I find these numbers highly significant not just from a political standpoint, but from a spiritual view. As corporations cash in by displaying and selling flag stickers that say “God Bless America,” many Americans are missing a spiritual doorway into contrition. Others can see our action's effects more clearly than we can.

In my personal experience, the most significant awakening one can undergo is insight into one’s own culpability. This does not mean we take on the debilitating view that “I am a bad person” (or “I am a citizen of a bad country), but that we recognize that the world is marked by suffering, and that we have had a hand, a significant one, in contributing to that suffering. Even if I feel and am good and righteous, I can be mistaken about the remedies to alleviate that suffering. Even before that, I can be mistaken in thinking I have not caused suffering for others. These numbers show to me that America as a nation does not want to take a good hard look at the ways in which she has contributed to the world’s suffering.

This spiritual doorway can be the most difficult, and the most important, threshold to cross. Most difficult because no one wants to look at her flaws, at her shadow, at her dark half. Even if we make a practice of it, we still find ourselves tripping over deeply buried shames and less-than-pretty habits. Most important because any spiritual progress we make will be blind to our own faults, our own shadows if we do not cross it. As a spiritual nation, and I believe we do consider ourselves a spiritual nation, we are just babies on the path to truth because we cannot look at our dark side, much less accept responsibility for it. We cannot rein it in. Some may say there is hope: we have ended slavery; we have regretted our concentration camps of World War II...but we stop short of making reparations, and we take such a long time, decades, centuries, before we face those dark culpabilities.

Before we cross this threshold we are innocent, or we consider ourselves so. A wonderful example can be found in the movie “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Jack, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, discovers Christmas, and immediately divines its beauty. His attempt to participate in it goes wrong, and he can’t see it is so. When he does finally recognize his tragic results, he laments, “What have I done? How could I be so blind?” With new insight, he can address his wrongs and save Christmas. He experiences contrition, he laments, but it immediately turns sweet: “And for the first time since/ I don’t remember when/ I felt just like my old bony self again.”

Here lies the secret of that doorway of contrition. We fear it, we dread facing our faults, but once we step, trip, fall, or run through it we find that contrition is so sweet. Here is where true freedom lies. Our fear and ignorance constrains us, shackles us. In order not to face our part in the world’s woes, we must turn a blind eye to more and more significant markers. We must hide from a significant portion of our own self. When we walk through that doorway, the truth becomes clear, and our options open up. When our defenses drop away, when we go even further and worry less about self-interest, we can see with clarity the best solution for all.

The IHT/Pew poll revealed another significant disparity: 9 in 10 Americans listed our country’s “overarching power” as the main factor in the world’s resentment, but 6 in 10 of non-Americans polled listed as a major cause the United States’ “responsibility for the gap between the world’s rich and poor.” I suggest that those who feel the effects of our nation’s habits are better able to judge what we need to work on. It’s never too late for us as a nation to step through that doorway of contrition. Let us hope it’s not too late to make amends for the harm we have done.

Heidi Enji Hoogstra is the contact person for a Buddhist Action Group in Portland, Oregon (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pdxbuddhistaction/) who are working towards becoming a chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. She is a Buddhist and a member of Dharma Rain Zen Center.

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