I’ve come to believe that the spiritual path is a place of warmth, creativity, beauty and light, and that is bounded on the one side by anger, and on the other, fear. Whenever you step off the path,into anger and fear the spiritual life is diminished, squelched. I’ve never been at ease with the choices America gives me – a left and a right, for example. So narrow, if you are thinking of paths. And the choice always seems to be the same – anger on one hand, fear on the other.
On the book tour, and in my own reading and listening, I’ve become increasingly conscious of two new intense social cultures – the Dystopians, and the Tea Party people. I see them as opposite ends of the same spectrum, born in anxiety, fury and intensity, and coming from different places to meet in a shared sense of doom. Both believe we are beset by great dangers that will devour us – teachers, librarians, terrorists, government workers, illegal immigrants, unions, or in the case of the Dystopians, government, the national security apparatus, shrinking resources, corporate America, economic dysfunction and a technological universe that is overwhelming both our freedom and our spiritual evolution. Both share different nightmare scenarios for the future. Neither is pretty, uplifting or affirming.
Both offer utterly barren visions of the future. Both often seek power of money be marketing fear and anger.
I have no idea about the political values of either, not for me to decide, but I definitely pick up on the terror and rage that seems to fuel them. I resolved some time ago to avoid any political or cultural movement whose advocates are angry. Not a spiritual path for me there. In fact, nothing for anybody there, if history means a thing.
The Dystopians are especially creative, I think, spawning a whole new rich Orwellian literature of ruin and catastrophe, mostly portraying our society literally devouring and brutalizing itself. They sometimes seem to have some humor, unlike the Tea Party people who seem, like the lefties before them, unrelentingly grim.
Politics and culture are personal and it is not for me to tell anybody else what to believe or not to believe. I don’t argue politics. I don’t give my money to people who market fear, political, medical, literary, or otherwise. I’ve been pursuing a spiritual life for much of my life, and I get clearer every day about the spiritual path for me. It is to recognize anger and fear as antithetical to spirituality, to peace of mind, to genuine creativity, to true connection with other people, and of increasing importance, to a life with or around animals. I wish humans were as sensitive to anger and fear and rage and as free of it as animals are.
They inspire me and help keep me on my path.