While many may not have noticed, our collective spiritual understandings have been undergoing change over the decades. Leading edge philosophers and open-minded theologians have noted an evolutionary shift toward a broader, more comprehensive existential understanding than that put forth by our traditional religions, and beyond that which is recognized in most of our mainstream society.
Where traditional religion was based on based on the need for comfort, protection and rules meant to save an individual person's soul in the next world, the emerging spiritual focus takes the person out of his or herself toward concern with the greater good of all in this world. Crucial to understanding this shift is recognition that the secular mindset that emerged with the Enlightenment saw through the myths and the next world focus of traditional religion, and concerned itself with "here and now values" in this life. Unfortunately, secular modernity threw the baby out with the bathwater; it disregarded the common human need to connect with something greater than the self.
Leading edge spiritual seekers are coming to a position that goes beyond both traditional religiosity and secular modernity. It respects the findings of science and includes the "this life" focus of secular modernity. But it also acknowledges the core values on which all the world religions were based and recognizes human spiritual yearnings without the need to solidify them into a concrete belief system. Like any other religious, secular or spiritual position, numerous superficial and immature expressions of this new spiritual focus abound. Yet in its most mature and most authentic expressions, the new spirituality represents a learning opportunity it behooves most of us to learn more about. Focused on higher-level issues than the salvation of one's own soul, the new spirituality is the New Age all grown up!
One of the most important of values in this newly emerging spirituality is a sense of personal responsibility for the vibrations we put out in the world. In The Power of the New Spirituality: How to Live a Life of Compassion and Personal Fulfillment, William Bloom, one of Britain's leading mind-body-spirit teachers, points out how this is so. He says every religion, every culture has recognized that a natural vitality and energy suffuses the entire cosmos. The words prana in Hindu, qi in Taoism, or chi in popular spirituality, all represent the same idea as shekinah in Judaism, sakina in Islam, and the Holy Spirit in Christianity. However, where the Western religions have repressed the universal nature of this concept, the newly emerging spirituality openly and explicitly celebrates this vast field of energy in which we all live, and which connects us all.
Central to acknowledging the existence of this vast field of energy is appreciation of the fact that each of our own words and actions contribute directly to it. Everything we each say, do, and even think, become part of this field, and influences everyone else's experience of it. This important idea calls every one of us a greater level of responsibility than living just to save our own souls in some dubious afterlife. It means that we create part of the "here and now" world others have to live in. This brings with it an ethical imperative to radiate a positive presence in the world wherever possible. It calls us to a position of vibrational responsibility.
Whether we can acknowledge this universal field or not, we cannot deny the importance of consciously choosing what type of energy we impose on the experience of those around us. Anyone listening to the news can see that Donald Trump--not that he is alone in this--is radiating the most negative possible energy into the world. His is an energy of arrogance and hate. It draws on people's fears, and brings out the worst in them. In a nation where most of us are adequately clothed, housed and fed, the Donald Trump mentality inspires people toward ever higher levels of paranoia that something important is about to be taken away from them.
Trump's method viciously lashes out at everyone who is different from what he is - a domineering, probably Lawless, white male. It excludes everyone who is other.
The energy Trump sends out into the world excludes rather than includes. Radiating exclusivity - the very opposite of all the progress our civilization has made over the recent decades and even centuries, Donald Trump represents everything that is wrong both with traditional religiosity (to which I suspect his allegiance is nominal - at best) and with secular modernity as well. As the epitome of the "ugly American " image held by some in other parts of the world, he is an embarrassment to our nation in a globalized, postmodern society.
Anyone can understand that a person running for president out of a desire to do good, a desire to serve, is not going to be emitting vibrations that lead to discord, fear and hate. Only a person running for power and egotistical reasons would do that.
Now when an individual radiates negative energy into the world, it diminishes the quality of everyone's collective experience in a small way. But a president radiating negative energy for an entire nation has disastrous consequences with widespread effects that last a long, long time.
We, as Americans, have no reason to let a Donald Trump mentality control our experience of reality. Nor can we afford to choose his ill-considered domineering narcissism as the emblem that represents our nation to the world. We as a nation must accept responsibility for the vibrations emitted by the leaders we choose. Who among us will accept responsibility for the ruinous vibrations a Donald Trump will send out into the universe?
....a few of the other candidates need to check their vibrations as well.