These days, in conversations and in emails, I am often asked, “What can I do about what is happening in the world?” If the questioner is an American citizen, their question focuses upon President Trump and the billionaire Elon Musk and their destructuring of the American government (at least as it has been). Even non-Americans ask me about this, but there are also many other hurtful things going on in the world that are causing suffering and pain. How do we deal with the times in which we are living?
This is not a simple question for which there is a simple answer. All I can share is my personal perspective and approach.
Start with Love
Let’s start by addressing an important issue: whatever I do, whatever actions I take, how can I do it so as not to add to the problem?
The questioner almost always goes further, saying, “I know I’m supposed to be a loving person, but how can I love ….. (insert name of a chosen politician, world leader, billionaire, celebrity, or some other hated person)?”
From my perspective, the answer to this latter question depends on an understanding and appreciation of how the subtle world—in particular, the subtle environment—works.
Let’s imagine that I have come across a virulent, nasty—and spreading—toxic waste dump. It’s a danger since the chemicals and sewage that are present contain elements that are pathogenic and likely deadly.
I don’t have to love this toxic waste dump, and I don’t have to accept that it’s just part of the environment now. I don’t want that toxic dump to be part of my world, but I can’t begin to clean it up if every time I visit it, I bring along and dump my own toxic products into it. Then I become a contributor to its spreading.
No, what I need to do is develop strategies that can contain the expansion of this toxic material and skillfully work to clean it up. Among other things, this will include accessing sources of purification. I need to replace the toxic land and soil with healthy soil, fed by clean water. I need to restore wholeness to the environment, and this means being able to tap into wholeness myself.
Dealing with human toxic waste dumps requires a two-pronged approach, neither of which benefits from adding our own distress, fear, and hatred into the mix.
On the one hand, each person needs to see what strategies he or she can undertake to contain and clean up the negativity. This might be taking political action or economic action (supporting those who are dealing directly with the containment and clean-up strategies). I might, for instance, run for office with the intent of bringing new vision, hope, and ideas into the political morass—or I might identify and support someone who is doing so.
On the other hand, what actions and strategies might I take in my everyday life that alter the overall understanding of the environment so that people stop creating toxic waste dumps in the first place? What visions of the world’s wholeness can I embody that do not simply go along with “business as usual,” but that change our relationship to the planet and to each other?
In other words, where possible, I want to address both the specific problem to prevent it from getting worse or doing more damage and the larger context of expectation, attitude, and behavior that allowed the problem to arise in the first place. For instance, how do my attitudes and behaviors possibly contribute to a worldview that allows toxic waste dumps to be created in the environment? Perhaps the change I want to see begins with me.
Whatever I do, including changing myself, I want to do it with love. Why? For two good reasons.
First, it keeps me from generating and injecting my own toxic energies of fear or hatred into the subtle environment, where it becomes part of the energy environment we all must deal with.
Second, it aligns me with spiritual forces of hope and inspiration, healing and blessing, forces that can greatly augment my own personal efforts. In my metaphor above, it puts me in touch with resources of purity and renewal that act to bring wholeness and healing into the energy environment.
Sometimes, it’s not at all easy to do this. When we see how a person in power is misusing that power, when we see corruption at work, when we see innocent people being harmed, of course we’re likely to feel anger. Anger lifts us out of apathy and fear; it is a powerful force for good when properly utilized. But if not, it simply adds to the toxicity of our world when we just broadcast it out of frustration or weaponize and focus it upon a person, whose own psychic immune system is likely to reflect it back. It leads to more anger and a potential loss of hope. I need to be better in order to do better.
I discovered a powerful approach through my experience with surgery and intense pain. While parts of my body dealt with cancer and suffering, other parts remained perfectly healthy. By attuning to these healthy areas and calling upon them as allies to comfort and heal the parts in pain, I found the pain diminished. I was able to find balance.
