At the time of George Washington there was an amazingly sharp divide between different groups of people. You may look at this nation and see the divide between slaves and free men, but there were many other divisions in American society. Divisions that truly, from the very outset, formed the greatest threat to the establishment of this nation, to the survival of this nation. And even today, they form the greatest threat to the ongoingness and the acceleration of this nation towards its golden age potential.

Could the United States have been established without bloodshed?

Consider a question, which very few Americans today bother to think about. It is the question of how early America might have achieved nationhood without the spilling of blood. Would it have been possible, indeed, to establish the United States of America as a free independent nation without the revolutionary war?

Certainly, at the time George Washington could not see how. Neither could Jefferson or any of the other founding fathers. Even though many of the so-called founding fathers of this nation had a background in in freemasonry – and therefore believed in universal spiritual principles and divine providence – they still were not able to see, how they could achieve greater independence from England without incurring the wrath of the King and the subsequent military clampdown that was – or at least seemed – inevitable in those days.

You, who have grown up in societies or in a time when there was less warfare – or at least without being directly involved with it yourself – will find it difficult to understand the mindset back then, where armed conflict was such an almost natural part of life. And it was often taken for granted that there simply was no other way to work out solutions to what seemed like major conflicts.

Yet, of course, when you look back with the perspective of higher awareness, you can begin to see just how many opportunities there were for actually having forged a separate nation. When you look today, you can see that had a different course been set, there would still have been an independent nation on the North American continent today. It would surely have taken longer; it would not have been established when the United States of America was established. Yet, it would have been there today. And in the process of pursuing a peaceful transformation, England itself would also have been transformed faster than it otherwise was.

The eagerness for armed conflict

Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, as they say. Nevertheless, there is always validity in looking at and learning from the lessons of history. Back then people were – those who started the process of independence and fought in the revolutionary war – not only quick to call for armed uprising, they were eager for it. For they saw it as a decisive way to further their own careers, even their sense of personal honor and pride.

This is a mindset that most of the more aware people of today will find alien to the way they have grown up. But that is because so much has happened in the collective consciousness of humankind since then, that you have been fortunate to grow up in a part of the world, where the collective consciousness is not as steeped in conflict as it is in certain other areas.

Look for example to the Middle East or Africa or other parts of the globe, where there is much more tension and conflict. And consider that the mindset in which George Washington grew up was fairly similar in some ways to what you see in the world today. Where people are ready to engage into conflict, almost at a moment’s notice, because it is always there as an underlying reality in their world view. They see it not only as inevitable, they see it as desirable for a variety of reasons.

The young George Washington

George Washington was born in a not wealthy family, but a family that had ambitions. Even though his father died early, George had absorbed enough of the consciousness that he embodied, the ambition to improve his status in society and become somebody. This was, of course, a mindset that was unique to the colonies, for in Europe people were born into certain stations and most of them would die in the same stations. But in the colonies, there was a new consciousness.

There was a new consciousness of realizing that you could improve your station in life. You could be born in a relatively poor family, and you could climb the social ladder and achieve status. Of course, this could not be done if you were a slave. But if you were born free, then you had this opportunity, through your skill and initiative and your willingness to take a risk.

Thus, if you look at the young George Washington, you will clearly see that kind of mentality. He wanted to achieve in his life, what his father had not achieved in his, and he was willing to take a risk to achieve it by joining the armed forces, as that was one of the ways to improve your status back then. So he joined and threw himself into the uncertainty of armed conflict, and he learned many lessons that became valuable to him, not only in his role as leader during the revolutionary war but about life in general. How fragile it is, how easily it is lost to those who are not, as he came to see it, favored by divine providence. For there were battles, where he saw his friends die around him and where he had bullets flying through his coats—and yet he escaped unharmed.

And he had a growing realization within him that it could only have been divine providence that spared his life, because he was selected by that divine providence for some greater mission. Of course, not knowing what it was when he was young, but it became gradually clearer as he grew into a position in the revolutionary war and eventually, of course, as president. He started as a young man, having little regard for the lives of others, being willing to further his own personal career by essentially having an occupation that required him to take the lives of other people. This was simply the mindset of the time: kill or be killed, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, whatever was required to prove your valor in battle.

The maturing George Washington

Yet, a change began to happen in his consciousness during the revolutionary war. Especially in that winter at Valley Forge, where he was beyond the brink of complete despair, coming to a point where he completely gave up all personal ambition, all personal desire, all personal expectations of what life should be. He came to the point of saying, literally, to God: “You can take me home right now!” And he knew that if he had died at that moment, he would have had no regrets, he would have been willing to leave everything in that lifetime behind in order to move on to some other service.

