Progressives Converge

The radical right learned the lesson that solidarity translates into real political power. This election season, progressives are faced with a similar challenge. If we remain splintered, we will have little impact. Unified, we become a powerful force.

Right now, many progressives feel disappointed. The candidates who carried the progressive torch have fallen away, except Dennis Kucinich, who soldiers on, and Ralph Nader, who inspires fierce critiques as a spoiler. Most progressives are a bit unsure where to situate themselves on this terrain since current enthusiasm for John Kerry is lukewarm at best. One option is to turn to outrage at George Bush and bond around that. However, anger has limited value in the long haul of an election. Those already outraged will bond with our anger. People on the fence tend to be turned off. Those who actually like Bush turn away altogether. While the anger might keep us motivated for a time, it tends to fester.

So I believe that the central task for progressives this year is to figure out a positive way to come together into a powerful enough block to exert pressure in a way that delivers maximum progressive change while sending Bush back to the ranch.

Most of the flagships of the progressive fleet have erred on the side of playing conservative. MoveOn.org, for example, has rallied lock-step behind Kerry, with no hint of exerting pressure on him to shift his platform. Their strategy is to use fear of a Bush second term to galvanize their considerable base. This is typical of most progressive political organizations, which are using the greater-evil argument to focus attention on beating Bush.

At the other progressive extreme are folks who have decided the game is rigged, the two-party system is actually a single corporate party and that the only way to win is to take our chips off the table and play a different game. Risking social banishment, they’ve rallied around Ralph Nader in fairly surprising numbers.

There are very real problems with both these strategies. In the first case, lock-step allegiance leads to discouragement and lackluster campaigning in the absence of more tangible benefits for progressives. In the other case, third-party rebellion may result in a split progressive vote and handing the White House to Bush again, a less progressive outcome.

When we look only at black or white possibilities, we may overlook a realm in which a better solution can be found. To create maximum progressive change this year AND defeat Bush, what is needed is a delicate walk between the two extremes. This translates into conditional support of Kerry and, just as importantly, an organized effort across the country to put politicians in office that champion progressive issues.

Conditional support means that we are willing to support Kerry with money, time, and votes because he is championing what WE want to see in the world, at least to some extent. He becomes our candidate to the extent that he is listening to us, responding to us, and taking positions that result in progressive change. In other words, he makes concessions to broaden the tent until we feel like he is OUR candidate and we can legitimately support him because he is helping to advance OUR vision of the world. Our task is therefore to influence Kerry to become more of what we want. It is also part of his job as a candidate to really listen to what his constituents want and balance competing interests. The broader the coalition we can mobilize for progressive positions, the more he must listen.

To some extent, Dennis Kucinch has taken on the required role, acting as the “inside guy” pulling the Democratic Party and the Kerry platform in a progressive direction. I wrote an article about him entitled A Risk-Free Nader in 2004 a few months back focused on just that. Kucinich champions many of the same platform planks as Nader and has pledged to push the party in a progressive direction. He deserves a lot of respect and I hope that we one day grow enough as a country to elect a man of his calibre. There is only one problem with him influencing Kerry at this point: he has almost no leverage.

As any negotiator knows, if we negotiate without leverage, we may end up with virtually nothing. A good negotiator must be willing to leave the table and forget the deal before obtaining a decent result. Kucinich is a man of his word and his word is that he will fully support the nominee. He thus cannot be as strong a negotiator for the people as a proxy who is merely representing the progressive block’s priorities and willing to take a stand for each point, even to the point of not supporting Kerry.

From Kerry’s perspective, Kucinich can’t offer much, except help in rallying the progressive vote, which is already unconditionally offered. So, in my opinion, if we primarily throw our weight behind Kucinich’s remaining campaign infrastructure, we are not going to get the maximum influence on Kerry. I’m very happy that Kucinich’s campaign has advanced as far as it has -- I’ve been an outspoken champion of it -- but in terms of negotiating power beyond the primaries, Kucinich has a compromised position. Nonetheless, he is a crucial voice for progressive change, so he will remain an essential part of the change equation this year.

Other candidates that have folded their campaign infrastructure and pledged themselves to support Kerry have also compromised their negotiating power. Howard Dean, for example, has pledged his unqualified support of Kerry, putting him in the same situation as Kucinich. Democracy for America and other spinoffs from the Dean campaign have yet to gain sufficient traction to influence the party platform in a progressive direction, perhaps because the leadership has pledged unconditional support of Kerry.

At the other end of the spectrum, Nader appears to be wedded to remaining outside the two-party system and seems unconcerned about playing a spoiler role. So while he has excellent negotiating leverage (he’s shown his willingness to play hardball), few people want to sit down at the table with him. Also, his rhetoric and loyalties may keep him from endorsing Kerry under any condition. Backing Nader thus won’t create much of any progressive change this year, unless he shifts to a stance of conditional support and is willing to drop from the race if Kerry adopts key planks or programs.

