Engaged Liberation

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit christopherrivas.substack.comYara Travieso is a brilliant artist, film maker, big feeler, and wisdom sharer. Yara embodies so much love and power in this world. I have been healed and quoted Yara many times in this life (“The more I heal, the less ambitious I become.”) and I will continue too. This is one of my favorite and most powerful conversations I’ve had on here. And now I ha…

“My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” - The one and only Mary OliverEngaged Liberation is a you supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider subscribing.Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a Guatelombian (Guatemalan-Colombian) American writer. Her book Candelaria was named one of the best books of 2023 by VOGUE and USA Today. Her work explores the intersections of Latina identity, feminism, hair removal & what it means to belong. In this incredible convo we chat turning off our phones, bringing back Selena through seance, and paving our own way.The Full unedited episode can be found here and the edited version on Brown Enough. If you love Engaged Liberation, consider supporting it for $5, cheaper then my LA cup o’ coffee. You’ll gain access to weekly group meetings, as well as full access to the Engaged Liberation podcast. Thank you! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christopherrivas.substack.com/subscribe

Kristen McGuiness is the founder of Rise Books, she’s a best-selling author, editor, and an integral part to helping me birth Brown Enough into the world. She coached me through my own book proposal process and then helped me publish the book through the publishing company that she helped create (RowHouse). Now, through her new publishing company Rise Books - she offers incredible resources and services to authors at all levels of their artistic journey. One of those incredible offerings is their 5 Months to Memoir Seminar. I have done it and it's incredible!Have you been dreaming of writing your memoir? Have you started but don’t know where to go with it? Have you already finished your draft but feel like you need a space to workshop your book? Then Five Months to Memoir is for you .You can learn all about here and also in the video / episode. Enjoy and keep writing your story, keep speaking your truth. We need it. ps. The next workshop begins on Thursday, March 27th and goes through July 3rd. Sessions are from 10:00am-12:00pm PST every other week. The workshop is 10% off with the code WRITENOWIf you love Engaged Liberation, consider supporting it for $5/mo, cheaper then my Los Angeles cup of coffee. You’ll gain access to weekly group meetings, as well as full access to the Engaged Liberation podcast. Thank you! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christopherrivas.substack.com/subscribe

I got to chat with the one and only, Samuél Lopez-Barrantes (from, if not, Paris)… The first person I ever heard talk about Substack, and likely the reason I hopped onto this platform.We chatted all things creativity, writing processes, liberation, joy, oppression, and how if you want community you just have to go get it. This is a beautiful one. Enjoy This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christopherrivas.substack.com/subscribe

Kalah Hill is a freedom Doula, shame slayer, and pleasure activist! The founder of In Pleasure We Trust. On this wonderful chat we To find out more about Kalah and her services follow on Instagram @kalah.hill and check out her website www.inpleasurewetrust.comEngaged Liberation is free. If you love it, consider supporting it financially. For $5/mo, you’… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christopherrivas.substack.com/subscribe

This week I get the pleasure of chatting with Candy Santana, a brilliant actress, author, and former lawyer! Enjoy this conversation on acceptance and hearing that call inside of us, the one that says whether to stay, go, stop or change directions…. As Lauryn Hill says beautifully, “God gave us a steering wheel for a reason.” Sometimes we have to turn l… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christopherrivas.substack.com/subscribe

