I was having an email exchange with someone who was contemplating not voting in the upcoming election in the United States. She felt, being the conscientious person that she is, that by voting she would be aligning herself energetically with the old polarized dysfunctional third dimensional paradigm and would be giving her power and sovereignty over to that. By putting her focus on creating the new heart-centered paradigm that is birthing on earth now she felt she would be better serving higher consciousness.

I agreed with her that the Patriarchal social system that we have now, and which we have had for the last 5,000 years (and within which our democracy is bound), is ego driven, dysfunctional, and often corrupt. But when we choose to throw up our arms and abandon it by not voting, and instead only acknowledge the light, aren’t we doing spiritual by-pass? When we turn our backs on the dark and look only to the light, personally or collectively, we are ignoring our shadow and transformation will never take place. I like the Zen koan-like phrase that my teacher coined years ago: expand into the contraction. As seekers our calling is to shine the light of consciousness on the unconscious contraction so that it may be transmuted and transformed.


Yes, we are being asked to vote (to vow or to wish) within a corrupt 3D political system. But it is of our own creation! It is a manifestation and a reflection of our own collective unconscious shadow. To vote is to choose to work within the system that we created to direct our enlightened energy and attention to the side of an issue or to a candidate that feels, given its 3D limitations, most likely to evolve the collective, or to at least point us in a more expansive direction. 


This does not make us partisan. We can make our choice with discernment and detachment and pray for the highest good without demonizing the other side or playing the game of right vs. wrong. What is our heart telling us? We quietly vote by trusting the power of our divine nature and intention to create the change we seek.

So voting is an act of power and a statement to the divine that we are not denying our human experience, but that with her help we choose to transform it.