By David Spangler
Editor's Note: This essay was originally published in 2008. A subscriber recently inquired about it, and David felt the message (with a few minor updates) was still relevant today. We recognize that this blog post in its entirety is particularly focused on the United States and we hope that our non-US readers will appreciate David's wisdom given challenging circumstances on this side of the world.
An Introduction
From the standpoint of spiritual perception, a country is a living being, a field of collective energy that possesses a unique consciousness. Like us, it has an emergent nature and a transpersonal nature. On the one hand, it has characteristics that arise from the geography and ecologies that exist within its boundaries and from the energy of that land; likewise, it emerges from the thoughts and feelings of its inhabitants and their dreams, visions, hopes, history, myths, and actions. These two might be thought of as the body and the psyche of the country respectively.
However, the country as a being is more than just the sum total of all its environmental and human parts. It also has a larger wholeness that emerges from its connections with the sacred and with the world as a whole and draws its existence from spiritual realms. This is the transpersonal aspect, which might be thought of as the spirit of the country.
Spiritual Destiny
This transpersonal aspect embodies as well the country’s spiritual destiny. When we think of this, we may imagine an objective or goal, what a country is destined to become, the role it is intended to fulfill, or the tasks it must accomplish. In other words, “destiny” may be equated with “destination.” Spiritual perception suggests, though, that spiritual destiny may be better understood as a seed-presence—a “will-to-serve”—that unfolds and expresses as the unique contributions and spiritual energy which that country and its people have to offer to the world and its wellbeing. It might be thought of more as “talent” than as “goal.” It represents what this particular pattern of land, nature, and humanity uniquely embodies and can give to planetary and human wholeness and evolution.
The Soul of a Country
The soul of a country is that active intelligence that holds the body, psyche and spirit of a country together and integrates them into a dynamic wholeness. It expresses capacities for synthesis, love, and evolution. It is the custodian of the spiritual destiny. It nurtures and develops that country’s talents. It seeks to promote the qualities and capacities that are that country’s unique powers and gifts to the world.
If we think of a country as a collective field fed by energies arising from its geography, its ecologies, its people, and its spirit, then the soul of that country tends that field. It seeks to keep it clear and unobstructed. It seeks to reduce or if possible, eliminate toxicity and dysfunction within that field, particularly as manifested by violence. It seeks to enhance the flow and radiant power of love within its field. It enhances creativity and emergence. It promotes and nurtures connectedness, coherency, integrity and wholeness. It works to synthesize its various dynamic elements, such as the land and the people, into a mutually enhancing presence. It works to integrate its field with the fields of other countries and with the great collective field and presence of the planet as a whole and with the sacredness that underlies all existence.
That is the work of the soul of a country.
Inner Citizenship
Inner citizenship is what we do when we take up this work of the soul of our country. When we seek to embody and express its soul to the best of our capacities, we are being active inner citizens.
We are all familiar with outer citizenship. As citizens we seek to support the political, economic, and civic life of our country. We take on a responsibility for the physical and social wellbeing of our nation. Depending on where we live, this may entail voting, running for office, being part of volunteer organizations, supporting public education, and so forth. There are many ways in which we may be good citizens in our outer world.
Inner citizenship requires us to realize that there is more to our country than just its physical and social dimensions. The country exists as a field of energy and as a spiritual presence as well. How do we relate to these? How do we act on their behalf?
Inner citizenship takes place in the invisible realms of energy, thought, imagination, feeling, and spirit. In outer citizenship, we may vote, but in inner citizenship, we may pray or bless. In outer citizenship, we may run for public office, but in inner citizenship, we monitor the quality of mental and emotional energies that we broadcast into the collective fields of our neighborhoods,towns, our cities, or our nation. In outer citizenship, we may serve on a panel to clean up pollution in a city, but in inner citizenship, we clean up toxic energies of anger and violence that we may be holding in our own psyches or that we sense in the atmosphere around us.
Each is important. To truly be partners with the soul of our country, we need to be both outer and inner citizens.