A Contemplative Guide to Toppling Tyranny

(and Learning to Resist Without Losing Your Soul—or Screaming at Your Uncle)

Dear Neighbor,

Excuse me. I hope I’m not interrupting. It’s just that… well, I happened to glance over, and I couldn’t help but notice. Again, I wasn’t spying in a creepy way or anything. I just happened to notice that… well... it seems like you might have a bit of a tyrant problem.

No shame in that. Happens to the best of us.

And I know it’s really none of my business. But I also know tyrants can be pesky. They kind of just show up—innocently consolidating power and eroding your freedoms—and the next thing you know, you’re either wearing a silly red hat or shaking in terror when you see someone else wearing it.

You’ve done well not to fully succumb, which is great news, because when a tyrant invades your nervous system, they tend to hang a few banners in your mind and redecorate your inner world in shades of dread.

I know it isn’t easy to hold it together. I bet it’s getting harder to ignore the stormtroopers marching across your mental streets to Darth Vader’s theme. And harder still to resist screaming at Uncle Eddie for posting that “Flat Earth–Deep State–Fox News–Reptilian Vaccine” garbage on Facebook again.

But let’s be honest—are you really mad at Uncle Eddie? Lovable Uncle Eddie? The one who may or may not have eaten an entire Crayola set in 1987? This might just be his cry for help. Doesn’t he have the right to believe in whatever pseudoscience his algorithm serves him?

So… what’s really bothering you?

Is it the quiet crumbling of civil liberties?
The toddler-level fiscal decisions wrecking small businesses and hurting the most vulnerable?
The blatant disregard for checks and balances?
The hollowing out of the soul of democracy?
The unjust burning up of the planet and its people?
The shock-and-awe rollout of solutions so devastating, you need a FEMA trailer just to emotionally recover?

Or maybe it’s something harder to name. A sense of helplessness. Powerlessness.
Like you’re trapped in a slow-moving landslide and no one else seems to notice.
Maybe you’ve started fantasizing about moving off the grid, far away from civilization.
Maybe you’ve googled “how to build a yurt” or “is it legal to live under a rock.”

If so, you’re not alone. These are symptoms of living under tyranny. When things feel rigged, rigged against you, and rigged within you, despair starts to look like common sense. And I know a thing about despair (shameless plug – click here).

So, what are we to do?

Well, I’ve got something that might help.

It’s the contemplative guide to toppling tyrants.

Think of it as a brief prep manual before you go storming the castle.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Contemplative Awareness — Typologies of Tyrants and Their Tyranny

Tyrants come in two varieties: Outer and Inner.

Outer Tyrants are your garden-variety despots. They wear power like strong, cheap cologne, and when everyone around them is choking on it, they either don’t notice or don’t care. You see, strong cologne is a must-have in the tyrant starter kit, because it distracts from other putrid smells, like the abuses of power, the distortions of truth, the manipulating of fear, and the constant lies. No good tyrant with dare leave home without it.

Some examples of Outer Tyrants include (but are not limited to) politicians who deny human dignity, bosses who weaponize team-building exercises, and the HOA presidents who’ve clearly confused their cul-de-sac with a minor fiefdom.

Then there are the Inner Tyrants, and these are the ones you really have to watch. They’re sneakier. Quieter. They don’t shout orders, they whisper doubts. They don’t build armies, they build narratives. They love to tell you stories about how you’re not enough, you’ll never be enough, and have you even seen your to-do list lately? They keep your mind busy, distracted, numb, and dumb.

Picture a dusty little throne room in your mind, run by a slightly malfunctioning animatronic leftover from a 1980s pizza parlor. (You know the one. Jerky movements. Eyes that follow you. Probably named something like “Shamey the Squirrel.”)

This inner tyrant doesn’t organize parades. It organizes distractions—compulsions, addictions, endless Netflix queues, spiritual bypassing. Anything to keep you checked out and locked in. It keeps Shamey the Squirrel dancing on the stage so you don’t notice the asbestos in the ceiling or the sticky floors of your inner life.

And here’s the kicker: outer tyrants rely on inner tyrants like late-stage empires rely on denial. Or like presidential candidates rely on billionaires. One feeds the other grapes while the other lies back like Cleopatra in a bath of entitlement, demanding attention and tribute.

So what’s the move?

Contemplative Awareness.
The art of noticing how these two tyrants collaborate without flinching. The goal at this stage is to learn how the strongman outside gets his strength from the saboteur within. Because before you can topple a regime, you have to question the stories you tell yourself when you're tired, afraid, or scrolling doom headlines at 1 a.m.

Start by following the smoke. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And near the fire? Someone’s sitting in the bushes with a box of matches. Your job is to figure out who hired that guy, because that guy is your tyrant.

Step 2: Contemplative Presence — Sit Down Before You Burn Down

Now that you’ve spotted your tyrant, your next move might feel wildly unsatisfying.

You’ll want to act. Boldly. Dramatically. You’ll want to draft a strongly worded post, sign up for twelve protests, and maybe cancel your cousin’s quinceañera so you can finally confront your HOA president in the street with a megaphone and a righteous playlist. You start shopping for tear gas masks, and start to wonder if pepper spray comes out easily in the wash.

But hold on.

Before you storm the gates, it’s time to do something far less sexy: sit still and regulate your rage.

