Direct Democracy

The intent of this series of posts is to invite readers to awake to the need for a change in our current political system, join with each other, and together, create a more effective and efficient political system more in line with our ideals and aspirations, and then develop the means to transition from what we have, to the better alternative. This is something to start thinking about now, before we’re torn apart by the flaws of the current system. It won’t be easy, but it is necessary. This is a time of great opportunity! We need to seize it! The parallels between this time, Washington’s and Martin Luther’s are there and can be seen if you look for them.

We have more in common than what separates us. We are all Americans! Let’s get in touch with that – our shared, ideals, hopes and aspirations. Everyone has a right to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Can’t we agree on the facts and work from there to build a system and a world that works for everyone and everything?

Perhaps, given the current dysfunction in DC and at the state level, it’s time to take a fresh look at the concept of ‘representation’ in government. Perhaps the very idea of ‘representative government’ is fundamentally flawed, and always has been.

How well are ‘the people’ represented when they elect someone and send them to the legislature? Who do the so-called ‘representatives’ really represent? Who has access to these so-called ‘representatives’? Who can speak with them on the phone or drop by their offices for a chat? Who actually drafts the legislation that they vote on, more often than not, without reading or fully understanding it?

You know the answers to these questions, they’ve been the same since the founding. Moneyed interests – the people and so called ‘corporate individuals’ who can give large sums of money. Tell me, what’s the difference between a ‘campaign contribution’ and a bribe? It’s always been this we and we know it, but the problems with this system of ‘representation’ are becoming more critical now, than ever before.

It needn’t be this way. Please get that! It needn’t be this way. So many of us see the charade of so called ‘representation’ for what it is, but don’t know what to do about it, or think there’s nothing to be done, so we do nothing or drop out, leaving the field to fanatics and idiots. One only has to look at the current crop of Republican presidential candidates to see that. It needn’t be this way.

A Thing of Wonder

It is possible, from a place of oneness with spirit, to experience spirit in everything that happens. It is possible to look upon all things with love, appreciation and open mindedness, understanding that no thing is as it appears and that its holy purpose stands beyond my ego’s little range, but accessible from the place of oneness.

Allowing the decision maker to choose again, I can see all things differently, with a mind that holds only what it thinks with God. The holiness of this thought extends to embrace the world and all its seemingly separated fragments. No longer deceived by perceptual illusions of special differences, my vision sees beyond appearances to the loving beauty of the right mind that is in each broken piece. And I am able to see in this beauty the doorway to eternity.

“All this beauty will rise to bless your sight as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally transforms vision, and lets you see the real world reaching quietly and gently across chaos, removing [the] illusions that had twisted your perceptions. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God’s [and my own] perfection.”

The Stately Calm Within

As I stay centered in the decision maker’s choice for the “stately calm within,” my outer world, like the spokes of a wheel with spirit at its hub, radiate and extend the “holy stillness”. My interactions with the world of matter would share the same purpose of learning to be kind, caring, gentle, and loving. Spirit is not actually present in matter, for all is illusion, but I may experience Its reflection and purpose there, if I am with It in my mind. That is what forgiveness is - not holding to past perceptions generated by the ego, but choosing to see spirit’s purpose of loving kindness and oneness in all the “little things” of the world. So of myself, I do nothing but allow mySelf to shine through.

“All things are lessons God would have me learn,” opportunities to recognize the ego’s illusion, return to my mind and allow, encourage, the decision maker to choose again. The greater the discomfort, disease, guilt, fear, and anger – the greater the difference between the ego’s interpretation of the world and spirit’s - the greater the motivation to see things differently and choose again.

So, the Course says, “God is in everything I see because God is in my mind. From this idea will the world open up before you, and you will look upon it and see in it what you have never seen before…we are trying to see in the world what [the reality of spirit that] is [already] in our minds…trying to join with what we see rather than keeping it apart from us.” To do this - join with everything I experience and accept it all as a learning opportunity, I become aware of my choices and seek to no longer project the ego’s purpose of reinforcing guilt about the perceived original sin of separation.

The separation never happened; could not have happened; it is a “tiny mad idea.” We are one with spirit right now as we have always been.

Patience and Doing Nothing

Patience is the natural teacher of God. All it sees in the certain outcome of timeless love and peace stretching out before it like an endless vista of sea and sky. Filled with this certitude, why would we even attempt to make things happen? Wouldn’t we let the forms of our behavior be guided by the content of our loving thoughts? Wouldn’t everything we think, feel and do be done with kindness and caring, gentleness and love?

Patiently centered in spirit, our earthly lives become like spokes of a wheel, the hub being our choice for spirit. Now, this quiet center informs our thoughts, feelings, words, and actions, determining the outcome of situations and relationships, bringing peace and love instead of conflict and fear.

“To [be patient and] do nothing is to rest,” the Course says. “And make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention. Into this place spirit comes and there it abides.” It will still be there when we forget and the body’s activities return to occupy your conscious mind. “Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you can return. And you will become more aware of this quiet center of the storm than all its raging activity.

“The quiet center, in which you [patiently] do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly.”

The Outcome is Certain

“Love knows no bodies [or things], and reaches to everything created like itself. Its total lack of limit IS its meaning. It is completely impartial [and unconditional] in its giving….” When I feel frustrated and lose my peace, I am without love and attributing my upset to something outside me. The absence of love manifesting as guilt, urgency, a hierarchy of values, fear, worry, and blaming – either myself or someone/something else, tips me that I am out of my mind, and not with the decision maker who must have decided wrongly.

