The failure, deceit, and betrayal of our leaders - political, religious, and financial - has exposed the utter futility of trusting virtually everyone in positions of worldly power. With a few inspiring exceptions, like Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s current prime minister, who seems to be honest and respectable, many of those who rise to prominent positions of leadership seem to invariably slip over to the dark side.
In 1897 Lord Acton wrote “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and we’ve had 133 years to prove him right. Now that we can’t gather in large numbers to protest, and may never regain that freedom thanks to the risk of infecting each other, what can we do to challenge and push back against fascism in high places?
The April 4 global meditation many of us just participated in gives us a clue. And members of the Noon Club are experiencing what I consider our best strategy every day at noon. My friend Robert was part of the TM meditation experiment in DC where meditators focused on lowering the crime rate and succeeded, which was acknowledged by even the police chief.
Why does the experience of this very different kind of power not seem to tempt us towards personal corruption? We might question big time faith healers who break bad but, again, they occupy positions of acknowledged power, while most of us using energy remain virtually anonymous.
I’m reminded of an odd little book that champions this principle. The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You, presents the concept of emissaries from another world incarnating on earth to occupy invisible positions of stability. The one rule? They had to remain anonymous, serving as janitors, house cleaners, teachers, doctors... never becoming acknowledged leaders. They worked in secret: secret service.
I always resonated with that principle. It’s an imaginative perspective on what may actually be true! What if this is why we came here, secret service? And what if now is our time to make this our priority and finally do what we came here to do?
And what would that look like, exactly, how might that change my life?
I’d have to give up ambition. I’d have to challenge my intentions, moment by moment, even those really, really good ones. BTW, this explains why successful marketers always tell us to find out what people want so we can sell it to them. That’s how we’ve been educated to live, in lack, wanting more / different. It’s good for business! Well, here’s a disruptive mindset: “I have nothing to sell you, I don’t need to convince you of anything, I have no agenda at all with you except to be present with another emissary who is just like me, here to give. What can we give together?”
I believe that what we really want comes from another dimension and that it’s something we are destined to give. I propose that there are no limits to this, that we are absolutely free to give “it” and will never run out.
So, what is “it?” Unconditional love is a popular term that has frustrated many of us, I think, because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what “unconditional” means. It doesn’t imply abandoning good judgment, as portrayed in movies like Liar Liar and The Invention of Lying, where absolute truth must always be told, regardless of the consequences.
We can be unconditionally loving and discriminate at the same time. In fact, this may be the intended use of our conscious minds, as opposed to what they’ve become, unregulated creators of an artificial world almost completely disconnected from the natural world.
Electrical power in a transformer must be stepped down before it can safely run a toaster. Likewise, we may be receivers of unconditional power, or love, but there’s a translation process required to make even love appropriate. Just talk with someone accused of workplace sexual misconduct and you’ll hear about their mistranslation.
Here we are, at a potential turning point on planet earth. My deep wish is that we can actually turn, as a species, vs return to normal as quickly as possible. There will be a tremendous pressure to revert back to business as usual. Well, that business – being on the earth the way we have – is bankrupt. Will we keep trying to prop it up, or do we choose another way?
Real unconditional love requires giving up personal agendas, being in genuine service to others and the world, and experiencing our fulfillment through what we give. And, of course, something comes back. Just try only breathing out! What we give in true generosity always comes back, tenfold, as the saying goes. Or, as one of my early mentors liked to say: “Cast your bread upon the waters and it will come back sandwiches!”
Now is the time for the expression of unconditional love through as many humans as possible as often as possible for as long as possible every day. Please set your phone for noon and start practicing. We pause in prayer, with no strings attached, allowing the infinite loving power of the One true God to flow through us, devoid of hierarchy or separation, to work its magic in this world. In these moments, we know that this is why we are here and we are fulfilled.
