Thoughts On the Upcoming Elections and Moving Beyond the Left/Right Polarities

Imagining a Nation and World

Where We Are United On Behalf 

Of a Highest Good For All

I am a mother and grandmother. I care deeply about my children and grandchildren — and all of the children across the planet. I also care deeply about the welfare of all of the children of all of the species everywhere. There are no boundaries or national lines for me distinguishing which lives matter and which don't. My circle of caring embodies all beings.

This wasn't always so. Many years of my younger life were spent addicted, disassociated, and disconnected. And it's hard to recognize and understand the needs and experiences of others when we are impaired in our capacity to hold ourselves with awareness, compassion, and love.

It has been my experience that to the degree that I am living with a defended heart and fragmented and isolated within myself and with others, and this very much includes those who appear different from myself, is the same degree that I am vulnerable to absorbing and perpetuating the proliferation of polarizing propaganda that serves to disempower, divide, dehumanize, and distract us from consciousness of larger pictures and greater truths.

I say this with no shame or blame, but rather with the humility of recognizing today how very deeply the walls have been around my own heart. As I work in an ongoing way to lift the veils which have kept me immersed in layers of illusion, indoctrination, and ignorance, I have found a pathway to love. And this is true freedom — the freedom to love ourselves and to love and care about all of life.

* * * * *

Through my own journey into greater wholeness and love, I have come to clearly recognize that the experience of separation rather than connection, feeling apart from rather than a part of, has been a tragic reality for humankind for a very, very long time. Today we witness the many forms and degrees of dehumanization fiercely rising to the surface for all to see. There is name-calling and belittling, demeaning and disrespect, disregard and contempt, rage and verbal and physical assaults, and even death threats and the actual killing of other human beings. 

Today a countless number of politicians need body guards. Election workers need armed protection at voting precincts. Armed guards are in the doorways of our supermarkets. Children have to endure active shooter drills and not feeling safe in their own schools and homes and communities. There are growing estrangements within families and between friends. Millions of Americans are empathically impaired, unable to discern fact from fiction, and drawn into beliefs and narratives which blind us to the sacred embodied within all of life. This is just a glimpse into the many faces of our disconnect from ourselves, each other, and the other beings with whom we share our Earth home.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated."

And Thích Nhất Hạnh wisely said this: "We are here to awaken from the illusion of separateness." So true. So true.

What to do about all of this pain and fear and suffering and disconnection? This is something I've now long been reflecting on and healing within myself and in the conscious ripples that I send out into the world. And this is what moves me to write and to be open to the spiritual messages of hope and healing, transformation and truth, and compassion and love that flow through me.

* * * * *

It is my belief that we humans are sitting today on a precipice in which our choices and actions, or lack of actions, are likely to have a greater impact than ever before on today's children and all children for the next seven generations and beyond. I sense this urgency that our numbers grow and grow of those among us who are committed in an ongoing way to courageously exploring what maintains our separateness and what offers the opportunity, the pathway, and the potential to radically transform ourselves on behalf of the highest good for all of life everywhere.

What can we do? One thing that certainly changed my life many years ago was when a counselor I was in a group with decided that it was time to give me a bit of a bigger picture. She saw how invested I was in seeing the problems that I experienced as existing outside of myself. If my (now former) husband and my mother would just get fixed, then I would be fine, thank you very much. That was my mindset. So it was absolutely shocking when she looked me straight in the eyes and said, "Molly, well people don't marry sick people." I silently thought, "Well fuck you!"

But she was right. And that was one of those moments when all of my outward pointing fingers began to turn around and point inward. It's not just everyone else out there who has the problems — I do, too! That very uncomfortable moment decades ago in front of the whole therapy group ultimately became a profound gift.

And I am reminded of the wisdom of e.e. cummings when he said, "It takes courage to grow up and become who you truly are." Indeed it does. 

And it takes courage for humankind to evolve past the incredibly limiting narratives and harmful beliefs of who we humans truly are. It is time, I believe well past time, to move beyond where we have ever gone before as a species. We hold this great potential to become ourSelves, who we most wholly are. 

The eyes of the children are watching. Will we humans increasingly recognize and embrace the power, the wisdom, and the Love that is the Sacred essence of who we are? Will we engage in the hard work of courageously seeking to know what we do not know, lifting the veils of our ignorance one by one by one? I am very much aware that so many of us are already doing this. Will more join us? Will we hit a tipping point of humans who are embodying the holiness of our true nature?

 

This shedding of the old and birthing of the new creates pathways into greater clarity and wisdom, connectedness and peace, compassion and love. We can evolve. We can heal and open our hearts....

* * * * *

One of the deeper issues that I have been witnessing for some time now are the pervasive narratives that embrace opinions rather than facts. This is the way that we lose our capacity for discernment, for recognizing truth, for seeing and understanding larger pictures. Replacing facts with opinions is certainly one of the larger tragic consequences which disempower, distract, dehumanize, and divide. 

It is my belief that if we Americans weren’t so chronically propagandized with opinions that we would discover how very much we share in common with the values and truths and needs that we all share as human beings — and regardless of our politics and nationality, race and ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, and any other difference which has been used to keep us separate rather than connected. Opinions replacing facts — and larger truths, connection and compassion, wisdom and caring — is a deep tragedy in American culture.