Asking to experience things differently, getting my bloated nothingness out of the way of the divine circuits, and allowing my decision maker to choose again, this time peace and love, enables me to function in this world effectively, efficiently and kindly until I am able to release myself and choose mySelf.

Understanding this, I understand that there is nothing outside me and so there can be nothing that can affect me either positively or negatively. But understanding this, difficult as it is, is still easier than living it. Faith and practice build confidence. Giving over guilt, urgency, my hierarchy of values, fear, worry, and blame and acting as if, nothing outside myself can save me or give me peace, that only spirit can do that, also means that nothing outside me can hurt me, disturb my peace, or stop the love that is mySelf from flowing into my experience.

The outcome is certain - giving over guilt, urgency, a hierarchy of values, fear, worry, and blaming always allows the peace and love which were always present, to manifest. Why furiously press forward with something that is not there, stubbornly convinced that if I do not, the ‘right thing’ will never happen?

Reflect – this attitude – which I suffer greatly from, makes no sense if I am already sure that the result of anything done with mySelf, will be loving and peaceful. Patience is natural when my beingness is with mySelf, for I’m focused on a certain wonderful and inevitable outcome, the time and details unknown to me, but never in doubt.

Knowing and Doing

Knowing the things I posted yesterday, isn’t the same as doing them. And doing them, isn’t the same as immediately getting the results – the feeling of oneness, peace, and connection to Source. It’s not easy to undo identification with ego, even for a moment. But ah, when I am able to, it’s so worth while!

I’m going thru a period of heavy ego identification right now. There’s something I want to do, and will do that ego doesn’t want me to do. Or, part of the ego - the parent, moralistic, punishing part doesn’t want me to. Whenever I think of what I want to do - something new and slightly dangerous, something on the fringes of main stream acceptability, but something I’ve wanted to do for my entire life, I get the thrills of anticipation, then the stress of doubt, anxiety and guilt.

Of course, it’s all ego – both what I want to do and the fear of what I want to do. However, the part that wants to do, feels more inspired and spiritually connected, as if it’s leading me to a fulfillment and completion. So, I commit to doing what I want to do, even tho the punishing, fearful ego is making me crazy, trying to talk me out of doing it and almost ruining it by taking the edge off and the joy out.

So, I pause, breath deeply, say a mental ‘thank you’ for the opportunity to remember and actually experience the ideas: by grace I live and by grace I am released, and the lord doeth the work, and invite my decision maker to let go of the ego and choose spirit instead. I forgive myself for once again falling into the ego’s web of illusion. No guilt, no blame, no drama, just a deep breath, a sigh and a ‘there I go again.’ Eventually this will work. But it’s a constant, frustrating back and forth until it does. But at least I have this to do. If I didn’t, I’d be crazier and more depressed, less happy and less creative than I am.

Knowing What to Do

One of the ‘things’ I go back and forth on, given the ideas of living by grace, and the spirit within doeth the work, is: if anything I do is OK as long as I’m doing it with spirit, then how do I know what to choose when what I choose to do kind of doesn’t matter, how do I know what to choose to do in any given situation?

The Course says the ego always speaks first and loudest, meaning that my first, often habitual and therefore most comfortable reaction/decision/choice arises from the ego. But what about intuition and gut, I think of these as more spiritual? Don’t these often speak first but more softly? Yes. I’ll often have an intuitive sense of or gut feel for what to do but talk myself out of it.

Spirit’s still small voice is always there, always advising, always whispering of grace and release of ego, sometimes as intuition and gut feel. But even these things can become habituated to my world view and obscure my grace and reality as spirit. Besides, the ‘answers’ to so many questions and concerns in the world are counter-intuitive. For instance: the best thing to do to improve myself, is to not improve myself, but to get my bloated nothingness out of the way and allow mySelf to shine through. MySelf, being of spirit, needs no improvement, is already perfect as spirit is perfect, and if I, of myself, seek to improve myself, others or the world, I am deep in the illusion and under the influence of ego.

Yet I believe I am here in the world and do seek to improve myself, others or the world itself. To know what to do or refrain from doing, I need to undo the illusion of the ego and awake to my reality as spirit. This is a choice by choice process, an often frustrating, ongoing, never ending process. I discover what to choose by knowing how I feel when I choose the ego.

When I think about choosing something, and whenever possible I need to develop the habit of pausing, thinking, reflecting and gut checking before I choose - if I’m feeling rushed, urgent, excited, worried, ‘should’ or ‘must do’ and worst of all, ‘have no other choice’, then I’m deep with ego.

When those feelings and thoughts are present, my practice is to pause, breath deeply, say a mental ‘thank you’ for the opportunity to remember and actually experience the ideas by grace I live and by grace I am released, and the lord doeth the work, and invite my decision maker to let go of the ego and choose spirit instead. I forgive myself for once again falling into the ego’s web of illusion and wanting to fix everyone and everything but myself. No guilt, no blame, no drama, just a deep breath, a sigh and a ‘there I go again.’ Then from that place, the choice is usually clear.

This is a moment by moment, choice by choice process, an often frustrating, ongoing, never ending process. But the more I do it, the easier it gets and the more I want to do it.