Conscious Politics: Transcending Party Identity

In previous posts, I've written about the possibility of liberating ourselves from the confines of personal identity - the conditioning borrowed from our tribe, caste, race, religion, gender, ideology, political party or other affiliations which make us smaller than the whole.

Politically speaking, I was raised in a moderately Republican yet generally apolitical household. "Work hard, make your own way, and mind your own," were the general rules of thumb in the blue collar mill town of my youth. Given the disheveled state of humanity, however, it seemed both right and imperative to embrace an expanded set of social and humanitarian values. "Minding our own" is essential for personal transformation, but not enough to mend our troubled world. We are all stewards of social and planetary well-being. Conscious evolution must meet compassionate action to create a world that works for everyone.

Now, imagine for a moment that each of the earth's 6 billion inhabitants shared a common ideal of planetary stewardship. This would be a significant ideological feat, indeed.

Yet the tragedy of most human endeavors is that they tend to become unconscious at the operational and practical level. While we might share a mutual ideal, such as ending poverty, our identities get activated when it comes to the politics of implementation. The habitual defense of our "partial" or "partisan" positions almost always derails our noble intentions and moves us from conscious to unconscious behavior.

I see a glaring example of this in our current democratic nomination process. Rather than celebrating the ideal of democracy and encouraging all voices be heard, no matter how long it takes, we hear party leaders invoking fear-based rhetoric over race or gender, or squabbling over whether continued campaigning will "harm the Democratic Party".

I suggest we take some guidance from the American Indian elders who led their people in conflict resolution by sitting in dialog as long as necessary, until every member was expressed (even their grievances and pain) and the path forward "emerged" from the collective wisdom. Party leaders' hallowed role is to create a container for fair and just democracy, where diverse viewpoints are considered and every vote counted. Far from "harming the party", a more enlightened perspective could help transcend divisions and allow a higher order alignment to emerge.

Philosopher Ken Wilbur describes it this way: "Our principal challenge is to create some form of governance that allows each stage [of consciousness] to be itself...and yet governs from the highest, widest, deepest, and most encompassing level of development emerged to date."

Unfortunately, very few governing bodies today have enlightened representatives as members. When picking a president, we should be asking not "who will best secure and defend my personal position", but "who is most prepared to guide the evolution of humanity". A primary test of our political leaders should be their ability to transcend division, to find unity amongst difference, to lead us toward a sense of our own connectedness and planetary stewardship.

Power To The Pope-ful

At a core level, somewhere beyond our religious ideology and distinctions, the Pope's visit has stirred something sacred. It has stirred our faith. It has sparked a little hope in the human heart, a sense of possibility and connectedness, a hint of excitement and celebration.

During his American tour, Pope Benedict XVI has talked not only of divine matters, but of human frailty - issues such as sexual abuse, war and human rights violations. Nothing has been off the table. He has demonstrated that the mundane and the sacred are not two distinct poles - one to be discussed freely in the public forum and the other to be hidden away in the private recesses of our personal landscape. They are inextricably intertwined, woven together into the very fabric of human experience. Beauty, truth, divinity, ecstasy are expanded states aspired to by every human heart, even as we grapple with the sometimes grim reality of the human condition. We are all seeking meaning, seeking to understand the contradictions of our lives, seeking integration within ourselves and connection with the broader whole.

It is this common search that holds potential for us to move beyond religiosity and divisive dogma into the realm of celebration of spirit - exaltation of the divine without bias of form or practice. While proselytizing Catholicism may have been part of his agenda, the Pope seemed more interested to bear witness to the sacred in all things, affirming joy and beauty while also addressing with compassion areas of human pain and constriction. The response from the American people was one of wide-spread embrace. Even non-Catholics felt the effect of his presence. We surprised ourselves.

