It’s not over until the fat lady sings.
A European friend of mine, happily residing in America for over a decade, suddenly called me out of the blue, totally panicked that his candidate for U.S. President, Hillary Clinton, had lost to Donald Trump. He felt that we were all doomed to a replay of the 1930’s when Adolph Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. He was all set to fly back to his native Austria and die peacefully in his own homeland.
My friend told me, “This is the end of the world.” But is it?
It may be the end of the world as he once knew it, but it is most certainly not the end of possibility. He needs to go within and learn how to bounce back, much like a rubber ball. When squashed, you then experience a resurgence of energy.
Reframe
The recent election has shocked a whole lot of people who had their worst fears realized in the Republican opponent of Hillary Clinton. Hillary was a highly established politician who had everything going for her.
People were even willing to vote for her as a woman. Hillary was by far the most conventionally qualified, but somehow she had a blind spot that cost her the election, the “rustbelt” Midwest where workers without high-tech skills struggled to make ends meet.
A highly unconventional businessman, Donald Trump, was running for President while breaking every rule in the book. All the pollsters and pundits consistently got him wrong, often ridiculing him in the process. Donald campaigned ruthlessly, but had a passion for his vision, that America could be different, that it could lead the world again.
Not only people in the Midwest, but people all over the country, many who said they wouldn’t vote for him, such as women and minorities, actually did vote for him in the privacy of their election booths. Apparently, someone who shunned a mantle of inclusiveness, but consistently spoke of economic realities, and who spoke with passion, got through to them.
However, few people think of the bigger picture.
One of the weaknesses of Hillary Clinton was supposing that the world could survive a direct, armed conflict with Russia. It is amazing how people forget what it was like during the Cold War, decades of terror around the nuclear threat. It took a no-nonsense, tough-minded conservative, Ronald Reagan, to end this conflict, preparing the way to true globalization as both Russia and China fully entered the world economy.
It is possible that people who appear crazy to us may be a lot smarter than we think. It may well be that we live in a world where if things go poorly for Russia, things may go poorly for all of us. Perhaps Donald Trump knows that. Due to marriage with Slavic women and having substantial commercial interests, Donald has learned to love that country. It is also clear that Vladimir Putin regards Donald as someone with whom he can deal.
Resilience Begins with Transforming Fear into Love
Our response to what just happened is vital, not only to my Austrian friend, but to all of us. If we fail to realize our part in creating the very thing we fear most, we will be locked into a disempowering path to ruin.
Nothing happens totally by mistake. From an expanded perspective, everything that happens HAS TO HAPPEN to bring us to a whole new level of possibility.
As Father Richard Rohr continuously points out, for every three steps forward, we take two steps backward, for a net gain of a single step. Yet those steps all add up.
In history, we don’t move forward in a straight line upward, and we don’t merely move in circles. Rather we spiral upward, until the low point of one epic is higher than the high point of the previous era.
To bounce back, we must transform fear into love. This we can only happen through a miracle, as all human love is conditional. I will scratch your back if you will scratch mine.
As Jesus Christ put it, “If you love those who love you, even the gentiles (nations) do the same.” He held his students up to a much higher standard. They are to become the Light of the world by their ability to channel a different kind of love… unconditional, Divine Love.
Start Living Our Highest Aspiration
If it weren’t for Mahatma Gandhi, we could safely suppose that Jesus’s greatest sermon was an impossible ideal suitable only for Sunday School and nursery rhymes. True, the early Christians died before an unending succession of Roman tyrants in the Coliseum following the injunction to “love your enemy and pray for those who spitefully abuse you.”
However, one can only too easily point to the Crusades and the Inquisition, as well as the Protestant versus Catholic wars.
Gandhi, a Hindu, became the greatest Christian of the 20th century by not only personally living the Sermon on the Mount, which he read in South Africa before inventing nonviolent resistance, but also bringing it to a collective level, first nationally, then globally.
If you study his work closely, especially Richard Attenborough’s Academy Award winning epic, Gandhi, you will realize that he literally loved the British so consistently and so passionately that he brought down the entire British empire.
Perhaps it is no accident that President Reagan, initially the greatest foe of the Soviet Union, developed a lifelong friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev, indirectly bringing down the old Communist order, and normalizing relations with Russia.
When President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev worked on transforming their relationship, the missiles became a secondary issue. It got to the point where Russia generals actually toured American bases.
Realize That Love Is Stronger Than Death
We need not be naïve and automatically assume that Donald Trump will accomplish everything he dreams. However, he needs our active support. Like Gandhi, we can stand firm on our convictions, while showing him consistent love.
This may seem dangerous to some, but the alternative is a lot riskier.
Gandhi once stated that if only 10% of the people who ever claimed to be Christian were true Christians, meaning they literally followed Christ, the whole world would be Christian. Since Gandhi was the greatest Christian of the 20th Century, it is most definitely not a matter of religion, but of an open heart towards Divine Love.
Divine Love is the only thing that both can and will SAVE THE PLANET.
It is almost as if, before now, we have all been dabbling with religion and spirituality. It is now time for all of us to plunge into that Absolute, Universal Love, as if our lives depended upon it. For they most certainly do.
If we are willing to die, not wretchedly, but with supreme elegance, we may find that we don’t need to die, but rather “inherit eternal life,” starting today.
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Resilience: How To Bounce Back When It All Goes Wrong appeared first on http://consciousowl.com.
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