Sunday, October 2, 2016

Why I Can’t Do Facebook Politics Anymore: An Essay in Two Parts


First this is a formal endorsement of Hillary Clinton for President.

This election may be the most important most of us have lived through. Who is elected will shape much of how our country will go forward, and it will be a reflection of who we are and what we value. If we want to be a country that endorses hate and separatism, that rewards greed and honors privilege, Donald Trump is the guy. If we want to keep progressing toward a more loving, fair, and inclusive world, we need to elect Hillary Clinton.

We have a cast of characters in this presidential election that run the full spectrum. I admire Jill Stein and Gary Johnson for throwing their hats into the ring, and while both have some decent ideas, each is unqualified and unprepared to shoulder the burden of the presidency. Votes for either may satisfy a need to protest or stand for an ideology, but realistically the only difference it can make is to weaken one or the other of the two main candidates. I was an all-out supporter of Bernie Sanders, and I believe he moved the Democratic Party generally and Hillary specifically toward a more progressive agenda. But I am a realist – Bernie didn’t get the nomination and Hillary did. He supports her and knows the importance of electing her our next president, and I do too.

I know people have problems with Hillary, and some are justified. Yes, she’s the quintessential politician. Yes, she has not been completely honest at times and spins the facts to favor her ideas. This is typical of any politician. And while she’s been thoroughly vetted and investigated by a hostile congress, by Fox News and all the neo-conservative vehicles out there, and by her enemies in both public and private life, she’s never been found guilty of the accusations heaped upon her. So she’s either the best criminal ever or the victim of lies told often enough people see them as true. I don’t think she’s a criminal mastermind.

The distraction and stain of these accusations have bled into her own party, prompting some Bernie supporters and Democrats to take up the chorus of these overblown and false attacks. Serving the GOP and the right wing of the conservative party, these “progressives” are now their foot soldiers. The most unfortunate result of this taking up arms against her is the complete disregard for a lifetime spent in service, bringing about real change over the past 30 years. She has fought tirelessly and is prepared to continue to fight for those causes I, and many of her now critics, find most important – equality for women, alleviating the burdens on the poor, civil rights, health care, the sustainability of the planet. She is known and respected by world leaders, and cares deeply for this country and humanity.

So I believe Hillary, who was not my first choice, will make a very good president and must be elected. The alternative is not just someone who has non-progressive ideas, but who is one of the most dangerous candidates in history. He gives lip service to whatever he thinks will gain him votes, which is rather common in politics, but he lacks the moral fiber, the strength of character, the good judgement, and the steady temperament to hold this highest position in our government.

This brings me to the second part of my essay: Why I must leave Facebook politics for my spiritual well-being and why Donald Trump is so dangerous for this country.

I’m in a time of transition, or rather, I’ve made a transition. I’m moving away from the illusions of fear and separation and toward the Reality of Being. The only way I know to do this is through meditation, reading my spiritual teachers’ texts, and using the tools I have gathered over years of consciousness evolution. That means giving time and attention to that state of Being, and spending less time and attention on distractions and illusions.

The vast majority of the world, unfortunately, is mostly caught up in the illusion in which we live our everyday lives as if it were the only reality. It is easy to be seduced by the battles that rage there, even as we move toward consciousness. I find myself in the struggle to be in the world but not of it and trying to keep from losing of all sense of that elusive Being. But ironically, as is the case with many spiritual truths, I keep finding myself buried more deeply in the quicksand of illusion the harder I fight.

I’ve been waging much of that war on Facebook. The presidential race has given me the battlefield, and Trump an easy and identifiable foe as the embodiment of all that is wrong with the illusion of separateness. His worldview is as diametrically opposed to that that I’ve come to see as the true reality of oneness as one can get. His tactics of fear-mongering, pettiness, hate, and dishonesty astound me, and the fact that so many are openly embracing these things distresses me. He is unconsciousness personified. My teacher Adyashanti describes this deluded world in his book, The Way of Liberation:

To remain unconscious of being is to be trapped within an ego-driving wasteland of conflict, strife and fear that only seems customary because we have been brainwashed into a state of suspended disbelief where a shocking amount of hate, dishonesty, ignorance, and greed are viewed as normal and sane [emphasis mine]. But they are not sane, not even close to being sane. In fact, nothing could be less sane and unreal than what we human beings call reality (10).

Because of Trump’s open endorsement of “hate, dishonesty, ignorance, and greed,” I find myself time and time again sharing the evidence on Facebook. I want to call him out, to show the world how awful and destructive he and his ideas are, especially to those good people I know personally who, because he calls himself a Republican, a conservative, or Christian, are hesitantly going over to his camp and making excuses for his behavior. The ability of people to ignore or disregard the reality of his rhetoric and ideas because of ideological alliances seems boundless, and I’m sickened and frightened about it.

This fear that arises, the need to illuminate the horror that he represents, pulls me deeper into the quicksand of illusion. It’s another of the traps that masters of illusion seem capable of setting – pulling in those who see the illusion for what it is and trapping them in the illusion though the fight, like a fish setting a hook. This has been suffocating me and pulling me under, and it’s time for me to walk away from the trap.

So I leave the sharing of clever memes and well-written, well-researched articles, the almost daily revelations of ongoing atrocities and uncovered character-revealing actions, to others. I’ll still be on Facebook, sharing what I’m learning about Reality and the beauty of this physical illusion we call our world, but I won’t be playing on the political field regularly any more.

Because after all, as Maya Angelou said, “We are more alike than we are different, my friends. We are more alike than we are different.” Namaste, my friends.