Post-election

Friday, November 8, 2024

1:40 a.m. I don’t know that I ever saw so plainly how an event like an election provides a fleeting opportunity to learn something about our own obscure processes. Nancy woke up on Wednesday, heard that Trump had won, registered the fact sort of neutrally, and snapped the radio off again. I learned of it at 2 a.m. or so, when I was up and browsing. Similarly, I shrugged. Not surprised, but not dismayed either.

Others, though, are responding in great fear, or in prospective apprehension, or in reasoned and reasonable worry – or, if they are on the other side of the divide, they are in hope and even excitement.

I have tried to get people to see that their reaction tells them nothing about whether or not they are feeling the future, but it tells them a lot about who they are right now. Only, you have to look and be willing to see.

It puts me in mind of the election of 1828, when sitting president John Quincy Adams was defeated by iron-hard, intolerant, self-righteous Andrew Jackson. That was not merely a lost election but the end of a way of doing things, the end of caucus elections among a small number of representatives, away from the cultured, somewhat insulated world of an Eastern and Southern aristocracy. It was the irruption into political life of the raw West, of the common people, of the previously excluded. It was a true revolution, and to the educated of the day it seemed the crack of doom. Could Jackson even read? Would he become a dictator? Would he not sweep aside the rule of law and become a sort of king?

Not every criticism of Jackson was wrong; not every fear of Jackson’s rule was warranted, not every one that was warranted was borne out in fact. An old saying has it that no dish is ever served as hot as it is prepared. Nor of course do we ever have the facts as to what another person’s motivations and hidden inner springs may be, given that the person himself may not know!

But people’s fears and their hopes are very high, unbounded by any realism yet. The sky will fall – or the promised land will be attained – and life’s unavoidable contradictions will not be allowed to spoil it this time (or, on the other side of the fence, will not save us this time).

All the tea-leaf reading, all the certainties! And what is it but Psychic’s Disease? “I feel this so strongly, it must be true.”

Well, you know what you feel. Is it too much trouble to examine why you feel that way, what it says about who you are? Don’t put it on “the objective situation.” It isn’t that you feel the way you do because “any reasonable person would.” Step back from the “objective situation” and pay a little more attention – a lot more attention – to your, subjective, situation. If you are in fear, how are you in fear? What does it say of you, that your belief in the world, in life, does not uphold you? Does your fine philosophic understanding vanish in the face of “real life” events? And, if so, how much is your precious philosophy worth? If it vanishes in the mist when you face something you’d rather not see, is it real? Was it ever real?

But there’s not much use in saying all this, though I may as well, since it came pouring out. It is the strangest thing to me, but people can’t see that the objective thing is not what they think they fear, but that they fear. What you think may happen may or may not turn out to become fact, but either way the one fact that you can bank on is what you are feeling and what it is based on within your psyche.

It is so odd – and so accustomed a situation for me – I can see the hopes and fears of both sides, and to me the processes and flavor are pretty similar, if opposite sides of a coin, but to either side, the other side consists of fools and knaves. There are plenty of fools and knaves, all right, but they aren’t conveniently lumped in only one party. Yet people seem comfortable only when they can tell themselves that ii is that way: They are angels, their opponents are fools and knaves.

It’s like living among people who have been hypnotized, who think they are in normal consciousness. And the one thing they are likely to agree upon is that this way of seeing things is mistaken, or wrong-headed! Blessed be the peacemaker, for he shall be shot at from both sides.

You guys want to add anything?

You seem to be doing well enough on your own.

Am I going too far?

Not too far in expressing your opinion. That doesn’t mean your view is the only way to see things, of course.

What? What?! Okay, which are you, fool or knave?

Yes, very funny, but it is worth remembering that even the most accurate analysis of anything must fall short of comprehensivity (if that is a word) because there are always more ways to see things, each of which can provide further education. So, your stricture not to confuse one’s fears with analysis is well placed, but not the only thing that may be said, because of course people’s fears also have an objective component. Yes, their fears will show them who they are, if they will pay attention, but there isn’t any difference in this than in any analysis of a situation: One hopes and one fears, and sees what happens. The one side is afraid of the destruction of certain safeguards. The other side is afraid of subterranean manipulation subverting popular will. They are not unreasonable fears. The danger is – as always – when fear swamps cool judgment and persuades it that fear is the only rational response.

Certainly we can see the indirect evidence of people always wanting to divide people into camps, presumably so that the situation can be manipulated. It seems to me that both camps see some of the same worrying problems, but they are prevented from joining to attack them constructively because analysis of the problem gets short-circuited by demonizing the presumptive villains behind the scenes.

Remember the Maharishi Effect. Remember the unbreakable connection of your non-3D components. Remember that All Is One. It isn’t hard to keep the world together, if that is your intent. Just don’t expect to enlighten the world to its own nature by some peaceful process, all love and light and never Sturm und Drang. As long as souls will coexist in 3D to work out their destiny, there will be contention and cooperation, strife and peace, triumph and tragedy. If you don’t set your heart of what is impossible, you won’t get it broken when what can’t be, isn’t. But if you live in faith that life is good, that all is well, you reap the reward of at least relative tranquillity.

And you guarantee being called escapist.

So what?

Oh, I agree, but still, there it is. Pretending a siege of Babylon is always in fashion as hard-headed common-sense. Seeing what is, is rarely in fashion.

Let’s not get to feeling sorry for ourselves.

Smiling. No. No reason to. Well, this is one of those sessions where I’ve done all the lifting. Nothing special to add?

Patience. Have patience with those who can’t see things as you do. You do not know but that you may change your mind, or may see things you don’t see at the moment. We don’t say you will; we say always, you may, so it is well to leave yourself allowance for it.

Okay. I get the feeling you have more to say, another time, and if I hadn’t run on so long, you might have said it here. But there’s always another time, until there isn’t. Till then.