Political manifestations, both good and bad, are but outer reflections of internal realities. They emerge from realms beyond what the eye can see. Love and lovelessness are constantly duking it out, in our hearts and in our world. Slavery, oppression, racism, and so forth are more than mere political wrongs; they represent spiritual malfunctions. Until we deal with our problems on the level from which they emerge, then no matter what we do to solve them, they will simply morph into other forms.
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That is why a new American revolution is a revolution of consciousness, and a new American politics is a politics of love. If the choice to love remains merely a private decision, then it will have only private effects. Only when love is applied to public issues will it then have public effects.
An overly secularized, rationalistic politics is an inadequate response to the challenges of our time. A politics of love is a twenty-first-century, whole-person politics that speaks to both external and internal issues.
External activism fosters a different way of doing things, which is important. But internal activism fosters a different way of thinking about those things as well. Both are important, because everything we do is infused with the consciousness with which we do it. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, "The end is inherent in the means." Enlightenment is a shift in worldview, and only a more enlightened thinking can deliver us to an enlightened world.
America's founders were products of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, or Age of Reason, during which Western civilization overthrew the mystification of the early church dogma in favor of rational thought and individual freedom. Today, we are entering a new Era of Enlightenment, in which we are overthrowing the limits of overly rationalistic thinking that doesn't recognize the powers of the soul. We are evolving beyond a twentieth-century worldview that posited the world as one big machine, and realizing that in fact it is more like one big thought. Consciousness is no longer deemed irrelevant to human affairs, but rather the driver of human affairs.
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A political mind-set mired in twentieth-century thinking is incapable of solving our most pressing problems, because its focus on externalities too often leaves their cause unaddressed... Not every force that is driving our world is visible to the physical eye. A politics that gives little credence to the inner life, considering it outside the purview of its analysis, is inadequate to the task of navigating these difficult times.
That is why the spiritual seeker is important to the transformation of our politics, and of our country. Spiritual seekers have always been the harbingers of political change in America--the abolitionists movement was started by the early Evangelicals and Quakers, and the civil rights movement was led by a Baptist preacher.
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In the words of Plato, "To philosophize and do politics are one and the same thing." Not only does enlightened politics require spiritual understanding, but enlightened spirituality requires attention to politics. No serious religious path gives anyone a pass on addressing the suffering of other sentient beings. The idea that we can leave politics out of our conceptualization of our spiritual journey is an outdated concept, because politics is simply the journey we take together. We can't transform our country without transforming our politics, and that we can do only by participating. Standing on the sidelines is not an option for a conscious seeker, or for a conscious citizen.
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"Love each other" is not just a prescription for personal salvation; it is a prescription for political renewal as well.
