Sarah Palin, McChange and The Collective Unconscious

Sarah Palin is a cute, plucky, positively perfect weapon of mass distraction. She sure does take your mind off everything, doesn’t she? She’s a basket full of baby ducks. A pitcher of fresh wildflowers. A side of fresh sliced tomatoes next to your eggs and bacon.

I can just imagine all the late night huddles in smoky dens of power coming up with the Palin selection. ‘Change! They want change! We’ll give ‘em change!’

Once-upon-a-time a small-town mayor, now Governor of the State of Alaska, land of iconoclasts, renegades and rebels, Sarah Palin is no pushover. She’s a wife, mother of 5, loves guns, and can even shoot her own moose, skin it, gut it, quarter it and pop it in a skillet in time for supper. By gum, if she isn't a modern day Annie Oakley, a veritable Annie-Get-Your-Gun, the Republicans ‘Little Sure Shot’, as the real Annie Oakley, a trick shooter of the 1880’s was called.

For one very long, long moment, many of us were blindsided. Once we had composed ourselves, we realized that dollars to donuts Sarah Palin was good old-fashioned nostalgia, a harkening back to a simpler time (or to the illusion of one), packaged in the guise of the new and progressive - McChange.

Nostalgia as a political strategy provides an escape, a respite from more serious issues. David Anderson, in an article called ‘Down Memory Lane: Nostalgia for the Old South in Post-Civil War Plantation Reminiscences’ quotes the late sociologist, Fred Davis as saying, ‘Nostalgia, always appears against a backdrop of ‘massive identity dislocations’, in periods of ‘rude transitions rendered by history’, in times of fear in the face of electrifying change’, and at those transitional points in life when anxiety is present…”

I had coffee with an old friend of mine the other day, and I have to thank him for bringing all this to the forefront of my awareness. He voted for George Bush twice, h8tes the Bush administration, and was on his way to voting for Obama until Sarah Palin came along. And you want to know why? Under the surface of my friend’s great desire for change, was a deeper more insidious truth. He was scared. ‘There’s a lot of prejudice in this country’, said my friend, seemingly disconnected from his own. I left breakfast with my friend deeply unsettled and searching for understanding.

Then it suddenly dawned on me. Thank you Republicans! Thank you Sarah Palin! If Palin was supposed to be the finger in the dike of Pandora’s box –I actually think she cracked it wide open like a piñata. In kicking up the dust of nostalgia, she actually showed us our collective unconscious and what is on the table for healing and transformation. Without her, we might never have seen the deep roots of shame and fear, insecurity and doubt that lie just beneath our great aspirations for change and healing in this country. As Carl Jung once wrote, ‘when an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears in the world as fate.’

So I know Sarah Palin and her old school habit of finger wagging and talking in terms of ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ is not the answer to what ails us. I know that's not the level of consciousness that’s needed to take us forward. In fact, I think that’s the level of consciousness that will take us backward, down that long, sleepy, familiar slope of denial, disconnection, blame and projection.

I know these times are calling us to awaken, to choose something higher, something nobler, something that speaks to and harnesses our wholeness, rather than being asleep to the past or to the choices we have made out of fear. We don’t really want a politics of change, we want a consciousness of change – where our leaders embody it and live it and where ‘visionary’ and ‘inspirational’ leadership rings with the crystal clarity of truth, balance, interconnectedness, responsibility and integrity.

The Tibetans have a beautiful concept that I think has powerful applications for these times. It’s called ‘Windhorse’. Cynthia Kneen writes about Windhorse in a book called ‘Awake Mind, Open Heart: The Power of Courage and Dignity in Everyday Life.” She says that windhorse is ‘the energetic aspect of basic goodness, the flow of life, an alive, exuberant and conquering energy that is always at your service, whether you are aware of it or not. The wind is a confident energy that is effortless, fearless and accomplishing. Horse is the discipline and strength to ride the circumstances you face.”

May our collective dream for peace, hope, health, prosperity, and equality for all be fulfilled. May we take this opportunity we have for change and ride it to its penultimate realization. And May God Bless Us and Prosper Us All!

*****(copyright Christiane Schull, 2008)

Multiply your wealth.....Share!

It is only by sharing that we ever feel wealthy. Wealth is created in community, in sharing, investing, giving, caring for others and ourselves. If you are holding on or holding back out of fear, you will only feel your lack. And what you have - by holding on - will appear to disappear much more quickly. Sharing your wealth -- your gifts, talents, time, money, love, caring with others and yourself -- creates more wealth. Sharing creates an expansiveness in our souls and in our hearts....we become a bigger vessel for abundance by acting abundantly. It is an old truth that what we give comes back to us multiplied. When we give with love and generosity, it flows back to us in kind. More people think of us, remember us, want to be with us, want to work with us, want to participate with joy in our lives. Our world becomes richer and more fun. Life has a buyoancy and a vitality that is magical.

Give, share, invest, circulate what you love and what you give, share, invest, and circulate with love will come back to you multiplied!