Political problem-solving on the spiritual level
Most people, surely, would agree that the world is in a dangerous and volatile state. The first decade of the 21st century saw us draw no closer to solving, collectively, the massive problems posed by climate change. Floods rage in Pakistan, landslides have brought death and destruction in China, people in the Niger region face famine, another huge mass of ice has broken away from the Arctic ice cap, yet we continue to rely on our dwindling supply of fossil fuels and are no nearer to reducing humanity’s over-mighty carbon footprint. Nor, indeed, do we appear to have any will even to discuss ways of tackling the nightmare of our continuous population growth. Worse still, we face an apparently ever-escalating ‘War on Terror’, which is effectively embroiling us in a conflict between religious groups of the sort we once imagined we had left behind in our medieval past.
The reason is that we are continuing to think and act on the very level of consciousness that got us into this planet-threatening mess in the first place. As Einstein suggests, the solutions to our complex problems lie in our as yet underdeveloped capacity to think from a higher level of consciousness – in this case, the spiritual level. This expression may mean somewhat different things to different people, but as far as the writers of this blog are concerned, thinking on the spiritual level means accepting that as individuals we are part of a greater whole and that what we do and even what we think will affect that whole, as well as ourselves, for good or ill. If what we do damages the whole, then we too will ultimately suffer. If we think only of our own interests, then we will damage the whole and therefore, in the long run, ourselves. This does not mean we have to neglect ourselves, of course, for we are part of the whole and should value ourselves and our place in the greater scheme.
The logical levels model used here is found in NLP: neurolinguistic programming, which is a form of therapy/psychology/way of understanding the mind and the mind-body connection, much used across a wide range of modern life and business coaching. In this model, the lowest level is that of environment (Where? When? With whom?); next comes consciousness at the level of behaviour (the activities going on in the environment). Above this come capabilities (the skills and knowledge we can bring to bear on the behaviour), which lead on to the next level, that of beliefs. Our beliefs, in turn are affected by our values, our motivation. Beliefs and values contribute to the next level, that of identity, a level at which we have become trapped, at our own great peril.
Thinking on the spiritual level, the level above identity, should not be confused with being religious, in the traditional sense: a sincere belief in the underlying principle of compassion and tolerance, if it forms an integral part of an individual’s religious/spiritual life will encourage thinking on the spiritual level, but ‘religious’ people can often fail dismally to think and act on the spiritual level, while non-believers may find it comes naturally to them.
In fact, many religious extremists are trapped by their religious beliefs into acting and thinking from the lower levels of beliefs, values and identity. Instead of seeing themselves as part of a whole, connected to numerous other parts, each of which has its place in the web of life, they see themselves as set apart, special, different, better than or, even worse, selected and empowered to subdue, dominate, control or even eliminate the rest of the whole, especially the human part of that whole.
War on Terror –crusades revisted?
The War on Terror (or whatever you choose to call it) offers a clear example of the dangers of thinking below the spiritual level. Without going here into great historical detail, the indisputable facts are these: the official reasons given by Al Qaida for the assault on the Twin Towers were the injustice meted out to the Palestinians and the general exploitation of the Middle East, including the presence of the American military in Saudi Arabia. The western powers, especially America, have indeed ruthlessly exploited the Middle East’s oil reserves to their own advantage, maintaining a range of autocratic kings, princelings and dictators in power in order to achieve this. In addition, we have backed Israel in its progressive land theft and its gross maltreatment of the Palestinian people, in clear violation of numerous United Nations resolutions.
By completely ignoring the effect on others of our own selfish actions, we brought upon ourselves a highly undesirable reaction. In response to that reaction, we again failed to act from the spiritual level. A spiritual response to the destruction of the towers might have included dealing with those responsible, of course, but also redressing the situation that had provoked this attack. We have done absolutely nothing to oblige Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, compensate the Palestinians for all their sufferings, negotiate with them (yes, including Hamas) and reach a viable peace settlement. Instead, we seized the opportunity to invade Iraq, a country which played no part whatsoever in the destruction of the Twin Towers, wrecking its infrastructure, bringing about bitter civil and religious strife, causing the deaths of well over a million of its citizens and the displacement of yet more, and leaving behind toxic dust from depleted nuclear weapons that has already cost the lives of untold numbers of children.
So ill-thought-out was our war in Afghanistan, meanwhile, that instead of capturing the leaders of Al Qaida (or indeed, finding any ultimate proof as to who really master-minded the attack on the Twin Towers), we have ended up supporting a regime that includes some of the vilest and most brutal drug barons in the entire world. As a result, opium production, reduced to a negligible size under the ghastly Taliban, has sky rocketed. Our (spiritual) claim that we were going to improve the lots of women remains largely unfulfilled, since the rulers we put in place have failed to give their support to those brave Afghan women who have tried to make our promises a reality. The war, in all its cruelty, has spread to hapless Pakistan, bringing that country ever closer to the tragedy of all-out civil war.
Pakistan flood appeal
And now, of course, the poor unfortunate people of Pakistan are facing the additional horror of the worst floods in their history. Time will tell whether these are a side effect of global warming or the normal, if ill-understood, workings of nature. What is clear is that the people of Pakistan now desperately need our help: they need us to think, feel and act from the spiritual level.
Sadly, this writer has recently had some unpleasant experiences which suggest that we may fail to rise to this challenge. The first was a round robin-type email, received yesterday, containing a range of vile racist jokes. (One example: ‘The rescue workers at the Pakistan flood area say that the smell of bodies is unbearable. They expect it to get worse when they start finding the dead ones.’) The second was an argument with a friend – a genuinely decent, loving person and an atheist – who sincerely believes that Muslims are far more dangerous than Christians or Jews (try explaining that to an Iraqi or a Palestinian). And the third was reading on the net that there has been a very disappointing response to appeals for help for Pakistan, from governmental levels downwards.
Thinking and acting on the spiritual level would reveal that we in the west have a chance here, for once, to show our better nature, to reach out and help those who are so much worse off than we are, to stop thinking in terms of ‘us versus them’ and ‘Muslim=extremist’ and, if we can do nothing more, at least give generously.
And the more we practice it, hopefully, the easier and more natural it will become for us all to start thinking on the spiritual level, recognize our common humanity, and start working towards finding solutions to our global problems instead of making them worse.
