Perspectives on National Events

 2020 continues to bring increased turmoil. The recent acts of racial violence are a horrific addition to our already troubled times, and the necessary peaceful demonstrations of protest to these hate crimes and their underlying causes highlights our desperate need to change as individuals and as a culture. 

 

            We cannot let lower levels of consciousness define us as a people; we must identify with the Light that we are. Only Light can dispel the darkness of ignorance and hatred. Mean spirited acts are based on fear and power reactions. These are throw back archaic primitive reflexes from the negative poles of the first and third chakras (survival, fear, combat; power, greed, domination). We can’t live like this anymore. As a species, we are on the tipping point of evolving to the heart chakra level of awareness: love all, exclude none. We can tip the scales to the fourth chakra.

 

            Because we are blessed with spiritual advancement, it is our dharmic duty to proactively participate in this transformation of humanity through spiritually informed social awareness and responsibility. Justice and peace provide the social order conducive to the spiritual progress of our species. Without them, the world is mired in struggle and strife that siphons focus and energy from the spiritual endeavor. The whole purpose of the planet is to promote our evolution into spiritual beings, one soul at a time. This is why the lineage sent Swamiji to America-to quick start a seeding of high evolutionaries. We are the result of that mission, and we are to continue it in the way we live in higher awareness.

 

            This is not a matter of politics. It is a matter of upholding the dharma, which begins in our souls, hearts, and minds and manifests in doing the right thing. Big change begins by emanating a higher vibe of compassion, understanding, and love. The voices of peaceful protest are cries for communal help to stop deeply engrained systemic wrongs. These desperate cries of hurt and hope must be heard and responded to with effective change. At very the least, we must prayerfully empathize and support the needs for fairness, equality, and upliftment. Refined inner intention on the subtle and causal levels is the most potent mover of big change, and we have the capacity to supercharge it. Gently and strongly will it into being.

 

            We are truly all in this together, and we must work together to right the course. Covid started a shared awareness of our interconnected responsibility, but it also piqued levels of stress and pressure, inciting some to greater agitation. This decreases the level of sattva necessary for the Buddhi to discern peaceful cooperative solutions for the betterment of the whole. It is the outliers-the oppressed, the mystics, the artists, the young-who can tune into wisdom and see true and plainly state the obvious to those enmeshed in Maya’s veiling and projecting powers so they passively accept the resulting distorted view of Reality. These are the voices that must be heard, not the sensational voices of discord and negativity. Focus on Truth and positivity.

 

            When rajas and tamas prevail, stupid things happen. As more sattvic beings, our job is to hold the center when the less centered among us start flailing about. If we can stay in the still eye of the hurricane until it runs its course, we can maintain our own well being and that of those near us, thus spreading a field of peace. That is our contribution, our obligation. We are the growing tip of human development, and our calling is to be the Light, to go high, to pull up the trajectory. This is the responsibility of the spiritual privilege with which we are blessed. This is instrumental to bringing about the only solution that works: a spiritual solution.

 

            Our primary dharma, of course, is to see to our own Liberation. But we can also make a significant contribution to the greater good without detracting from that essential agenda. We each are gifted with qualities and talents that can make a difference without straining our prana or distracting our mind. We know, as the Buddha emphasized, that life is suffering, that there is a state free from being affected by life’s innate travails, and that there is a way to reach that state. We have experienced that.

 

            Our exquisite Advaitin philosophy tells us that the vagaries of life are a fluctuating superimposition of Maya obscuring the reality of Consciousness, which we actually are and which is all there is. To take the tragic drama that life presents as the only thing happening is to buy into Maya’s illusion. That error leads to anxiety and despair, the dilemma of Arjuna, everyman, at the opening of the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna, Divine Awareness, showed him the Truth that leads to fulfillment through dharmic action. That action is spiritual. It yields Liberation and then appropriate giving through compassion.

 

            Gandhi based his program of social change through nonviolent resistance on this sacred text, and Martin Luther King followed the same principles. The American Transcendentalists based their beautiful perspective on the newly translated Gita and Upanishads as well, and their outlook has been called the soul of America. America was founded on the elevated egalitarian principles of the Enlightenment era, but it is also based in the genocide, slavery, and elitism of imperialistic colonialism. The ideal and the sin are our inheritance. It has all come to a head. Who are we to be? This is the watershed moment. Be peace, Light, Truth, and love. Because of our spiritual blessings, we can be exemplars of the new wiser kinder human.

 

            As contemplatives in the world, let us prayerfully focus our awareness and love on celebrating peace and Truth. Let’s keep our attention on the goodness and grace emerging from the catalyst of difficulty and turmoil. We are witnessing the unloading of our nation’s and the world’s Chitta. Let us hold the center as the gunk pours out. The transformation is happening!

 

Love, peace, Truth & Light,

Joan

 

P.S.  Here are the words to the Mandukya song I spued forth last time.

I’m the waker. I’m the dreamer. I’m the deep, deep sleeper.

This seems true, but it’s not all.

I’m the seer. I’m the be-er. I’m the Truth here, dear.

I’m the One pervading all.

Once you see it, then you be it.

Once you know it, then you show it.

You’ll shine forth the Truth for all.