America, I Love You
America, I Love you, my letter to America, began in late August 2024 and I first posted it here in Medium early September. After editing many many times I deleted the original post and re-posted the newer version. But I kept adding more and more to it which later dawned on me that it was probably due remembering years I lived under dictatorship and the anxiety or ptsd in relation to the current election which one candidate wants to be, “dictator on day one.” So I was anxiously writing and editing while fooling myself that I was writing rationally and intelligently.
خموش باش که گفتی و کسی نشنید — که این دهل ز چه بام است و این بیان ز کجا
I realized this after writing in detail about a short exchange with my high school classmate in Iran, about Savak, the secret police of the dictator of the time in Iran. I wrote and lived through that experience which took place over 47 years ago. I had never written about it nor do I remember talking about it to anyone!?! Remembering specific moments in that exchange, the energy and feeling of it all, was too much but somehow it seems to have helped me let go of my attachment to the result of this election.
During the 2024 Presidential election in the United States, sometimes I would suddenly get anxious and stress about the possibility of dictatorship in America. Then I’d try to remember a saying; If I can have faith that the Beloved worries for me then I don’t need to. However, at this stage in life and with this character of mine it comes natural to me to say this to you America, it’ll be easier to align with truth under democracy than under dictatorship.
America, I love you. For decades you gave me support, love, compassion and more love. You have also supported dictators in several countries around the world and dampened people’s hopes for democracy, including the country of my birth. America, I forgive but not forget what you and the British did to early democracy in Iran/Eron in 1953. Don’t do it to yourself.
We live in the world of judgment and duality but let us not forget that there is a “field beyond the ideas of right doing and wrongdoing,” as Molavi said 800 years ago, in Farsi and Coleman Barks puts it in English recently. Let’s not buy into the lie that this duality, this reality, is the only world there is. There is also a world of compassion, as Saints and Masters have said and continue to say. But since we need to do our time in this reality, let us seek truth and nothing but the truth or as Zarathustra put it, many centuries ago; There is only one path to the Beloved and that is the path of honesty and truth. Yes we can find compassion in this world of duality too but let me just focus on what I’m anxious about, losing democracy once again!
In this world of duality and deception sometimes it’s hard to tell who is telling the truth. My practice advises me not to criticize others and not to break anyone’s heart. It’s recommended not to be fixated on reforming society but to reform myself. At the same time it’s hard not to reflected on my personal experience of seeing the difference between a society governed by dictatorship vs democracy.
Let’s not be deceived by lies and deception. Let us seek truth and nothing but the truth. Let us not forget that there is a field within each of us, a reality that is filled with light. This is not what I say, it’s what Molavi and all other Masters say.
شاد زی، پاک زی، دیر زی
God Bless, America.
Roz Omid
Eugene, Oregon, USA
