Friday, November 7, 2014

Post Mid-Term Election Reflections And The Wind In My Sails



I was frustrated the other evening during my program planning session with Jack, my co-host for the Possible Society In Motion Radio Show.

Typically Jack and I have an abundance of synergy in these show formulating meetings. And, typically, I come away from them inspired and eager to translate our sense of a shared and heightened consciousness into a preliminary script for the show.

But this time was different.

We had agreed to wait for our planning meeting until after  Tuesday’s mid-term election results were in. We had agreed that as the main theme of our show has to do with overcoming polarization, the outcome of the elections would give us much that we could work into our coming Thursday evening’s show.

Just as anticipated there was plenty of viable material to dig our way through.

We had even mucked our way through the election debris to the broader issues of our societal problems. And how this newly elected Congressional body might solve or sabotage our over-all progress as a nation. We were definitely not lacking in program-relevant material.

Still our session was generating nothing but frustration for me. I was troubled, no doubt about it, and completely at a loss as to how to get unstuck.

With this as our closing, Jack and I were all but ready to call it quits for the evening, anticipating that time away from the tediousness of the effort might bring some light. So we called it a night, saying our good-byes -- except for just one more item Jack wanted to share.

All well and good. Just a few moments more. Than shelve the project for the evening.

But that last moment’s topic brought us our turning point!

Hanging up the phone, I was off to my other end of the day tasks.

Then, almost in an instant, I realized that the item Jack had just introduced had, serendipitously, cut right through the ruminations of our very intellectual, earlier conversation – and – had gone straight to my heart!

There was the missing piece!

The shift that occurs when we meet at the level of the heart!

This is what came to me –

Dealing with our political and societal challenges is far and away not something to be undertaken solely with the thoughts of the mind! This notion may not be as apparent to some as it is to me. That's a good reason to keep listening to our radio show, reading our online articles and participate in our study.

The understanding of these ideas may be quite subtle and thus illusive at first. But once you start SEEING what some of us are already SEEING, you will wonder how you missed it so long.

But this is one thing, you might already be realizing -- ruminating about politics, as Jack and I had been doing, is one the most frequent things people like us in a civilized society, such as ours, do in order to survive troubled times. But it is not the only way.

Over-analyzing is a survival-based tendency to think repetitively without finding solutions about certain negative circumstances. Our society and our politics are ideal for this kind of thinking.

Rumination only seems to be a way to solve problems. But on its own, ruminating does not lead to change. In fact it can lead to the very things that obstruct change such as discouragement and depression.
Somewhere, if a shift is to occur to help us truly solve problems, we must find ways to meet at the level of the heart.
The short story Jack shared, almost as an afterthought as our planning session wound down, brought light into darkness, exemplifying, once again, how the human heart transcends polarization. With a good night’s sleep, enabling me to integrate what I experienced as a result of Jack and I shifting out of our cogitations into an appreciation of the human heart, a fine radio script emerged. 
Hear the podcast of that show and join Jack and I, taking a brief respite in terms of how post-election reflections can go in a gentle, low-key way.


“Finding The Light In The Darkness Of America’s Secret Civil War”

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