Incensed. Now what?
Issue 23
The junior senator from Missouri, on my radar since he unseated Sen. Claire McCaskill in 2018, announced about a thousand years ago (Wednesday, December 30, 2020) that he was going to be that senator and I was immediately, viscerally incensed. That smarmy little fuck-face charlatan motherfucker. What a self-serving, anti-democratic, duplicitous dickhead. I was outraged. I was incredulous. And, I was busy.
There was a big, annual event to facilitate that night for Spiritual Workout. My head was flooded with material I was urgently distilling into an appropriate first-of-the-new-year piece. There was no way to countenance both and while Hawley had me riled up, I reasoned there would still be plenty to say about him in a week’s time. More succinctly, there’d still be plenty to say about the consciousness that animates him and why a simple conscious politics practitioner like me would react so forcefully to that person.
Good god. No sooner did I complete said piece than breaking news! Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and too many of his colleagues in the rapidly crystallizing, anti-democratic, sedition-supporting, Jim Crow congressional caucus announced their intentions to join the cynical junior senator from Missouri. They committed to co-throw a wrench into America’s quadrennial, pro forma, blissfully mundane, mandated, legal process of receiving, counting, and recording the already-certified Electoral College votes from the 50 states and the District of Columbia. (More on D.C. statehood and abolishing the Electoral College another day.)
I was also one hundred percent clear that I was reacting to it with old, dying consciousness: swearing, yelling, name-calling. Like attracts like. Momentarily satisfying? Oh yeah.
What I saw in Hawley that day — well before he was joined by Cruz & Co. — was lying: lying about election fraud and lying about civics — how our government actually works. What I saw was contempt: someone of privilege and position who absolutely knows better lying outright to people — his actual constituents and those he seemingly hopes will be his constituents — who clearly do not know better. What I saw was an abject lack of integrity.
As a human American being committed to living in an America that works for everyone I was viscerally incensed because I know for a fact that untruth, contempt for fellow humans, and a lack of integrity cannot ever lead to creating a world that works for everyone. It’s quantum-physically impossible. Yes, I was incredulous and outraged and angry. I was a growling dog with a bone and I was one hundred percent clear that what I was reacting — reacting — to was what I saw as a fresh, new embodiment of the old, dying consciousness on our political landscape. Ugh. I was also one hundred percent clear that I was reacting to it with old, dying consciousness: swearing, yelling, name-calling. Like attracts like. Momentarily satisfying? Oh yeah. Monumentally unproductive? One hundred — unless I springboard from it into what it is I’d prefer to experience. To springboard from the grip of old consciousness to the aerie of the new is what we conscious politics practitioners do these days again and again because the law of attraction is still always on and all.
So I switched gears from reaction to response. Instead of reacting to what looked and felt like a potentially significant derailing or postponement of my desire to live in a world that works for everyone I responded by re-aligning with what that vision actually means and looks like to me — a shiny, clear intention to focus my attention upon. Ahh. I responded by checking my belief that my project could be derailed by anyone. (It can’t.) I responded to Mr. Hawley without judgment/with compassion — it’s not personal. He’s no different than any of us, believing what he believes based on his own life experience which, like yours and mine, are his all his.
A week after his announcement on January 6, 2021, the day of the scheduled counting of the votes, now the day of insurrection that will, as we say, live in infamy, Mr. Hawley racked up a slew of other old-consciousness displays: misrepresenting about “antifa scumbags;” that photo; the insurrection itself; fund-raising off the insurrection while it was happening; insisting on going through with his anti-democratic exercise after the joint session of Congress reconvened as if the insurrection hadn’t happened. Wow.
Yet, as we say, the old consciousness and the new consciousness is all swirling around at the same time and I personally have delighted in seeing evidence of the new within 24 hours or so of that fateful day: The Kansas City Star’s rapidly-published editorial saying, “No one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday’s coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol than one Joshua David Hawley, the 41-year-old junior senator from Missouri, who put out a fundraising appeal while the siege was underway;” The St. Louis Dispatch’s own condemnation; Simon & Schuster canceling the publishing of his book; former U.S. Sen. John Danforth, who had championed Hawley’s ascent, calling that the “worst mistake” of his life. Cruz is on the receiving end of a lot of this, too, and there’s much more piling on.
The point is that switching back and forth between the old and new consciousness can be exhausting and it can be exhilarating. We will feel outraged and exhausted when we’re in the grips of the old; we will feel invigorated and exhilarated when we’re aligned with the new. It’s the times we’re in, my fellow conscious politics practitioner, emphasis on practitioner. Keep practicing. That’s all — and that’s everything. Keep cultivating the new. Keep your attention on what you want. Keep believing that everything is possible. Know you are not alone, none of us are. We got this.
NOTE: None of us can ever say what’s in another’s heart but when it comes to public figures we can do our best to ascertain their beliefs and intentions. We listen to them speak, read what they write, and watch what they do. As conscious politics practitioners we then take it to the next level not by making judgments from our heads but by making them through our intuition, our feelings. Does it pass the feel test? There’s much more to say about this dynamic, but let’s be sure to acknowledge that, in truth, the hearts and minds of others is not our domain — until and unless someone makes it so. Thus, we acknowledge that our reactions and responses are also ours, all ours.
NOTE: Save the date for this month’s Spiritual Workout for Politics & Current Events: TUESDAY, JANUARY 19 — INAUGURATION EVE. 5:00-6:30pm Pacific / 8:00-9:30pm Eastern. This Workout is the live version of the newsletter where we talk abuot what you want to talk about. More info and registration will be available next Sunday in plenty of time.
I laughed outloud when reading the first paragraph - I could hear your voice in my head. Thank you for the reminder that changing consciousness is a practice. I am trying to be more curious and open and less reactive - it's a work in progress.