For as long as I can remember, the ritual in our national political theater that has always moved me to tears is the moment after a presidential inauguration when the outgoing president boards the helicopter and flies away. It is an enactment of what is perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of democracy: the peaceful transition of power.
It brings me to tears because I am aware of how precious it is, how novel it is, in a world that has for so long been governed by egoic drives for power and control, and it exemplifies the fundamental break with the past that the founders of our country made when they decided the United States would not be a monarchy.
Knowing that Donald Trump is completely beholden to the ego-mind, I have always had a hard time envisioning him peaceably getting on that helicopter and flying away, honoring the will of the people and the democratic process. This is not a condemnation of him. It is simply an observation of him. It is not in his constitution to yield power and control.
Now that he has confirmed that he may not honor the election results if they don’t go his way—in other words, that he may attempt a coup—he is giving the people of this country time to prepare ourselves to thwart a coup through non-violent non-compliance.
But really, there’s been a coup underway for awhile now, a quiet coup happening under the radar, one that’s never reported by the media, one that is far more radical and world-changing than anything history has ever seen. This isn’t a coup that simply overthrows governmental systems or the people in power, but a coup that overturns our very perception of reality.
This coup is the overthrow of an idea that led us down this path of suffering and brought us to the brink of ecological catastrophe, an idea that set the stage for every imaginable injustice: the idea of “separateness.”
This idea, which mystics have always known to be an illusion, is now being overthrown as well by physicists, geneticists, cosmologists, ecologists. In this very moment it is being overthrown by a tenacious virus that relentlessly and uncompromisingly asserts our interdependence.
It is a coup being brought on by a groundswell of people awakening from the egoic dream.
This coup takes place in the mind when it is suddenly struck by the realization that relationship is the essence of Reality. It takes place in the heart that flings open its doors to the Realm of Love where judgment and fear simply don’t exist. It takes place in actions of compassion, solidarity, and inclusion that express the awakened heart and mind.
This is the coup that will irrevocably transform the world, and the only coup that can, because the external world is a reflection of the mind’s beliefs, and it will not change, it cannot change, until the mind that is dreaming this dream of separateness changes.
This quiet coup needs no weapons. It sees no enemies. It knows that death is an illusion. It recognizes that we can never alienate ourselves from Love, no matter how hard we may try. It is the coup of peace, of Spirit. I like to think of it as the coup of the dove.
Despite how frightening our present circumstances appear, they are lending immense momentum to this quiet coup that is preparing the way for a new world to arise, a world that reflects the inviolable truth of Love.
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Lovely.
I have never read anything more beautifully written. I will never again hear the “coo” of a dove without remembering my commitment and the part I play in the “coup” of Unitive Consciousness, making way for the wellbeing of a world that is possible for all.
Oh such amazing words of light. Thank you, Dear Soul. Diana
Thank you Patricia for a deeply meaningful post. Synchronicity brought about today’s reading from Micah:
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
Also to paraphrase Bernanos: we don’t keep quiet, it is quiet that keeps us. The “quiet coup” holds us.
Cliff
Thank you, dear Patricia, for your steadfast, ongoing witness to the grand Truth underlying these times which the sense of separate selfhood finds so trying!
I also have thought that he will not get on that helicopter ~~~