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This little book is about the next step. I've been involved with
various spiritual, political and human rights movements, but I still feel that
something is missing. I've been racking my brain for years on how to effect meaningful, fundamental change. Well, something
has clicked; I'm pretty sure that I've found a possible way to bring forth the
revolution we all want.
There are
millions of people, young and old, black, oriental and white, religious and
agnostic, who're developing the unitive instincts of the New
Spirituality. They're connected, to a certain extent, on the Internet and
through other links. What's missing is a catalyst. We need a mechanism to focus
all the revolutionary knowledge that abounds in today's world into the type of
concerted action that will in fact bring about the needed revolution. It is no
longer sufficient for us to be scattered about in gazillions of different
advocacy and protest groups. We must take control.
If our mainstream news organizations don't report the
important news or fail to present an accurate picture of world and national
affairs, we can no longer be content with clicking on petitions, or supporting
quaint counter-culture blogs. We must create mainstream media that do
accurately report on the world, as it is, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
If our healthcare system is falling apart, so that ever more
people can't get routine or emergency care, it is no longer adequate to protest
and to agitate for universal healthcare that never comes. We must create an
alternative healthcare system.
If our environment continues to be degraded, it's no longer
effective to rely on legal action by beleaguered environmental organizations
that face an increasingly hostile legislative, executive and judiciary.
Let's face it: if our society routinely allows hundreds of millions of our
brothers and sisters to fester in unimaginable poverty without creating an
uproar, the slow, mostly invisible degradation of our environment is not going
to create excitement. People will be happy to trash the earth slowly, in order
to protect their share of its dwindling resources. In order to save the Alaskan
wilderness, for example, we may have to buy the drilling rights.
If our schools don't even teach our children how to keep
their economic heads above water in these raging floods of rampant consumerism,
then we must establish new school systems or work within existing schools. We
must supply our children with an educational system that enables them to live
life willfully and elevate our culture.
If our foreign policy, or that of other nations, continues to
trample on the rights of poor people, then we can no longer be just protestors
and petitioners. We must connect with individuals, organizations and states
that share our values. We must implement actions that neutralize the effects of
any political entity that causes harm.
If our prisons become ever more
crowded with the people our society has discarded, we must go into the prisons
and create hope, empathy and purpose. We must find ways to empower people to
the fullest extent that their circumstances allow. Even in prison it is
possible to find fulfillment working for the liberation of mankind. If one's
mind is free, then there is freedom, regardless of the shackles that impede
physical movement.
If rampant real estate speculation and anti-poor zoning laws
drive up the price of decent housing beyond the means of low and moderate
income families, then we must create a way for people to obtain affordable
housing. This doesn't mean creating low-income ghettos. Instead, we must employ
a creative approach to the problem. We can take advantage of depressed real
estate prices in both urban and rural areas where there is a net loss of population,
and combine that with the creation of employment opportunities.
Each of these areas of concern will be expanded in its own
chapter. The main thing to keep in mind is that we won't achieve a better
society by petitioning others to do it. We must be that better society,
and create all the institutions necessary to support that society,
locally, nationally and globally. We will integrate these institutions into a
holistic community. The talents and resources are out there. All we need to do
to motivate the talent and tap the resources is to create the framework for it
to happen.
Next question: Who is the "we" responsible for all these
wonderful things to happen? Now we're getting into the heart of this little
book, the little piece of the puzzle that was, up to now, missing. I don't mean
an amorphous, unfocussed "we" consisting of all the progressives, all the unity-believing
spiritualists, all the protesters, all the do-gooders - the whole spectrum of
scattered people who are at some level involved already. "We" is a unitive
term, but because we're living in the illusion of separateness, and because
we're easily overwhelmed
by that illusion, we need a more positively focused sense of "we." It's like
many compatible living cells becoming organized to form a strong, functional
multi-cellular organism.
Let's face it. The forces that are in
control now are strongly unified: powerful nations, huge corporations,
and over-arching international organizations like the WTO. They're all unified from
the top down in anti-democratic hierarchies, even those with democratic
trappings. They're focused on maintaining and increasing their power. A
scattered opposition of unorganized protesters and petitioners is no match for
the sharp focus and the overwhelming resources under their control.
I want to interject a word of caution here, one that will be
repeated often. The previous paragraph demonstrates how easy it is to paint the
world's struggles as the usual "good versus evil" or "us against them" fight.
This is why I started with the chapters on Unconditional Love, and The
Mystery Of Evil. The only way for the New Spirituality to prevail is for us
to realize that it already has prevailed. If we stoop to the old "us vs.
them" fight to the death, we will have already lost. Been there, done that,
right?
To keep us on message, we should keep in mind that beautiful
metaphor of the butterfly's imaginal cells that provide the structure around
which each new butterfly materializes. Like these imaginal cells, it's not our
job to oppose the disintegrating old caterpillar structures. After all, we're
not against the people who defend the present system. They don't know of any
better system to take its place. From their point of view they're doing the
right thing. This goes for all defenders of old systems, from Jewish, Islamic
and Christian fundamentalists to soul-less capitalists and soul-less communists.
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