American society has become charged with hatred, of which mass shootings are the most spectacular expression.

This hatred did not come out of nowhere. It must have been always there just below the surface. It must stem in large part from our primate tribalism. We have an innate need for us-them thinking and feeling, driven by fear of “them,” and certain circumstances in the last few years have made different groups appear to be, and perhaps actually to be, more of a mutual existential threat than they were before.

Once a person can look within and clearly see that his or her adversarial relationship with another group stems at least partly from his or her own psychological need for such a relationship, the need and the negative emotions will largely disappear.

The way to look within is meditation, so Americans (and everyone) need to meditate more and orient their lives more around the goal of their meditation. With meditation, the negative emotions will largely disappear. When deep in meditation, it is impossible to hate. People who meditate will make better political decisions.

Is Marianne Williamson the candidate of meditation? I think it’s clear that she would indeed promote meditation and psychotherapy, and I think that when she speaks of going deep and treating causes, not symptoms, one deep cause that is likely important in her mind is everyone’s deep psychological need for an adversarial relationship with other groups.

And underlying even that need is the need to cling to our egos, and, as a corollary, the delusion that happiness can be found through a selfish search for the pleasures that the world seems to offer, rather than finding it deep within, deeper than the level of the ego.

I feel that Williamson thinks, correctly, that as president she could advance a “know thyself” agenda. However, the benefits of meditation in terms of political decision-making are not tangible benefits, and I think she tries too hard to portray them as tangible in order to prove that they exist. (E.g., Donald Trump is not going to be beaten just by insider politics talk. He’s not going to be beaten just by somebody who has plans. He’s going to be beaten by somebody who has an idea what this man has done. This man has reached into the psyche of the American people and he has harnessed fear for political purposes.) Moreover, her admiration for the real insight that various spiritual teachers have achieved may have led her to accept various unscientific things that those teachers have believed.

Those are not fatal flaws. A more serious flaw is her championing of abortion rights. This is not entirely a failure of looking within; there are self-aware people, and loving people, on both sides of the abortion issue. The love that exists within pro-choice people and that they direct toward others bypasses one big human group mainly because of a problem of perception. Nevertheless, when Williamson calls* for “an emotional and psychological uprising,” I think that her ability to lead such an uprising is compromised and that many loving Americans won’t follow her. (See also “The 2020 Election: Is It Love versus Fear?”)

What we need is a pro-life (and perhaps slightly more scientifically-rigorous) Marianne Williamson.

We must not be surprised when we hear of murders, killings, of wars, or of hatred. If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other?

–Mother Teresa of Calcutta

* At 3:10 in the video.

© 2019

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