Eternal Flame
Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site

While there’s no shortage of post-election opinionating, I want to offer my own, Active Peace oriented response.

As I was flying back to the U.S. yesterday from Canada, I opened up my passport and noticed a quote on one of the inside pages by Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.” It reminded me, in a challenging and tender moment, of how we are not separate. In Canada I noticed the temptation to feel like “here I could be away from the insanity.” I felt it on farms I visited, “here people are buffered from the craziness of society.” But that kind of thinking is ultimately an illusion. There is no separation.

So I come back to doing my best to put this election in a larger context. The spiritual context of discovering who/what we really are as human beings. The healing context—healing ourselves of the belief in separateness. And facing the full depth of our predicament while also holding the wonder, beauty, and gratitude that make life worth living.

I was among those whose initial response was to be in the grief. It wasn’t a rational choice but one my body made for me. I felt nauseous when I heard the news of the Trump victory. Being in the grief keeps it human and connects me to my heart and deeper wisdom.

This feels like a time for mourning and reflection. On the being/doing continuum, it seems “doing” just became more urgent than ever, but our “being” is still the ground for wise, compassionate, life-affirming action.

The moment calls me to reflect on what is mine to do. What will my action be? What practices will I turn to for support? Who will I support and be supported by?

These are standard kinds of questions but the playing field has changed. A man with a psyche warped by separateness will soon be the most powerful in the world (powerful by certain conventional standards that is). Violence flows from those beliefs and that way of thinking and a great many people are likely to soon find themselves on the receiving end of it. What is mine to do in response? What is yours to do?

I believe the most important key is to move forward with the root cause of our collective crisis in mind—it’s not Trump but the belief in separateness. It’s not hate but ignorance—ignorance in the Buddhist sense, not stupid people but people caught up in the illusion of separateness and the resulting fear and insecurity. I count myself among them, I too am healing from my own belief in separateness. I too participate in systems that oppress and pollute.

My personal reflection is challenging me to change my life in fundamental ways. To bring myself fully to the task of creating the world I want. Beyond the protest, beyond the NO, what do I want, what is the YES? Am I willing to create it now? And if not now, when?