Common Ground: The Reconciliation of Love and Power

“What politics offers at its core is what
life offers at its essence — connection, communication, conflict, discovery and growth.” — J. Manuel Herrera

Freedom, Democracy
& Robert’s Rules

By Norman L. de Vall

We’re suspicious of the Patriot Act. We doubt the honesty of voting machines. We fear White House secrecy and presidential power grabs. But I submit that the greatest threat to our democracy lies not in Washington, but in our local communities.

Because democracies are “government by the people,” they require committed individuals willing to volunteer their time and talent to serve the community.

The politics that matter the most are local. Whether it’s the approval of a new subdivision, a declaration of eminent domain, a variance or the proposed closing of a library, these decisions depend on the work of volunteers who serve on the boards and commissions that provide society’s essential services — from protecting our kids and assisting the elderly and homeless to safeguarding what’s left of our forests and fisheries.

Mendocino County’s Board of Supervisors recently culled the number of boards and commissions down to 65 but this still requires 750 registered-voter volunteers to serve for terms as long as four years. To date, 16% of the seats remain vacant. It’s easy to see that, without public participation, there will be less public involvement in the creation of public policy.

The activism of the ’60s and ’70s are long gone. Since the 1980s, fewer people are volunteering to keep our communities thriving. As a result, more of the decision-making lands on the desks of career bureaucrats and elected politicians.

Some say it’s no different than it’s always been — older people have more time, experience and a desire to serve. But there is one huge difference between the generations and it is… Robert’s Rules of Order. The teaching of Robert’s Rules, the “language of democracy,” was largely dropped from the public school curriculum about 25 years ago. As a result, as the under-40 generation prepares to become “tomorrow’s leaders,” they lack the basic skills needed to effectively participate in public meetings.

Even with a knowledge of Robert’s, public meetings can be painfully boring. But without such knowledge, it is almost impossible to either participate or influence the outcome.

Give this trend another 10 years and you’ll see a consolidation of local boards and commissions, followed by an increasing elimination of these groups as power becomes more concentrated and decisions are made by fewer people with even less public input.

To counter this, we must bring civics back into our schools and encourage our kids to become involved in community service. Young people must feel responsible to their community but it is up to us to provide the tools that instill the desire to serve it well.

Norman L de Vall has served on the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors for 16 years and now serves on the boards of both nonprofit organizations and local government.

April 2006

The Reconciliation of Love and Power

As the conservative infrastructure unravels, the stage is set for a deeply progressive, truly evolutionary politics to re-emerge, all the way from the grass roots to the national level.

By J. Manuel Herrera

Across the land, there is a palpable yearning among people for a new consciousness to transform the world of politics. We hunger for something real and true to emerge in the arena of politics; not a politics that dishonors and degrades us, but a politics that mirrors our goodness and our highest possibilities.

I recently was speaking with a bright, articulate young woman, a spiritual seeker attuned to the world and current events. She told me that she’s not drawn to running for public office because it seems so incongruent with her values. She believes in the political process, in democracy, but she also believes that, in order to be in politics, you have to sell out and compromise on issues that you deeply believe in. Playing the political game, she said, is so far removed from her ideals that she simply refuses to do it.

By contrast, all my life I have been drawn to the political arena and, in the past 25 years, have lived my life deeply in the two domains of politics and spiritual practice. I am a trustee for the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. I am an active lay minister and I served for seven years as a chaplain for Unity Palo Alto Community Church. I have been a legislative aide on Capitol Hill and in the California State Legislature. I have served on the executive board of the California State Democratic Party. I am president of San Jose’s East Side Union High School District where I have served as a trustee for 16 years. In December 2005, I announced my candidacy for mayor of San Jose.

From two profound life paths of politics and spiritual practice, I have come to know that the personal and the political are one. There is no separation between the two seemingly disparate paths of politics and spiritual practice. The truth is, when baptized in the archetypal fires of life, we are all spiritual beings and we are all politicians.

Politics has a high purpose. It is the handmaiden to democracy, just as democracy is the handmaiden to the human quest for freedom and the soul’s yearning for liberation. Stunningly, what politics offers at its core is what life offers at its essence — connection, communication, conflict, discovery, and growth. Politics, at depth, is a generative force. It propels us into contact with our human family and illuminates the diversity of worldviews in our midst. The massive convergence of energy in the public process, representing a spectrum of constituencies and beliefs, is combustive and alchemical. The stuff of politics — how we communicate, how we reach agreements, how we are with each other — is the very stuff of life.

There is a pathology in politics that is undeniable, but it is magnified to a degree that obscures the affirmative essence of politics. Politics is permeated with opportunism, unethical dealings, and lack of authenticity. It is distorted by special interest money and toxic campaigns. Yet, there is a vast faithfulness, decency, and appropriate functioning that is just as evident in the public process. Today we are mixing and confusing these two elements — the pathology of politics and its life-affirming essence.

