Today we are not in the middle of a covert corporate takeover of our democracy; we’re in the middle of an overt corporate takeover of our democracy. An establishment that thinks traditional political strategizing alone can override this threat is not as sophisticated as it thinks it is. In fact, it is naive.
The forces of unbridled corporate power are hugely funded, politically savvy, and active on local, state, and federal levels. They don’t care if we defeat their candidates in a particular election, because behind that candidate they have several more. They’ve shown they’re not above suppressing votes, hacking machines (or conspiring with those who do), or spreading lies to the American people. Only a massive wave of conscious citizenship, alert to what is happening at every level of our government, can override their nefarious influence.
The conscious citizen is working on more cylinders than the traditional political activist. Not just the power of the intellect, but also the powers of imagination and love, are necessary to overcome the influence of the new aristocracy.
With our imagination, we give birth to new realities. We can envision the world we want and then work back from there. We can imagine a world at peace, a planet healed, and all sentient beings happy. We can visualize those things and commit ourselves to their manifestation.
When we do, we are confronted by the gap between what we are imagining and what we are currently creating. Is America’s foreign policy a prescription for world peace? Are our environmental policies a prescription for a healed planet? Are our education and economic policies a prescription for economic growth for any but a few? No wonder so many people on the spiritual path avoid politics altogether. It’s hard to meditate in the morning, then read the newspaper and see how billion-dollar American arms sales and technical support to Saudi Arabia are contributing to the starvation of tens of thousands in Yemen. It’s even harder to see when our own leaders confound all efforts to stop the evil. It’s hard to watch a beautiful sunset on a gorgeous beach and consider that millions of children in some other part of the country go to school each day in schools that don’t even have needed supplies. The cognitive dissonance is painful.
Yet being with that dissonance is important; it is our soul work. The purpose of our lives is to close the gap between what could be and what too often is. Goodness must be willed; it doesn’t necessarily happen of itself. It’s not enough to not intend to do harm; our moral responsibility is to intend to do good. And then do it.
That is why it’s our responsibility to protest when our nation, with our tax dollars and in our name, does wrong. If we’re morally responsible for monitoring our own souls, then we’re morally responsible, as well, for monitoring the soul of our nation.
It’s not as though the majority of our citizens don’t want a peaceful world; of course we do. The problem is that our political and economic systems are not currently placed at the service of that vision. If one’s main goal is the attainment of power or the creation of short-term profit, then what is truly peace-creating, loving, behavior is often dropped by the wayside or given short shrift.
The things that in fact do the most to improve our democracy and create peace among us are not the things that make immediate money for our economic overlords. Do we truly want world peace? Then expanding economic opportunities for women and educational opportunities for children, not just profits for military manufacturers, should be at the core of our national security agenda. Do we really want a healthy environment? Then we must stop using the Environmental Protection Agency to shore up profits for fossil fuel companies at the expense of their effect on climate change. Do we really want a long-term healthy economy? Then we should massively realign our investments in the direction of support for health, education, and culture among America’s children.
Old systems do not die willingly, particularly when they control gargantuan amounts of wealth and power. From the dismantling of environmental protections to economic policies that increase the gaps between rich and poor to the destruction of indigenous wisdom and peoples in the name of economic “progress” to the often unthinking extension of our military prowess, we have been moving away from, not toward, the realization of humanity’s highest hopes for life on earth.
Yet we would do well to remember the laws of evolution. Any species behaving in maladaptive ways will either evolve or become extinct. A world in which we habitually and powerfully attack not only each other but even our own habitat, is a world the laws of evolution will not support.
Our species will either evolve to a more heart-centered consciousness, choosing a greater reverence for planet and people, or we will go extinct due to collective behavior that is maladaptive for our survival. No change in government will fundamentally save us unless we are willing to evolve as a species from one with prodigious intellect and technological power but disconnected from its heart to one that puts reverence and devotion and love before all else. As with any other species, our opportunity for survival lies in the presence of an evolutionary alternative, or mutation. For the human species, that mutation is a mutation of consciousness. It is represented by the great spiritual masters who have lived among us, teaching the message of compassion and love. Only a spiritual leap forward will save us from the evils of the world.
The weight of history is on our shoulders now. This year—not next year or the year after that—we are called upon to put aside unimportant things and get to the work of correcting our evolutionary course.