Sacred America, Sacred World: Fulfilling Our MIssion in Service to All

Introduction

Have you ever felt dismayed by the state of our country and our world?

I have, and I suspect you have as well.

That dismay arises because of a deeper dream that lives in your heart and the heart of almost every American. It's a dream that goes far beyond the material fulfillment and worldly success that are the apex of the classic American Dream.

It's a recognition, on a soul level, that we are each part of something larger: a sacred plan. A destiny. A calling that goes beyond left and right politics.

We have a great and noble mission to be part of creating something magnificent with our country, something that lights up the world.

Our hearts sense that we are here to help advance that cause and create liberty and justice for all. That phrase resounds through our history because it is a call for us to remember why we are really here.

We are not here simply to create a wonderful life for ourselves and our children (although that's a fine start). We are here to demonstrate what is possible as a society and to boldly forge a brighter future with opportunity and prosperity, peace and security, health and justice.

That's why we each feel dismay and heartache with the painful evidence on the news that we're not yet accomplishing what we are here to do. When we are failing to create something extraordinary with our nation, it hurts something deep within us. We can blame our politicians, as most of us do. We can blame our system for being rigged. We can blame our fellow citizens for being deluded.

But this doesn't change the fact that each and every one of us can do something about it.

In fact, we must take responsibility for being the change we want to see if we are to fulfill our mission. The truth is that we didn't choose to be born in this amazing country to entertain ourselves until we die. We came here to create something special.

Fulfilling the deeper mission of America will require a contribution from all of us. Even if we've sat on the sidelines of elections. Even if we've never gotten politically involved. Even if we feel hopeless to create change. None of those stances are worthy of the nobility in our souls. We are made of finer stuff.

This book is a manifesto to help you wake up, stand in your sacred power, and take wise and effective action in the service of us fulfilling our collective mission, while expressing your own personal mission along the way. It's a book about politics that is also deeply spiritual because that is the only way our politics are going to become something we can be proud of.

It is designed to help us align our country with a higher plan, to expand our vision for what is possible, to forge innovative solutions, and to embody our sacred values for real. It's about becoming evolutionaries who build the America of tomorrow rather than impatient revolutionaries who shout ideological slogans rehearsing the past.

To do this, we will have to go beyond partisan warfare to embrace those with other political views as our deepest allies. They are also part of the team that is here to help America shine. Yes, even the people you can't stand.

In short, we need to open to a vision of possibility for our country, one in which we successfully navigate the crises, polarizations, and political warfare of today to create a country that reflects our highest ideals and that truly serves the birth of a new, global era for humanity, one that is peaceful, sustainable, healthy, and prosperous.

If you choose to take this journey with me, you will be challenged to let go of your judgments and biases—the many ways that you protect yourself and close your heart.

You'll be invited to embrace the full spectrum of American political values and integrate the virtues that each political orientation represents. You'll be called to stand passionately for your views while opening to embrace what you might have seen as the opposition.

You'll also be invited to face America's shadow in the service of a deeper kind of patriotism that challenges us to rise to our potential. We'll look squarely at the face of genocide, slavery, and discrimination so that we can emerge more whole and committed to an America that is built on oneness, respect, and love.

After we've illuminated the path to reunite our American family, we'll explore real solutions in contentious areas, from strengthening our families to evolving our schools to stopping global warming to stabilizing the Middle East to reforming our banking. I'll show how we can forge great, bipartisan solutions more effectively than ever before.

You'll also be invited to think seriously and strategically about our long-term future and how we can create real breakthroughs with media, grassroots organizing, new forms of transpartisan political engagement, and, ultimately, forms of governance that put an end to our planet's long era of war.

As we undertake this journey, I want you to feel seen and respected for who you are and the beliefs you bring to the table, whether you are a Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, or Socialist. I will also invite you to stretch outside your comfort zone to become a more mature, thoughtful, and collaborative citizen.

Ultimately, this book is about building a movement of awake, conscious, and caring citizens who are powerfully committed to building a new era for America.

If you are willing to overturn some of your assumptions, open to a more unitive view, and roll up your sleeves to get to work, Sacred America, Sacred World will guide you, challenge you, and empower you to fulfill your highest role.

