Leadership, Service and Spirituality...does it matter?

Leadership, Service and Spirituality...does it matter?
a message from Celia Fenn

      So, here I am again with this topic that just doesn't seem to want to go away right now. It seems to be something that needs to be addressed, and strangely enough, it is Obama that is bringing this to the surface. I think we are experiencing a deep healing of the collective psyche around the issues of leadership and service, and yes, spirituality. Because they are interconnected in the continuum of our lives, and because what happens in the USA tends to have reverberations in the western world.
So lets start with the American psyche and the issues of leadership that Obama is bringing up in people. I find that Americans who are spiritually aware have two responses to Obama. The one is a kind of glamorized idealization, where he is seen as a kind of Messiah. The other is the opposite pole, where he is viewed with grave distrust and seen as no more than a continuation of the old dark ways. I believe that David icke has already "proved" that Obama is working for the "dark side".

     I am going to suggest that what is at issue here is how we view leadership and power, and a healing of the deep wounds in the American psyche that go back to Watergate and Nixon. At this time, the Leader was found to be corrupt and dishonest and was successfully removed from power. This was unfortunately true of Nixon, but it created a pattern of political distrust and paranoia that has followed practically every President since. There seems to have arisen a culture of politics that is interested only in highly destructive power politics, in which aggression and oppositon to the person in power is in order if you don't like them, and idolization if you do. The whole thing is played out in the media, and people take positions according to what "appears" to align with their current point of political and spiritual view.

     Now, I get mails from people who assume that because I write about Obama in positive terms, I must belong to the idolization camp. Sorry, but not true. As an outsider, I consider Obama to be a gifted and capable leader, and the best choice America could have made right now. Of course he represents a significant change of direction. When last did the American people choose a leader of color with a history in community service? That alone holds out great hope for significant change! But, I am of the opinion that you judge a leader by his or her performance, and Obama is still in the wings on that one. He hasn't even been there for a month yet, and it is still far too early to make judgements of any kind on his leadership ability as a President or what it may mean. Of course, there is his track record, very positive, and his community work, that suggests that he may indeed be a capable leader and a good one. One able to lead America to and through the gate of 2012.

Why is that important?
     Well, I was talking to my Spiritual partner on the phone last night, and he reminded me that 2012 will be the culmination of the significant shifts that we are moving through right now. We are recreating the Planet as a New Earth, and the changes that we make now will determine whether we, as a whole, will be of a high enough frequency to pass through this "gate" as a Planet. I believe, personally, that every person alive today has the opportunity to make that passage, and that the choices that we make now will be crucial to raising global frequency sufficiently to make this a New Earth for everyone.

     But, in this phase of the "Now", we are still healing the Watergate scars, and the Vietnam scars...and the other "shocks" that entered the psyche of the "superpower" as we began the big shift back in the seventies. Now, just as we are rediscovering that we need to grow food like we did "back then", with respect for the soil and the water in order to keep our bodies healthy, we are discovering that we need to build community through respect for leadership in order to keep our social body healthy and viable. The tremendous technological and social changes we have passed through as a collective have left us in a state of collective "post traumatic stress", as we struggle to come up to speed with who and what we are now. And, learning to trust our collective leadership and to work with that leadership while still holding it accountable to the rule of law, is what will determine whether we can raise the frequency in our society and in our collective being. But we will need to release the paranoia and the distrust and be prepared to serve and to support those who serve.

     When we can trust our leadership, we will trust the leadership in ourselves. When we can serve others, we will begin to trust those that serve us. Because it will no longer be a media and politics mental "game", it will be part of our lives and part of our spiritual service. And maybe when we can trust ourselves and our inner Light and Divinity enough, we will cease to look heavenward waiting for the redeemer who will save us, and start to trust our own innate Spiritual essence and truly believe that "we are the ones we have been waiting for". All of us, not just the Dalai Lama and Barack Obama....but each one of us on the Planet today.

     It is not easy...and just to show you what I mean I would like to share something of my own experience with community leadership and power politics. When I first became involved with the community I support, I joined a group that seemed to be made of of people with high ideals, ecology, sustainability and community upliftment. I went to some of the meetings and I liked what I was hearing. But unfortunately, that was as far as it went. There was lots and lots of talk that went round and round, but very little to show for all the talk. There were issues of money misappropriation and who was responsible. The "usual" stuff. After a while, as I suggested new projects, I became the focus of a power struggle in the group. I was considered to be a newcomer, and it was perceived that I had an "agenda" that was obviously to enrich myself, since this particular group were there with that agenda. So they became obstructive and started to oppose everything I suggested. The climax came when we decided to work towards creating a garden for the soup kitchen that I was supporting at that time. I asked for a plan of the work to be undertaken and a schedule of working times so that we could co-ordinate our efforts. The response was that I was trying to control them, and they refused to co-operate. The garden never materialized, and after all the "talk" the community was left with nothing. At that point I moved on and began to work with my present Organizer in an independent project.

