By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Now that I'm back in the Pea Patch, welcomed by snow drifts and glacial temps, my days of basking in the sun, reading the books that seemed to magically arrive in my hands, are over for a while. I finished the last book, borrowed from a friend, the final afternoon of my visit, and looked out over the quiet, tree-lined neighborhood to note the changes a month had made. Here in the Patch, autumn seemed to come in an eye-blink and faded away as quickly: perhaps ten days of color blooming on the trees, then a brisk wind and it was all crunching under my feet. In California, the deciduous trees took their time, and it was luscious to watch them slowly turn and drop their leaves until they stood as naked heralds of winter.

My last read was Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. It was better written, perhaps even more interesting than his later offering, The Da Vinci Code, but like James Redfield's Celestine Prophecy, the message was in the concept, and consequently Code became more valuable as a marker in collective consciousness than as a literary offering. Angels and Demons is a rousing conspiracy tale about religion versus secularism, the religion being Catholic and Papal and the secular being science and technology. Personally, I've never had a problem merging the two into a symbiotic whole, just as I've never seen politics as more than leavening in the social order; not so, of course, for those who can't seem to define themselves except through railing against something and in so doing, solidifying it to the density of concrete. Brown's earlier book made a potent argument that humankind, and especially the religious, cannot seem to comprehend that there is no fear in love. None.

The opposite of love is not hate -- it's fear. A Course in Miracles tells us that there are only these two core emotions, and while they appear to be in mortal combat, love must eventually win. Given that, it's no surprise that our planet seems steeped in the darkest of energies and there appears to be no end to its strength and power. We are in purge mode, not only by weather pattern and climate change, but within the very fabric of our thought system. What is darkest is coming forward with a vengeance but, as I've mentioned before, it is no longer so dense, impossible and terrifying a stone that cannot be rolled away. Now the darkness is shot full of Light, but perhaps only those who can put aside fear to open themselves to love can see how fragile the darkness has become. The rest of us are as busy as ants at a picnic trying to patch the holes with concrete.

It's been decades since I've given evil its 3D due. I substitute 'error' for evil in the Lord's Prayer and welcome the disapproving looks of those around me. Long ago I discovered that evil spelled backwards was live -- as God spelled backwards is dog. Both made a good deal of sense to me. Evil is the natural and mundane consequence of humanity's lowest common denominator and ego drive, and we can begin to understand God/dess in the unconditional love that canines show as a matter of collective consciousness. Simplicity is always best, in my opinion, although there's a difference between the profundity of simplicity and the kind of moribund simplicity we use to get through life, killing us softly thought after thought until we're grateful to leave the planet.

The more dumbed down we've become, the dumber everything around us looks. That's not true of simplicity and it's also not by accident. Fear has been used as a bludgeon to bring us to this moment for all of the Piscean Era. We've been led to personify both God and Satan as extremes in consciousness, using our least imaginative template of understanding and putting both outside of ourselves as mental/emotional action figures. They give us someone to beg for boon, and to blame when our own failures in manifestation assault us. This kind of immature thinking has made us spiritual children, powerless and pleading -- and evil licks its lips at the plunder available.

Is evil real? Sure, I see it every day. Is God/dess real? Ditto. Redefine them as fear and love. Nothing more, nothing less. If we have a blanket of evil thrown over this lovely world, it's because we've not risen above the dense, egocentric thought forms that produce it. The eight years of Bushism made that blanket suffocating and we seemed unable to throw it off. Now we're doing the difficult work of pushing it back and letting in fresh air. For me, it's the simplicity of this issue that is most frustrating.

I've struggled with political reporting in these last months. It's obvious to me where we're going, where we MUST go and how contentious the path ahead. Getting there is working my every nerve, because quite frankly I gave up Drama Queen consciousness long ago and evil is just damned boring. Think about it. Now it takes a 2012 scenario with the whole of the planet crumbling to give us a cheap thrill, as if the daily events of our lives aren't dramatic enough to rouse us. Terrible isn't terrible enough, it has to look like complete annihilation to get our attention. I don't circle this bait with any interest. Whatever political quivering was left in me burned to cinders in the early years of this century. You can't maintain adrenal exhaustion and continue to breathe. That's why the War on Terror was an immense failure, by the way. When fear stops working as a goad, ego's played its Ace and been trumped by a Royal Flush.

One of my favorite columnists is Mark Morford, who contributes to the San Francisco Chronicle. Some think him an out-of-control wordsmith, but he tickles my fancy and almost always reads my mind. He wrote an interview with the devil the other day. Here's a clever passage that shares some of my thoughts on this period of energy shift:

I appreciate your time. Now, many say the world is in a horrible state of turmoil...

Isn't that great, by the way? That's just f--king great. Dear God, I rule.

I'm sorry?

It's not, actually, just FYI. Here's a little secret I don't talk about much, but you'll forget it the instant I leave anyway: The world is actually teeming with beauty and life and rejuvenation, hope and awe and epiphany, every moment of every day. There is pure bliss, entire universes of knowing, pure God consciousness available in the smallest instant, the complete breath, the gentlest human touch. But you didn't hear it from me! (Laughs, concrete curdles).

