Power Falls Out Of The Coconut Tree

I shy away from politics. I don't want to talk about politics on this blog or anywhere online or even in person. It's not because I don't care about the real-world consequences of political decisions made or that I don't want to hold my political views up to scrutiny from others - anyone who knows me well knows that I enjoy vigorous debate. I just don't see the point in sharing my views and experiences with strangers about topics they rarely change their minds about.

So, of course, I write about religion instead.

The biggest political story in the world usually involves the American Presidency. Unless you live under a rock, you've probably already heard about President Biden stepping down from his reelection campaign and promoting Vice President Kamala Harris in his place. Whatever their personal political affiliation, hardly anyone can deny that the vibes surrounding the Harris campaign have been immaculate. With a brilliant social media and marketing campaign, endorsements from prominent party leaders, and grassroots energy, the Democrats are (currently) energized.

Politics is all about power, and that's what I want to talk about today: the idea of empowerment. To adapt the quote from Kamala's mother: it falls out of a coconut tree.

When we live in the Western world or under democratically elected governments, we have this notion that our voice is why our leaders get elected. This is false. This isn't me writing a whole thing about how corporations, deep-pocketed interests, and aristocratic power brokers manipulate the masses into believing certain things (although, yes, that's totally a thing), but rather the notion that voices of humans are the reasons why leaders get elected.

In a democracy, the people vote for a candidate's ability to do the job and personal qualifications that make said candidate a suitable leader. It's not that our vote magically bestows upon the candidate the capacity to lead well or that the cumulative number of votes transforms the candidate into a better person. Our vote is simply an affirmation of the fact that this person has the ability to lead. Some might even call those abilities "god-given talents."

Obviously, this can be slightly hard to wrap your head around, especially as so much emotional investment and moral certitude goes into supporting a candidate or a political stance. It can be incredibly difficult when the immoral candidate wins - but that's where a belief in a higher power comes in: one of the main questions spirituality seeks to answer is why bad things happen to good people.

Put simply, our vote acknowledges that an individual has been empowered by the universe/destiny/Divinity/the Supreme/<use your name for God here> to lead, rather than giving them the power to lead. Power always flows down: when exerted on something superior to itself, it has no effect.

This is by no means me claiming that any current candidate is going to win because God said so - that's religious fanaticism morphing into political tribalism. What I am saying is that in any situation, external empowerment is the result of internal qualification.

One of my spiritual heroes is His Holiness B.T.Swami. He was an incredibly empowered individual who served as a spiritual advisor to many international leaders and global icons such as Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali. He was full of many wonderful quotes, including one I've already written about: "Show up with your armor on." He elaborated on this idea of internal qualification coming before external empowerment by describing what our internal qualification should be like for external empowerment to manifest:

"When your desire to serve is beyond your capacity, yet you act without hesitation, that is the moment empowerment occurs."

This statement is so deep that it would require a whole other post just to elaborate on what it means to serve, what our capacity is, what it means to hesitate, and what proper action is - but for now, I think it's fairly self-evident. Our inner world needs to rise to an appropriate level before the universe/divinity/your name for God reciprocates to empower us externally.

Very often, we want the external things to manifest quickly. There's very little focus on what we can do internally to allow that empowerment to come. It's like we're a coconut that's fallen out of a tree.

The coconut has to make that internal shift to decide to become a tree, and in doing so, will have to act, without hesitation, beyond its present capabilities. Once the coconut decides that it wants to become a tree, it needs to put down roots, tolerate the wind and the rain and the animals peeing on it, and slowly, over a long time, it will grow into a tree.

Of course, we can't actually BE the universe/divinity/God in the same way that the coconut can be the tree, but the analogy is still useful. Not every coconut will be put in the right situations to actually grow, but we all have our own journeys of empowerment to find. Some of us might be mangos, some of us are peaches or apples or pears. Whatever we are, we need to first focus on our internal qualifications so that we can be empowered externally.

Happy to be here,
-Sid