Politics without spirituality is trying to wipe off blood with blood
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It's time to put to bed once and for all the foolishness of discounting spirituality in the name of political activism.
Political activism has its place. Yes, the petitions help (we hope!) and so do demonstrations and getting out the vote. 2006 was a "failure" not in the sense of explaining away the heroic efforts to support liberal/progressive candidates, but only in the sense that nearly all of the allegedly liberal/progressive candidates turned out to be closet Republicans. In short, 2006 proved beyond of shadow of a doubt that we have a ONE party system, i.e., the Democratic/Republican Party. Diaper dems and Nazi pugs are two sides of the same coin and political activism turned out to be much ado about nothing.
In spiritually, this can be related to the ultimate mystery of liberation. In Buddhism the 2nd of the 4 Noble Truths is Trishna or "craving" and desire and a Reader's Digest understanding of this mystery is that liberation (or nirvana) is the ending of craving and desire. Ergo, we desire not to desire.
Doesn't work.
Said differently, the blind siding truth is that human misery is not a nightmare from which the dreamer finally "awakes" (Enlightenment), but that the dreamer IS ITSELF the nightmare. We are not what wakes up from the nightmare, "we" are what's being waked up from by that which is more real than our driver's license self-image. The "thinking about point of view" is not what finally thinks it all though. The thinking about point of view (i.e., ego/personality) is a flame which is blown out and what's left is that which was never not there in the first place.
Nothing is obtained because there isn't any obtainer.
Back to politics. Trying to change the political world is typically merely a variation OF the political world. It's like trying to fall asleep. Trying to fall asleep (as some of you many have nervously found out) never "causes" falling asleep. Trying to fall asleep is simply an odd way of staying awake. And forget trying to stop the trying, since that will lead you even deeper into an entrapping vicious circle.
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