Global Sense: Self rule and personal democracy

September 21, 4:39 PMPolitical Issues ExaminerJudah Freed

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Global Sense by Judah Freed
(www.MakeGlobalSense.com)

In the book excerpt last weekend, I mentioned mindful self rule and personal democracy as means of changing the world by changing ourselves. What do I mean by these terms?

Mindful self rule is the art of making ethical or moral choices about how we live. For example, when I quit smoking cigarettes in 1990, that was an act of mindful self rule. When I sit beside a river to peacefully commune with the God of my understanding, that is an act of mindful self rule. When I’ve chosen in the privacy of my heart to forgive myself, my family, my friends and my neighbors for real or perceived injuries, that’s very definitely an act of mindful self rule.

Personal democracy is the art of expressing mindful self rule within the world. When I offer amends to anyone I’ve treated badly, that’s an act of personal democracy. When I buy organic food grown close to my home city, that’s personal democracy. When I go to a peaceful rally to protest civil liberties abuses,  that’s personal democracy. When I vote my conscience on election day, that’s very definitely an act of personal democracy.

Inner self rule and outer personal democracy interact. In Taoism, feminine yin energy stimulates masculine yang energy as yang stimulates yin, forming a dynamic loop.

In much the same way, self rule stimulates personal democracy as personal democracy stimulates self rule. Said in practical terms, our hearts and minds shape our words and deeds as our words and deeds shape our hearts and minds. In this way, we create our personal and social reality.

What if our inner choices conflict with our outer actions? Takeo Doi describes our inner struggles in The Anatomy of Self. Japanese culture, he explains, sees the difference between outer face (omote) and inner truth (ura). Social standards or mores (tatemae) may disagree with our inner knowledge of what is natural and right (honne). Tension between these forces can twist us into knots.

I’d add that the conflict between social rules and inner knowing opens us to the allure of kings, messiahs, shoguns, emirs, dictators, and other masters promising us the comforts of mindless obedience — the opposite of mindful self rule.

Fully practicing mindful self rule and personal democracy hinges on knowing the true nature and power of interactive communication. We’ll discuss later how communication drives the process of “sense-making” behind our choices.

What I want you to see now is that we form our lives and our communities through the ways we interact daily, by design or by default. Changing how we communicate changes the world where we communicate. Treating others with more compassion, for example, creates a more compassionate world.

Consider the oneness of the Creator and the Created. If all that exists is God (by any name), since we exist, we are part of God. If this is so, as we evolve, God evolves. If we evolve with God, we are co-creators, which has profound political implications to be explored in the coming weeks.

On this earth where every one of us lives and breathes and has our being, we each share "stewardship" responsibility for co-creating the Creation. Our global connectivity means each of us is globally powerful, perhaps infinitely powerful. Pretending to be powerless is an excuse we use to avoid personal and social responsibility for using our global power wisely.

“Who is powerful?” asked Benjamin Franklin. “He that governs his passions.” Here is the meaning of self government.

NOTE: The above is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Global Sense. Every weekend until further notice, I will post one or two excerpts from the book to stimulate your mind and evoke your comments. These excerpts will be marked, "Global Sense" in the posting title, just like this posting. Subscribing to this column is your best way to catch all the installments.

Your feedback will be welcome. You could help improve the next edition.