STANDPOINT
At the opposing pole of contemporary worldviews held by the Religious Right stands the Spiritual Left. Its relationship to the Political Left is analogous to, but more poorly defined than, that between the Religious Right and Political Right. The principle difference between those two poles lies in the way history is -- or is not -- used to command allegiance.
HISTORY
Those who remember history are doomed to repeat it.
What a miserable story of exploitation and suffering human history is: An endless litany of wrongs and revenges, hatreds and guilts, victims and perpetrators. Our inability to forget the past keeps it alive, an oozing wound that never has the chance to heal. Like a ship dragging its anchor, we do not sail into the future because we do not jettison our collective history of enmity.
We go to extraordinary lengths to remember past glories (the "conquest" of other peoples and/or the wilds of nature) and humiliations (other people's past glories at our expense). It isn't just public education that keeps regurgitating past history, of course -- it's politicians and military strategists and their disinformation arm, the media. Conflicts, hatreds, wrongs: There is no offensive act that can't be justified by the past.
We refuse to forget history and so we keep repeating it.
Things do not change and that is what conservatives want. That is what conservative means. Hold on to the past. Resist change. Return to the past.
While some factions of monotheistic religions promote progressive and liberal ideals, most find that the conservative nature of their dogma aligns with the objectives of the political right. The marriage of the religious right and the political right is not confined to the U.S. culture war, of course -- and we do not have to look hard to see just how facilely that marriage gives birth to theocracy, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism.
THE SPIRITUAL LEFT
The Spiritual Left is the complement of the Religious Right. The other half of the human psyche. The half grounded in a trust of life rather than a fear of it.
It is progressive, in the sense that it seeks out positive change, seeks to move on, seeks a better vision. It is liberal, in the sense that it accepts differences, embraces differences, finds the sameness within differences. It is progressive and liberal in the sense that it not restrained by the past: It does not simply forget the past -- it forgives and it seeks forgiveness.
It is, however, first and foremost, a spiritual lifeway.
Lifeways that identify as spiritual rather than traditionally religious tend to focus on the present. A spiritual practice often entails cultivating sincere goodwill toward all and a consistent "mindful" awareness of the present moment. Despite its ancient roots in indigenous animistic worldviews, it is a curiously modern perspective in the sense of living consciously within the relativity of an Einsteinian universe (in which there is no objective past-present-future) and the instantaneity of a quantum-entangled universe (in which information passes instantly, unconstrained by distance). Both ancient and modern, this spiritual practice of living-in-the-present involves an authentic relinquishing of cognitive-emotional attachments to the past, as well as hopes, fears and expectations of the future. It is a positive disinterestedness in the fallacies of memory and projection in favor of the living present.
However, the present moment does not mean just attending to the ever-flowing stream of "news" generated by corporate and social media. Such one-sided focus on the completely ephemeral and skewed opinions of professionals and nonprofessionals alike subsumes all the other, more essential, facets of our present experience of the universe. The present moment is the totality of raw experience, unfiltered by our internal running commentary on experience. It encompasses the totality of internal and external experiences stemming from our interactions with culture and nature. A spiritual lifeway leads to contentment precisely because it calls us to disengage from the social conditioning which, like gravity, pulls us back toward groupthink and away from our natural state of buoyant free-thinking individuality.
Likewise wisdom does not mean forgetting the lessons humanity has gleaned from its collective past--rather, it means not fetishizing past experiences.
At its best, the spiritual left embodies wisdom and compassion. Not the rote wisdom of dogma, but the creative and adaptive response of intuitive intelligence to changing circumstances -- a kind of wisdom that subordinates self-interest to the greatest good and deals with the long-range consequences of actions ahead of time. Nor is it the golden rule receiving little more than lip service on Sunday, but the compassion of deep-seated identification with the sacred nature of people and nature without exception.
The alignment of the spiritual left and the political left is a natural alliance, since they share many of the same values of egalitarianism and peaceful coexistence. But it is also a tenuous one, since the political left has become embroiled in a power struggle with the political right that runs counter to the deepest values of the spiritual left.
The political left, in other words, has taken the bait of the right and entered into an antagonistic relationship that has polarized a nation into political paralysis.
In a highly-charged polarized environment, what does venting anger and outright rejection of the other side accomplish but reinforce their own righteous indignation and the sense that their way of life is under attack? Certainly, this is the effect of the left's words and actions upon the right--but it is no less so the effect of the right's words and actions upon the left.
Both sides dig in deeper, in a kind of mental trench warfare, lobbing word bombs and political strategies at one another in the vain belief that victory will soon be won. It is a war of scoring points, as if the other side will finally be convinced either by superior reasoning or votes.
