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0000-00-00 0000-00-00 2008-11-16
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Letter to Rob Brezsny from Christopher White
As a Libran who has followed your work for a long time, I value your creative insight into how we as individuals should cultivate our authentic selves. I look forward to your weekly horoscopes and never cease to be impressed by their beautiful voice, vivid imagery and cunning provocations. Were they ever removed from the ether that surrounds us, I would be greatly disappointed.I wanted to say this because although I think I understand your decision to endorse Barack Obama and to use your platform to promote his election (it is certainly your right as an American), it nonetheless jars to see you discard the robe of the devoted shaman in favor of the garb of K Street lobbyist. As all the world's seekers of truth know, the world seems ever in ferment. That ferment is mostly an illusion, typically of our own making. Any differences between Barack Obama and John McCain are not so vast that a Washington bureaucracy and the quotidian demands of a generally unenlightened people will not eliminate those differences fairly soon after election. For me (and probably many others), it is less meaningful that you endorsed Obama over McCain than that you thought a political endorsement was necessary at all -- for while all politics is indeed local, the ultimate locus in our strivings should be our own hearts and minds. In my opinion, a shaman only promotes the persistence of illusion by advocating a candidate for chieftain to the tribe. Persistent illusion is the core nature of those who seek power over others, and the artifacts such seekers contrive to acquire this power and preserve its luminosity for the masses are well known. By the very act of running for president, Barack Obama and John McCain should stand suspect in the eyes of those who would liberate their own life and the lives of others from the confines of convention, spiritual coercion and cultural homogeneity. I do not mean this cynically, anarchically or even hopelessly. It is just that those who would strive earnestly to know themselves and free their wills from the chains of the now, will never do so through any avatar of left-wing hope, right-wing faith or unwinged realpolitik. The nature of the political beast is to deny freedom to some, while granting freedom to others, all in the name of whatever ism happens to be popular with the beast at the moment. As a result, Barack Obama or John McCain can no more free Americans to realize their true potential than George Bush can free us from terrorism by killing every angry Muslim on the planet. Nor should they. Given the fractious nature of our earth's civil life, the job of American president relative to "we the people" will always be, for a practical matter, far less transformative than any campaign or political operative would have us think. So while we may congregate and agitate for change, the mere fact that we do so probably means we have yet to see the truth before our very own eyes. From this perspective, it seems to me that any endorsement of Obama or McCain is a distraction from the journey and would have been better left alone. I thought I would share this view with you, since I admire your work in all other respects. Sincerely, Christopher White Las Vegas, Nevada |
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© 1995-2008 -- Rob Brezsny. All rights reserved
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