Spirituality and Politics

This is a difficult one for me.

My kabbalah teacher urges me and the others in our group to keep out of politics and political discussion, and concentrate on developing our own behaviours and attitudes in such a way that we become more generous, compassionate, disciplined, empathic, less greedy and fearful, and just generally more useful and pleasant to our fellow Earth dwellers.

For those of you who have not read my posts before, or need reminding, Toledano kabbalah (the form of Kabbalah that was developed in 13^th century Spain) has divided humans into three ‘classes’ – with names that I think are rather tasteless, but nobody’s thought up anything more appropriate yet. The first group of humans, by far the largest, are the ‘vegetable people’. These souls are content with enough to eat and drink, with adequate clothing and shelter, with being entertained, and having the opportunity to have children if they so desire, and they are keen to fit in with their 'tribe', e.g. their culture or religion. They are happy to be led, providing the leader does not cause them too much physical discomfort or alternatively, can offer a convincing promise of better times. When they don’t think they’re getting this, they may well form a populist movement to warn or overthrow their leaders.

The next group are the ‘animal’ people. These are the people who desire wealth, fame and/or power. Among them you find, for example, (not all, but a lot of) pop stars, business men and women, TV personalities, rabble rousers, people high up in religious hierarchies, teachers, and politicians. I’ve heard it said that if vegetable people are the pebbles on the beach, animal people are the waves that roll them about. However, people in the animal class are guided by the deep desires and aversions of their egos (their personalities). In a sense they, too, are the pebbles, and their egos (and ids, that is, their sub-conscious minds, fuelled by strong and ancient animal instincts) are the waves pushing them about.

The third class, the ‘human’ people, are those who are trying to free themselves of the control of their ids and egos in order to be able to see more clearly, to achieve glimpses of the bigger picture unskewed by ego fears and id impulses, and to act accordingly. It is probably still the road less travelled. Toledano kabbalists make regular visits to meetings where they recount their recent experiences to each other.  Others in the group are usually able to see if the ego is interfering in a way that a person themself cannot see. In my experience to date, this has never been a daunting procedure. I’ve not been in any group where somebody has taken a delight, or felt superior in pointing out to others something that has been overlooked. The prevailing culture is about mutual support for each other on our journeys. Nevertheless, I think that a person has had to have got through the ‘defensive against any suggestion that I’m not perfect’ stage before they can open to this in the most constructive way. I think you have to be a genuine seeker.

However, not all those aspiring to be human people are spiritual or believe in higher, nonphysical dimensions; many are humanists, for example.

There is another group with which I am closely involved and that is the Integral movement. Most Integralists are also concerned to act in the world from a ‘higher place’ than their egos, and that includes acting in politics, reasoning that this is what the world needs right now. Many people within the movement believe that the world will become a fairer, more pleasant and sustainable place for all to live in when we move beyond ‘left-right’ politics to something more, well, integral. Recently I’ve been part of some extremely interesting political discussions with others within the London Integral Circle (which I have to say have not degenerated into the ‘I’m right and you’re not’ slanging matches that I’ve been part of elsewhere.) And one thing that’s emerging is the need for a meta-political stance. John Bunzl, whom I know through Integral circles, and who also blogs for The Huffington Post, has set up an organisation called Simpol. To quote from their website:

“Simpol invites citizens around the world to use their votes in a powerful new way to encourage politicians to solve global problems like global warming, financial market regulation, environmental destruction, war, and social injustice.

Simpol offers us a way to take action on global problems; problems individual governments cannot resolve by acting alone.

That’s because these problems cross national boundaries, and because competition between governments to attract investment and jobs means the markets - not the people - end up calling the shots.

Governments cannot act alone to solve these problems because any government doing so would make its economy uncompetitive, leading to inflation, unemployment, or even economic collapse. Any government that moved first would lose out! While governments remain stuck, it's the markets that continue to run politics - not we, the people.

Simpol aims to break this vicious circle by encouraging people around the world to oblige their politicians and governments to cooperate globally in implementing appropriate policies simultaneously for the good of all.”