Pope Benedict's visit was an example of how we can naturally recognize the holy, and be affirmed by it, without having to invoke the boundaries of religion. Faith is a universal concept. Holiness, sacredness, divinity, communion, celebration, exaltation, prayer, reverence are all universal energies that can unite rather than divide. We have the power and the connectedness of heart to transcend divisive religious distinctions and expand into unity of spirit. We can become "equal opportunity" people of faith. We can seek to find the higher order harmony that unites all faiths into one human congregation.

While we're at it, let's make room for the sacred in our public discourse, not just during Papal visits but tomorrow and the next day. Let's not strip it out, sanitizing our discussions into a secular safe zone. Let's instead call upon the sacred as a guiding force, beyond ideological distinctions, to bear witness to our mutual search for meaning and wholeness.

Despite the many woes of our world, we are on an evolutionary path toward recognizing our interconnection with this planet, with each other and with spirit. The Pope's visit was a sweet reminder. The divine is all around us. Despite our many troubles, we need not look further than our own heartbeat to know the sacred animation that governs our very existence.

May the blessings of the Pope and the many spiritual leaders who walk the path of interfaith harmony be a source of upliftment. And may we all seek unity of spirit in a time when we have come to view religion as a source of division...but when our world needs sacred connection more than ever.

What You See Is (Just a Hint of) What You Get

I recently watched a short clip of Oprah describing a magical moment in her redwood grove. She had visited this place in her garden a hundred times before, but this day was different. On this day she released the word "tree" from her mind and entered the grove with full attention, endeavoring to truly experience the essence of this majestic setting. She noticed something she had never noticed before - a vibrant, pulsating field of energy, as if the space was alive and conscious, and she was at once connected to and non-different from it.

Oprah's experience was not an anomaly, but an example of the capacity for higher human perception. While our world might appear full of familiar objects - the cars we drive, the food we eat, the bodies we inhabit - science tells us these are 90% empty space, swirling clouds of electrons and other particles vibrating at rates beyond the ability of the human eye to register. The world we occupy is actually a vast, energetic, vibratory field where boundaries are far more fluid than they appear. It is a subtle world of energy, light, sound, and thought just as real as the gross physical perception logged by our senses.

Yet so few of us experience this expanded reality on a consistent basis...why?

We have created shorthand of words and symbols to simplify our experience. We use labels like "redwood tree" or "coffee cup" as proxies for vibrant energetic systems. While imprecise, this shorthand is useful. As a colleague of mine said recently, "Life would get far too complicated if we described drinking our morning latte out of an 'interactive, vibrational field shaped like a cylinder and designed to hold hot liquid'."

However, using shorthand has a downside -- we often forget the deeper truth of our reality as we slip into the habit of using labels. Rather than staying tuned to the vital essence of our experience, we default to past memory or preconceived notions about how things will be. Our words and labels tether our mind to the historical. Our labels freeze reality. Instead of remaining alert in each moment, listening and seeing intently, we numb the intensity of our experience with comfortable ideas about what we think we understand...what we think we've already figured out.

Philosopher J. Krishnamurthy claims we never actually see or listen to anything "because our mind is not free; our ears are stuffed up with those things that we already know...if one can listen to something with all of one's being, with vigor, with vitality, then the very act of listening is liberation."

Oprah's visit to her redwood grove could have been an unremarkable replay of her many past visits but, on that day, she was open to seeing and listening in a different way. She brought a beginner's mind free of labels. She brought her full attention without prejudice. As a result, she experienced the raw energy and intelligence of the space which immediately transformed her perception.

My spiritual teacher Dattatreya Siva Baba puts it this way, "When you look at an object without words or thoughts, you will understand it in a completely different way. You will simultaneously lose all knowledge and all ignorance...but you will gain omniscience."

Just as a map can never convey the true essence of the territory, our shorthand descriptions can never capture the deepest essence of the world around us. In order to know the richness, aliveness, and creative pulsation that animates all things, we must look beyond seeing. Listen beyond hearing. Experience beyond words.