The idea of democracy is a system of government determined by the people.
Nowhere is it decreed that it be a binary system of left V right where each defines the other. Nowhere does it say it should be a mud fight between two candidates in which the victor will be placed as ‘the face’ of a whole population. The core of democracy is destined to be about collaboration through which a common ideal evolves, not about toxic competition that leaves destruction in its wake.
The fatal flaw in today’s political and psychological framework is that in the dance between left and right, we get blinded to an aliveness that is neither left nor right.
With flares of illusion, this never-ending dance sheds victories and defeats in balanced portions.
Witness the presidential face of collective ego, born from the wounds in its own shadow, bequeathed by its presidential predecessor.
The structures of ego are toxic, blotting out the miracles of perception, poisoning the body and the mind, and draining the natural vitality from the system.
The all-powerful ego aims to divide and conquer its electorate. When the manifold is divided, then only might is right. Truth is happening elsewhere – if it exists at all.
The electoral candidates of ego have a fundamental purpose to distract our consciousness from truth. When consciousness is captivated by conflict, it contracts from sensing the deeper wounds in the darkness. It betrays, neglects, abandons and refuses to heal. The cries of the emptiness are heard by the candidates only for the cause of ego inflation, and later, they are rapidly forgotten.
Because fear breeds the energy of division, the mantra of ego is “Be Afraid.”
Be afraid of other species, other races, other religions, other nations. Be afraid of the other sex and of differing sexuality. Be afraid of anything and everything, except the light of ego that guides us for the sake of its own survival. Above all, be afraid of those cries from the emptiness – the dispossessed that would rob ego of its power.
We trust this shield of government to save us from ourselves, and repress the fear that maybe, one day, we will find that nobody was ever really home in the white house of false self, and we never were protected.
We trust this ego even though we know that inevitably, it dies again and again, for only ego is able to die. So we become widows, widowers and orphans, bereaved of the miraculous vitality whose promise is inherent to the human community.
One antidote is to disinvest from the system of illusion. Develop a sense of truth, even if it’s irrational, crazy and foreign; even if it means allowing courage to burn away the fear; even if it means our freedom consumes all we believed ourselves to be.
Perhaps then, a democracy of the heart, body and mind will have space to emerge.
All the above could be wrong, but perhaps wrong is more honest than the dualistic notion that makes media addicts of us all.