Emma Goldman has said, "Ignorance is the most violent element in society." 

And Noam Chomsky has sadly but accurately reflected, "Americans are a profoundly propagandized people... The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know.” 

Just imagine how equalizing the playing field would become if we recognized that all of us, no exceptions, have been propagandized right here in America. It isn't just those Russians and other "lesser" nations over there. We could no longer hurl judgments or name-calling or contempt towards "those f@!king idiots who believe the propaganda of the ______ (fill in left-wing or right-wing, democrat or republican, liberal or conservative)" — because we've been humbled by the reality that we, too, have been fooled. We too have acted against our own best interests. We too have believed that FOX or MSNBC or PBS or _______ (fill in the blank with any corporate funded, rather than independent, mainstream media resource) is the one that is telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Fair and balanced, the news you can trust, right? No. Tragically not true. We too have been the unknowing victims of misinformation and harmful status quo narratives that keep us stuck, ignorant, disempowered, and divided.

Just imagine how we humans would be changed if we came to see that we all fall somewhere on the continuum with ignorance and fear and disconnection on the one end and consciousness, compassion, connection, and love on the other. Just imagine.

And now imagine if more and more of us increasingly set about taking the next step — looking, I mean really looking deeply, and exploring just where we fall on that continuum. Not with judgment or shame and blame. We want to move past those harmful attacks on anyone and very much so including ourselves. But rather with curiously, courage, clarity, compassion, and a deep passion and commitment to seeking the larger perspectives and consciousness that will inevitably unfold within us and the ways that we live our lives as our opinions and ignorance and illusions are transformed.

 

Just imagine if we loosened our attachments to what we currently believe and how it is that we perceive our world. Just imagine if we earnestly set about seeking the vista beyond the one which we currently see and if we opened our hearts and minds in an ongoing way. And evolved. What would we and our world look like? Just imagine.

* * * * *

From the youngest age I sought to be kind. The was my true nature, my essence. And then circumstances related to generational and cultural trauma occurred which pulled me out of alignment with living in authenticity. Today I recognize this as being an experience extending way beyond myself and tragically enveloping so many of us as human beings.

And this is when we justify the bombing of Gaza while saying that the killing of innocent civilians must stop. Or we condemn a presidential candidate as being too "radical" for endorsing healthcare for all or an end to fracking. Or we intend to vote for a presidential candidate, or in some way support those in positions of power, who deny that there is a human caused climate crisis. Or we blame poverty on the poor or stand against any actions to address the epidemic of gun violence or advocate the building of walls to keep out desperate suffering human beings rather than turning walls sideways to build bridges.

What I have experienced within myself is that the inner reflects the outer. To the degree that I have built walls internally is the same degree that I erect them outwardly. And then we find ourselves pulled into all kinds of polarizing propaganda that severs or impairs our innate deep capacity for kindness and caring towards ourselves and all others — and very much including our Earth Mother. And, unknowingly, we become vulnerable to narratives which keep us disconnected and divided and even perpetuating or somehow enabling and perpetuating misogyny, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, homophobia, Christian nationalism, authoritarianism and fascism, and other forms of fear and separateness. 

And the list goes on. And our nation and the planet continues to fall into great violence and other forms of the trauma of disconnection from who we are and the recognition of our sacred connection with other beings. Certainly I wholly and humbly own that this has happened to me. And I didn't know it. I didn't know how how fearful and disconnected I had become.

It is my belief that bell hooks nailed this larger picture of what plagues us that extends way beyond any narratives of left/right, democrat/republican/liberal/conservative. She calls it "imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy." 

This encompasses it all. These five words illuminate the forces that propel us deeper into the abyss of being lost to who we truly are and disconnected from one another. There is no shame or blame or judgment in this whatsoever. Instead, this understanding of our long shared trauma history related to living under imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy — one which has impacted us all — is tremendously empowering and freeing.

Recognizing the problem is half the solution. Now we have something to work with, to heal and transform, to awaken from.

It has been my experience that we can only unknowingly or knowingly harm another, covertly or overtly, when we are disconnected from who we are. Because at our core is what I recognize as our Divine Self — Christ consciousness, Buddha nature, Spirit, Creator, Goddess, or whatever you would call the Sacred — which is deeply kind, courageous, compassionate, wise, loving, and connected with all of life. 

Here there is no us versus an Other. When grounded in our Self, we are  empowered to extricate ourselves from narratives and systems which dwell in separation rather than connection. And then a word like "progressive" no longer remains something to be denigrated or seen as something "radical." Because it is not radical to care about the welfare of life on Earth, to move the boundaries of our circles of caring to exclude no one, to do our best to dismantle how it is that we have absorbed and colluded in the status quo narratives embedded in imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy. No, this is not radical. This is what it is to be human, to live with kindness and profound caring, to evolve into our full potential as a species.

May this be the place from which we act out of when voting in the upcoming elections. May this be the place out of which we increasingly live our lives each and every day. Our descendants are counting on us. As are all peoples and all beings everywhere.

Bless us all, no exceptions...

💗

Molly