I hide my face when I cry. Or at least I turn my face away from anyone around. Doesn’t matter if it’s a best friend, my partner, family - I’ve been turning away and hiding my tears for almost my whole life. In one way, I’m glad I’m even crying. Crying in general, letting the salt water leak from my face was hard for me for about 28 years. You should have seen the internal crisis I had when watching The Lion King in movie theaters for the first time - I had to leave when Simba’s dad wouldn’t wake up (spoiler)… It’s was all the cliche’s you can think of: I didn’t really see my father cry, I believed it was weak, I didn’t know it’s medicinal benefits, the feelings felt bigger than I could grasp, it wasn’t what men did… But here I am now, 36 years old and still hiding my face, hiding my tears. Which inherently says, “you shouldn’t see this” or “this is wrong.”Maybe it’s just habitual - this hiding - a story that tells me I have to be some stone faced perfect person who always feels okay (whatever okay is). But, like any habit, it simply takes awareness and practice to start a new one… to recognize and engage with this wanting to hide, and in that recognition I can instead choose to look into the eyes of whoever I am with, and to cry with my head high. Engaged Liberation is reader-supported. Consider supporting me for significantly less than an $8 Oat Milk latte. Hopefully these writings are just as delicious and caffeinating. Because Liberation is all about recognizing, not running, not hiding. It's about accepting that pain, the emotion, and not letting it define me. I cry, you cry, we all cry, and liberation tells us, "That’s part of this whole thing." Or as the poet Gibran would say, “I cried enough tears till I dug me a permanent smile.” Liberation isn't about being perfect; it’s about intimacy with the moment, with whatever that moment has to offer, and not shying away from it. Engaging with the messiness of this life, even when it means letting you see me wiping the tears from my beautiful face.xo This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christopherrivas.substack.com/subscribe

*I highly recommend you listen to this one.“Without art there is no modern world, just a barbaric one. If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?” - Ai Wei WeiPASTI don’t know the exact point, but I know it was early on. As early as the story, which is as early as us. We crafted gifts, we called it art. It wasn’t about weightless viral messages, it was about truth. Liberation.That’s what the ancients did. They told us, Your world is about to fall apart, it’s about to collapse. Save it, now, before it’s too late. PRESENTWhat is that rule of three - fast, cheap, good - you can only have 2. Why has good been sacrificed for cheap and fast? "Will it sell?" they wonder. “Will it reach the socials?” they hope.... Is it a coincidence that Society rhymes with Anxiety? Or that content and to be content are the same word?As in, I wish to be content, but to even think about being content reminds me that I am most certainly content. Because content is everything right!? This is why Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says artists need to work harder, “it’s about creating continuous engagement and keeping a continuous dialogue.”Continuous. Is this why I can’t sleep? Continuous. Why I wake with a stomach tied in knots? Continuous. Because I’m not making enough continuous content to be content? Content that will most certainly be forgotten by the next piece of content and the next and the next. When they say work harder, do more, post more - they don't know how hard it is to actually birth something meaningful, to cultivate, to make, to try, to try, to try, to pitch, to arrange and rearrange, to begin again. They might understand the Bugs Bunny mathematix of paying an artist less than a penny per stream - but they don't know art. And so, great artists chew on leather so that CEO's can save a buck, so they can make it faster and cheaper. Stuck so deep in the gospel of more they forget why they started to begin with. They have lost themselves to the bottom line.More is the religion of right now, and it is a broken religion. Think of the great art and artists we have lost in search of more. Those displaced because they didn't have the space to create. More is taking more from our physical and mental health than it can give in return. It’s like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. She runs and runs but she never seems to get anywhere. She tells Alice, “In my country, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”Or like an employee who walks into his boss’s office and asks for a raise, the boss says– “I can’t raise your salary but if you want to earn more money, all you need to do is work more hours. Don’t go home, don’t sleep, don’t go to brunch, don’t go see your mom on the weekends, miss the funeral, the wedding, and the birthdays, stay here, deliver product - ”The gospel of more will tell you product is all that exists, that everything is made of it, and nothing exists outside of it. But this isn’t true, because according to physics – at everything’s core, there’s actually nothing. Even objects as solid as rocks, chairs, you and me, have nothing substantial at their core. So here I am sweating for something that is empty at its core. And when it finally comes I don’t even know how to enjoy it because I’m onto the next. What’s the point of it all if I can’t enjoy it?Instead of, “Have I worked hard enough to deserve rest?” May we now ask, “have I rested enough to birth my most loving and meaningful creation?” FUTURE I believe what many indigenous cultures believe, we're alive just as nature is alive: to be here, to be beautiful & strange. What we really want is peace, admit it. A gut that isn’t in shambles. A calm nervous system. Imagine if we could make art and not product. Making and sharing for the beauty of sharing. We create worlds and invite people in.Initiating a conversation between ourselves and the people who are engaging with our spirits. This kind of collaboration is at the heart of what it is to be human, what it is to be in our time, and what it means to be part of civilization. Who we free will be part of the future, and it will help to shape whatever future that will be.Because, the future is not fixed. The “future” is not a destination. The future is a practice of now. A co-created set of decisions, of happenings, and loved-out-loud questions in the only moment where there is breath. Now. We are each other’s future.xo*composed by Adrien Prevost This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christopherrivas.substack.com/subscribe

