In order to change everything fundamentally, we must rethink things and that includes politics.
Until recently we thought about politics in the same way that we used to think about medicine, our approach had been allopathic: treat the symptom, treat the symptom, do not stop to consider the cause.
Today this is changing, because we have not realized that not all political cancers as well as doctors can operate or simply change channels. Hitler was an operable tumor, but terrorism has metastasized throughout the political body, its tumors involve healthy organs. We cannot remove the problem and assume that it will disappear forever. Now that we have assumed a more holistic approach to medicine, it is time that we also assume a more holistic approach to politics.
In holistic politics, mental, spiritual and emotional factors increase their significance when material problems become more discouraging. People usually tell me: "Oh Marianne, emotions have nothing to do with politics" Yes? So is not terrorism hate turned into a political force?
If we perceive a subject only superficially, in this case that our problem is terrorism, then we are limited in our thinking and in the ways of handling the problem. But if we perceive it from a holistic perspective, then we see that our problem is hatred in itself, that terrorism is merely the effect of that problem. And hate forms a system of thought that cannot simply disappear. Because for every person who hates that we destroy, at least one or more will arise. The only way to free the world from a system of thinking based on hate is to dismantle it and the only way to do it is by tuning into forgiveness and love.
Einstein said we would not solve the world's problems from the level of thinking we had when we created them. If violence is the problem, then violence cannot be the solution. What is emerging today is a new pacifist movement that recognizes that peace is more than the absence of war, it is the passionate and proactive cultivation of peace. And the only true peace in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. "It is the peace that is born of justice and brotherhood."
Now, we cannot cultivate justice and brotherhood if we, in our personal interaction, do not act as brothers. Gandi said: "the end is inherent in the media" If we want a different end we have to change the media. We cannot give what we do not have, an angry generation cannot bring peace to the world. If we want to achieve fundamentally different political goals, we must transform the political process itself.
In other words, to cover more we have to go deep, if we want to achieve powerful social effectiveness, then we must go deep into the mystery of our heart. Because people will listen to us from the level at which we speak to them. If we speak from the head, they will listen with the head. But if we speak to them from the heart, then they will listen with the heart. And the heart is a space that cannot be falsified.
How can I talk about Israelis and Palestinians forgiving each other, when I have not deeply forgiven someone in my own life? It is easier to talk about the violence in George Bush's mind, than about the violence of my own heart. But claiming a change from what I am exposing in others, without seeking that change in me, causes my communication to suffer from moral authority and therefore from political effectiveness. Not only do we need to give a message outward but we also need to give a message inward.
That is why personal transformation is a political act. As long as we don't change, we can't change the world. Until we find a moral center within, we cannot articulate a moral vision at the center of a new emerging world. Now once we have found that center, there is no force that can stop it. Consider the abolitionist movement or the women's suffrage movement. Huge, colossal powers were mobilized against him. However, the moral strength of the claim, reflected in the minds, hearts and actions of the people who truly believed in the claim, literally moved mountains and changed the world.
Now it is our turn to do the same. The old geopolitical calculations based on political domination and organizational economic principles, no longer take place in the moral evolution of our species. Not only are they politically and socially outdated. The point is that they are morally wrong. The faster the progressive movement leaves the insistence on saying that morality is a bad word, the faster we can claim a greater moral anchor that is historically and philosophically expected by us.
So don't worry if we don't have a million dollars to finance our campaign for universal justice. Don't worry because we have very little material power to support our vision. No abolitionist had a computer, no suffragist had a cell phone. What they had in Dr. King's words was: "the power in us that is more powerful than bullets." They had a passionate commitment, something more important went beyond their own personal interest, they had a passion for the possible, to reach the spiritual and political fulfillment of the destiny of humanity. And they could see the role that the United States could play in reaching this destination. We can show the whole world a novus ordun seclorum (a new order of the ages) in which the world is free of its bonds, because people have been freed from them.
We do not respond to the temporary or immediate goals of political conveniences. We are here responding to the times, past generations and those that are yet to be born. We are a generation that we will be remembered, history will definitely review that we were here. The only question is whether we want to be blessed or condemned and the answer is up to us.
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Marianne Williamson, internationally known writer and speaker, is co-founder of renaissancealliance.org (international network of pacifist activism).
Translation: Abjini Arráiz
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Abjini Arráiz
www.portalterraluz.com
www.abjiniarraiz.com
