We are questioning our faith in our institutions. Was the election rigged after all? Should the FBI have gotten involved so close to the end?  There were so many hacks this time…foreign trolls…we don’t know who to trust…we don’t trust the media…they didn’t do their job…and so on.

The foundation of faith in our institutions has cracked.

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No matter what we think the system is, too many of us feel that we cannot trust it.  We think the system is rigged. We feel despair, which spirals outward in anger and fear, horsemen of the apocalypse unleashed.

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Hold that thought a minute.

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You are bigger than your institutions. You think of your institutions: the FBI, the electoral college, the Supreme Court, the World Bank, the European Union, and so on, as huge blocky monoliths, pieces in a giant chess game. And this chess game goes back and forth, as any play of power always must.  One side dominant, then the other, never resolved, always ongoing.

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The only way to win this game is to refuse to play. Realize that you are bigger than your institutions. They only exist with your permission. It is your collective belief, and voluntary servitude to your belief, that gives your institutions what validity they have.

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But you could just as easily shift your attentions, and create other institutions.  What if you created communities of ideas, instead of countries?  Commonwealths of love? You could endow them with the qualities you have come to yearn for, by their absence. You could create institutions embodying world order and peace.

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Or you could transfer your positive attention to the institutions you already have, and restore honor to them. Bring justice, impartiality, tolerance and fairness to all, back into your institutions. How? By becoming the kind of people to take this as a given.

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Or you could go within, where everything originates. Mentally create that country you wish to live in. Need it be a country, as you presently understand that? Not necessarily; it is up to you. What state would you like to live in?  Which condition? How is it you wish to feel? What is important to you?

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When you have answered these questions for yourself, the questions will be answered for you.

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If we can begin to open our perspective and discover new dimensions of space within our immediate experiences, the anxiety and frustration which results from our sense of limitation will automatically be lessened; and we can increase our ability to relate sensitively and effectively to ourselves, to others, and to our environment.

Tarthang Tulku