A caring leader considers all others over the self. A good leader does what is necessary so that all may be comfortable. A compassionate leader shares what is available so that all may have. A strong leader ensures a land of safety and prosperity for all. A loving leader knows that peace and calm are the hallmarks of health. When a leader fails to lead all into security, happiness and health there is no recourse but for the leader to be challenged and the people to take the lead with kindness, compassion, and love for all so that goodness may once again be the law of the land.
Jan and I drove into our little village of Red Hook yesterday to be greeted at the main crossroad by a pickup truck sporting a huge half- American half-confederate flag blowing in the wind in the bed of the truck. The energy of the war drums pounding is palpable everywhere. How to respond? We turn to some sage guidance from the person we consider to be the wisest of the 20th Century, whose reach has yet to be fully realized, C. G. Jung, from his collected letters Volume 2, p. 502-3.
On April 28, 1959 Jung responded to a question as to why he didn’t protest against the injustice done to Tibet by the Chinese occupation. Here is his response:
“You are quite right: I also ask myself why I do not use the means that appear to be at my disposal to do my bit in combating the atrocities that are going on in the world. I can give no rational reasons for this. In such matters I usually wait for an order from within. I have heard nothing of the kind. The world situation has got so hopelessly out of hand that even the most stirring words signify nothing. It would be more to the point, or so it seems to me, if each of us were sure of his own attitude. But an individual who thinks that his voice is heard afar merely exposes himself to the suspicion that he is one of that band who have said something in order to prove to themselves that they have done something whereas in reality they have done nothing at all. Words have become too cheap. Being is more difficult and is therefore fondly replaced by verbalizing. Unfortunately this is all I have to say on the matter.”
What Jung is suggesting is that we act when we hear the order to do so from within ourselves. That order issuing not from impulse but from the quiet certainty of the heart. In the meantime the real contribution is to take on one’s own being, truly reconciling the opposing energies within the self. This is the playing field for world peace, the holographic solution.
Like all animals, humans sense the danger of our time. The collective diagnosis for our species at this moment in time is Acute Stress Disorder. Regardless of how relaxed our persona may appear, just beneath the surface lies a hair-trigger anticipatory fear. The world is indeed an extremely unstable place right now.
What power do we have?
See the self as a hologram of the entire world. Balancing the self contributes to balancing the whole world.
Accept that humans had to dream the dream we are living in right now. All options had to be tested. The current hypothesis: Can we really destroy ourselves? Answer the question individually. If you come to the conclusion that yes, it’s possible, but that Russian Roulette is of no interest to you, move on to a heart-centered vision instead.
Accept that everyone and everything you hate are you at some level. Find the hated in the self and love it. Thank the hated tyrants for illuminating the inner ones.
Thoughts have power. Thoughts are in the air we breathe. Think truthful, loving thoughts. Send them to the world in warm exhalation.
Embrace life. Our time in human form is limited. Keep the focus on the magic. Restore the innocence of childhood to the threatened adult self; it’s the only way to truly live.
Be in the Tao. Be with what is in detached calm. You know how to ride the vibration of change. Everyone rode that vibration into this life and will ride it again on the exit. No matter what happens consciousness can observe and flow into new life. Ask body and spirit to get calmer and walk beside the river of life together, knowing that you can handle everything that comes—even the shocks—by moving deeper into calm acquiescence to the flow of change. Trust the Tao.
Love is the ability to embrace the total package. Love is partial to the truth but accepts the existence of everything, however vile, however glorious.
In a dream, I walk with my family a few steps behind Donald Trump and his family on the streets of a metropolis. I’m drawn to walk beside him. We are looking for a hospital. Suddenly Trump faints in my arms. There’s a soft puffiness to his body and I feel a kindness coming from him. I also notice that he has terrible breath.
In my dream, I’m drawn to Trump, perhaps feeling the draw of my ego to walk with power, an inflated air. The hospital represents an illness, something in need of healing. As Trump faints in my arms I encounter his humanness, and beneath it all a soft kindness. The breath is what takes in spirit, spirit is air. In this case, the bad breath signals a malaria, a bad spirit, the source of the illness.
And so, can I love my ego self that is attracted to power? Can I love my animal self, the soft fallible body? Can I love my spirit self, the one that sometimes is high and sometimes quite low, sometimes the smell of flowers and sometimes quite foul?
We are beings of goodness and badness—we must live, love, and find a place for it all. Americans are prone to high spirits. We leap ahead for two terms and elect a black man to the highest level; gay marriage, transgender rights become the law of the land. But what about our bigoted selves, our angry selves, our suppressed, primitive, disorderly selves, our miserly selves, our envious, jealous selves, our lustful selves, our rigidly conservative selves? We reach so high in our all-accepting values that we push down and disavow our lowly selves.
Trump swung into power because he spoke directly to our politically incorrect selves, and so he continues, his popularity growing exponentially. Unless we face and come to love and accept our deepest, darkest sides, we are prone to be mesmerized by a leader who unabashedly says what many may feel but are too afraid to say.
We are a composition of good and evil, order and chaos. All parts of us must be lived in some way if we are to become whole beings. Yes, we must love every lowly part of ourselves and give it its rightful place in our beings.
In my dream, healing was called for. The Trump of my dream suffered from a disjointed spirit and body. The bad spirit in his body made for a toxic brew. Somehow the balance was off, the dark spirit having overtaken the body. Nonetheless, the body revealed its innocence, its softness, its kindness.
When, as human beings, we identify only with our high spirits we are prone to a radical shift that will bring us down and dirty into the mardi gras of our self-serving instinctual selves. It’s a law of nature that if we go too far in one direction we will swing to the other side in an equally one-sided way. That’s where we are now as chaos has its turn with the world.
All is love!
The key is for us to accept all of ourselves, to truly embrace the total package. Love accepts all, all that is. Love knows that nothing can be excluded without a cost, without a loss, without an eventual revolution.
Once we can love all that we are, we can create a new harmony beyond the radical bipolar splits we see around us and experience in our own moods and self-judgments. This is the journey of our planet now, to embody all is love and love is all.