There’s toxicity in the world, but there’s a lot that is beautiful, uplifting, empowering, encouraging, hopeful, and healthy. These can be sources of positive energy for us.
This principle extends beyond the physical. When I tune into the subtle realms, it's like a radio with various frequencies. Some channels overflow with healthy life and blessing. In these frequencies, life flows in service to all beings. Yes, there are also frequencies filled with pain and obstruction, largely emanating from human behavior. It’s not a matter of choosing one over the other but of attuning to one in order to bring healing to the other.
If I’m going to confront and transform maliciousness and toxicity, it helps if I can draw on sources of wholeness and renewal, either from the Light within us or from outer sources that inspire and put us in touch with a source of inspiration and empowerment. It also helps if I don’t give energy to negativity that can further pollute the subtle environment, thus adding energy and force to the very conditions I want to banish. Love enables me to do both.
Jesus said for us to love our enemies. He never said for us to condone their actions or behavior; he never encouraged us to be passive and accepting of the toxic waste dumps among us.
The trick is to act with love, grounded in our own spiritual practices of wholeness and attunement, but nevertheless, to act in whatever skillful way is open to us. We are far from helpless, unless we choose to be hopeless.
My wife Julie wisely wrote: "We knew we incarnated into a time of transition and have never really known what that would look like, but here we are. This is what we all came for: to hold bright love and presence and to keep joy while the unknown future stares us in the face. Our work is to hold the best of humanity that we can, and hold resonance with the new while the old stuff gets worked out.”
Subtle Activism
When thinking about the planetary, national, or local situation I wish to transform, my first step is to bring a loving heart and mind to guide my actions. But then, what can I do?
When someone asks me this question, I have to assume they do so not expecting me to answer as a politician, an economist, or a community activist, as these are not my fields of expertise. They are asking me because of my insight into the subtle and spiritual realms and my work with subtle energies. They are asking because they want to know how to act using their own subtle and spiritual nature and resources.
Let’s begin by asking how the subtle worlds themselves are engaging with the world situation. For illustration, I’ll use the current situation in the United States where the Trump Administration, with the help of billionaire Elon Musk, is dismantling much of the federal government as we know it and enacting policies of retribution and division that challenge the spirit, the intent, and the application of the Constitution.
We see this Administration as made up of people, but the subtle worlds see it as made up of souls. These are souls, like all souls, that are on a long arc of evolution lasting through many lives; they do not come in black and white, evil or good, but, again like all souls, are a mixed bag of wisdom and folly, selfishness and attunement to the larger Whole, positive and negative energies. The objective of the spiritual worlds is to enable the growth of the Light within each of us, aware as they are of the sacredness within us each.
Consequently, when I tune into the subtle worlds, I am aware of spiritual and subtle beings who work with the souls currently occupying positions of earthly political, economic, and social power to inspire and help them to bring out their positive side and their Light. They work to enable these incarnate souls to live up to the promise and expression of the sacredness within them. These inner forces are obviously not always successful, or are both successful and failing in degrees (as is true of humanity in general), but the effort is there. They want this Administration to be a force for good in the world, certainly in the long term if not in the short term. They look for possibilities of opening to the Light and to the wellbeing of others and seek to expand those possibilities into action.
It’s important to understand that their support of the souls within the Administration has nothing to do with earthly politics or economics but with soul evolution and the empowerment of Humanity’s evolution as well.
On the other hand, there is a second group who are opposed to any and all actions on the part of the Administration that bring harm to innocent people or that damage and corrupt the spiritual destiny of the United States and the work of the Angel of America. They support those who oppose the actions of Trump, Musk, and others that are born of selfishness or in support of a few against the good of the many. Again, this has nothing to do with earthly politics but rather with a deep understanding of the qualities of soul that the Angel of America seeks to cultivate within the American population: qualities of compassion, creativity, innovation, freedom, and personal Sovereignty in service to a larger community of life. To the extent this Administration (or any group of incarnate souls) seeks to spread meanness, cruelty, disrespect, hatred, and a love of power, these spiritual forces oppose it. They also act to protect those who are the victims of hateful policies.
