Awakening to the Possibility

There is a magnificently radiant possibility ready to light up our dark, sleeping world, and the moment of awakening happens when we recognize that the possibility exists.

Whether we see a possibility or not depends on awareness. When we are asleep we would never think to consider it, because it exists outside awareness. When we don't know that we don't know, it is as though the possibility doesn't exist. But when conditions change, as awareness and perspectives shift, we may awaken and witness its rise above the horizon of the imagination, and into our lived experience.

Why is it challenging for us to imagine the possibility of many, many millions of people participating in a movement of awakening democratic empowerment that aims to change the way that we collectively make decisions? Is it difficult to imagine because this is an impossibility, or because we are asleep to it?

If we truly wanted collective empowerment, we would find a way to bring it into being. So, either we don't really want it, or we don't see the possibility. Or, perhaps we don't want it because we aren't awake to the possibility. We have, indeed, become so habituated to seeing ourselves and our world from perspectives where the possibility of such a movement doesn't seem to exist, but once we recognize how we've been conditioned to be asleep, we might imagine conditions that will facilitate our collective awakening.

It can seem challenging to want something that we don't believe is possible, and we're so used to wanting (or not wanting) what is put before us. We might choose a meaningful, participatory democracy if it were presented to us, but it's not likely to be offered by those who occupy what we take to be positions of authority. Of course, we will have to author it ourselves, co-creatively. To this end, it might be helpful for us to appreciate how our expectations around what is possible have been driven down low by an accumulation of heavy conditioning.

Much of our culture has developed around the wants and needs of those advantaged few that remain unseen, apart and protected from the rest of us. In fact, so few can maintain such power only because the many are asleep. Over time, individuals who believed that their advantage was threatened by popular freedom and equality have embedded conditions within the society and its structures in order to prevent this transformative possibility from being realized. Fundamental separation and imbalance are at the core of what troubles our world today.

Those who assume power over others—and those others who recognize the authority of that power over themselves—hold beliefs that constitute the inheritance of conditioning we live with today. The main condition that keeps us asleep is our separation from others, and this happens by our holding onto beliefs and feelings that contribute to mental and emotional separation, which in turn results in our physical isolation from others. The overall aim of such conditioning is power for the few and mass disempowerment for all else.

We are presented with views via the corporate mass media that may lead us to believe that we are too flawed or different from one another to co-operate peacefully, and that we are basically incapable of self-governance. Within the context of our unseen collective disempowerment, we are enticed to try to empower ourselves as individuals, and then compete with other individuals. In this separation, we privately endure the emotional burden of disempowerment through feelings of unease, anxiety, frustration, grief, anger, fear, shame, despair and hatred. Perhaps we question our self-worth and wonder whether we deserve to experience empowerment.

We have become passive spectators receiving what others have offered us, disempowered consumers slaving away in a struggle to survive, and we are distracted from wanting too much change because our having high expectations for empowerment likely causes many in situations of advantage to feel uncomfortable, anxious and afraid about losing what they have.

If it is true that we've been conditioned not to know the possibility for genuine democracy, it's perhaps encouraging to consider how this suggests that the possibility does indeed exist, but how it is only obscured by social conditioning and the institutions acting as defenses against it. I feel compassion for those who believe that they actually have power over others, because they are more alienated from the enlivening possibility of sharing power, in community, with others. And because a lot of our energy is tied up in the emotional impact of disempowerment, it's exciting to consider what might happen if we were to empower ourselves and use this energy in creative, life-enriching ways.

Gathering with the intention of exploring what we want could be the most empowering, effective and catalyzing action we might do now. When we gather and share what we truly want, when we become actors and co-creators and co-operate to meet common needs, and when we experience empowerment together, we will become increasingly conscious of how these new conditions facilitate our awakening. When we discover and understand what unites us—rather than always seeing what divides us—the perspective that emerges will allow us to effectively align our energies toward achieving what we collectively want.

This exploratory process could meet shared needs for engagement, self-expression, understanding, cooperation, inspiration, bonding, hope and celebration. When we agree on a common goal—on what we want and hope to achieve through our collective efforts—then all that we will really have to do is celebrate our being together. The energy that would naturally flow between us would attract others, and there would be nothing for us to do but enjoy and celebrate the whole, big party. If this were to develop to its natural conclusion, the emerging political movement might also bring us to a place of meeting our deeply unmet needs for empowerment, autonomy, harmony, stability, support, belonging, security and peace.

In engaging in political activism, we often strive to raise the awareness of others—not our own—and, as a result, we avoid activating deeper potentials that are waiting to be realized. Maybe we are so conditioned by the example of individual empowerment that we cannot help but reproduce it, and so we empower ourselves as individuals (taking roles as actors on a stage) rather than collectively activating ourselves into shared empowerment. Or maybe we can see the possibility and imagine how we might collectively empower ourselves, but we feel afraid and hesitate to act because we've been conditioned to fear striving for shared empowerment. Perhaps a perceived threat of personal loss inhibits our willingness to act for the benefit of the whole.

Whatever may be true for us, it appears that we do not want to face the paralyzing effects of disempowerment in our own hearts: the pain of grief, shame, fear, rage, hatred and despair. But if we are to engage our deepest potentials for life-enriching change, we must be willing to embrace ourselves. This is why it is important to create a safe space for what stirs in the heart, so that we can speak and hear with love and compassion, and nurture and support one another. If we do this within the context of empowering ourselves through a process of reaching for what we want, we may embrace the pain of disempowerment while also living the excitement and joy of creating new possibilities for community and freedom.

Whenever we let go of what we think we know, we allow space for the imagination to take us beyond. If we can gather the courage and will to imagine, and then call for, a way of engaging in politics that would serve us best, a way that enables us to effectively express our democratic contribution to important decision-making, then this movement would legitimize a new way of enacting politics while rendering the old way obsolete.

By awakening into a collective empowerment that would enable us to effectively participate in creating the world we want to see, we would alter the course of this civilization. Indeed, we would lay the foundations for a new civilization based on collective well-being, hope and promise. We have been so conditioned to turn away from each other, but when we believe in ourselves, recognize our collective power and appreciate the opportunity before us, then we may awaken to the possibility. We can not expect that others, elsewhere, will do what we will not do, here and now.

Let's dream big, even though it appears dangerous to those who benefit from our unequal and unjust political and economic structures—and perhaps for us, too. By imagining what we want, and then acting our dreams, we will change our world and make it the place of abundance and love that we know it really is. And dreaming big is what we do before we wake up.

An authentic, participatory democracy is not some way-out, impractical idea—it's a longing of the heart. And because all life-sustaining social movements are birthed from the heart, when we gather and share what is stuck and what flows within, we open ourselves to emergent possibilities for life-enriching social and political change. Can we gather what moves in the heart and send it forth into a movement that calls for what we really want? Are we ready to take the next step in our conscious evolution and create a civilization based on universally held values and needs? Are we ready for a global community of genuine democracies?

When we want it, we will create it.