That Extra Kick

For me, blogging has become much more than a once-or-twice-a-week activity of observing, ruminating, and commenting on events as they unfold. Mostly I have no idea in advance what I will write, so a certain feeling of precariousness hangs over the whole enterprise, because of the possibility of nothing dropping, as it were, out of the sky at the requisite moment. Trusting that by leaving myself in the hands of infinity something will inevitably catch fire, can be a nerve-wracking experience at times. When it works out well, though, it can also be a wildly exhilarating, even ecstatic experience, giving the act of writing a special radiance.

The truth is, I use the blog as my "spiritual helicopter," by which I mean that I am always looking at events through the lens of synchronicity, scrying everywhere for signs, hoping the tide will bring me in. What I find is that certain things seem to cluster meaningfully in space and time, as if held together mysteriously by a hidden magnet of meaning, even while appearing to be random. The trick is in being able to notice and highlight the connections.

When things intersect like this in small but inspiring ways, they often have a numinous charge. Sometimes this can have the feel of messages coming in from the universe. However, writing from the principle of synchronicity presents a real challenge, because synchronicities cannot be consciously created. They take you utterly by surprise. It is the feeling of utter surprise that adds that "extra kick."

There is another "extra kick" about blogging, however: it's when someone you don't actually know posts a comment to what you've written. One such comment arrived a couple of days ago:

"Suzi,

As a long time fan of yours (I've read all of your books and articles) I can tell you that I was not only delighted to come upon your blog, but to know that you are an Obama person. I have not read all your blog entries...and somewhere you talk about Obama exuding an aura of a Zen master. It goes much deeper than that.

I wasn't old enough to vote when JFK ran, but I can tell you that when I would listen to him, I would get goose-bumps and just know that this was something different. (I am an empath) Of course I could not voice this in a staunch Republican family (Queens, NY). Needless to say I was severely traumatized when he was killed. My feeling about Obama goes much further, and maybe it started when I read his book, Dreams of My Father...he's right there in that book. To me he is so obviously REAL in a world of so many fakes..."

Many thanks,
Lee Mamunes,
Suffern, NY

This commentary intersected on my email (where all blog comments are automatically delivered) along with the following forwarded essay, also about Obama. I will leave readers to draw their own conclusions as to whether there is any meaningful coincidence occurring here, and if there is, what to make of it. All I know is that it passed the test for me, because as I read them both, I felt the prickling zing of a "dancing universe" collapsing in on itself for one fleeting but poignant moment.

"Friday, June 6, 2008 (SF Gate)
Is Obama an enlightened being?/Spiritual wise ones say: This sure ain't no ordinary politician. You buying it?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

I find I'm having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and
more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and
miserable, deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped persons of
all shapes and stripes and I'm having it in particular with those who seem
confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the
same thing: What the hell's the big deal about Obama?

I, of course, have an answer. Sort of.

Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical,
a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former '60s radical with no hope left,
or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak,
click away right now, because you ain't gonna like this one little bit.

Ready? It goes likes this:

Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.

This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the
whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional
karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't
understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about
Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.

To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the
pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of
people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new
channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?

No, it's not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring
rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black
president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different
ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless,
winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful
luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.

Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously
smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away
by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to
say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully
orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into
office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking
lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.

Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not
coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a
Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead
us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but
who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of
relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment.
These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and
peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or
emotion, but to the soul.

The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a
brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why
Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and
Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring
vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.

Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me. But you gotta wonder,
why has, say, the JFK legacy lasted so long, is so vital to our national
identity? Yes, the assassination canonized his legend. The Kennedy family
is our version of royalty. But there's something more. Those attuned to
energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK
wasn't assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It's because he
was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the
war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.

Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to
the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into
disenchanted pulp and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage
for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally
truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.

Let me be completely clear: I'm not arguing some sort of utopian
revolution, a big global group hug with Obama as some sort of happy hippie
camp counselor. I'm not saying the man's going to swoop in like a
superhero messiah and stop all wars and make the flowers grow and birds
sing and solve world hunger and bring puppies to schoolchildren.

Please. I'm also certainly not saying he's perfect, that his presidency
will be free of compromise, or slimy insiders, or great heaps of
politics-as-usual. While Obama's certainly an entire universe away from
George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall
inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn't hard to stand
far above and beyond the worst president in American history.

But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to
me, in a way, it's not even about Obama, per se. There's a vast amount of
positive energy swirling about that's been held back by the armies of
BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod,
is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy. People and
emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically drawn
to him. It's exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational
energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know,
completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.

Don't buy any of it? Think that's all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Agey
bulls-- and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose
inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you're
talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes? I understand. I
get it. I often believe it myself.

Not this time."