Wednesday, November 5, 2008

The American Election

I woke up at 7 this morning and couldn't sleep. I then remembered to check online to see who won the American election and it was Barack Obama. Perhaps it is the lack of sleep but I have cried with optimism and inspiration already a few times since then and writing this post.

Yesterday I went to the appropriately named Breithaupt Park after biking and just sat. I thought about all the negativity and fear I feel squeezing my heart and my other organs and my body and mind in general. M suggested to me that the cure for low energy is to do nothing, and I wondered how I could cultivate that. I kept saying to myself, I love you, just be who you are. I felt an open quality arise in my body as I told each section of my body that I lam the love which is universal to existence. Walking about, I saw a large bird of prey fly into the woods, and watched it with admiration.

The greatest thing I have learned this year and in my life is that there is another way of thinking that is completely and totally positive and free. Obama's election coincides with this feeling in me, and makes me think that the world/myself is changing. That if I am changing, then the world must be changing, since there is no distinction between my body and mind and the world.

In reading different news coverage (with world leaders in all major countries supporting Obama and hoping joyfully for change) I thought about checking out Focus on the Family. Apparently during the campaign they were posting some fearful projections of what would happen if the Democrats one. I went to the site, to see if I could get worked up by some of it, and then when I was looking at it, I thought, I'm done with this. It has very little power over me, this fearful religion, this close-minded narrowness, this belief system of non-life. Why did I let these people have so much power over me throughout my life? Even my hating of them, my anger, came from the way I feared they were right. Having been raised a Christian, of course I may always have some amount of fear in my heart. But it is small now. I'm just simply not interested in their politics and religion of fear and negativity.

It's not about believing in God or not. It's about the approach to it. I see no reason to continue to be fearful and narrow. Clearly Americans do not either. They seem to be collectively loosening their grip. They seem now to be opening up to real faith. Now that I feel this opening happening, and the ripples of it across the world, I can't believe we ever lived in any other way.

Of course there are threats to openness. There are situations and emotions which will arise on the world stage in the coming months which will challenge the American people, and the world's people, to remain faithful, to remain open. Ignorance and old wounds will cause people to want to shut down or begin to shut down. I personally will likely experience that feeling in the next few hours! It doesn't take long for wild optimism to fall. However, I will begin to meditate on behalf o the world, through the Medicine Buddha and in other powerful ways, that we remain open. That I remain open.