Heart-based Democracy

lead with the heart, not with a system

Free Gaza Circus bringing relief and joy to internally displaced children

We are no longer who we never were

Western Democracy was birthed in the crucible of the Greco-Roman empires where the power of democratic rule was always restricted to an elite class of men.

Democracy as we know it was conceived by empire and has continued as an instrument of empire.

It’s important to say this because many of us carry consciously or unconsciously the erroneous belief that we once had democracy and have now lost it, or that there is a “good” democracy waiting to be uncovered in the heart of the U.S. if only we could clear out the “bad” politicians.

The truth we must face is that the U.S. empire, from its very conception, was specifically designed to disenfranchise and disempower any who might intervene in the self-interest of an elite class.

How it’s always been

The U.S. Constitution originally allowed individual states to grant or withhold the right to vote. States restricted voting to white males who owned property or even to Christian white male property owners.

Today, nearly 250 years later, elites in the U.S. are still attempting to prevent people from voting through gerrymandering, restricting voting access, intimidation, election tampering, and legal challenges to the legitimacy of cast votes and vote counting.

The electoral college was mandated by the U.S. founders specifically to guard against "the people" having too much power. Today, we are still saddled with this archane and unjust system of voting.

We do not and have never had a system of voting where each person’s vote counts equally, or in some cases, at all.

Empire is reiterated at the UN, the ultimate repository of democratic hopes and fantasies. The veto power of only five countries reinforces empire and acts as a barrier to the forward movement of the rest of the world and our best aspirations.

These structures and moves are not contemporary aberrations. They are the original and ongoing form of life of Western Democracy.

Not for all of us

Empire-style democracy is never going to work for all of us. It was never meant to be egalitarian, fair, or truly representative. It cannot be tweaked or prodded into a shape that will accommodate actual democracy.

I believe that we need to rebuild from the ground up a true, direct, representative democracy that has been shorn from capitalism.

On a practical level, we need to:

• Get rid of the electoral college.

• Get rid of the current culture of lobbying and campaign financing.

• Get rid of the U.N. Security Council.

• Start to break down cultures and systems that reinforce division at the expense of continuity and collaboration. For instance, “states” as competitive entities.

• Create a system of voting where every vote counts equally.

But none of this will matter much unless. . .

we recognize that the core problem is not the system. It’s us.

We need a direct democracy, yes, but if we don’t want that to turn into the same old, same old, we need to learn to actually care about each other.

Any system we choose could, in the end, repeat violent norms such as “capitalism,” “the family,” “whiteness,” “Christianity,” “citizenship,” “heteronormativity,” “competition,” “individualism,” or the brutal ethos of American exceptionalism.

And in my view, socialism and communism won't do as viable alternatives because of their overweening focus on work, workers, economics, and materialism to the detriment of a more thorough and holistic approach to equality and what makes life worth living.

But more than comparing systems, we need to recognize that any system can be corrupted, and every system has been corrupted because we are starting from a false premise.

We think that systems and laws and justice and legalistic equality are going to protect us from ourselves. They won’t. We’ve proved this over and over again in just about every system of government that’s ever been erected here on Earth.

Whatever system of government we create, if we want a truly different form of life, we need to start with actually caring about each other.

We need to break down the conceptual yet embodied barriers between ourselves and all others, not just those that affect our relationships with our family and friends.

We need to recognize and move beyond the harm of deploying and defending boundaries between states, countries, cultures, and everyone for purposes of self-protection and gain.

The practice of loving everyone

One time I told my brother that I loved everyone. He was horrified.

My confession horrified him because he wanted to be the subject of a special kind of love he felt should be reserved for family. It also horrified him because he felt that some people are not deserving of our love.

He did mention “assholes” during that conversation as exemplars of who we wouldn’t or shouldn’t love. But I assume he would have included many people in the world, and also “strangers.”

Of course, my brother’s reaction is perfectly reasonable from a certain point of view. But I have never been reasonable or satisfied with how life is conducted here.

I want us all to engage in practices of loving everyone, of seeing everyone as family. I want us all to know, deep in our bones, that your life is my life, your well-being is my well-being.

We’re in this more than together. We are a magnificent continuity. And despite the fears that our cultures instill in us, we can only gain by being generous with each other.

My practice is, of course, traditional spiritual practice from India and Tibet. And like many others, I have taken that practice “into the streets” and put it to use in the fine-grain of everyday life.

This means doing the internal work to release and relax the tensions that keep the heart in bondage. This means letting other people in and giving everything I have to give.

Your practices may be something different. But if we want a more heart-based democracy, if we want true equality and freedom of expression and to be collaborators with and not destroyers of our planet, we have to figure out how to actually care, how to actually feel our intimacy with others. Whatever it takes.

Putting the community of Earth before individualism, we can discover the creativity that springs from the natural desire for the well-being of all. Any systems we create can emerge from this engagement with the heart.

In my main spiritual tradition, Trika Shaivism, the heart is called “kula”—family. And the ultimate heart is all-encompassing. It is the kula of all beings and worlds.

This is the real meaning of self-realization: that we include everyone in our heart and recognize that everyone was always included all along.

If you resonate with what I have said, please share in the comments how your heart has opened lately, what practices you have in your life to continue widening this path, and what obstacles you have faced.

with infinite love,

Shambhavi