In this introduction, I am speaking to you directly because you have many things competing for your attention and time. I am asking you to let go of your other activities for a time and undertake a journey with me into the heart of our democracy and the heights of our shared mission.

My promise to you is that if you invest your time in reading this book, it will help you to play your unique role as a citizen of this great nation and a soul who is here to birth a better world. It will help you transform bitter partisanship and reunite our American family.

This book is thus an investment that I believe will pay dividends for you, your loved ones, and the future of our country.

Before we go further, I want to spend a bit of time sharing with you my personal journey, which began in political slumbers, passed through a phase of disillusionment, entered into the partisan fray, and ultimately arrived at a deeper level of understanding. My journey is a microcosm of the larger story of our country as we seek a higher possibility. In sharing my story, I invite you to reflect on the forces, values, and beliefs that have shaped yours. In this way, we can each begin to understand and then let go of our old identities and meet in a shared common ground as fellow Americans.

Growing up in Duluth, Minnesota, with my parents Bill and Connie and my brother Mike, I felt comfortably distant from American politics. Duluth is far from Washington, DC, literally and psychologically, as well as one of the chilliest places in the lower forty-eight states, averaging just eight degrees above zero for all of January. Nonetheless, it has a warm and welcoming community, well stocked with Scandinavians and other hardy peoples of the north. Neighbors were always eager to help, whether with chicken soup if you were sick or a snowplow if you were snowed in. We were blessed by endless acres of forests and the vast, shimmering beauty of Lake Superior, which made us all feel prosperous in natural wealth. We enjoyed a life of middle-class comfort, with top-rated public schools, more parks than we could visit, and plentiful programs for swimming, baseball, soccer, and more. People had aspirations and ambitions, but it was mostly for a settled and comfortable middle-class life.

My parents were actively involved in the community through their jobs—my father as Duluth's city attorney and my mom as a counselor for high school students and displaced homemakers—and through our Episcopal church, which reached out to the poor and marginalized. There were certainly many people in Duluth who were stuck in abusive marriages, alcoholic, or living in abject poverty. But the numbers of such people seemed small in comparison to the large and relatively content middle class. On the whole, Duluth was a modestly prosperous and healthy community—a positive example of American culture.

Local politics would periodically intrude when my father worried over his job. As the city attorney, he was a pawn in the chess match between the city council and the mayor. And because he was appointed by the mayor, he could be fired at any time. My father managed to survive decades at his post—a testament to his balanced temperament—but the crossfire exacted a toll, leaving a vague feeling in our family that politics was a life-negating force. That was the extent of my involvement with politics while growing up, aside from reading about national politics, which felt very far away.

I carried this arms-length relationship with politics into my undergraduate years at Stanford University, where I was more interested in neurobiology and psychology than politics. I read enough to be informed, though, and gradually questioned more seriously the integrity with which our country was run. But I did not truly engage the process of political change. Real change, in my view at that time, came from growth in human consciousness.

And so I devoted myself to the latest frontiers of psychology, philosophy, science, and healing. I devoured the work of pioneers of human psychology like Carl Jung, Stanislav Grof, and A. H. Almaas and integral philosophers like Sri Aurobindo, Michael Murphy, and Ken Wilber. I opened to a mystical understanding of Christianity and Sufism. I studied Hinduism and kabbalah, bodywork and aikido, meditation and shamanism—anything that promised to deliver greater wisdom. I did many ten-day silent meditation retreats and entered into a training for Holotropic Breathwork, which opened new vistas beyond the everyday mind.

During this time, Washington, DC, felt like gazing backward; it lacked the dynamism and power of the worlds I was discovering. So I largely stayed disengaged.

My real political awakening happened in 2003, when I finally allowed myself to feel heartrending dismay with the state of our country, which had grown militaristic, reactive, and fearful. The events of 9/11 could have opened the floodgates of America's heart; instead we gave in to the tyranny of revenge and war. After years of being disengaged, I finally woke up to my duty to get involved. I began to understand on a visceral level that our leaders were my representatives and my emissaries to the rest of the world.