If you join Simpol, you are signing up to vote for any politician, wherever they are on the left-right spectrum, who will make a declaration of support for a process leading to the simultaneous implementation of a range of policies to solve global problems. The website contains the names of politicians who have already signed up to this pledge.

Naturally these policies (that Simpol advocate should be simultaneously enacted by all), have certain values embedded in them. It could not be otherwise. These values are based on the fact that, as humans have evolved and life has become more materially bearable for a lot of us (less nasty, brutish and short), certain values have developed as well, values that have perhaps made such evolution possible. These values are to do with 1) being able to cope with increasing complexity: evolution can be seen to be producing increasingly complex systems all the time, in both the natural and human made worlds; and 2) developing greater compassion and empathy for others, people who are not us, or not like us, not part of our ‘tribe’, or even part of our species. Those who have made efforts to become more spiritually developed repeatedly report back that the feeling of separateness we all have in our ‘skin encapsulated egos’ is an illusion. So are feelings of independence and dependence. We are all inter-dependent, and so it makes sense to develop and live by values that reflect that.

I hurriedly add that becoming more compassionate and empathic does not preclude preventing others from taking advantage of you. It is perfectly possible to ensure one’s own needs, and non- greedy wants, are met, and still be generous and tolerant of others. As Gandhi said, “there’s enough for everyone’s need, not everyone’s greed”.

In kabbalah the universe is said to be held in existence between two poles: ‘force’ and ‘form’. (‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’ comprise a similar model). ’Force’ is outgoing, creative, expansive, merciful and generous. ‘Form’ is structuring, curtailing, setting boundaries, disciplining, gathering in, and defining. Without this latter ‘form’, the universe would expand into chaos; and without ‘force’ the universe would just shrink into itself and eventually disappear up its own fundament. The work of a kabbalist is to balance these two poles. This cannot be done successfully without having first developed a perspective which has risen above the level of ego and id. Some politicians have done this, even if temporarily, and changed the course of history for the better in the process but, again, one’s own level of consciousness has to be developed beyond the level of ego and id to spot them at the time.

After writing the above, as I had reproduced material from the Simpol website, I sent it to John Bunzl for comment. He offered the further thought provoking observations:

 The need for a meta-stance, beyond simply going beyond the right-left dichotomy, is that, in practice, the left has all but disappeared from the political scene. Today, party politics is really just different shades of right. This, I argue, arises because of the free-movement of capital which, because it forces all nations to enact only those policies which keep the nation competitive and attractive to investors, means politics is squeezed into a broadly centre-right straightjacket. An effect I call pseudo-democracy: whoever you vote to govern, the policies delivered remain substantially the same. (Like Henry Ford’s ‘you can have any colour you like so long as it’s black’)

-          So the need for a meta-stance is actually two-fold: 1. To be able to see the above in the first place and to see why/how its occurring. 2. To devise a strategy for doing something about it.

-          Force and Form. These two energies are like dance partners. Each is vital but each leads the dance at different times as evolution unfolds. Force, it seems to me, is what economic globalisation represents: market competition, as a force has outgrown the Form of the nation-state and has now gone global. Absent Form at the global level, Force is pathological, as we see today. (Another way to look at it would be to say that the market economy embodies the masculine principle whereas cooperative governance embodies the feminine.) Either way, the masculine principle – Force – has, since 1648, led the dance to the point where, if Form doesn’t make her move to go global too and so catch up to balance Force, we’re in big trouble! Simpol, if you will, is a channel, an emergent possibility, for feminine Form (i.e. global governance) to emerge and take practical shape.

-          Spiritual Politics: To me, the underlying spiritual import of Simpol is forgiveness. When we accept that no one is really to blame for the global vicious circle we’re all embedded in, we truly see that we’re all in the same boat. We forgive ourselves and each other. We give up the ‘blame game’. Only by doing that can we reach a spiritual turning point in which truly inclusive global solutions might be envisaged: we take responsibility!”

To finish this post, I would say just this: Those of us trying to develop beyond our egos (“egos are wonderful servants, but dreadful masters”) refer to it as ‘the work’ and, as my kabbalah teacher said recently, it’s not called the ‘work’ for nothing. It is extremely hard work.

But the wages are good.