Spirituality and Politics, a Blend

Can we grow spiritually and, at the same time, be interested in politics? First we need to define terms. What is spirituality? It is that state of feeling deeply connected to ourselves and the world around us. The more we are truly ourselves the more we are living in the Spirit and the more we do that the more we are connected to all existence. The Spirit is where everything connects or, to put it another way, it is pure love which is essentially pure connection.

Politics is the process of being in society thus all social activity, all work, all community involvements are political. Politics is not about what the US. media covers in the “news” that is obviously and clearly a project to manipulate our lives and opinions concerning a very narrow band of issues we may or may not be interested in but furthers some agenda beneficial to the owners of the media and the power-elite. Real politics is, obviously, much deeper and wider than what we are led to believe it is. Politics is beyond political parties, social movements, but starts once you leave your house and enter into the world.

To be spiritual is to connect with the world and society and that is political. You cannot be spiritual and not be political unless you are a contemplative living alone in the mountains somewhere and then other sorts of connections are sought. Sadly, we are now seeing a kind of politics that involves anger, hatred, tribalism, blaming others, indulging in fear-mongering and jumping to conclusions. Even for the worst kinds of people you can imagine assigning labels like “bad” or “evil” are not good for our spiritual development. I usually assign those kinds of labels to organizations which clearly and unambiguously cause death, fear and suffering to people like, say, Goldman-Sachs, the US. Military, Monsanto and, really, most other very large organizations—but I don’t assign the label “evil” to an Army officer say or an exec and Goldman—I do wonder why they persist in those organizations and try to see their positive motivations—they may feel they are doing good in the world and interpret life in a way very different from my own values. A spiritually-based politics would cause us to listen to others and look for connections and assumes that behind most people there are “good” intentions that may be twisted out of shape but that must be there somewhere.

As I’ve grown older I am much more aware of other people’s pain and the twisted ways they seek to relieve that pain—not because these people are “twisted” but because society offers them very few ways to relieve and solve the problems that cause their pain. I did this through self-examination and realizing how, in my own life, I’ve used many twisted paths deal with my pain or unmet needs. I’ve seen and see my own idiocy in life and I forgive myself and, thus, I forgive others as well—as John Lennon sang “whatever gets you through the night, it’s alright, it’s alright.” From this base we can think about our political life.

There is another aspect of politics that involves power whether personal, group, or simply the power to get things done. Each of our activities may have some bearing on power-politics. When we work for a company whose goals we don’t share we are, in effect, dis-empowering ourselves. When we cooperate with laws that violate our own standards of decency and morality we are also dis empowering ourselves and we must face up to that fact.

So here we are kind of stuck on issues of values and social morality. Without a discussion of those fundamental issues all discourse about all aspect of our political life, whether social, religious, or in our debates about what the media considers political issues the big missing factor is what are our fundamental frameworks of social morality? Underneath political conflicts about war/peace, social justice, the legal system, laws, regulation, federal programs, and monetary policy is social morality. If we do believe that, like Margaret Thatcher said, there is no such thing as society only groupings of individuals, then our viewpoint is much different from those who believe that society does exist as functioning whole with a life of its own and that a convivial society elevates the scope and well-being of individuals who are encouraged to live a life that goes beyond selfishness. This may be one of the fundamental differences between right and left. For the right individual liberty, even the liberty to oppress and hurt others is the highest level of morality. For the left the situation is murkier, and has no easy answer but, basically, the left sees that well-being should be something most of us share but its goals are so confusing that there is strong need to pull together a more compelling world-view.

Religions are, essentially, mythological frameworks that we can live within. Even if we are not religious (from religio, to bind) we live within a mythological framework. Doesn’t mean the framework is based on illusions or delusions or facts and science. Human frameworks are based on our upbringing, our laws, our traditions, the sum total of movies and books we have read and any situation or event that truly moved us. In addition myths have deeper multi-dimensional truths called “archetypes” which are deep patterns that come from mysterious places in our collective and personal psyches that cannot be comprehended other than through symbols, intuitions, dreams, sudden conversions, grace, altered states of consciousness, visions, metaphors, and epiphanies. There is a whole category of knowledge that comes from this general area that we ignore at our peril.

So when we have disagreements with people we have to try and understand their framework. While, I don’t agree with the right-wing idea of the primacy of the individual over the group, I do believe that without fully honoring the dignity and well-being of individuals society cannot be convivial—thus we could have room for agreement and then argue our cases. But if we demonize each other as being “bad” or “evil” because we disagree about guns, or war, or social policies, or cultural mores then we cannot benefit from our neighbor’s or our enemy’s wisdom. We, in fact, learn more from those who may oppose or challenge us than those who go along to get along with us. The diversity of our society could be our strength if we only could learn to respect each other and understand that most of us have very limited information and little or no training in critical thinking techniques. I would urge all of you to begin to learn about logic, science (social and “hard”), and dialogue featuring what the great Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, called “radical listening” which means listening without attachment to our own views and in total sympathy with your interlocutor—in a sense, we can become that person even physically through feeling his or her mannerisms. “Reality” and “truth” are not so easy to parse out. Sure I think I possess the truth about a lot of things but, at best, it is partial; sometimes we have grasped what seemed to be the essence of something real and true yet missing one small but essential component may cause to completely miss the actual truth of the matter. I believe a continual dialectical process is the only way we come close to truth—it may be that truth itself is more an attitude of openness as well as a “motion” of embracing the world—so less arrogance on our part might be indicated.

Now, to comment on what we usually regard as politics involving national/international issues but if you we look at the crises we actually face in a society suddenly (by historical standards) gone terribly wrong you naturally recoil and/or assign blame. But we must all start with looking in the mirror—who are we? How are aspects of society the I find very negative expressed in me? This is always the starting point. How is this or that politician or executive expressing something within me? We are faced with severe environmental problems our that are dramatically beyond anything previous generations faced—so how do I approach the environment around me? I don’t mean recycling or not driving a lot—I mean the details of our environment—am I really aware/conscious of my surroundings—do they reflect what I want? We are on the edge of global war so we have to look at how we each handle conflict—am I demonizing people who have a different culture or religion than my own? Every issue we face collectively has a link in our personal lives we must look at. At the same time, we have to identify what we do know to be wrong about these situations outside of ourselves and work both ends the personal and the public sphere. I should, for example, do my best to debunk clearly bogus rationales for war, like the WMDs in Iraq that I knew were not there and I did my best with millions of others to make my opinion known because I knew for a fact the narrative was a lie and one easy to verify. But seeing that lie as something separate from some of the lies I tell myself would have been a mistake—we must work both ends. So this is how spiritual practice and politics meet.