Recognizing that my cool distance had been a form of silent support, I saw that I had to take more personal responsibility for America's policies and call forth something better from our people. Indeed, I began to see that my passion for positive change in psychology, health, spirituality, business, and other realms could not find its full and final expression until our political system passed laws and policies that supported a peaceful, sustainable, healthy, and prosperous world.

After beginning to write articles, volunteer for political campaigns, and speak truth about our political system, I kept returning to the evolutionary ideals and liberating spiritual practices I had ardently cultivated during the previous decade. I intuitively knew that they held a vital key for our political process to reflect our highest aspirations. Mahatma Gandhi had built his Indian liberation movement on disciplined spiritual practices that became satyagraha, a Hindu term Gandhi coined that literally means truth force. With a foundation of equanimity and inner strength, satyagrahis were able to apply nonviolence in powerful ways that eventually called both the British and Indians to higher ground. Martin Luther King Jr. carried the same torch of nonviolent, spiritually based engagement that lifts people on both sides of a divide, producing profound evolution while addressing injustice.

As I sought a marriage, within my own being, of spiritual understanding and political passion, something beautiful began to emerge for the first time: a patriotic love for our country that felt intimately connected to our collective higher purpose. It took the form of a faint but growing recognition that the greatness of America's soul has yet to find its full expression, either politically or spiritually. While many celebrate our past accomplishments as the mark of America's exceptionalism, our true greatness lies in a deeper kind of service to the world that lies in our future. I began to see that our higher mission is about America demonstrating real leadership in helping to create a world that works for all.

As I came to these realizations, my certainty grew that our soul's code as a country is built on timeless ideals and a spirit of service that can eventually lead us to fulfill its promise. The America I truly love is one in which the greed, self-interest, and corruption have been washed away to reveal a radiant gift for the world: a society designed as an enlightened template to empower the best in humanity.

Our founders embedded universal ideals into the vision for our country, ideals that, while they have never been perfectly enacted, did put us on the path to throw off the shackles of old social orders and eventually create liberty and justice for all, which is still a mighty and worthy goal.

In 2003, Dennis Kucinich was the first national political leader I found who carried an aspirational vision for our country that was also grounded in deep spiritual principles. He was just beginning his presidential campaign, and in him I found a kindred spirit. While his campaign never became competitive, it provided an opportunity to turn my growing passion into action, beginning with hosting a large fundraiser for him in San Rafael, California, that featured authors Ram Dass, Shakti Gawain, and Jack Kornfield, as well as music, poetry, and mobilizing. Almost two hundred people gathered that night for passionate political talks, singing, and funky dancing. It was a new kind of political happening, and it was electric!

A frenzy of activity followed this exhilarating first night, as I created a kind of Chautauqua tour of new-paradigm political events. I organized a speaker's bureau of pioneers, authors, and musicians to bring some on the road to places like Chico, Davis, Grass Valley, and Sonoma. In our grassroots tour of Convergences we would find wise souls in each town who were awakening from anti-political slumber to bring a higher possibility into our political discourse.

It was an initiation into the practicalities of campaigning and an eye-opening exposure to the deeper hunger in America's citizens to have a political process that elevates us and speaks to our highest vision rather than forcing us to focus just on beating an opponent. In the course of this journey, I was hooked on forging a new kind of politics. The most satisfying aspect was finding others who had similarly yearned to have their whole being—body, mind, and soul—fully welcomed into politics.

During that period of full-throttle engagement, several people encouraged me to run for office myself someday, which I had never previously considered. I took a serious look at the matter and eventually decided that seeking elected office would not be the best channel for my skills. My talents lie more in the direction of visionary strategy. By forging new organizations, media, and writings, I can help sculpt a vision of where we are going and offer a practical roadmap of strategies to get there. I can plant seeds of change wherever the soil is ready and influence political leaders on both sides of the aisle as well as everyday citizens.

Over the years, my political orientation has evolved still further. I've supported candidates in races for Congress, the Senate, and the presidency, but I've also shifted my focus to influencing our current elected officials rather than mainly backing candidates who share my views. I've learned, through working with groups such as the Friends Committee on National Legislation, that one of the most important responsibilities of citizenship is to support, influence, and empower our elected officials to make the best choices they can, day in and day out, rather than focus solely on the next round of elections.

