The next great political unfolding for our age is a broad-based commitment to wage peace, to declare it with as much serious intent and effort as we have ever employed in the waging of war. Merely managing the effects of a war mentality -- and fear-based consciousness is at heart a war mentality -- is an inadequate response to the dangers of our age.

The new politics is a kind of shamanic power that seeks to influence the world around us by becoming the change we want to see happen. Gandhi said, "We must be the change." This does not mean that we must become enlightened masters before we can have a positive effect on the world. It means, however, that our every effort to live lives of righteousness and purity as we understand it is supported by the power of God.

It is in forgiving people that we release them from the darkness we might judge them for; it is in refusing to judge people that we have the most power to affect them; and it is in loving people that we heal them of the wounds that have hardened their minds and hearts.

That is why a new politics is one in which our own whole person must be the world we work on first. Our meditations, our personal growth work, our prayers, our healing, and our need to forgive and withhold judgment are the things we must concentrate on first in seeking to transform the world.

- Marianne Williamson