I was reading More Than a Life, the biography of the Indian mystic and global humanitarian Sadhguru this morning, and was stopped cold by a quote from the man I call my guru: “You don’t need a moral structure when you have consciousness.”

It didn’t stop me because it was a new thought. I’ve known this for ages. What stopped me was the context. He was talking about our modern “civilization” and how he perceives we’re rapidly coming to the place where as both individuals and society we exhibit neither morality nor consciousness.

And I realized yet another aspect to the whole Donald Trump “win.”

When there is no awareness of what life is—when there is no knowledge of the self—when there is no sense of interconnection—when there is no compassion—when there is no capacity for inner regulation and restraint—when there is no striving for wisdom … in other words, when there’s no higher level of consciousness at play in the world … we are reduced to the need to impose rules and regulations from the outside. We are reduced to the Law of External Morality.

Which is exactly what a vast number of people in the US are striving towards and obviously yearning for.

With no inner compass to guide us we blindly turn to Authority—to the loudest voice and the biggest stick. With no strong compassionate feminine presence mitigating our fears, teaching us that it’s safe to turn inwards to search our own hearts for answers, we automatically turn to the Authoritarian Male for leadership.

In our fear we fall prey to the need for rules. Order at all costs! Whether the order imposed is egalitarian doesn’t matter. Whether the order imposed is ethical doesn’t matter. Whether the order imposed makes sense doesn’t matter. Anything to save us from the gaping maw of chaos and dissolution …

For decades Western society has been sliding into chaos—that unstructured frightening time and place that inevitably comes when old philosophies and systems no longer work and are falling apart, before new systems have been birthed to replace them.

Instead of going gracefully into the unknown we clutch at the old and the known and fervently cling to it no matter how dysfunctional and corrupt and painful it might be.

A rise in consciousness is the only alternative. But how do we get to that?

We must turn within and follow the guidance of own inner spirit. And if our inner compass is wobbly it helps to find a great teacher. (Not surprisingly I highly recommend Sadhguru!)

We must support the voices calling for change from within. We must be loathe to impose rules and laws and be quick to open doors to new ideas. And we must be even quicker to reach out our hands in unity—shattering boundaries and barricades wherever we find them, both inside and out.