     I was dismayed at the time that was wasted in power struggles and ego trips and talk, by people who considered themselves to be community leaders. The idea of "service" and "accountability" had given way to ego and power and money. And, it seems like that is where we are mostly in our political and community life. A very low vibration. And we have a few years to lift that to a new level of community support and oneness. And yes...enter Barack Obama.....world leader. I do not think Obama's work is to solve all the problems America has. If he can, however, instill a new ethic of community support and awareness into the American psyche, and heal the paranoia and mistrust so that people can work with him and trust him, then he will have made a huge change and created great healing that will benefit us all. This is what I expect from Obama, this is what his background is mostly about. And this will create a platform for a higher frequency of government and leadership.

     And why it matters to us, is that we as Lightworkers are here to assist in raising the frequency of consciousness as we move towards 2012. We can do this by the leadership and service that we offer to our community and by the example that we set. Will we continue with the low frequency politics of duality and power, or will we begin to help to create a society where we can live and experience the true nature of the "one" within our collective. And that does not mean that we are all about to fall into a world dominated by America like a huge prison camp, as some surmise. The nature of "oneness" is always diversity and mutliplexity, for the Law of One is made up of the Laws of "the One and the Many" and "The Many and the One", complex expressions of soul family and diversity within the Divine Expression of the Totality of Life on Earth.

     It matters because we are changing, from day to day, and we are learning to express who we are in new ways. Even our spiritual understandings and beliefs are changing as we embrace who we are as "Masters of Light" and the co-creators of our own destiny here on Earth. It is what we chose to come here to experience at this time.

© 2006-8 Celia Fenn and Starchild Global http://www.starchildglobal.com - You are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work under the following conditions: You must give the author credit, you may not use this for commercial purposes, and you may not alter, transform or build upon this work. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Any other purpose of use must be granted permission by author.

Awakening To Total Revolution

Awakening To Total Revolution

Inner Freedom Is a Social Responsibility

      Viewing the world as a large pieced-together collection of fragments, some of which are labeled as friend and others as foe, begins internally. We map out our internal territories with the same positive or negative designations as we do external territories, and wars go on there as they do in the world. Internally, we are divided against ourselves; the emotions want one thing, the intellect another, the impulses of the body yet another, and a conflict takes place which is no different in quality, although it is in scale, from that of the world wars. If we are not related to ourselves in wholeness, is it any surprise that we cannot perceive the wholeness of the world? If we believe ourselves each to be a patched-together, unmatched assortment of desirable and undesirable features, motives at odds with each other, undigested beliefs and prejudices, fears, and insecurities, will we not project all this on the world?

      Because the source of human conflict, social injustice, and exploitation is in the human psyche, we must begin there to transform society. We investigate the mind, the human psyche, not as an end in itself, as a self-centered activity, but as an act of compassion for the whole human race. We must move deep to the source of decay in society so that the new structures and social systems we design will have a sufficiently healthy root system that they will have an opportunity to flourish. The structures of society need to be transformed, but the hidden motivations and assumptions on which the structures rest need to be transformed as well. The individual and collective values and motives that give sanction to the injustice and exploitation of modern society must become the focus of change as much as the socioeconomic and political structures. We no longer will be able to allow the motivations and values that underlie personal and collective behavior to remain hidden and unexamined. It serves no lasting purpose for us to change the surface structures and behaviors while the deep foundations remain decadent and unsound.

      Those of us who have dedicated our lives to social action have considered our personal morality and ethics, our motives and habits, to be private territory. We not only want our personal motivations and habits cut off from public view, but from our own recognition as well. But in truth, the inner life is not a private or personal thing; it’s very much a social issue. The mind is a result of collective human effort. There is not your mind and my mind; it’s a human mind. It’s a collective human mind, organized and standardized through centuries. The values, the norms, the criteria are patterns of behavior organized by collective groups. There is nothing personal or private about them. We may close the doors to our rooms and feel that nobody knows our thoughts, but what we do in so-called privacy affects the life around us. If we spend our days victimized by negative energies and negative thoughts, if we yield to depression, melancholia, and bitterness, these energies pollute the atmosphere. Where then is privacy? We need to learn, as a social responsibility, to look at the mind as something that has been created collectively and to recognize that our individual expressions are expressions of the human mind.

      Inner freedom from the past, from the thought structure, from the organized, standardized collective mind, is absolutely necessary if we are to meet one another without mistrust or distrust, without fear, to look at each other spontaneously, to listen to one another without any inhibition whatsoever. The study of mind and the exploration of inner freedom is not something utopian, is not something self-centered, but it is urgently necessary so that we as human beings can transcend the barriers that regimentation of thought has created between us. Then we will perceive ourselves, each as an unlabeled human being; not an Indian, an American, a capitalist, or a communist—but as a human being, a miniature wholeness. We have not yet learned to do that. We are together on this small planet, and yet we cannot live together. Physically we are near one another, and psychologically we are miles apart. Clearly the social responsibility for arriving at inner freedom is a very relevant issue. We study the mind because we want the harmony of peace to prevail, because we need the joy of love in our hearts, because we care about the quality of life our children will inherit. We do not undertake such study because we want something new and esoteric for the ego, some transcendental experiences to enhance our self-image. We study the mind as a social responsibility; we recognize that the roots of violence, injustice, exploitation, and greed are in the human psyche, and we turn our clear, precise, objective attention there.