The late 20th century witnessed the beginning of a journey to wholeness in our culture, encompassing an integration of rationality with heart and spirit. Millions of “cultural creatives” emerged in our communities, people committed to universal spiritual principles and a more wholistic life path. In the original Sanskrit, “sacred” and “spirit” derive from the same root as “power.” We can rightly say that to be in the Sacred and in Spirit, is to be aligned with Power.

For spiritual seekers, the embrace of power is like eating of a mythical forbidden fruit. Just as the ego is discomforted by paradox and spiritual practice, the spiritually awakening soul is discomforted by the practice of power in the real world. With that, we fall short as stewards and co-creators of a new world. The combined energy of Love and Power is a different consciousness, a new creative force. Expressed authentically from the Self, it is transformational, alchemical, mysterious, and divine.

Love without power revels in innocence; it lacks a fully formed spiritual and emotional body capable of greater co-creation in the world. Power without love is self-serving and fundamentally in opposition to the evolutionary spirit moving us toward surrender, radical awareness, liberation, and transcendence. Lovelessness and powerlessness are at the root of much suffering in the manifest world. It is crucial, then, that we come to a realization and integration of both love and power in our lives.

Authenticity and Politics

We have a cultural story that says that being a politician is about manipulating others and eroding one’s ideals. We have a cultural story that equates power with corruption, often summed up in the quote: “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lastly, we have a cultural story that says one must not compromise one’s principles, and that is what is required to be successful in politics.

These themes comprise a simplistic and destructive cultural story that is literally blocking transformation by dissuading conscious, talented people from public leadership. We urgently need a new cultural understanding and a new mythos of political leadership.

There is something quite beautiful about authentic political practice; it is enlivening, connecting, and a basis for genuine growth. It operates on principles that stem from a healthy self-interest and interdependence. This practice doesn’t seek perfection or a utopian world. Rather it calls us to live from authenticity and wholeness in relationship with others, in the face of ongoing challenges and even escalating tensions. Increased participation with the Other brings challenges that are opportunities for personal and collective growth, for authentic communication, for the birth of mutual respect and partnership, and for genuine community. Provocative topics become windows to deeper insights, pathways to truth and wholeness, and a journey that unites both heart and mind.

I propose the concept of the “sanctity” of politics based on a deeper meaning of participation. At depth, participation in the public process is about encountering the Self and engaging the Other in the context of Life Itself.

We have universal human responses when confronted with tension, looming conflict, vulnerabilities, challenges, and conundrums. We have universal human responses when we are in the presence of approval, support, clarity, abundance, safety, and love. These inner forces are activated because they have an evolutionary purpose. Something intrinsic in us and in the design of Life wants to engage us, befuddle us, break us and defeat us — for a high and noble purpose. What is missing in many visionary approaches to politics is a grounding in Life Itself, where conflict, power, and compromise are seminal, transformative forces. The reality is that the political, public policy arena is filled with difficult, intractable problems for which there is insufficient public consensus and reasonable and passionate disagreements.

A New Civic Literacy

Democracy is more than a system of government and more than politics. Democracy is about the emancipation of the human spirit, the culmination of centuries of the evolution of human consciousness. It calls for a higher, more authentic form of political practice arising from greater literacy about the arts of political leadership.

In the modern public square we relate with one another from a distance, rarely knowing each other directly or personally. Rather, we are known to one another through the reality-distorting fields of the media. A new civic literacy is needed based on invoking communities of mutual regard that connect the leaders of community constituencies at a much deeper level of relationship.

An authentic politics is based on three core practices in the public process: 1) Visibility, 2) Mutual Regard, and 3) Transactions with the Other. A community fabric is woven through these practices, and a web of relationship and life is established and sustained.

The principle of “Visibility” says that, in every area of the public process, there is a civic village of public process practitioners, a discernable, human-scale community where you can deeply know others and be intimately known by them, providing possibilities for partnership and change.

The principle of “Mutual Regard” says that we are all worthy of recognition and respect, even those with whom we passionately disagree. This does not support self-righteousness or demonizing others.

The principle of “Transactions with the Other” recognizes that life is a constant give-and-take. Robert Bly, in Iron John, quotes Carl Jung: “Jung remarked that all successful requests to the psyche involve deals. The psyche likes to make deals.” Transactions, agreements, and “deals” generate political capital, which is the coin of effective political leadership.

If the path of salvation in our time encompasses public policy and politics, then a contingent of conscious servant-leaders needs to embrace the disciplines of this path, persevere over time, acquire genuine regard and influence within the community of political practitioners, and ultimately leverage their positions on behalf of a higher order of public policy and political leadership. It would signify our transition from advocacy to governance, from petitioners to policymakers, and from simple visionaries to leaders and co-creators.

This would herald the re-birth of Spirit in the public square and the full emergence of Love and Power as a creative force for the transformation and stewardship of planet Earth.

J. Manuel Herrera is an adjunct professor at San Jose State University and program administrator for the Silicon Valley Conference for Community & Justice. Excerpted from Herrera’s book-in-progress, The Reconciliation of Love and Power.

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