So that leaves us with one other option: a NEW progressive umbrella network emerges and grows powerful enough to rally much of the progressive base behind a vision of conditional support for Kerry. This coalition of progressives must do a number of things effectively:

1. Provide some shared focus while still allowing for diversity of priorities and loyalties
2. Create a linked infrastructure for many organizations and alliances that share similar visions of the world we want to create.
3. Effectively identify the “price point” of progressives – what is the minimum number of changes to the Democratic platform to get their unqualified support? What are the most important planks? This needs to be very specific.
4. Have negotiating representatives at the Democratic National Convention with something real to offer in exchange for progressive shifts in the platform.
5. Develop long-term movement-building infrastructure (online resources, events, voter registration, roadshows, etc.)
6. Recruit progressive leaders to represent the movement – including people like Kucinich, Dean, and Nader – while also remaining independent of party loyalties.
7. Develop a more unified progressive platform, perhaps ratified by progressive summits.
8. Make support of Democratic, Republican, or third-party candidates running at any level proportionate to alignment with the network’s overall platform and values, or at least match support with appropriate subgroups.
9. Incorporate many wings of activities into the extended network – think tanks, media efforts, campaigns, protests, community groups, grassroots infrastructure, trainings, etc. which is precisely what the radical right did.
10. Empower people to organize by neighborhood, community, region, and state, linking issues at each level into national change efforts.

The challenges of creating an umbrella network are sizable, given the diversity of voices, concerns, and priorities. Plus, the time horizons are very short. However, without a single, leading force such as the far right had with the Christian Coalition, there is a dispersal of negotiating power and grassroots strength. Solidarity is the source of political power. However, that solidarity cannot come from imposition. It must be a coalition that honors and represents many voices in a balanced way. To do this, we need to create enough transparency around the will of the people such that those who bring forth our messages represent our needs and negotiate for our requirements.

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. Necessity requires that if progressives want a significant say in this year’s election, an umbrella network must emerge and it can’t be strictly wedded to any of the existing parties. It must bring together many movements and do so with a good mix of entertainment, organizational savvy, and political finesse.

These are tall tasks on a short deadline, but they are achievable with the specter of a second Bush term looming and grumbles about Kerry increasing while the Iraq war worsens and 9-11 revelations continue. If we don’t create such a network this year, we may face a grim future with ongoing imperialistic wars, further erosion of civil rights, massive debt, rampant deception, and increasing consolidation of power and money in a cloistered elite. This is not the future America was founded to create.

I’ve been helping to create some organizations and efforts that can become important pieces of a unified progressive movement. We have used Convergence as the umbrella term since it describes the process of many movements coming together into a single force of positive change. Recently, this led to the formation of WeConverge.net, a way for those who share a similar dream to find allies and organize locally, as well as exert real leverage on the Democratic platform. We will be launching a campaign on Monday, May 3rd, to advance this work and are looking for others to help take it still further. I encourage you to register on the site today to help shape this network. The plan is for WeConverge.net to become a primary political advocacy and grassroots organizing arm of the larger network.

Personally, I believe it is possible to converge various progressive movements into a more unified force this year. If you share this vision and have specific talents, funding sources, or time to commit, let me know. We will be doing our best to weave the threads together into something strong enough to pull us towards a conscious, sustainable and just world. We can do better than simple regime change on November 2nd; we can take significant steps towards creating a new vision of America and a new vision of the world.

Do You Need a Guru? Book Review

This review appeared in Shift, the journal of the Institute of Noetic Sciences
Mariana Caplan
Do You Need a Guru?

On the spiritual path, there is no question more fraught with peril than the Guru Question. Sometimes it leads to heated debate, other times to uncomfortable silence. One side judges the foot-kissing devotee as regressive, and the other judges the aloof, independent seeker as unwilling to brave the fire surrounding an authentic master. Most seekers have a strong opinion on the One Right Answer. Rarely is there room for a more multi-faceted and nuanced assessment.

Mariana Caplan penetrates this obfuscating haze in her book, leaving only the warm sunlight of authenticity and wisdom. She shares intimate moments with her guru Lee Lozowick, her many misfires with spiritual teacher wannabes, and tales of breathtaking vulnerability and ego-dissolving humor. Every pratfall produces new insight and Caplan has become a connoisseur, unabashedly using her misadventures with itinerant hippies, lecherous shamans, and I’m-not-a-guru gurus, to illustrate her insights into power, awakening, and the unique complexities of the student-teacher relationship. She wields her psychological savvy like a warrior, daring to say truths that most avoid, and ultimately opens the reader to the fresh breeze of possibility where there once was only defense.