My political work has also evolved beyond championing progressive candidates and policies to encouraging evolution of our political culture, both left and right. While my politics still lean strongly progressive, as I've matured, I increasingly see that fulfilling our country's mission will require the best skills, insights, and policies from across the political spectrum, including conservatives, Libertarians, and moderates. Learning to respect and honor the full political spectrum leads to a stronger end result than competing with a political enemy.

That recognition informs this entire book, which harvests the best of what I've learned in my journey of integrating spirit and politics, left and right positions, visionary future possibilities and the pragmatism of what it takes to create change. And from that vantage I now consider myself a transpartisan progressive, a term we'll explore later but that speaks to finding a higher ground in which all are honored for their views.

I have also learned that we need to transcend charismatic figures. Millions of us grew enamored with Barack Obama and the message of hope he carried powerfully in the campaign of 2008. On his victory night, I shed tears of joy that America had evolved to the level of electing a man of mixed race and stirring vision to the presidency, beginning to heal a racial schism that has long festered in our hearts. We attended the 2009 inauguration with millions of others and stood shivering on the National Mall, delighted to be part of this historic moment, waving our flags with patriotic pride.

But then, during his presidency, my elation became tempered with times of disillusionment: frustration with his appointments and policies, the fading notion of grassroots change, and partisan stalemates. In many ways, these disillusionments were necessary to dissipate the expectations many of us had for a political messiah figure. It's easier now to see the limitations of putting too much hope and expectation on anyone, including the president of the United States. It is actually a form of our political immaturity to expect someone to save and protect us rather than to stand in our own power and patiently help our system and people to evolve. Our political maturation means removing excess hope and excess resentment from our political figures, while offering our personal best in service to the collective challenges we face.

This holds true even if the elected leader does not share our political party. If history is our guide, we will spend about half of our lives under political leadership that does not come from our favored party. We can either spend those years resentful, frustrated, and scheming to take our power back—as much of America now does—or we can see these times as opportunities to work with people of different temperaments and values toward a shared goal of America becoming a shining light unto the world.

I now firmly believe that a single political party or ideology cannot deliver the kind of healthy, integrated, evolutionary growth that will lead America to fulfill its mission. Cultural evolution is a slow and often meandering process with many opportunities to regress. Both Democratic and Republican political positions hold value; indeed, as I've passed through the challenges of starting and successfully growing my own company, I have deepened my appreciation of free enterprise and how important it is not to restrain America's entrepreneurial engines. I've seen how the discipline, caution, and personal responsibility championed by Republicans build character and a stronger business. I have joked that I've had to integrate my inner Republican to become a better CEO, recognizing that some of what I once judged holds value for creating a healthy, profitable, and responsible business.

On a larger scale, I've grown to see how the evolution of our country to the next level of our potential requires the best of all of us—Republicans and Democrats, Libertarians and Greens. Our task is thus not just about getting the right party elected or even finding the right leader but about evolving our political process itself so that it generates greater wisdom and reflects the best in us. We need real, long-term solutions, and they are found in all value systems and in all parties. As we learn to appreciate alternative positions, we can help grow a healthier political culture where opponents become allies and adversaries become friends.

So the book you are holding represents the fruits of my political journey, one that started off as more radically left wing and has evolved to appreciate and even integrate positions that I once judged as of the old guard. While I still believe in progressive ideals and the vision of the future they hold, I now see that to evolve America still further, conservative and traditional values are often required to keep things working well. There's a positive evolutionary tension that progressive and conservative values create so that our movement forward is more measured, thoughtful, and grounded.

This complementarity is important to recognize and honor because it's clear that our country and our world are going through a historic shift in what we can think of as the operating system that runs our lives. Just as our computers are periodically upgraded with new and more sophisticated operating systems, so too are we evolving a new global consciousness and culture that will, in turn, transform every realm of human endeavor. We are evolving into one people on planet earth, and the walls between us are slowly but surely coming down in spite of the violence,