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Opening
Your Political Chakra
by
Stephen Wing
Technically, “politics” is too long to be a four-letter word,
but nowadays it seems to qualify as a dirty one. To judge by recent
voter turnouts, a clear majority of We the People would not touch the
American political system even if ten-foot poles were available at the
polling-place door.
As I write, the Bush administration is dragging our standing among reputable
democracies to a new low. The wealthy private interests who invested
in the president's campaign are lining up for tax cuts, regulatory exemptions,
permits to drill, mine, and clearcut without limit. No longer are such
dealings considered scandalous; bribery is just good business.
 But
on another level, “politics” is a universal ingredient in
what makes us human. Homo sapiens is a communal creature. Even hunting
bands and farming villages have a political system of some kind. Some,
like the Iroquois Confederacy, offer time-tested alternatives to our
hierarchies of power.
The seven chakras are the power centers of the human body, from the
base of the spine to the crown of the skull. If you visualize the entire
human species as one body, it too has chakras – different levels
where it interacts with the world in different ways. Politics is one
of those levels, as are religion, science, art, economics, etc.
We post-modern urbanites may have lost touch with the communal instinct.
But we have not escaped the need to function together in communities.
Decisions still need to be made. It is un-communal decision-making that
has earned politics its dirty name.
Politics is everywhere, from your household to the U.N. It's the way
individuals agree to operate as a group, how the logistics of life in
the web of relationships get worked out. It can be done in an unhealthy
way by power-seekers intent on controlling others, or in a sane way
by folks who value most what can't be bought and sold. Or it can be
ignored, not done at all, left to whoever is willing to deal with an
increasingly messy and complicated task.
Everyone knows that a wealthy few now control 80% of the economy, that
through advertising and corporate interlock they control the media,
that through campaign contributions they control both parties in Congress.
Knowing makes it easier to abandon the business of politics to rich,
white, male politicians who rarely represent us.
But politics is not just business. It's our future, our children's
future, the future of the Earth. And if we ever doubted it, Bush's
hostile takeover of the White House made it perfectly clear.
I think that is exactly why he is here. Under Clinton, Bush I, Reagan,
etc., our government's policies were steadily transferring wealth
from the poor to the rich worldwide, dominating other nations economically
and/or militarily, and destroying the global ecosystem. Under Bush II,
people are finally beginning to notice.
If enough of us respond, human evolution could take a historic step
forward this November.
Mother Jones published a riveting account of the movement to end slavery
in the British Empire – an impossible dream in a world that ran
on slavery just as ours does on petroleum. Within 50 years, against
all odds, it succeeded. Great Britain emancipated its slaves a full
generation before the United States.
This, too, was politics. The political chakra runs through every human,
left, right, or indifferent. Passionate activists and campaign volunteers
are more attuned to it by nature. Democracy depends on all of us to
play a part, at the very least by voting.
Yet at a time when elders among us still bear the scars of the last
great voting rights struggle, when their grandchildren are targeted
for computerized removal from voting rolls, over half of the eligible
voters elect to abstain.
You, too, can open your political chakra. Sit in a comfortable position.
Close your eyes. Breathe deeply. Breathing in, visualize in your mind
the generations of activists who won the freedom you enjoy today. Breathing
out, visualize the face of a child or young person you love, seeing
clearly how their future depends on what you do every day.
Not just voting – everything. The stakes were always that high,
every time we started a car or purchased a hamburger or cast a ballot.
It's just that an awakening consciousness casts light on things,
and on the connections between them. We aren't just watching history
unfold with breathtaking speed on the evening news. We are unfolding
with it, whether consciously or not.
Now, open your eyes and look around. It's a New Age! Perceive and
act consciously with every inbreath, every outbreath, and one day –
maybe one Election Day soon – you'll find you're part of
a critical mass of people who have made the leap from awareness to action,
just in the nick of time.
Stephen
Wing is the author of Crossing the Expressway: Poems from
the Open Road. For more information about seasonal circles, contact
him at stevew@newleaf-dist.com
or 770/948-3445 ext. 3180
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