      We are related organically, and we have to live that relationship. To be attentive to the dynamics of the inner being is not creating a network of escapes to avoid responsibility. It is not continuing a false superiority that I am sensitive and you are not. It is simply recognizing that our personal relationships and collective relationships are miserable affairs, and that these relationships stimulate fear and anxieties and throw us on the defensive. However much we yearn for peace, emotionally we are not mature enough for peace, and our immaturity affects everything we do, every action we take, even the most worthy of actions.

      The elimination of inner disorder takes place in the lives of those who are interested in being truly creative, vital, and passionate whole human beings, and who recognize that inner anarchy and chaos drains energy and manifests in shabby, shoddy behavior in society. To be attentive requires tremendous love of living. It is not for those who choose to drift through life or for those who feel that charitable acts in society justify ugly inward ways of being. The total revolution we are examining is not for the timid or the self-righteous. It is for those who love truth more than pretense. It is for those who sincerely, humbly want to find a way out of this mess that we, each one of us, have created out of indifference, carelessness, and lack of moral courage.



The Choice Is Ours

      Most of us are not aware of our motivations for living or our priorities for action. We drift with the tides of societal fashions, floating in and out of social concerns at the whim of societal dictates and on the basis of images created by the media or superficial, personal desires to be helpful, useful persons. We are used to living at the surface, afraid of the depths, and therefore our actions and concerns about humanity are shallow, fragile vessels easily damaged. Ultimately most of us are concerned chiefly with our small lives, our collection of sensual pleasures, our personal salvation, and our anxiety about sickness and death, rather than the misery created by collective indifference and callousness.

      We have reached the point, however, where we no longer have the luxury to indulge in self-centered comfort and personal acquisition or to escape into religious pursuits at the cost of collective interests. For us there can be no escape, no withdrawal, no private arena in which we can turn our backs on the sorrows of humanity, saying, “I am not responsible. Others have created a mess; let them mend it.” The writing on the world’s wall is plain: “Learn to live together or in separateness you die!” The choice is ours.

      The world today forces us to accept, at least intellectually, our oneness, our interrelatedness. And more and more people are awakening to the urgency of arresting the accelerating madness around us. As yet, however, our ways of responding are superficial, unequal to the complexities of the challenge. We do not take or even consider actions that threaten our security or alter our habitual ways of drifting through life. If we continue to live carelessly, indifferently, emphasizing private gain and personal indulgence, we are essentially opting for the suicide of humanity.

      We can become involved in many acts of social service, according to our resources, without ever moving one inch from the center of our private interests; in fact, the very act of social service typically enhances self-image and self-centeredness. But we cannot become involved in true social action, which strikes at the roots of problems in the society and in the human psyche, without moving away from ego-centered motivation. We must look deep into the network of personal motivations and discover what our priorities are. Our yearning for peace must be so urgent that we are willing to free ourselves from the immaturity of ego-centered action, willing to grow into the sane maturity required to face the complex challenges that affect our existence. If we are motivated by desire for acceptance either by the dominant culture or the counterculture, clarity of right action and passion of precise purpose will not be there. We may be praised for our contributions, but unless there is a deep awareness of the essence of our lives, a penetrating clarity about the meaning of human existence, our contributions will not penetrate to the roots of human misery.

      To be ready for social responsibility, we will have to be mercilessly honest with ourselves. Wherever we are, we are responsible to resist injustice, to be willing to put our comforts, securities, our lives at stake in fearless non-cooperation with injustice and exploitation. If we adopt all the habit patterns of the enslaved—the fear, the acceptance of tyranny, the intellectual and emotional blindness to injustice—we deserve the inevitable consequences that are descending upon us in a dark storm cloud. If we are submissive, clinging to our small islands of security, naturally terror will reign. If we are willing to allow all others to perish—the peoples of other countries, races, castes, cultures, religions; the other creatures of the earth—so that we may flourish and endlessly increase our network of pleasures and comforts, obviously we are doomed to rot and decay. The callousness of letting others be abused so that our petty little lives will be undisturbed, so that all the comforts of a lovely home, pleasant meals, and good entertainment will not be threatened, portends doom for us all.

      When we come face-to-face with the actualities of human and planetary suffering, what does the powerful moment of truth do to us? Do we retreat into the comforts of theories and defense mechanisms, or are we awakened at the core of our being? Awareness of misery, without defense structures, will naturally lead to action. The heart cannot witness misery without calling the being to action, without activating the force of love. We may not act on a global or national scale; it may be only on a community or neighborhood scale—but act, respond, we must. Social responsibility flowers naturally when we perceive the world without the involvement of the ego-consciousness. When we relate directly to suffering, we are led to understanding and spontaneous action—but when we perceive the world through the ego, we are cut off from direct relationship, from communion that stirs the deepest level of our being.

excerpted from Vimala Thakar’s
Spirituality and Social Action: A Holistic Approach
(Berkeley: Vimala Programs California, 1984).