CosmicSandBox’s Weblog

TRICK OR TREAT ELECTIONS

Halloween and political elections are a lot alike, I’ve discovered. I was debating with myself about the subject for this week’s post. Should I write about Halloween or the elections? That’s when I realized how much they have in common!

Halloween is a day set aside to send children out disguised as something or someone else to get a treat from others or they will trick them. Election day we send our citizens to a polling place to choose from disguised candidates and hope we don’t get tricked in the end.

Last year I published an article called “A Hidden Halloween”. It was about how we hide from ourselves and each other behind masks everyday. We role-play the Good Girl, the Hero, the Prince/Princess, the Warrior, etc. etc. Seldom do we ever take the time or the effort to go inside ourselves to discover if we really are that good girl, hero, prince/princess, warrior or whatever.

How sad to live a whole life as someone else and never really know oneself. But sadder still is that people who are not authentic can’t discern whether another person is being authentic or not. We’re in costume and so are our candidates. No one knows who anyone really is. Trick or Treat!

There is some good news though. Just the awareness that most everyone is in costume can be liberating and can lead to understanding and insight of the truth of a matter or person. What we see is not always what we get. Unmasked we can ask the deeper questions that go to the intentions and motives behind the costume or persona. Is their true intention to serve the best interests of all the people and not just a priviledged few? Do they want to unify and heal the divided factions?

This is where the heart comes into play because it doesn’t play trick or treat games. If we can engage our hearts in our decisions we will be able to FEEL the truth inside ourselves. Deep down we know that hate and violence never solve anything or bring peace. We when witness candidates attacking character, inflaming violent or fear-ridden emotions, our hearts break inside. We experience a sour taste in our mouths.

We also experience the same physical reactions when we do violence to ourselves in words, thoughts or deeds. These are the body’s thermometers to let us know we are being incongruent. The inside is not matching the outside. We are in our costume again. Just seeing this helps us to be able to take off the mask and get real. Only then will we see others more clearly and be able to tell the truth from the lies.

Halloween and elections should be totally incompatible – no similarity. But because our emotional and intellectual growth has been stunted, we want to stay in denial of reality. We don’t want to admit to ourselves that our leadership is corrupt or that they are deceiving us. We don’t want to take the time and effort to actually fact-find and reason things out. It’s almost like we want to stay in OZ and believe the Wizard. But now that the disgusting underbelly of the financial world has been exposed, maybe we can muster the courage to look at the underbelly of the political world.

It is time to grow up, wake up and smell the coffee. We are adults here, not the kids in costumes trick or treating through life. None of us is one dimensional, able to be defined in one or two words. Yet that is how we are assessing our candidates. It’s as if they had on a Halloween costume. It does take time and effort to understand others and complex issues. But freedom isn’t free. We can’t just turn over our choices and our rights to whomever appears willing to lead. That is childish. Children aren’t independent and free. Only conscious adults can be independent and free.

We can take off our masks and costumes, get authentic with ourselves, have integrity with others and discern truth in our communities. Don’t trick or treat through this election. The trick is way too costly!