Responsibility: complicity to truth

The ideals that our country has professed since the ratification of the Constitution have never really been owned up to and met. Any Hispanic, Asian, black, or American Indian will attest to this. Most women could attest. Yet the myth persists that we’re the good guys.

Our government has invaded, undermined, destroyed, strong-armed, blackmailed, and manipulated many, many individuals and countries purely to forward our own interests, most often to the detriment of the individual or other country. Our lawmakers are too often bent by big money corporate and political lobbies that represent narrow interests, often – consciously and indifferently – to the detriment of the whole of society. The aid our representatives send to assist is too often hijacked by the people who need it least, and used to increase their power and bank over those who are weak or starving. 

Our judicial system has never been fair and impartial. As blatant as its corruption has become through the ultra-conservatives having stacked the courts, it has always bent the spirit of the law against the marginal, underprivileged, and under served.

Power corrupts, and we become immune to our own complicity in the corruption. We continue to agree to the way things are, never actually having to admit to picking up the stone that was thrown at the Nicaraguan farmer, the Eritrean mother, the orphaned child in Indonesia. But make no mistake, the stones that were and continue to be thrown are as much our responsibility as they are the responsibility of our leaders. We keep agreeing to the way things are. We were not rioting in the streets to stop lobbyists buying our congresspeople, and we were not losing our minds over injustices done daily in the courts. We were not standing in front of tanks or jets in the Middle East or blocking construction of oil facilities in the Congo or building shelter for our own homeless and mentally ill. Well, it’s just how the world works. I’m busy with my own life – I can’t monitor all those politicians. 

Most of us are not directly complicit, and so we abdicate responsibility. But I believe that abdicating that responsibility will keep us from creating something better. I don’t advocate beating ourselves up over this passive agreement to what is or was. I do entertain the possibility of seeing it clearly and with brutal honesty, forgiving ourselves and each other, then from that point being able to create something that actually lives up to the ideals that we as a country have professed to be possible.

Now everything that has been present in the background is presented in exaggerated form, exposed for anyone with the presence and mind to admit it. Lies, racism, misogyny, manipulation, kidnapping, bullying, et cetera, et cetera. These have always been present. Now they are exaggerated and growing, to everyone’s shame. And we are quick to point a finger at the ultra-conservatives who are dismantling what we know and are accustomed to. We fear the chaos, and are confused watching the fast-moving destruction of the over-arching organizations that we assumed to be stable.

There are other, more peaceful and sane ways that we could have met the consequences of our own blindnesses, mistakes, and overlooked choices, but this is the one we’ve ended up within. We can point fingers and hate the more obvious architects of chaos, but I think we also have an opportunity here to face our own complicity in and agreement to a governmental history that has trampled on many, many lives. 

I do think every stand to stop the current chaos is valid action. Protest in the streets, call congresspeople daily, donate to organizations taking legal action. Sheild vulnerable immigrants, join forces with others who know how to help. People are being hurt, kidnapped, lied to, and people will die due to the choices being made by people who base their power in lies, deception, exclusion, racism, misogyny, and greed. Stand up – speak and act strongly and in whatever way you know to be yours. I will only encourage two additions to meeting these people. Firstly, before, during, or after that protest, phone call, or donation made to counter injustice, fear, greed, or illegality, close your eyes for a moment and shower those people with love. Imagine you can see the tiny light of divinity within these broken people and brighten that light. And secondly, take a moment to ask forgiveness from our human and earth families for any and all detrimental consequences that have resulted from our own passive agreement and acceptance of the way things were and may be again. 

We are all in this together. Everyone is connected. “What you damn, damns you back,” as Paul Selig’s guides say over and over. A problem can’t be solved from within the problem – when you damn, you place yourself within the problem, perpetuating it. When you damn yourself, you do the same. Healing anyone who is cut off from their essence is an act that will heal everyone. See their light. See your own light.

See your own responsibility – your “ability to respond.” Own the past with brutal honesty so we don’t – individually and collectively, consciously or unconsciously – build that same thing again in what may be the ashes of what we have known. Of course do what is yours to stop injustice, hate, greed, fear, and chaos – please do. And while we’re at it, let’s own what has been our passive agreement to its presence so that we will not claim it again in the future.

We are one. Realize the divine in all that exists.