Worried about losing? Experiencing loss? Even winners have to lose something in order to win. When loss happens it is the opportunity to glimpse our True Self — who we are without that which we just lost.
From our birth on through life we take on concepts, self-images, explanations, beliefs, world views, cultural assumptions and the like, which frame our day-to-day life. These are not who we were born as, yet we depend on them to define us and be the vehicles of our lives.
When we lose one of these, the trauma can open our eyes to recognize we are still here after the loss. Who is this person who remains after the losses we thought would destroy our world?
Isaiah 58 describes people who put on the appearance of correctness by securing for themselves power and wealth but who were still unsatisfied. The prophet points out that they needed to lose the control and privileges of an oppressive society before they could become who they were created to be. Losing their greedy grip on power and wealth would result in authentic health and sufficiency like “the well-watered garden,” the rebuilt city where all people find “the paths of life.”
What a counter intuitive proposition: to be healthy and prosperous, quit hoarding power and wealth.
If you fear the loss of your preferred presidential candidate, you are facing whether your world will fly apart out of your control. But you do not cease to be yourself just because the world is not controlled by your assumptions. The things you have lost may have been add-ons. Now you can realize who you are without them. If they were qualities of Truth, you did not lose them and you can still live by them.
GOD on our side
I know there are people on both sides of the American presidential race who believe zealously that God is on their side. So, if your side loses, will God lose? Will there then be no God with whom you can humbly walk? Maybe the “God on your side” has actually been something else.
We have coped with a president who promotes a worldview that all we need is material wealth for … whoever can get and guard their own. This worldview is a life based on self-delusion and self-indulgence for a few … at the expense of the masses, one based on the add-ons of the false self. When those temporal goals fail, the loss may be enough to open the eyes of some to their True Self. But some refuse to get the benefits of their loss and maintain loyalty to the worldview that failed them.
A list of some add-ons we really need to lose is offered in the cartoon with my last blog post HERE.
You can choose to live in mourning over your losses or take the opportunity to grow into your authentic self without relying upon those add-ons. If you yearn for Truth and Beauty, Justice and Peace, Love and Unity, you can continue to grow into them regardless of the political regime in power; you can live your True life, not the life of your collected add-ons.
“What has the Lord required of you? To do justice, to love mercy and walk humbly with your God.”
Micah 6:8
