Spirituality and Politics

by Marianne Williamson

I once said to a friend of mine, another author who writes on spiritual subjects, "We really should be addressing political issues."

"Yeah," he responded, "I think you're right." Then a pause, an angst-ridden silence, "but there's only one problem," he said, "I really hate politics."

It's a conundrum: we don't want anything to do with politics because it's such a dirty business, yet turning away from it altogether makes us feel like we're avoiding something that maybe we shouldn't be avoiding.

Many people would love to feel that politics can be a high- minded effort, but it's hard to see how, in today's political climate. Particularly when looked at from a spiritual perspective, political involvement seems tawdry and low. It's the last place any of us look to anymore for hope or inspiration.

"I just want spirituality in my life," a friend said to me recently. "None of that other stuff matters to me."

And yet, what is spirituality? Is it just another compartment in our lives, like relationships, career, money, or health? Or is it something all-inclusive-the soul's oxygen, the life-giving agent meant to grace and revitalize all of life? If spirituality is relevant to anything, then it is relevant to everything. How can we speak seriously of a God who cares what
happens to you and me, but somehow would not have us care about what happens to each other?

So how do we make spirituality relevant to polities? Ten years ago, if I asked that question, I would receive answers such as these:

- From political types, that "Spirituality is not relevant to politics. Don't start with all that spiritual stuff. It has nothing to do with politics. Politics is about the real world."

- From spiritual types, that "Spirituality makes politics irrelevant. Think about more positive things. Politics is just a low-level, addictive power game. Forget it. Real change can't come from there."

As we have seen, the last generation of Americans to seek a blend of philosophical and political flowering came of age in the 1960s. It's popular in some circles today to say, "Face it-the six- ties didn't work." But for millions of Americans whose souls were branded forever by the magic of that time, to say it didn't work is a rather obvious attempt to kill whatever
remnants of its audacious spirit might still remain alive.

To blend love and politics is indeed audacious. Politics is a fear-based pursuit in America today, and love is the only thing that fear fears. Love is the ultimate political rebellion.' During the 1960s, love and politics were uttered in the same breath and sung in the same song. "All You Need Is Love" was a song we sang at political rallies.

And then, of course, the music died. By the mid-seventies, the paths of love and politics diverged. They would no longer seem even distantly related. Many who stayed interested in politics would come to trivialize the consciousness movement, and many of those interested in consciousness would start to ignore politics. Both sides then tended to smugly, self-righteously
dismiss the other as irrelevant, thinking that they and they alone knew what it takes to change the world.

The consciousness movement concerns itself with addressing the causal level of events. All things in the outer world are reflections, or effects, of consciousness; mere changes in external conditions are thus seen as temporary palliatives, at best, for the problems of the world. Enlightened laws can be passed, but then repealed. Only when the mind has itself
transformed does the world achieve any permanent change. The search for higher consciousness is the effort to attain a level of mind from whence only peace can flow, and in the presence of which only peace can exist.

Those interested in traditional politics, on the other hand, are primarily focused on the world of effects. They argue that we cannot afford to just sit around meditating while so much human suffering goes unchecked. They use the means of the material world to solve the problems of the material world, and are apt to see the issues of enlightenment as airy-fairy when applied to politics.

Today, it is the remarriage of our philosophical and political passions that
holds the key to our political renewal. It is not either /or, but both-both cause and effect, mind and body-that need addressing in order to create a positive, effective politics for the twenty-first century. It is the political process itself that lacks, and that is because neither our hearts nor our higher minds are currently particularly active there. We need to recreate politics now as a mystical pursuit, bringing our souls to bear on the effort to make the world a better place.

And that is what is happening now. Many political types are saying, "Maybe politics really does need some deeper roots, some way to get past all the hatred"; and spiritual types are saying, "We need to extend the principles of enlightenment into social and political realms."