Caplan advocates a stance called “conscious discipleship” in which our discrimination, doubt, and resistance are welcomed into the crucible of transformation that occurs in an authentic and sacred teacher-student relationship. To become conscious disciples, we are asked to become a mature seeker – one who is responsible, surrendered, intelligent, psychologically savvy. This type of seeker doesn’t attract or create the fraudulent, abusive, regressive behavior that has often given guru-disciple relationships a bad name. As we mature, so do our teachers. In this refreshing stance, she breaks the psychological gridlock of focusing purely on what is right or wrong about the way a particular spiritual teacher behaves and puts the responsibility back on ourselves for our own growth. Part of this responsibility for our own growth, however, is putting ourselves in the fire of as much truth, love, and transmission as our systems can handle. Caplan makes the case that it is very hard for us to turn up the heat as high as it can go without a powerful teacher to facilitate the process. The process of surrender (and even obedience) to a teacher can be seen as part of our own responsibility to turn up that inner heat until all of our resistances, defenses, and veils can be incinerated.

Though her case is compelling, Caplan is sometimes prey to a universalizing tendency. Rather than seeing a singular guru relationship as best for a particular individual at a particular time in their development, she often argues that it is generally the best structure for spiritual development and it is a lifelong thing. My personal observation is that having a strong spiritual authority with whom to work can be best for some years or decades, then perhaps a time of independence, then perhaps a time of working with multiple teachers. A second small critique of Caplan’s work is her hilarious but slightly heartless tendency to box up most teachers, seekers, and relationships as inauthentic, New Age or false, thus elevating her own stance and her own favored teachers, many of whom nonetheless do give compelling interviews, which are found at the end of every chapter. There may be objective truth in the betterness of these stances, but occasionally the New Age bashing smells of cliquishness rather than compassion.

Regardless of these minor critiques, this book is powerful medicine -- an antidote to laziness around the guru question. Caplan fearlessly tackles such tough topics as crazy wisdom, sexual transmission, guru games, projection dynamics, obedience and exposes the transformative logic that may underpin even morally questionable activities. She is provocative, so much so that I found myself challenging and even changing some of my long-held beliefs in the course of the book. I also opened to a deep hunger to work in a more committed long-term way with a spiritual master.

The intimacy of Caplan’s tales makes this into something of a love-story – an adventure into the sacred nectar at the core of existence through the twists and turns of a committed teacher-student relationship. Though her logical arguments are powerful, what is most compelling is the realness of her love, the poignancy and intensity of her journey, and her willingness to lay it all on the line. For that, I bow down in gratitude to Caplan and recommend that we heed her call for all of us to step into divine adulthood through the honoring of authentic spiritual mastery and the blessings it can bestow.

Creation Emerges From Stillness

This is part of "The Pulpit" - a monthly segment in the Radical Spirit Catalyst. See the site for more details or sign up here for the newsletter, which is mainly geared to allies in Northern California

I thought I’d write today about the importance of taking space for silence and not-doing, both as a reminder to myself as well as all those extraordinary souls who are doing work on transforming this world.

In the press of deadlines, projects, and campaign-level-intensity, it’s easy for me to forget something that is obvious when I’m on a retreat, vacation, or a mountaintop: creation emerges from stillness. It may not look that way on the surface, but underneath, our creative acts emerge out of pure space. The closer we can get to the silence and stillness at the heart of reality, the more powerfully our creative impulses flow forth. When we align with the vastness of the universe – the Godforce – we become a literal Creator of reality. Also, when I abide in stillness, the waves of intensity of life are no longer threatening. I can watch them crest and keep a steady course. A part of me remains anchored below the drama, so that storms are easy to weather.

I do tend to forget that stillness. In the buzz of daily life, I am quite prone to be seduced by the notion that a single result will change EVERYTHING and then become fixated on making that result happen as fast as possible. When I move into that mode, I lose my ground in stillness and begin to feel the frustration of being out of alignment with the natural, creative flow.

A friend of mine, Mark Ackermoore, likes to talk about manifestation moving at “the pace of grace.” It’s a catchy phrase to remind us that grace has a rhythm to it, one that respects that patterns of organic unfolding. Living at the pace of grace reminds us to see the beauty in even what appear to be obstacles, barriers, and failures. I find myself having to return to this knowing as the number of projects, organizations, and campaigns I’m involved with increase. The challenge is to tune in and find what is ready to move and what is not, trusting that each project will have its right timeframe of ripening.

So I encourage you, for at least a moment today, to remember to allow space for breathing out, resting, and touching the place of stillness in you, thus freeing your attention and energy to let grace flow more naturally through your life. We ARE changing the world. The most enduring changes, though, may well be the ones the emerge almost unbidden and quite effortlessly, from silence.