In the Days After the Election: Interesting Psychology & Energy Challenges

I hear that, immediately after the election, Rush Limbaugh has called Obama a thug, and has misquoted his acceptance speech to make it seem that Obama is scoffing at individuality, among other things. I don't listen to Rush, as I can't stand his voice and violence, but a friend of mine in Germany who only has Armed Forces radio, listens to him as a counterpoint to Ed Schultz, and he says Limbaugh is an "intellectual psychopath" which I think is quite apt. No one calls this man on his outrageously hate-filled accusations.

It is the cleverness of the dying ego—that's what I think the whole nastiness in the Republican party is about anymore. The party used to have integrity, but now it seems to be mainly kneejerk reactions, and a desire to indulge in being able to express bile, rage, and hate for virtually any reason, as though projecting blame is the only thing that's satisfying. The Course in Miracles teaches that projecting blame and punishment onto others is a method the ego-mind uses to keep from having to feel the underlying ego death (and simultaneous soul emergence) and the fears that the ego is trying to keep suppressed.

As a people, we Americans are healing some deep psychological wounds, and many of us aren't willing to admit there's a problem. The country must now go through a "self-recovery" process similar to that which any psychologically wounded individual must. I am really ready for Obama to continue recentering the people and calling up the original motivations of our country's destiny, to help us all pull together and get back to work, to pull jobs back, to pull soldiers back, to clean up our boundaries concerning illegal immigrants, etc. These are all the same things a single person needs to do in a psychological growth process to get healthy again after a period of physical, emotional, and mental abuse. For that is what we've been living through, and like any abused person who stays with their abuser, we've been in denial, big-time.

Where is our national character? Instead of doing the really hard work of honestly assessing our weaknesses and wounds, then finding a way to reactivate our truth and love, people want to be patriotic and proud of their country, which is national ego. Honestly, there's not much to be proud of lately—we've compromised our character in so many ways. And, I don't think we can even be patriotic in the old sense of the word anymore. We need a new kind of national identity, similar to the kind of presence a mature spiritual person has—think, Dalai Lama here—that allows us to be uniquely what we are without being puffed up, defensive, aggressive, and separatist. We have to develop high levels of respect for all other countries and peoples.

I saw Obama's face when he was on The Daily Show the night before the election, and it was calm, eyes soft and large, a wide smile, and literally, light was radiating off his face. There was no racial "color" to his face, just light. I was stopped in my tracks at the sight. I thought, "What happens to a person who has been talking to audiences of 10 to 50 to 100,000 people everyday, several times a day, for 2 years? How much energy has he run through his body, emotions, and mind? How much has he given? And received? Wow! Talk about transformation! What will be interesting now is to see if/how he continues to run the same intensity of energy when not aided by crowds. How will his new energy "skill" translate into the day-to-day business of the presidency?

I think we're going to see a new way of being President emerging. And it's going to be fascinating. It's a different scope than Obama used in campaigning, a penetration into a tight, complex Gordian knot of problems, and it's going to take immense intelligence, diplomacy, new perception, steadiness, patience, vision, hope, and confidence. These are things I think are close to the heart of what caused our country to come into existence--our core values. I hope people of all "parties" can recognize what's real and good, and not be attached to the outer wrapping of the gift, or to just being right. These days, being inflexibly "right" is getting very close to being "dead right." Our fluid world can't tolerate stubborn, immobile ideas that block that intensifying flow.