Your anger is valid. It’s also volatile. And if you’re not careful, it will burn through your nervous system faster than a box of clearance fireworks in a dry field. Tyrants, especially the internal kind, count on that. They feed off your fury. They need you reactive, loud, and distracted.

Tyranny thrives on the tumultuous.

So in Step 2, we choose stillness.

Not safety.

Not submission.

Stillness.

We pause in the rubble and resist the urge to rebuild too quickly or react too loudly. We sit with the shame, the fear, the distraction and refuse to feed it or pay tribute to what is causing it. We evict that tyrant’s minions, and refuse to let any more tyranny book the room next to Shamey the Squirrel in the Chuck E. Cheese of our minds.

Because sometimes the most radical act isn't shouting louder.
It's refusing to be manipulated at all.

Step 3: Solidarity in Motion — How to March Without Losing Your Soul

Once you’ve sat still long enough to notice the tyrants and quiet your instinct to flail, something strange happens. You realize you can’t do this alone. And you were never supposed to.

That’s where solidarity comes in—not as a hashtag, not as a performance, but as a kind of sacred conspiracy. A holy alliance of the slightly tired and wildly hopeful.

Solidarity isn’t about matching signs or synchronized outrage. It’s about being with people who are committed to presence over performance. The ones who will hold your gaze when your inner tyrant is screaming, “Don’t let them see you like this.” The ones who know revolution starts with relationship.

Because the tyrants—both inner and outer—count on your isolation. They want you scrolling at midnight, convinced no one else feels like they’re unraveling. They want you siloed in shame and exhausted from pretending.

Solidarity breaks the spell.

It says, “Me too. I see it too. And I’m still here.”

And when presence becomes communal, it becomes movement. Not fast, not flashy. But faithful. This is activism in its most honest form—quiet, consistent disruption rooted in truth.

Contemplative activism doesn’t seek applause. It seeks alignment. It whispers, “I’ll move, but not without my soul.” Sometimes that looks like a march. Sometimes it’s staying in the meeting. Sometimes it’s refusing to laugh at the cruel joke, even if everyone else does.

It’s slow. It’s awkward. It’s deeply human.

But over time, this kind of solidarity becomes contagious. And when enough people show up rooted and real, even the tyrants get nervous.

And then, inevitably, comes the question:

Now what?

Step 4: Consecrated Action — Small Revolutions, Real Consequences

At some point, stillness must move. Presence must speak. Solidarity must step into the street, or the boardroom, or the kitchen, or the voting booth—or all of the above.

Because contemplation without action is just curated avoidance. And solidarity without consequence is just a group chat.

Evelyn Underhill said, "The spiritual life does not consist in thinking about God while one is peeling the potatoes. It consists in peeling the potatoes for the love of God." Which is a polite, British way of saying: your mystical insights don’t mean much if you’re still a jerk to the people who bag your groceries.

And Thomas Merton? He said that contemplation is the highest form of freedom—but freedom is wasted if it’s not used for the liberation of others. "The contemplative is not the person who has fiery visions, but the one who sees the world as it is—and loves it anyway."

So this step? It’s where your interior revolution becomes a little bit external.

But here’s the thing: it’s probably not going to feel revolutionary. It might look like telling the truth at work even when your voice shakes. Or choosing not to retaliate, even though it would feel so damn good. It might be returning to your art, forgiving someone who won’t say sorry, or getting the therapy you swore you didn’t need.

Maybe it’s refusing to abandon joy just because the world is on fire.

That, too, is sacred rebellion.

Consecrated action is the moment you realize that your healing is part of the world’s healing. And that resistance doesn’t have to be loud to be real—it just has to be rooted.

So no, you might not be the one to storm the gates. But maybe you’re the one who plants a garden at the base of the wall. Or sends supplies to those who climb. Or just stands there, hand on heart, whispering prayers that sound a lot like marching songs.

This step is not the end. It’s the continuation of a deeper spiral.

The world needs your strange holiness. Your inconvenient honesty. Your humble, mustard-seed courage.

The tyrants won’t know what to do with you.

And that’s the point.

Step 5: Return — The Long Walk Home

Eventually, you come home.

Not to a world that’s been fixed or redeemed or free of tyrants—but to the same messy, beautiful, burdened place you left. Only now, you are different.

You’ve named your tyrants. You’ve learned to stay. You’ve found your people. You’ve moved with purpose.

Now what?

Now, you live.

Not just mystically. Not just morally. But meaningfully.

You go back to your life—with its laundry and dentist appointments and traffic jams. Only now, you carry something sacred. You carry consecrated defiance. You carry quiet fire. You carry a nervous system that knows how to say “no” with love and “yes” with integrity.

Contemplative return is not a retreat from the world. It’s a reintegration. It’s learning to hold both the holy and the horrible without shutting down. It’s looking at your inbox and saying, “You are not my pharaoh.”

You might not look any different on the outside. But inside, something has shifted.

You know how to pause. You know how to listen. You know how to resist, not with rage alone, but with presence and poetry and boundaries that don’t apologize.

The tyrants will still shout.

But now, you know better than to shout back.

You’ve got other work to do. Quieter. Deeper. More contagious.

The spiral continues. And you, strange brave soul, are already on the path again.

Welcome home.

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*If this sparked anything, a memory, a feeling, a question, let me know. Or just tap the ❤️ so I know you’re out there, too.