OF COURSE THERE WILL BE TEARS

For years we simply refused to cry them. They will no longer be denied

Photo: D-Keine

There’s no need to underestimate, or minimize, the depression now felt by millions of freedom-loving Americans.

When MAGA supporters say things like, “Now you know how we felt,” no, they couldn’t possibly know how we feel and they could not possibly have felt it. There has never been in this country the systematic dismantling of our government, the nefarious limiting of our liberties, or the assault on everything we have historically treasured from inside our own government. Many who don’t even consciously realize what’s happening, are feeling what’s happening. America as we know it is crashing down around us.

All of that is to say that the grief, if you feel it, is understandable. And yes - in case you’re asking - there’s a karmic connection between the decades during which so many refused to face the suffering caused at least indirectly by U.S. policies, and the pain that millions of us are being forced to feel right now. What goes around comes around doesn’t even begin to cover it. Talking about that suffering - on full display for anyone who was willing to see it - I’ve said to audiences for years: “If you’re not depressed, who are you?”

Quite simply, we were busy thinking about other things. We left it to a class of political and PR types to handle the country, thinking that if we showed up to vote every two or four years then we were doing our civic duty. What silly people we were, to think that suffering on the other side of town or on the other side of the world needn’t bother us. We thought it was enough to attend a fundraiser every once in a while. And again, if we’re not depressed simply thinking about what all that has led to, then something warm is missing from our blood. Only sociopaths feel no remorse. The fact that we’re collectively depressed right now is not just okay; it’s an important part of the process to realize how fully we messed up.

There’s no point in endlessly reading or watching the news right now. Quite horridly, it’s just more of the same each day. Watch enough of it to know what’s happening, of course, but not so much that it grips you with paralysis or fear. There’s an art to cultivating the balance of sacred activism. You look, but you only linger at the site of the disaster long enough to see what you can do to help there. Support Prop 50. Check. Attend Town Hall. Check. Write Congresspeople and Senators. Check. Do what you can, but then go deeper…

Going deeper, you’re apt to meet some demons lurking in the caves of your psyche. “I guess we let this happen.” “What fools we were.” “My grandparents would be so crushed by this.” “What would it be like to live under fascism?” “Will they come for me?” “Should I try to move out of the country?” “Should I be more careful online?” “I wonder if it’s Thiel…or is it Putin?” “I cannot believe this is happening.” “Will I lose my job?” “What will happen to my kids?”

Don’t suppress those thoughts; they’re active unconsciously whether you allow yourself to bring them into conscious awareness or not. And don’t try to drink or drug or medicate them away, either. Such shenanigans make the devil laugh. The only way around them is to burn through them. We have to alchemize the darkness in order to turn it into light; we can’t transform feelings we refuse to feel. Much of the sadness we feel now is sadness we refused to feel before, when it was appropriate and we might have done something about it. For years, I’ve refused to see the rampant depression among American woman as just something that was wrong with us. I saw it as something meaningful and important. Deep down inside, we knew that something was wrong.

But that was then and this is now. Fortunately God works outside the confines of time, and His hands are never tied. He’s not rolling His eyes saying, “If only you’d listened to me then, when I could have done something about it!” He’s with us now as He’s been with us all along. But not so we can escape the reality of what we’ve wrought. The Law of Cause and Effect is inviolable for the very reason that He created it. The only way out of the mess we’re in now is through deep atonement for our former recklessness and irresponsibility, as individuals and as a country. The escape route, literally the portal to our freedom, will not come from traditional political activism alone.

Those now demonstrating consistent resistance are good, and I admire them. The judges who are standing firm. The Governors and Mayors who are gearing up for the fight, God bless them. I’m all in for doing what I can, as I’m assuming you are too, so we can follow their lead and look for openings where we can find them.

But we need more than an army of political activists right now; we need an army of miracle-workers. Let those who think that’s kooky, or unsophisticated, or unqualified, or whatever, think whatever they want to think. They had their day, and look where it got us. “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Go, Hamlet. The only way our democracy - even our species - will survive is if we’re willing to go deeper, much deeper, than the plane of consciousness from which sprang these catastrophic times.

Read. Pray. Meditate. And do them for real.

God raises up leaders at such a time as this, and He’s raising them up now. He sends a Moses to deliver us from every dark chapter in our lives. Moses is an aspect of consciousness now emerging in all of us: the part of you considered the least likely to do anything important, the part of you that can never quite find the right words, the shy one who would rather be anywhere else. Yes, you. God parted the Red Sea for the ancient Israelites, and He will part the waters for us. He’s going to work through you to make it happen.

First He commanded Moses to lift his staff and spread his hands over the water. We too are commanded: lift your thoughts and take responsibility. Then it still took several hours for the sea to part. “The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.” (Exodus 14:21) Miracles don’t happen instantly. That was one scary night for Moses, and this is one scary night for us.

Even then, it was another forty years before the Israelites made it to the Promised Land. It’s three days between the crucifixion and the resurrection. And Buddha didn’t rush over to the Bodhi Tree and achieve enlightenment overnight. The journey to the Promised Land, to resurrection, to enlightenment - whatever we want to call the state in which humanity has returned to its right mind - whether that journey is personal or political, is never accomplished overnight.

We got ourselves into this and God will get us out of it. But He cannot do for us what He cannot do through us. Where we didn’t step up before, we need to step up now. Where we were immature and irresponsible before, we need to be mature and responsible now. Where we were willfully ignorant and easily swayed by propaganda before, we need to think critically for ourselves now. Don’t linger in the online gutter. Don’t remain in your silo. Don’t sit out the moment. Give it all your heart and all your soul. And don’t be afraid of the fact there will be tears along the way. Of course there will be. T’was always thus.