A while back, I was driving from Austin to Beaumont for a gig and stopped in Brenham to gas up the Kia. Right next door to the convenience store where I was filling my tank is a self car wash. On the brick wall of the car wash stall closest to where I was is an electronic sign that scrolls messages and advertisements. As I pumped gas, a message appeared on the sign: God Bless America!
For a moment, I felt the usual affirmative response that I, like most Americans, have experienced most of my life. “Yes, God Bless America.” Then, something unexpected occurred to me and a profound new awareness took up residence in my mind. This patriotic sentiment that I had first learned in grade school and heard echoed by every American president in my lifetime at the end of virtually every formal public address, was no longer big enough to satisfy my deepest spiritual truth.
At first, I felt irritation at myself, and to be completely truthful, everyone else who had ever uttered “God Bless America” at any time in their life. In that moment, for the first time in my life, I truly had a clarity that I could no longer deny. “God bless America” has simply become too limited of a vision. We need a bigger, broader, more universal vision. The prayerful intention every single American should be affirming is more appropriately: “God Bless the World…and everyone in it!”
Before I go any further, and so that I am being perfectly clear on this point, I love America and I love being an American. There is a lot of beauty in America and deep in the hearts of every single American, without exception. However, there is also beauty in every single nation and culture on the planet, as well as deep in the hearts of every single person on the planet. Why do we, as Americans, so often believe we are the only ones entitled to some sort of “manifest destiny” of the “elect” that God has promised solely to us? Energetically, it has begun to feel like, “God bless America! But, the rest of you, not so much.”
Like a growing number of increasingly vocal Americans, I am deeply troubled by many of the political changes going on in and with our country. To be fair, I am also joyous over many of the changes I am personally witnessing within my own self and in others all over my life. However, putting aside political arguments about the size and scope of government, and whether a national health care plan will lead us down the road to destruction or not, I am more troubled by our social and political divisiveness. We can’t even agree on a harmonious unified vision for ourselves. How deeply arrogant of us to attempt to export our way of life to other nations around the world when ours is about as dysfunctional as can be.
To me, the only way America can effectively lead itself or the world to a bigger vision is if we first realize one for ourselves first, manifest and demonstrate it here, and then export it. This vision should be beyond party affiliation for there is no practical way that a two party system can efficiently speak to the needs of the most diverse national population on the planet. The “aisles” that divide us should be obliterated. We should seek first what we have in common, that which unites us with one another, rather than differences that divide us.
To me, everyone on the planet is a child of God…period! I am unconcerned by what name anyone calls their God, for a name is just a word; and, a word is just a symbol of a symbol. Whatever name one calls the Divine Intelligence that animates and motivates the universe is inconsequential to me and, for me, is not a matter for division or debate. So, feel free to use whatever name appeals to you, but for me, God works just fine. And, in my view, we are all God’s children and it is all holy land, every square inch of this amazing planet and every single living human being populating it.
Not just America, or Israel, or Iraq, or China, India, Japan or England, or even Austin, Texas, where I live, but ALL of it. It is all holy land, because it is all God-given, or God created. I did not create it. You did not create it. Nor, has anyone who has ever lived created the “substance” from which we create. That came from God and it is the cosmic “stuff” from which we all come forth into existence. It is also to this cosmic stuff to which we return when our time on the planet has ended.
We are all holy children of one large spiritual family of human beings. We may not like what some of our family members are doing, but that doesn’t change the truth that we all come forth from the same source and that we are one, whether everyone realizes this truth or not. This “source” is the foundation and the essence of our commonality. As we attune ourselves to and affirm this one simple truth, a unified vision of the planet will emerge from the apparent chaos and manifest itself into our daily reality. This new reality will most certainly be a more refined, spiritually balanced vision of unity, cooperation and peace, rather than the current divisive and polarized dysfunction we are currently experiencing in America and around the globe.
In America, our dysfunction will not be solved by a government takeover of health care. We will not solve it by the creation of a new Federal agency, or a new law, or printing more money. Our dysfunction will only be healed by manifesting a bold new “spiritual” vision grounded in unity and universalism. This cannot be legislated. It must spring up from within each one of us and become what we demonstrate.
The most important thing America can ever export to the world is not democracy or capitalism, but rather a consciousness of universal oneness. Only in “oneness” is there peace. We must become more than just Americans. We must become citizens of the entire planet and our prayers should be for everything and everyone everywhere. For me, anything short of this is simply too limited a vision to pledge my allegiance.
This is the only vision that interests me, and it is the vision I am willing to spend the balance of my life articulating and demonstrating to the world. I do believe and deeply feel there is a shift in consciousness rippling around the planet and I am exhilarated to be alive at this time and participating in it. I know I am not alone, and I am grateful for everyone everywhere already holding this intention for the planet. Now, let’s turn up the volume!
Stay Tuned In…