>From the early American Quakers to Henry David Thoreau, to Mahatma Gandhi, to Martin Luther King, Jr., the effort to bridge the inner-outer duality has been one of the high points of human philosophy and endeavor. America has been fertile ground for such philosophy since our earliest days. It is the message that our spiritual and political evolution are not separate, but intimately and potentially even gloriously connected. It's the suggestion
that we can't give to the world what we have not achieved within ourselves, and we can't keep for ourselves what we have not yet given to the world. And ultimately, it's the message that maybe, just maybe, love will someday rule the world.

In the most advanced stages of ancient Egyptian culture, the Pharaoh was not
just given his job for life. At regular intervals, he had to prove to his people that he still had what it took to do the job, displaying physical, moral, and mental strengths for all his subjects to witness. Similarly, statues of ancient Egyptian gods were reconsecrated yearly through prayer
and rituals, as though it could not be taken for granted that the genuine force behind material substance would remain fully active without a regular reassertion of human devotion.

So it is that while Americans still go through the rites of democracy-political campaigns, elections, inaugurations-there is among us the sinking feeling that these rites are losing their spiritual force.
Anything, no matter how initially pure, becomes corrupted if it is no longer
connected to people's hearts. And that is how so many of us feel today. Democracy we know is still a vital concept-in fact, more so now than ever. But American democracy today is like a beautiful treasure housed in a decrepit building; our democratic principles are too good for our politics.

The state of our politics reflects the state of our humanity. In order to renew our politics, we're going to have to take a good look at the principles, or lack of them, that underlie all of American society today. As long as our social order rests on obsolete principles-obsolete because they
are spiritually blind- there will be no real breakthrough in our political
realities. In the words of Gandhi, "The problem with humanity is that we are not in our right minds."

The principles underlying our social, political, and economic conditions deem us purely material rather than spiritual beings, economics rather than relationship-oriented, and separate bodies rather than united hearts. We view competition as the primary motivator of human creativity, which it certainly is not. We view the creation of wealth as the primary goal of
human work, though it should not be. We treat each other as anything but brothers, though that is what we are. These misperceptions of who we are and why we are here are central to the problems of the world. They are illusions holding back the human race, keeping us limited to the lower energies of dense, material-plane consciousness at a time when we are ready to expand to new 1evels of awareness and joy. In withdrawing our attachment to them, in rejecting their claim on our imaginations, we can transform our experience of life on earth.

A philosophical shift of historical importance is occurring throughout the
world. Yes, we know that we are rational beings. Yes, we know that the physical world is based on the laws of science. And we also know-or remember at last- that in fact we are spiritual beings.

We are each of us divine essence, placed on earth to create the good, the true, and the beautiful. That goal is a compelling force that motivates us to higher heights than any contest or economic stimulus could ever come close to matching. There are within each of us God-given talents that do not
respond to market pressure, yet spring to life in the presence of honor and respect. The spirit within compels us to serve each other rather than compete with each other, bless each other rather than condemn each other, and place our primary attention on the extension of brotherly love.

The dawn of the twenty-first century is a crossroads for the human race. We are living at a time of both intensified fear and intensified love, both encroaching barbarism and spiritual renaissance. Our consciousness now is backed by so much material power that, whether it is attuned to fear or attuned to love affects the future of the entire human race.

The spiritual renaissance of our time is like a mystical revolution of human
consciousness, a surge of energy from the subconscious of a species that registers threat yet is intent upon survival. Love, like fear, is contagious. Unlike fear, however, love has ultimate authority over the forces of the world. It proceeds in spite of all obstruction. Every day,
like the inevitable dawn, more spiritual light seeps into the world.

Awareness of spiritual tenets already colors our philosophical outlook as we
approach the new millennium-in time, it will dominate our politics and economics, too. Either love will begin to rule the world or we will suffer the consequences of our continued resistance to the supreme law of the Creator- that we love one another- too long past the point when as a species we knew better. To run counter to love is to run counter to life. One can not do so forever and survive. That is true for a person and it is true for nation.

Excerpted from Healing the Soul of America- Reclaiming our Voices as
Spiritual Citizens

© 1997, 2000 by Marianne Williamson- a Touchstone book. Excerpts from pages
35-41 in the Mystical Politics section.