That’s not all.
I am aware when I tune in of at least two other groups of spiritual forces and beings. One of these acts to encourage, inspire, and support those who seek to rebuild America’s political and economic life in keeping with its ideals of equality, freedom, and justice for all. They are not opposing anything but rather seeking out and supporting souls in Incarnation who wish to work within traditional means to restore good government, good economics, and so forth.
Another group is exploring wholly new forms of politics, economics, and society that may yet carry forward the larger evolutionary arc of human spiritual and incarnational development but in ways that might be very different from the status quo or from anything that has gone before.
Equivalents to these four groups can be found in all parts of the world, configuring themselves to the specific situations amongst the human populations they seek to serve. What is important to understand here is that, though these four groups have different specific areas of working, which determines the incarnate individuals with whom the will work or whom they are trying to inspire, they are all ultimately serving the overall evolution of humanity. These are not political or economic groups; they are collections of souls, angels, Devas, and the like that are cultivating in harmony with each other—particular “gardens” within collective human consciousness.
Subtle activism is like making a financial contribution to organizations of your choice who are doing the work you support. In this case, you are making a donation of subtle energy. It’s up to you which of the four groups I’ve mentioned you feel deserve your energy and inner support (and you can support more than one). You do so by aligning with their overall purpose (the evolution and well-being of Humanity as a whole) and with their specific work of aiding a particular group of incarnate souls rise above personality or ego interactions to a larger vision and attunement linked with the good of the Whole.
Each of these four groups has its incarnate counterparts in the form of individuals, organizations, non-profit groups, community activities, and so on. Do some research to see who in your world best represents the inner group or groups you wish to support. Then hold them in Light, in prayer, in blessing—in addition, of course, to any outer actions, financial, political, or social, that you may take in physical support of their endeavors.
Just remember, you are acting as an agent for the Light within Humanity and the world, not just within a particular incarnate or subtle group.
You have the power
There is another important thing you can do as a person with subtle energy resources. This is to remember that whenever you encounter another person (or, for that matter, anything within nature), you are encountering the world. This makes little or no sense on a physical level, but it makes perfect sense on the spiritual and subtle levels. There, we are all interconnected. Jesus put this well when he said that what we do for the least person we meet, we do as well for or to him.
If I feel the current American administration—or any political leadership in the world—is spreading lies, meanness, hatred, disrespect, intolerance, and other negative energies and attitudes intended to separate us into disempowered minorities, then I am in a position to spread the opposite. I can bring kindness, respect, dignity for others, and a sense of community and love into all my encounters. I can create the world I wish to live in one person at a time. This may require inner work on my part, especially if I encounter someone who represents something I fear or dislike, but doing that inner work is precisely one reason we’re in incarnation. Souls grow and evolve through the immediate and often challenging work of daily encounters.
Questions I can ask myself are these: “Am I representing the Light within me or am I mimicking and spreading the attitudes and energies of Trump (or any other “power-over” dictator in the world) and those like him?” What world do I wish to live in, one shaped by hatred and fear or one shaped by love? How am I contributing right now to the emergence of the world that I want?”
Each encounter, no matter how brief or trivial, is an opportunity for silent subtle activism. It is something we can definitely do. Love and healing live or die in my world through my choices and actions.
Finally, the allies of those who seek power and control at the expense of others and of those who deliberately create energetic toxic waste dumps of human suffering for selfish reasons are apathy, acquiescence, and ignorance. It can feel easier to give up than to resist, especially when we feel powerless to make a difference. Skillful resistance to what is amiss takes effort, energy, and often a willingness to learn, to be informed, and to change.
If something is worth fighting for, then fight for it! But do so with love, with care, and in a spirit of serving the good for all Humanity.