Many of you know that I consider the heart of the spiritual task to be nothing short of revolutionary. To awaken into the divine moment requires a fundamental turn from an orientation in the physical to a total absorption in the divine essence, the Sacred Eternal. Anything short of that is not a revolution but merely change. A focus on improving your circumstances, mood, thought, or even health is not a revolution, though all of those things should result from a true revolution.
Most modern revolutions have focused on a sudden change of who controls the reins of the government rather than a fundamental shift in how power is understood and used. Driven by anger and hatred, too often the revolutionaries simply replace one totalitarian form of government or ideology with another, and sometimes the new leader is worse than who is replaced. Typically the battle is over how control is to be wielded, not whether control should be wielded. So one group is thrown out that another group can take control and run the governmental and social order according to their priorities, their structure.
Even within the ranks of modern-day anarchists, there are few who actually believe in the power of freedom to organize life and living. When you watch them in action on the streets of the world, protesting one economic summit or other, you quickly realize that they are not really anarchists at all, but are simply demanding that their particular ideas (social structure) gain ascendency on the world stage, and they are willing to use force to gain their ends. Freedom is not the point, securing a different, preferred, control is.
At best, to these groups, “freedom” is nothing but a slogan slung about, but it is a negative freedom referring merely to the removal of that which is hated–happiness is implied, and perhaps promised, but never delivered on. And it cannot be delivered on through this dynamic. In their failure to understand what a revolution really is, seeing only the surface, they wield their anger and hatred and thus defeat themselves before they get started (and betray those who believed in them). Anything driven by hate and anger can only produce the reflection of hatred and anger. And one oppressive structure is replaced by another.
For any action to be successful, it must be rooted in the Sacred Eternal not held hostage to false beliefs and judgments. Merely changing beliefs, habits, or feelings will maintain allegiance to the system. In national revolutions, when you are driven by hate and fear, you remain allegiant to the original system and so recreate it, but in your own image. In your personal lives you need to avoid this trap, treat yourselves with understanding and compassion for the service these outmoded parts of self have provided, and look upward to the higher truths that are rooted in eternity.
Too many humans who are seeking spiritually, are caught by the rejection of things they seek release from because they have been taught that these things are their enemy. However, when you are caught in a pot and struggle, all you do is stir the pot! What is actually called for is to get out of the pot, give up your allegiance to the pot and its contents, and walk a truly revolutionary path.
This is why a spiritual counselor first has to help their client to stop hating the emotions, thoughts, and behaviors that are so distressing to them and disruptive to their lives. A spiritual counselor will never lose sight of the fact that the dynamic they and their client are creating is in service to a revolution of the heart, no matter how it looks in the immediate interaction of a particular session.
I am suggesting that you learn from the tragic history of too many revolutions and apply the lessons to your spiritual tasks. You must be driven by a yearning to know, by a desire to feel the Oneness of life and your place in it, and you must listen to the voice of the Eternal calling you home. These things live within every human heart and are beautifully captured by the the passionate translation of the Lakota word for vision quest, “crying for a vision”. And they take only your attention and care to awaken.
Recognize that the power that has held you captive is nothing other than your own consent, and withdraw it. Just don’t hate what has been. Perhaps a place to begin is to let go of your self-judgment and self-rejection as that is the slippery slope that tumbles you into the pot. In reality, you already live within the pure reality of the Sacred Eternal but your own focus holds it away from your awareness.
As you let go of the negative images that you hold up between you and the truth of your Being, you will find the Eternal fully present within and all around you. And you will find that a true revolution has taken place in your heart. You will have found freedom and peace because you are now rooted in the timeless creation rather than the world made my humans, a world defined by control and structure.