Conscious Politics: Transcending Party Identity

In previous posts, I've written about the possibility of liberating ourselves from the confines of personal identity - the conditioning borrowed from our tribe, caste, race, religion, gender, ideology, political party or other affiliations which make us smaller than the whole.

Politically speaking, I was raised in a moderately Republican yet generally apolitical household. "Work hard, make your own way, and mind your own," were the general rules of thumb in the blue collar mill town of my youth. Given the disheveled state of humanity, however, it seemed both right and imperative to embrace an expanded set of social and humanitarian values. "Minding our own" is essential for personal transformation, but not enough to mend our troubled world. We are all stewards of social and planetary well-being. Conscious evolution must meet compassionate action to create a world that works for everyone.

Now, imagine for a moment that each of the earth's 6 billion inhabitants shared a common ideal of planetary stewardship. This would be a significant ideological feat, indeed.

Yet the tragedy of most human endeavors is that they tend to become unconscious at the operational and practical level. While we might share a mutual ideal, such as ending poverty, our identities get activated when it comes to the politics of implementation. The habitual defense of our "partial" or "partisan" positions almost always derails our noble intentions and moves us from conscious to unconscious behavior.

I see a glaring example of this in our current democratic nomination process. Rather than celebrating the ideal of democracy and encouraging all voices be heard, no matter how long it takes, we hear party leaders invoking fear-based rhetoric over race or gender, or squabbling over whether continued campaigning will "harm the Democratic Party".

I suggest we take some guidance from the American Indian elders who led their people in conflict resolution by sitting in dialog as long as necessary, until every member was expressed (even their grievances and pain) and the path forward "emerged" from the collective wisdom. Party leaders' hallowed role is to create a container for fair and just democracy, where diverse viewpoints are considered and every vote counted. Far from "harming the party", a more enlightened perspective could help transcend divisions and allow a higher order alignment to emerge.

Philosopher Ken Wilbur describes it this way: "Our principal challenge is to create some form of governance that allows each stage [of consciousness] to be itself...and yet governs from the highest, widest, deepest, and most encompassing level of development emerged to date."

Unfortunately, very few governing bodies today have enlightened representatives as members. When picking a president, we should be asking not "who will best secure and defend my personal position", but "who is most prepared to guide the evolution of humanity". A primary test of our political leaders should be their ability to transcend division, to find unity amongst difference, to lead us toward a sense of our own connectedness and planetary stewardship.

Comments

[mamacat]

Enjoyed your article, thank you.
The idea of "transcending party identity" sounds good to me. Over the course of my life I have tried to vote the issues. This has led me sometimes to vote for a politician of one party, sometimes one of another party. Some might call me a Reagan democrat, since I chose to vote for him.

None of the three potential presidents was my first or even second choice. My absolute first choice would be someone with the wisdom and strength of character of a JFK, MLK, Carter, or Al Gore, but it looks like I will have to pick from among who's left.

While I have voted Republican many times in my life, now that the party has been taken over by the neo-cons, I really see no national-level Republicans I could vote for. Maybe someday, if I live long enough, I will see the Republican party return to its roots, and kick out these neo-conservatives.

[subs99]

This is why another name for realizing what you are is called Awakening -- you awaken from the dream of this life, and realize what you really are.

So when you get yourself really busy with all this political work, save the planet, stop wars, feed the children, etc, etc you now know the futility of it all, everything is exactly as it should be, and cannot be any other way. You are everything, and everything is you, everything is the way it should be, and there is nothing 'you' -- that old body/mind you used to identify with -- can do, or should do, to change anything. And yet paradoxically at this point, you may notice the body and the mind making itself really busy doing stuff, which is all perfectly fine and exactly as it should be, just like everything else, yet you obviously know none of that has any effect on you, the real YOU, at all.

[subs99]

" I've written about the possibility of liberating ourselves from the confines of personal identity "

It is unfortunate that you stop there.

Why not continue on and liberate yourself fully?

Liberate yourself from the *delusion* of being a human.

You have written an excellent article earlier, "Who Are You, Really?"

You almost got it right. The right question is, "WHAT Are You, Really?"

When a human "transcends the ego", they realize WHAT they are.

If you were to transcend the ego, you would realize that there is no you.

When you realize there is no you, then there is oneness with all. There is no you, there is only ALL.

This is the realization of Enlightenment or Liberation or Nirvana.

When you realize what you are, that you are not a human, not an ego trapped inside a body, then you realize that you are not affected in any way whatsoever by what appears to be occurring in the body or the mind. Not in that body you used to identify with, and not in that mind you used to identify with. And you realize that none of those other bodies and minds running around are actually humans/ego­s-trapped-­in-bodies either. This is when you realize what you really are, and that all of this stuff that seems to be happening really isn't -- it is all as if it were a dream.