What Do You Want?

“Mystical experience is being touched by God at a level deeper than words, thought, imagination and feeling.” Ruth Barrows (Sr. Rachel, O.C.D.)

Long ago an Orthodox friend explained mysticism to me somewhat along the lines of the quote from Sr. Rachel. Something no one had done that before in my adult life. She also told me that we are all mystics. I came across this quote from Sr. Rachel, O.C.D. (aka, Ruth Burrows, an English Carmelite nun) while looking for a working description of mysticism. I feel it can clarify much of what I write.

Following the January 6, 2021, insurrection and attempted coup of the American government, I discussed with some people how I had had visions of that day for over sixty years. Since the age of approximately three or four. One woman asked me how it will turn out. She’s like a lot of us. Sometimes life is so horrifyingly real that if there is ever any chance of hope, we want a Hallmark ending to our stories.

There is no Hallmark ending in this case.

Similar to dealing with the coronavirus epidemic — as in other defining epidemics such as AIDS or ebola — life will never return to what we thought was normal. The old normal vanished when AIDS began to decimate world populations. Ebola created generations of orphans and upended life forever. Social and economic structures ceased to exist. No one will have the slightest glimmer of an idea of how the coronavirus has changed the world for some three to five after vaccinations have stabilized the world. Maybe 2025 at the earliest.

Hatred is like a virus. It eats away at the soul.

The insurrection of January 6, 2021 cannot be undone. There are no magic pills. Only stark facts and harsh realities.

One of the cold, hard realities is that the outcome is up to you.

It is up to each individual — American or other — to decide how they want this to end and then put in the work to achieve that end. If more people are willing to have a peaceful and Constitutional outcome than a continuation of death and evil, their singular and joint efforts will bring about good. Good will, the willingness to pray, meditate and take action are all required.

The ordinary woman and man can do their bit of prayer and meditation and then take action out in the world. We can see the outcomes of our actions. Regardless of the outcome we choose, we receive the outcome for which the majority of us work.

If most people put in the spiritual, emotional and physical labor to bring about a stabilization of America, that will take place. Should a majority put in the effort to overturn the republic, it will be overturned.

America will be dead.

Not that this is the first time groups have attempted to overthrow the American government to meet their own selfish ends. The first people to commit sedition in the newly formed republic were pardoned by George Washington for the Whiskey Rebellion.

If modern Americans have become used to stability and are now faced with insurrection and rebellion, it is up to Americans to decide what they want.

What do you want?

Are you willing to expend the spiritual effort necessary to bring about a new way of being American? Are you willing to go deeper in thought, word, imagination and deed than ever before in your life? Do you have the guts to give up self-satisfaction and conceit to become a better human being for the common good? To work for “a more perfect union”?

Or do you want an overthrow of all democratic countries around the world?

For once one domino falls, more inexorably fall.

While you are making up your minds on that, here is one further piece of information.

Fourteen of the last American presidents have been alive at some point during my lifetime. Of those, I have seen one who has died in hell and one who is currently alive who will go to hell. They made their choices.

The choices are between building a new and better life for all or the end of time. The apocalypse is not the neat, clean movie version. Life — and death — are messy.

What do you want?