"Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is." ~ Gandhi
People often say you should never mix religion and politics. Both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. disagreed, as the quote above clearly indicates. King said,"Any religion which professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a dry-as-dust religion."So where does religion and politics intersect?
In your daily life.
When religion or politics are separated from my daily life, they become merely theoretical. If we're not talking about the practical application of spiritual principles within the context of the present moment—the eternal womb out of which life is born—then what exactly are we talking about? When disconnected from the immediacy of daily life religion is reduced to nothing more than unrealized fantasy and politics becomes a collection of ideas about how things should and shouldn't be.Daily life is the great testing ground. It is where the value and substance—real meaning—is discovered. In the present moment we clean out the closet of our mind, throwing away antiquated ideas that are not substantiated by our own experience and passion. In the present moment our passions bring us out of our comfort zone and into the wilderness of our soul where we are forced to reconcile our sincere and heartfelt motivations with what we think about ourselves and the world we live in. This is the real scratch test. This is where our true individuality is discovered.
