Now What?
The good news is the body
politic is finally emerging from its torpid slumber. Both the Tea Party
movement and the growing ranks of progressives undergoing "hopium"
withdrawal, signal an awakening to a more ominous emergency: Our
democratic republic is rapidly sliding down the slippery slope toward
totalitarianism. This acknowledgment, while initially difficult to face,
is ultimately empowering. Because the first step in healing a condition
is acknowledging it. Or, in Swami's words, "The truth shall upset you
free."
And how do we face this
emergency? First by emerging from fear and separation and seeing that
despite our divisions, the American people are deeply united on one
thing: What we have now isn't working and the predators on Wall Street
have overpowered the producers on Main Street. Progressives blame
corporations, conservatives rail against the state ... and continuing
the conversation at the level of bipolar "politics as usual" will only
exacerbate the emergency. However, if we emerge from the polarized
political puppet show, we see "the man behind the curtain" is the
corporate state - the power of enormous financial leverage combined with
the coercive power of a government-for-hire with the power to legislate
"illegal" laws.
As more and more Americans
are awakening to these inconvenient truths, we must arise to yet another
emergent seeing: As Einstein famously said, a problem cannot be solved
with the same thinking that created it. So if we merely replace the old
villain (Muslim extremists) with the new one (the Corporate State),
we're missing the holistic message and are buying into the same "assaholic"
model that brought us to where we are today.
Instead of seeing the "sociopathogens"
that have been afflicting the body politic as individuals or even groups
of individuals, it's far more helpful to see them as fields of beliefs
and behaviors - that are fed by our own fears, unhealed wounds and
programmed beliefs. Consider that while Enron was a sociopathic entity,
not everyone who worked for that company was a sociopath. However, to
keep their job they had to engage in sociopathic behavior. So, the
emergent awakening is that we have allowed the amoral sociopathic credo
of the rule of gold ("Doodoo unto others before they can doodoo unto
you") to overrule the Golden Rule.
As Bruce Lipton and I point out in
Spontaneous Evolution, when religion ceased to be the dominant force
in our civilization, because "human nature abhors a moral vacuum," the
raw power of "the 3 M's" (Materialism, Money and the Machine) came in to
fill the breach. While old-fashioned religionists on the right and
progressive communitarians on the left both see the problem, because we
have been so divided into warring camps, we haven't until now been able
to unite and stand for the virtues and values that the 90% of us who
aren't sociopaths would choose to live by.
Yes, it's challenging and
frustrating to hear the "other side" attack our side through
misunderstandings, stereotypes, lies and distortions. But perhaps it's
time to rise to yet another emergent seeing: Instead of "fighting their
liars," it's time to gather around a larger and more powerful truth. As
Jesus said, "Resist not evil" - meaning, we find far more true power in
standing for something than fighting against.
Swami
For Precedent: A 3-Step Program
Seven years ago, I wrote a
book and launched a campaign called Swami for Precedent. No, it wasn't a
campaign to get my alter ego elected President. Rather it was to choose
a new "precedent": Government of the people, by the people and for the
people, where the government does our bidding, not the bidding of the
highest bidder. Essentially, it was a campaign to elect ourselves - to
recognize that only by evolving from passive children of God to
proactive adults of God could we bring goodness to earth. It grew out of
the spiritually mature realization that we are not victims of a wrathful
God or a random Universe, but aware and awake co-creators of our world.
At the time, we subtitled
the book "A 7-Step Plan to Heal the Body Politic and Cure Electile
Dysfunction" because there was no time for 12 steps. Well now, seven
years down the line we've boiled it town to three steps:
-
Wake up laughing.
-
Wise up loving.
-
Show up growing.
As more and more of us are awakening to realize, before there can be
political evolution, there must be spiritual and psychological
evolution. And while not everyone needs to awaken at the same level,
those at the leading edge of this new paradigm must gather together
under One Big Intent - to live the principle at the core of every
religious, spiritual and ethical path, the Golden Rule, and to express
what Integral philosopher
Steve McIntosh calls The Natural Theology: truth, beauty and
goodness.
While these ideas may seem
abstract, they become very real as we set an intention as individuals,
communities, nations and as One Humanity to bring them to life. My
personal mission is to use comedy and laughter as a "people tenderizer"
that releases us from rigid and obsolete beliefs, and attunes us to
curiosity and new possibilities. When we "wake up laughing," we find the
"aha" in the wake of the "ha-ha," and see the ironic joke that we have
held the key to our own liberation all along.
And as levity lifts us to a
higher seeing, we recognize that "love" is more than a nicey-nicey feel
good word, but the very glue that holds our Universe together. And from
this universal, outside-the-matrix view, we can see beyond both religion
and non-religion to the perennial truth: One Spirit, Many Paths. While
some dogmas insist there is a God, and others that there isn't, the one
thing everyone can agree on is that there is a power of Good. Even in
the most dire of human circumstances - from natural disasters like
hurricanes to unnatural ones like warfare - the power of Good is always
present, and seeing that good always inspires us. Since the root of the
word "inspire" is "infused with Spirit," if Good is inspiring, well
goodness gracious, Good is as good as God.
Once we've freed the mind
through laughter, and opened the heart with love ... we have to show up
growing. We have to use our will, our hands and our whole physical
beings to embrace change and take the next evolutionary step. Whether we
like it or not, we are finding circumstances tearing us from the safe
harbors of comfort and complacency. We cannot pretend that our warfare
state is a benevolent father who will care for our welfare and
protection. Nor can we rely on comforting clichés that make us right and
others wrong, but don't fundamentally change the game.
We must now become the new
precedent - awakened, aware, proactive adults of God (or if you prefer,
Good) willing to laugh at our own shadow, and courageous enough to risk
standing for the world we know is possible rather than merely railing at
perceived villains. May 2012 be a precedential year, where the emperor's
buttocks are revealed - but we the people turn the other cheek as well,
shifting our attention from fighting disease in the body politic, toward
building health.
May a new "movement of
movements" emerge, where a new order arises from the grassroots up, and
we strengthen the fields of truth, beauty and goodness, and the
sociopathogens die from starvation. For as Swami has said, "The only way
to overgrow big brother is through bigger brotherhood - and sisterhood."
Only by seeing that we are all brothers and sisters in the same 'hood
can we transform the current state of emergency to an ever-growing state
of emergent seeing.
Curious about Swami's
upcoming Precedential Campaign for 2012? Just
respond to this email and put "Precedent" in the subject line.
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