Well, there have been some pretty difficult, even horrifying events in the past few years...

Let me just clear up one misconception right here. People thought I was swamped during the Bush years, running that whole glorious, bloody spectacle. And it's true, I was busy. But it was also wonderfully easy.

What do you mean?

Honey, I had armies of devoted minions in power back then. I basically sat back like a fat, narcotized Hamptons housewife while my staff brought me cupcakes made of war and fear and homophobia, Christian evangelicals and Muslim hysteria and economic failure. Glorious, glorious time.

But now? Now it's ... different. Bloom is off the black rose, you might say. I'm still busy, still plenty of ugly out there, but I'm not in control anymore. Now I'm just herding cats. Very, very dumb cats.

I can safely say that politics is about as insufferably tedious a topic these days as I've ever experienced. What is good and pure and Light is peeking out of the cloud of darkness on the Hill, shining through the Swiss cheese of obstruction and greed and personal ambition that produces the mushroom cloud of density we suffer. At this point, tracking the glimmers shining through is all that keeps me intrigued, because, as I've repeatedly mentioned, the scripted reality shows that are so popular these days work my nerves. Think of politics as more of the same.

Yes, the mundane, dark-spirited and superstition-laced evil mankind does is just damnably boring these days, no longer a Machiavellian machine grinding us into compliant dust, but now a kind of noticeable and desperate knee-jerk response from those who refuse to let go of the old game. A good many of us are playing a new one and have little patience left for the old. While I have a grudging tad of respect for the leaders that work these dark arts, I can't say the same for their followers. Compassion kicks in when I get too annoyed, ballast to the ego-concerns that point me to my own fears of their never getting the point. Too often though, I'm left wanting to shake them awake none too gently, blow a dog whistle in their ear to get their attention and point out that they've become the weighty baggage of an old understanding and the barrier to a new one. It won't work, of course, until it does, and the energies flooding the planet are more potent alarm clocks than any argument you or I could make. That means we have to find a way to keep faith with the future while allowing the dense energy signature of the past to dissipate around us.

Another witty writer I appreciate is actor Steven Weber of Wings fame, who blogs for Huffington Post. He recently wrote a snippet on his disenchantment with politics, hence blogging itself. Speaking of our current holding pattern of loggerheaded dissension, he wrote of his hopes for Obama:

But the game, it seems, is bigger than him, bigger than all of The People.

Because it uses The People. It uses them as fuel and as fodder; it bleeds the hope from them and substitutes it with fear; it is run by tyrants steeped in a tradition of oppression. Only they don't oppress with the immediate application of armies and gulags and stormtroopers. They oppress gradually, slowly, steadily...with sugar. They suppress with intoxicants. They dazzle the eye with semblances of old pride and faded glory, both too diluted to have any practical effect upon a sated and dispirited population.

They have successfully bamboozled The People into having faith in a system which is incapable of reciprocation.

And so my president, for whom I have the utmost respect, is the most visible of dupes. Hell, given his savvy, he probably even knows he and his country have been rendered incontrovertibly, tragically superfluous.

While I have sympathy for Weber's frazzled nerves, it's easy to think the worst. That's the toe-hold that evil -- error -- has on our souls. Last night, surrounded by unopened luggage and the disorder a month away from home produced, I clicked on the television for some comforting noise and noted a PBS offering about depression. Studies show that depressive personalities receive good and bad news disproportionately; they focus on the bad. Good news doesn't impact them with the same intensity, and if given a compliment, they are inclined to dismiss it. While there appears to be some truth in our being at the mercy of our DNA wiring, there is also much learned behavior that influences us. What has been learned can be unlearned. We have choices. If we let others make them for us, or sink into despondency about where we are today without understanding that life is a daily revelation, we can easily lose our way. Always, always, always life is choice. Thoughts are choice. Attitude is choice. Self-control is choice. We should take meds if we need them but realize our own responsibility in choosing our life's path.

So, as much as I understand Weber's frustration and gloom, I prefer Morford's larger picture:

I'll toss out some names and current events, and you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind. All right?

Bring it.

Barack Obama

Ha! Dude pisses me off. Can't seem to rile him. Thinks he understands things. Actually does. Know what I hate more than anything, and that includes laughter and singing in the shower and multiple orgasms? Wisdom. Calm, assured wisdom in the face of all the whining and screeching I can muster from my minions. Such gall. Makes my soul pimple.

We've begun a new year, one that can be exciting if we allow it to be. Think of it as the adventure of a lifetime, because that's just what it is. We have a lot of concrete to bust through, a lot of density to dissolve. We have, ahead of us, a year of patience to muster, compassion to summon and forward motion to inch toward before the floodgates of consciousness break. Think outside of the box, because the box is decaying before our very eyes. That is our part in this, that is our purpose. And, because we can choose it, we will also have moments of joy and clarity and progress and hopefulness to balance our energy and contribute to the collective. The choice between love and fear awaits us, everywhere we look. Choose well, beloved. Dog is watching, having amused Itself at the error humankind does, now patiently anticipating the bright and blissful arrival of love. And to that, may I add my own resounding, bright-eyed and tail-wagging WOOF!