"I of my own knowledge…"

Nothing in our life is more dualistic than the concept of elections. In any given race, only one person can win; at least one person, and often more, must lose. It’s hard to turn that situation into a win-win. I wonder, sometimes, that we get any cooperation at all out of our elected representatives, given that their first priority, if they want to be reelected, must be to claim all possible credit and cast all possible blame upon their opposite numbers. If they don’t play the game that way, chances are they will be defeated and replaced by someone else who will.

Years ago I read a very enlightening book by a man named Charles Hampden-Turner called Radical Man , in which he argued, from a psychological viewpoint, that when people spend enough time seeing things in a dualistic manner, they can lose the ability to perceive opportunities for cooperation across whatever lines separate them from their opponents.

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In the final couple of days of the long election process, there is one effective thing we as individuals can still do, to work for a beneficial outcome. Inner work. It doesn’t look effective to the outside world, but the inner world shapes the outer.

If you want this election to put this country on the right course, here’s something you can do. Take a few minutes, get into a quiet mental place, and do the following meditation. Do it with emotion. Feel what you want, and put that feeling into the visualization.

Visualize this:

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