If the continual looking outward at other people’s lives makes you feel inadequate, why not stop? If the reminders of what you don’t have hurt / are more than you can handle, why not disconnect? Why not give up the addiction to your own discontent. Disconnect from comparison (that their of joy). Disconnect. See the world that is here. The world as it is. Right here. Right now. See why you can’t leave or walk away. See the excuses. The stories. The addiction. The habits. Just because everyone is doing it, or everyone is on it doesn’t mean you have to be as well. Why not free yourself?Get Free. So I can be free. xo  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christopherrivas.substack.com/subscribe

This is one of those Buddhist tenants that have always bugged me a little bit. The idea that reality is permeable, or fluctuating, or easily suggestible. As in, there is our reality, not a single reality. In simple terms - when you are in a rush, everyone is moving to slowly. When you just got great news, or are falling in love, everyone is moving at the perfect speed. One little thing can turn our whole day upside down or right side up. Life is how we think about it. Eyes show different people different things. Glass half full / half - you get it - In physics it’s called the measurement problem. The theory that the observer always affects what’s observed. How we look at something changes it. It’s also called the The dandelion principle. Some people call a dandelion a weed, a menis, and for some it’s medicine, a detoxifier to the liver, a tool for women to produce more breast milk.There are many dharmic teachings that remind us that so much of our life is not just the action but also the state of con­sciousness that we choose to reside in. Our suggestible storytelling and story-filled mind is the very thing that determines the nature and quality of the words we utter and actions we take. There are people who have it all and still don’t feel enough. People who are powerful, famous, rich, and still profoundly unhappy. Okay, this all makes sense to me… Now, what if I say that I see a ton of disparity, unfair death, war, genocide, a planet in pain, abuse and greed, is that all just in my mind? No - these things are most defiantly happening, but as you know - some people do not see them that way. Some people don’t see a planet hurting. Some people only see profit and not people. Some people are in fear for their lives while others see justice and righteousness taking effect. I think the phrase, “all that you see out in front of you is how you feel inside your head” is more about this ability we have to convince ourselves of anything. To come up with and believe in a story that serves or harms us. And since we are so suggestible, one of the things we get to do in this life is open up this field of inquiry. Ask ourselves, is this real? Is this thought real? Does this cause harm? Am I complicit? Is this that serious compared to what could be happening? By taking a moment to arrive and see what truly is, to take in a perspective larger than just our story, we’re allowing reality to come to us. A reality that is much bigger than us as the main character. A reality that says we are tiny pieces of dust, but also, we can love, take action, and heal in profound ways. A reality that is both beautiful and full of devastation. A reality where what we do matters and doesn’t matter at all. By opening up this field of inquiry, we’re seeing what's here rather than imposing a story about what's here. This requires us to take on the task of challenging what we have been told, and going head to head with the oppression we have internalized through any allegiance we may have to poisonous and outdated stories.How much liberation is in our lives depends on how much space we make for it to exist - in all that is here, not simply what we pick and choose to be here. xo Engaged Liberation is a labor of love. If you appreciate the time and effort that has gone into this, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christopherrivas.substack.com/subscribe