GOD IS WATCHING US

He's not angry but He's not kidding either

mapo

I read this morning that U.S. citizens should be on high alert following our bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities. From possibilities of cyber attacks to hate crimes, we’re told the ongoing conflict is causing a heightened threat environment in the United States. Iranian bombs have already flown toward US military bases in Qatar.

Apparently Iran sent a message to President Trump while he was at the G7 meeting in Canada over a week ago. It warned that they have sleeper cells in the US which could be activated should the US take action against Iran.

We don’t always know what to believe these days, but it seems clear that anything could happen anytime anywhere. We can expect the unexpected, that’s for sure. According to some sources, the main ingredients for the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon were removed from Fordow days before the US attack. And if that’s true, then the Iranian nuclear program was possibly set back only for months, not even years.

If we only look at things on the level of what’s happening outside ourselves, clearly these are not happy days. Indeed they are rough and chaotic. But the point of spiritual consciousness is to look beyond the mere surface level of things. While major changes are happening in the world, we best navigate them by understanding the nature of things that do not change. Spiritual understanding is our greatest tool for enduring and navigating the times in which we live.

There are objective, discernible laws of consciousness that work no differently than the laws of the material world. The laws of physics, for instance, are not someone’s opinion. You don’t have faith in the law of gravity; you simply know that it is. And you know it’s not negotiable. You can override it, but the law itself does not bend.

Spiritual and physical laws mirror each other and share the most basic common underpinning: the Law of Cause and Effect. Every action has a reaction, and every thought creates form on some level. We get away with nothing, either physically or spiritually. You don’t drop an object without expecting it to fall, and you don’t take an action without expecting it to be returned to you. The universe keeps a perfect set of books.

The Law of Cause and Effect applies to the behavior of groups of people as much as to individuals. Processing what it means that an entire nation might have karma to deal with is often not so much an intellectual stretch as simply an unpleasant truth to deal with. Yet the laws of nature are inviolable. If everything in the world is a mere Effect the Cause of which is in our minds, then it’s within our minds where we will find our greatest power to change the world.

There are people, usually on the Right, who only want to look at what America has done right and have little interest in looking at what we’ve done wrong. There are also people, usually on the Left, who only want to look at what America has done wrong and have little interest in looking at what we’ve done right. Both views are incomplete and based on false premises. American history has been forged by human beings, and human beings are imperfect. Where we’ve been good, at times we have been spectacularly good. And where we have been bad, at times we have been spectacularly bad.

The laws of the universe are simple, actually - profoundly encapsulated in the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Why? Because they will! And if they don’t, then someone else will. Think with Love. Act with Love. And if you don’t, don’t go expecting things to turn out well. For they will not.

All of us are human, and all of make mistakes. This world is nothing if not confusing. It is dominated by a thought system based on fear, consistently tempting us to thought and behavior that is anything but aligned with wisdom. It happens to all of us. Add to that, that in our collective existence our thoughts are too often shepherded by sociopathic political and economic forces, and you get…well…you get to where we are.

That is the truth.

At our best, as a nation we have adhered to the laws of righteousness and acted according to the “angels of our better nature.” We have recognized our mistakes and sought to correct them. As much wrong as we have done at times, American history is not just littered with error; it is also littered with greatness. People in other generations have recognized and acknowledged the higher truths of the heart. They have lived for them, sacrificed for them, and many have died for them.

Lincoln gave a profound exposition on the spiritual meaning of the Civil War in his Second Inaugural Address. Franklin Roosevelt said these words about the office of President: “The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That’s the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.” Martin Luther King, Jr. saw the Civil Rights Movement as an opportunity to redeem the soul of America, making good on our founding ideals of liberty and justice for all. The last thing any of those men were was naive about the world or naive about America.

Great leaders do not speak, or act, only in material terms. They have at least an instinctive understanding that more is going on here than the mere externals of life. Ideals matter. Principles matter. Righteousness matters. In fact, without them we are doomed. “God shall not be mocked” means that He isn’t. And “Where there is no vision the people perish” simply tells it like it is.

So what has happened to us, that we are where we are today?

Many things have happened, but there are general strokes of history worth noting. In very simple terms, we forgot who we are. This nation was founded on the most enlightened principles - never fully actualized, obviously, but continuously striven for in every generation despite ever recurring forces of opposition. Those principles are not just a political identity, but what is in essence a philosophical mission. For most of our history, the people of the United States have had an instinctive understanding of what that meant. From abolishing slavery to fighting fascism, no one can say that Americans have never shown up for the principles on which we purport to stand.

But the last fifty years, while materially successful, have been been a spiritual Dark Ages in the United States of America.

Money became our God. Military and police became our primary problem-solving modality. Corporate greed became our organizing principle. Our political system has become corrupted by the undue influence of money. Among many Americans, there has even developed a fondness for fascism and an attraction to dictators. Morally and politically, we have swerved way off course.

For those thinking God help us, that’s exactly my point.

There is within our consciousness a way to change what’s happening, but it requires humility toward a power greater than our own.

The truth will set us free, that’s true, but in the words of Werner Erhard, “First it will piss you off.” We need to be willing to look in America’s mirror, with love and compassion but with brutal self-awareness.

The Atonement is the ultimate expression of God’s mercy, enshrined in all the great religious and spiritual traditions of the world. Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, the Holiest day of the year among Jews; confession is the practice of Atonement among Catholics; the admission of character defects and seeking to make amends for them is the practice of Atonement in Alcoholics Anonymous. It means admitting to God the exact nature of our wrongs, invoking a spiritual and psychological reset. When we have strayed from love we can atone for our errors, thus resetting the trajectory of our lives.

And America needs to do that - we need a national Atonement. Only purification of the American heart can get us out of the pickle we’re in now. The self-reflection required of us in this moment is not easy to swallow, but it’s the only portal to fundamental change. For years our political leaders were told by their handlers not to tell us anything “negative,” as though we were children rather than mature adults. And we are paying the price for that right now.

If God forbid sleeper cells are activated in the United States, Americans’ prayers for protection are going to ring pretty hollow to a God who loves other people as much as He loves us.

How many times over the last fifty years has this country behaved with callousness, disrespect - at times even cruelty - led by leaders who argued it was in “America’s best interests” to do so? How many ill advised and unnecessary wars, how much destructiveness of the earth, how many economies demolished so US corporations could get richer, how much callousness toward the poor, the weak, the hungry, the sick, and the young do you think a Divinely Intelligent universe tolerates before the effects of our lovelessness comes crashing back at us?

Prayers for protection are not the prayers that will penetrate the veils of heaven now. God does not save us from what we brought upon ourselves. That’s not to say He isn’t merciful. God’s not angry…but He’s not kidding either.

Prayers for forgiveness, atonement for our shallowness and complacency, fasting in sorrow, purifying our hearts of the ways we’ve enabled a system for so long that has abused so many - such is the power (greater than any other) that will reset our trajectory for the days that lie ahead. The more any individual comes to that place in our hearts, the more we will affect the collective consciousness of the country. That healing will not come from institutional sources; it will come from us.

At a times such as this, contrition is more powerful than bombs.