The U.S. has become the Indig-Nation: Everything the right does stirs righteous indignation in the left, everything the left does stirs righteous indignation in the right. From the standpoint of the spiritual left, the strategy of the political left is not working -- it simply contributes to the ongoing polarization of the citizenry while the real opponents, the ruling oligarchy, continue to dictate the direction of civilization from the shadows.
Wisdom considers it axiomatic that everyone acts for the sake of what they believe to be good.
Within a political context, this presents as the basis of compassion and empathy. Even with those we oppose ideologically, we can be moved to understand their perspective and make the effort to move them to the center. At the very least, we can avoid retreating into sophisticated cynicism and clever irony as a means of ridiculing others' positions. A moderate position to adopt is to recognize that others are sincere in the pursuit of their beliefs and so, to neither take offense nor give offense.
Self-criticism is an essential part of wisdom, one that brings our respective shortcomings into sharp relief. This is especially valuable when reflecting on the relationship between the spiritual left and the political left and the way they mutually strengthen one another: Just as the spiritual left learns from the political left that it must not withdraw from the world of action, the political left learns from the spiritual left that it must not right wrongs by committing wrongs.
Once we have adopted the tactics of the right, we have ceded the moral high ground. And without the moral high ground, minds cannot be changed nor can hearts be won.
CHANGE
We have arrived at the turning point: At the pinnacle of waxing, the inevitable waning begins. This is a lesson, not the memory of a specific historical event -- one that encompasses a wide swath of human experience and is grounded in recognizable cycles of natural phenomena. Once something has reached the limits of its growth, it needs to contract back onto itself in order to consolidate its resources in preparation for the next cycle of growth.
It is a lesson embodying the famous saying by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in his novel, The Leopard: "If we want things to stay as they are, everything will have to change." If we want to continue to have anything like the kind of life we have now, we will need to make fundamental system-wide adaptations to a world of escalating social and environmental change. It is, of course, upon this point that the right and left must ultimately build consensus.
Political strategies running contrary to wisdom, on the other hand, arrogantly seek to expand the nation's influence forever. With the inevitable result of depleting its energy, resources and national will. In place of a measured strategic contraction, such tactics precipitate a fall from the very power they sought to seize and hold. Anyone advocating for continued expansion of influence, power, or environmental exploitation in this time is blind to the writing on the wall.
Moving beyond history allows us to encounter change -- and when has such a confluence of profound technological, environmental and social changes ever converged? We live in a time without precedent and we know it. No generation before us has faced such a perfect storm of change.
What especially distinguishes this from other times is that we ourselves are making decisions that can either escalate these global problems or defuse them. Paradoxically, we as individuals are empowering ourselves by making constructive decisions even as our social institutions continue exacerbating the problems, contributing to our underlying sense of powerlessness. This disconnect between the citizenry and their rulers has become a symptom of failed nation-states and one that any self-aware ruling body corrects without hesitation.
Encountering change means not getting distracted by contrived issues. It entails seeing through the hype of corporate and social media and into the heart of those problems of the first magnitude, those problems affecting the human race itself. There is no other way to draw people together and move into a present marked by collaboration and cooperation. Other peoples cannot trust our motives until we consistently demonstrate a selflessness of purpose -- one that strives for peace and prospering for all people everywhere, absent any advantage for ourselves.
Encountering change means looking at why things aren't changing for the better. Purely political solutions that fail to incorporate wisdom and compassion don't change things because they are aimed at the wrong target. It takes both wisdom and compassion to reach the inevitable goal of universal amnesty and reconciliation. Any other goal is secondary, as it requires a unified citizenry to establish a viable civilization for hundreds of generations to come. Is there really any other goal worthy of our lives and deaths?
Why would I want feet if I have wings to fly?
-- Frida Kahlo
This quote of Frida Kahlo perfectly captures the spirit of the Spiritual Left, which holds that the mundane issues will resolve themselves once the universal issues have been resolved. It is the power of imagination -- not reason or memory -- that gives the human psyche flight, allowing it to discover unsuspected and unforeseen solutions to long-standing problems. It is in the landscape of the imagination, as well, that people of all cultures and all times meet on the common ground of art, music and philosophy.
SUM
Encountering change is not dissimilar to staring wide-eyed into a gale-force wind. It is seldom comfortable, causing as it does the stress of uncertainty and insecurity. It can blur our vision, causing us to see things that aren't there even as it causes us to miss things that are. But change is the present moment. It never occurs in the past or future. It is where our full attention needs to dwell if we are to maintain that unique ability to adapt readily to extraordinary circumstances which made our most ancient ancestors the species of such extraordinary potential that it did.
William Douglas Horden is author of The Toltec I Ching and In the Oneness of Time as well as other books on the spiritual lifeway: williamdouglashorden.com