Many of us – not just in the United States of America but all over the world – are now feeling like Abby Evans, the little 4-year old girl on YouTube who is crying and saying, “I’m tired of Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney.” We have been stimulated and over-stimulated by media, ads, campaigns, debates, and more . . . for far too long. I don’t know the statistics, but perhaps this has been the longest election in history for everyone to be privy to. It certainly seems that way.

Many of us – not just nationally but globally – are concerned about what’s going to happen on Election Day. Many of us are concerned about what’s happened and what’s happening to the U.S. political system. And many of us are concerned about what’s happening in our world.

When the election is over, we will have a lot of feelings. Some will feel relieved. Some will feel happy. Some will feel scared. Some will feel angry. Some will grieve and some will celebrate. Some will feel it’s all over for four years.  But it isn’t.

What has happened in this election in the outer world is a reflection of what happens within people individually and thus communally in our inner worlds.

If you already do some form of your own inner healing work, you already understand this. If you’ve been receiving my newsletters for years, you already understand this and have been working with it, wherever you are geographically and wherever you are in your healing journey. If you’ve been reading my blog posts and particularly my election blog posts, you have had the opportunity to take in the seeds I’ve offered and hopefully grow them over time. And if this is your first time reading my blog, I hope you can allow it to help you get a bigger picture, a deeper picture of what is going on and what we need to do.

I’m going to repeat the essence in brief: Each of us has some way in which we were hurt, wounded emotionally and perhaps also physically, or traumatized as children. A child cannot tolerate that kind of pain, buries the pain, and reflexively creates immediate protections against the pain. Over time the immediate protections harden and get frozen and even break off from the original intention . . . and they take on a life of their own. When we get to the point of adulthood chronologically, the child we once were is still alive within us . . . even if we are not aware of it, even if we don’t want to be aware of it. And we hold onto our broken-off, split-off defenses for dear life. We believe it is life and death, even as an adult, not to feel what the child we once were, was not able to feel. And we continue to fight against our own feelings, perhaps now not just inside ourselves but outside too. We continue to fight to keep from feeling those feelings.  And the more we do that, the more walls we build to keep us from our real, true, authentic selves beneath the defenses. And the more we do that, the more we create distortions within us, around us, and the more we help to create distortions and destructiveness all over our world.

For example, if your parents believed as children that they could never have enough, very likely they made a decision in childhood that they could never have enough. As a result, they began creating their lives as though what they believed was true; they began creating their lives as though their decision was an accurate decision. And when you came along, they very likely interacted with you in such a way that you came to believe you could never have enough. Or even if they didn’t act it out with you, you watched them act it out in other areas of their own lives. So even if they made sure you had enough, someplace within them, they were torn – perhaps between I can’t have enough but some people can. And so you, in turn, found yourself split – maybe, for example, between I can have enough but not everyone can have enough. If you go out into the world with this split, you will interact with the world in this split way. But not only will you interact with the world in this way . . . your split will be poured into the communal consciousness – as though the communal consciousness were a big cauldron of thoughts, decisions, feelings, and energy – and feed the split. At the same time, everyone else with that split will be feeding the communal consciousness, too. And all those people will believe something that doesn’t have to be true. . . if we don’t create it to be true.

That was one example. There are so many others. I have written about them all through the election. When the election is over, we will still have a lot to do. Not just on the outer level, but even more within ourselves.

For today, tomorrow, and in the days to come, be aware and hold onto this . . .

Out of the experience of the past many, many months of the election process. . .
we see many distorted, destructive things that are coming out into the open from beneath our awareness, from beneath our consciousness –
both individual and communal.

We can simply bemoan these things that are emerging into the light of day.
We can be afraid of them, deny them, run away from them, numb ourselves in the face of them.
We can believe we are powerless, and in so doing, give up the power we have. 

Or we can see that these things are coming out and we can choose to utilize them and our own power
purposefully, consciously, and safely for healing.* 

This is my choice.
This is where my deepest, most important vote goes …
To our seeing them and committing ourselves to utilize them purposefully, consciously, and safely for healing –
our own individual healing and our communal healing, as well. 

What choice will you make?
Where will your deepest vote go? 

*From the Prologue of Power Abused, Power Healing . . .
“Power is like fire, lightning, wind, ocean – like life itself – a raw, vibrant, force of nature. It has the potential for great harm and the possibility for magnificent good. Each of us chooses, whether consciously or unconsciously, how we will use the power of our own life energy.” 

© Judith Barr, 2012.