and sent letters, not to keep asking me but simply to thank me for coming and giving the workshop.) This experience haunted me until nine months later, I sold all of my furniture, took a leave of absence from my teaching post (without pay but with health insurance), and let Chicago for Asia to see if I could respond to this pandemic via learning more about AIDS activism and offering to write about it. This begins my journey into a deeper understanding of how a spiritual practice demands compassionate engagement with the world.

I then traveled to India, Thailand, Vietnam, my own community of Chicago, and Senegal, seeking the stories of how activists and others working and living with HIV are changing their societies via what I call spiritual activism. I visited Indian doctors, male sex workers, yoga teachers, social workers, AIDS activists, Buddhist monks, Christian social activists, Marxists, healers, social workers, nurses, government officials, public health officials, Muslim clerics, Baptists, activist who work with female sex workers, gay, bisexual, transgendered men, and scores of people living with HIV. I have tried to embody their stories, their faith, their wisdom and activism into my life by writing this book. The process of letting their words transform me has challenged me in everyway artistically and spiritually. This book is in honor of them and all the those who have dedicated their lives to AIDS activism by alleviating suffering and speaking the truth.

My website is http://mccolly.ecorp.net. Here you can learn more about my journey and how I have used yoga as a source of healing and as inspiration to my work as a writer and activist.