In her most recent book, Getting a Grip: Creating Clarity and Courage in a World Gone Mad, Frances Moore Lappé offers an enlightening statistic. A century ago, the native population of India outnumbered the British civil servants ruling them by a ratio of 300,000 to one. It wasn’t until Gandhi awakened the people of India from the trance of powerlessness that they were able to organize and become an independent state.



We Americans are in a trance of powerlessness as well, but it is even more insidious. Here we have the right to vote, the right to speak out, the right to petition -- and we even have a founding document that tells us that we have the right to overrule our rulers when they go astray -- yet we the people seem to have silently resigned ourselves to being ruled by “they the very, very few people.” Our job? Shut up and go shopping.



Each election cycle, those of us who still care enough to get involved fervently work for whichever lesser evil most closely approximates our “tribal” affiliation. “Red” tribe polarizes against “blue,” “blue” against “red” and Americans on both sides are continually reminded why they are supposed to dislike and mistrust one another. Consequently, we have been so divided by our differences that we have failed to defend the core values that unite 95% of us.



All of this is starting to change, and perhaps the most surprising manifestation of this change is the Ron Paul for President campaign. Who would have imagined six months ago that right there in every Republican Presidential debate there would be a candidate speaking so much truth that he would embarrass the others by winning the straw polls conducted at the end of each debate?





This past weekend, I participated in a workshop with Howard Martin of the HeartMath Institute. He offered a simple process to calm the heart so we think more clearly. Next time you find yourself feeling despondent, discouraged, or disheartened about the news you are seeing, take a break and try this. Calmly focus your attention on your heart, and begin to breathe into and out of the heart. Then bring thoughts of love, gratitude and appreciation into your heart. This has a tendency to synchronize heart and brain, and shift us from our reactive hind-brain and put us into our creative forebrain.



Remember that an important quality of the awakened heart is courage. The way we bring forth the courageous leaders is through our own. Build it and they will come!



2. Expand the Nonvoter Vote.





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