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A problem cannot be solved on the level of the problem. The solution is always on a much subtler, more interior level, because the "problem" is an effect, not a cause. Trying to solve this nation's political problems with politicians, and economic problems with economics, is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The underlying cause of the problem must be clearly revealed, and that cause is the mind.

The essential problem is that we have identified our minds with the world. Projecting the mind into the world, as the world, we mistake the mind for the world.

Then we wonder why the world is so disturbed, and such a puzzle. But the world is ineluctably simple, clear, and radiant. It is the mind that is disturbed. It is the mind that is a puzzle to itself. The mind is like a spider entangled in its own web.

You are the spider, not the web. You are the vast night, not a star. Knowing that you are not your mind is the solution to the nation's problems.

If we just realized this, on both "sides" of the conflict, we could meet in the space at the center, where there is no ideology of the left or the right, no past to repair, no future to be anxious about. We could take the next step gently, in peace, because that step is where we walk right now. We could act not out of the mind, which is ever tangled up in time, but out of the body, which is ever present.

Let the nation turn away from whining, blaming, shouting, burning, and return to its center, to its body, to its beating heart. The act of returning is meditation. Meditation is letting go of the mind to repose in the Self. This is not an escape from action: it is action. Meditation is the act of centering that liberates the energy of presence.