As I write this, it is the day after election day, 2024, in the United States. The air is thick with the polarized, collective reaction to the election. While some are celebrating, others are mourning. While some are appalled, angry and frustrated, others are relieved, grateful and inspired. Still others are a little of both, or neither.
What many, many people, in this country and all over the world, are experiencing right now is the search for meaning in the outcome of the election. What does a majority Republican government mean for the future of our freedom and our potential for unity, health, financial stability, and a thriving, safe country? What does this mean personally and collectively, locally and globally?
The polarity we see in our society is reflected in the polarity of answers to the question of meaning behind the election results. Some are convinced they are in imminent danger, that everything will turn to chaos and destruction. Others are sure this election means peace and prosperity for all. And, of course, many are somewhere between this dichotomy.
The search for meaning is a natural, human response to events and experiences in our life here. And yet, it is not in finding meaning in external events that we find Joy, Peace, Purpose or Power. You will never find freedom in the search for meaning.
The mind and its endless meaning-making is a function of the ego, the divided/separate self. To analyze and intellectualize, categorize and judge is a survival function of the body-mind. While being an important, helpful and necessary function of the body-mind, it is not the source from which our life flows, and can, therefore, never offer us a fulfilling answer to why something is what it is in this world.
But we can jump to a lot of conclusions, accurate or not. Unfounded or filled with “evidence.” The mind can certainly provide a lot of answers. But none of them truly lead to your freedom, joy and peace. Peace of mind is accessed from outside of the mind, from your true self, from Spirit.
Your “intuitive mind”–Awareness, Knowingness, Intuition–responds to events and circumstances with inspiration, creativity and amusement. Because Awareness is of Spirit, the limitless, whole of your Beingness, there is only clarity and peace, understanding and love, compassion and presence in response to anything happening in the world, your body, your life here. The “why” that the mind constantly asks is meaningless. Rather than constantly seeking meaning, Spirit constantly Knows the Truth: only that which is Eternal has meaning. The rest is meaningless, the inconsequential noise and unproductive drama of the non-existent trying to make itself real.
But this is nihilism, you say? Oh no, not at all. This is just the nature of the mind and its inherent limits. Reality is Eternal, unchanging, and Joyous. Pure Peace, Stillness…beyond words. You cannot experience Reality in your mind. The mind, again, is a useful and necessary function, especially when we have a body, but, Reality is beyond the mind. All the thoughts and images produced by and contained in the mind are meaningless because they have no effect on Reality. We can use them to create and communicate here, while we live in and through the body, but we will find ourselves lost, confused, disappointed and afraid if we depend on the mind and its endless production of thoughts to find any sort of meaning, clarity, direction or purpose. The mind cannot give you peace or freedom.
Finding meaning about anything in this world only results in finding relative, yet perhaps reassuring, meaning in relation to other things in this world, at best. At worst, it leads one on an endless cycle of mental torment and effort that seesaws back and forth between hope and despair, comfort and disappointment, encouragement and frustration. If you have ever felt (or been) bipolar, you have been the effect of the mind. You have put a Lot of your creative energy into the many pictures the mind (yours and “others”) produces.
So how does one make sense of current events and how they may be impacted personally or collectively if they are feeling lost, frustrated, confused, angry or afraid? What if you are sure that what you see out there is a problem, dangerous, very bad?
Practice observing the mind rather than being the mind. The old adage “Question Everything” includes your thoughts. Especially the thoughts you find yourself sure of. All of them. Because that’s what everything in this world of perception is: thoughts and the forms they take. It’s all a giant charade of the mind.
Aren’t we creative?!
The question then is (if you can accept all of this so far 😊): What Are You Creating?
When you find yourself lost in the mind’s chaos of meaning-making, analyzing, debating, defending your rightness, planning your survival strategies (and I don’t just mean physical survival, I mean identity survival), give yourself space to stop and observe the madness. No matter how uncomfortable and disturbing it may often be to just Be with all of the thoughts, you will find that, when you continue to do so–when you make it a practice and a commitment to be with rather than become anything and everything going through your mind–you will break through the clouds of disturbance and discomfort into the light of amazement and amusement.
And then, you will know your freedom.
Your path forward, through whatever darkness you perceive, will be clear. You will have the inspiration, joy, grace and power that comes from knowing and trusting Spirit.
May you live as the Divine eternal flame of Spirit here on Earth and create Beauty through the body-mind you have here with the limitless Creativity that is ever present within you.
Let’s Go!
