Coalition of Sovereign Love
From my Heart to yours,
2024 is the first year in recorded history when more than 50% of the world’s population (some 4 billion of us) have the opportunity to choose which power structures best represent our will. Regardless of actual turnout, pollsters all agree that 2024 will smash the record for number of votes cast internationally in a single year. Of what significance could this be to you?
These are revolutionary times evidenced by the speed of change occurring before us – technologically, environmentally, socially, economically, politically, and yes spiritually! The younger generation is keeping pace with this revolution, if not fuelling it. The older generation – the gatekeepers of power – with more life behind them than in front, appear to be holding on to it for now – but only just.
2024 is a global inflection point. The real value of trendy political sloganostra is worth less than the paper or pixels they occupy. Old narratives with power brokers purporting to be endowed with solutions succumb to a sort of habitual perpetualism synonymous of samsara.
Revolution, on the other hand is always risky. It flirts with unpredictable unknowns. In hindsight, revolutions expose the brittle bond linking the various carriages of ideological paradigm-trains together – that of the public’s trust. While this sacred trust is at an all-time low universally (an indictor of potential revolution) let us not underestimate the global forces at play here, and abroad.
As the world’s population votes this year, a ridiculous game of chicken is being played out on the world’s stage. The US/EU/NATO’s ‘Maintain-at-all-Cost’, unipolar, dominant, western ideological train barrels towards the oncoming BRICS’s “Change-at-all-Cost’, multipolar, power redistribution train. Does South Africa (and by extension you) find itself tied in and to the middle of this track as we await news of a coalition government?
With the prevailing pundits suggest a Government of National Unity as the ideal, they intelligently caution its impractically, predisposing it to failure! Will you, as a South African and global citizen, via the government we democratically inherited, veer right ideologically (map-left toward the unipolar dominance of western ideology), or veer left (map-right toward the east-driven demand for a multipolar, countervailing force for the risky alternatives of unknown change)? A Zen Master once said to me as I questioned alternatives, “Move and you will be a lost ghost for a thousand years!” I trusted him and the opportunity my conundrum offered. I trust these now too. Without choosing left or right how would you respond? How would you create a self-governance system within yourself to rebuild the sacred trust for unity?
Whenever there is a conundrum – we find it only in the mind – a mind with a pre-existing condition intent on reconstituting our compendium of narratives. When the mind cannot comprehend, solve or reconstitute, at best, it surrenders. Worst, it revolts – often violently. Perhaps your heart is patiently waiting for your surrender, and perhaps for just such a moment.
Nowhere in South Africa’s Constitution or Bill of Rights, nor in the manifestos of over 50 political parties and independents who contested the recent election, have I heard or seen the word LOVE. Aren’t we essentially constituted love? Would you fuse or unite with who or what you don’t love?
This I know to be true – Love is the ultimate unifier; Love dissolves all edges as it celebrates diversity; Love gets down to the basic fundamentals of this life – to the heart in the matter. I wonder, have we reduced Love to a four word?
Coalition means union, or fusion. Yoga means union too! Zen… not two (self and other are One), or as we South Africans like to spout – Ubuntu (I am because you are). Can you imagine a Government of National Yoga or Zen? Perhaps an effective GNU (in you and the country) could bring the eastern and western halves of ourselves together and avoid a nuclear catastrophe?
If we are not each able to quell the obstinance of the old narratives residing in our own ideological minds we may push our collective minds into violent con-fusion. Rather, let each of us be the revolution, be the most risky thing possible, and go beyond the edges of narrative and our limited understanding, by Being-the-Edge.
Entering this edgeless terrain we will find an infinite supply of true love, and consequently our True North. Let us each love practically, ferociously, uncompromisingly – everyday, everyone, and every aspect of ourselves – even the most unloving nature we all, in some way, harbour.
If we each did this, in every possible moment would be the most powerful vote. 2024 would simply be four numbers on a calendar. We would not need to cast ballots to (hopefully) choose government representatives to re-present our love. We would instead present love as our very selves. We would be sovereign in our own empowerment presenting our truth, our very presence. We would be our own government – a constituted and Embodied Enlightenment – Ubuntu and Unity.
Not for the feint of heart, the ride of your life on Love’s Trackless Train awaits. Its station is everywhere, hidden in plain sight. Remember you can’t get on where you get off. It never arrives, and never departs. There are no obsessive log keepers, pundits, analysts or bean-counters on its Middle Way. This train has no need for records.
This is the state of Nirvana. The price? All your fears.
Nangaku