For he truly realized that he of his own self could do nothing. There was no way that he alone – with his leadership and with the men he had at his disposal – could win this war for a new nation. All of his youthful ambitions had made him believe that he had the skills to lead. His early victories had made him even more sure that one day he would eventually triumph, and his personal ambitions to achieve the highest standards would be fulfilled, through his bold choice to lead this nation.

Yet on his knees at Valley Forge, he gave it all up. He surrendered himself entirely unto God as he saw it, the God of nature, the God within, and he commended his life and his spirit to that higher being. Which at the time he sensed, but could not name as the higher self. From that moment on, the young George Washington effectively died. There, in the cold dark days in that distant forest, he died. And yet, he did not die. He was not taken home. And he realized that there could only be one reason why he was still in embodiment. And that was that divine providence still had some role for him to play. Divine providence had something it wanted to do through him, now that he had gotten himself out of the way, his own ambition out of the way.

Not wanting to be king

He was reborn. And thus came, of course, the process that eventually led to the surrender of the British and the formation of a new nation. This, then, led to the crucial situation, where he stood there – as the hero of the new nation – and he was offered, basically, the highest possible power. He could have taken that power, as Napoleon took it. Yet he declined, and this was the pivotal moment in his embodiment in the public life.

But had it not been for his total surrender in that distant valley, he could never have given up the trappings of power. They surely were pulling at him with all of their might, to get him to take the position as a god for this new nation, thereby thinking that he could do this.

Nevertheless, because of his previous surrender he knew that he could not be a king or an emperor for this new nation. And thus, he was able to once again surrender and decline this position. And this was, indeed, what made it possible for him to then later accept the position as the first president of the United States, and conduct that position in a way that he would have never been able to do before this total surrender to God.

How to be a good president

And thus, what is the moral of this story? It is indeed to show you, what it takes to be a good president of these United States. And it is precisely this one quality: the total surrender to a higher power. The absolute, uncompromising acceptance that you can of your own self do nothing, even though they say you are holding the most powerful office in the world. You need to be able to stand in front of a mirror, look yourself straight in the eyes and accept: “I am nothing, I can do nothing without a higher power. I can only be successful as president by being the open door, a clear pane of glass.”

Thus, this is the key to being a successful president. This is why George Washington could say that eight years was enough, and thus set a precedent for this nation that otherwise could easily have been broken by those who had not surrendered their desire for ultimate power—and thus could even at an early stage have transformed this nation back towards a more totalitarian form of government. This, then, is the lesson to learn from the life of George Washington: the surrender onto a higher power. The powers of men may seem intoxicating, when you have them in such a measure that you think nothing on earth could take it away from you. But there is no amount of power that can preserve you, when divine providence decides to turn the wheels of destiny.

There is nothing that can stop the wheels of time from taking away anything and everything you think you can own and possess on this earth. And thus, only those who know this will be able to surrender and let go, whereas those who do not know will continue to use whatever power they have available to them, until their ultimate defeat, as you saw with Hitler, Napoleon, many other people throughout the ages. Even people who have not been leaders of nations, but who have continued doing the same thing over and over again, thinking that one day they would surely mount enough force to get a different result.

Practical realism

When you surrender yourself entirely unto God, you realize a very simple thing: we live in a universe that has certain mechanical properties. What you send into the cosmic mirror, the mirror will reflect back to you. The harder the impulse you send out, the harder the reflection coming back. And if you think that fighting your own reflection requires you to use more force, you only get an even stronger reflection coming back. And this can go on until you are either broken or until you see the light and just give it up, give up the entire dualistic game.

And this, then, is indeed the quality that needs to be manifest, if you are to be a successful leader of this nation or any democratic nation. For even though democracy must be secular and must not be taken over by a particular religion, a democracy cannot function without the acceptance of a higher power, a higher principle, a higher idea.

Nevertheless, this is not saying that in order to be a successful President of the United States, you have to be an idealist. For if you look at the life of George Washington, you will see that even though he clearly had ideals and principles, he was not what you would call an idealist. If you look at his consciousness during the revolutionary war, you will clearly see that he was a practical realist.

He used what he had available to him, and he attempted to multiply it, to gain the maximum effect. But then, when he acknowledged the fact that he would not have more troops, he would not have more gun powder, he would not have more money, then he committed himself 100 percent to doing the best that could be done, and then accepting the result.

The Alpha is the total surrender to God, the Omega is the practical realism of what is possible in the material universe. This is also why he was not able to find a solution to the slavery issue that you clearly see outpictured at Mount Vernon. Yet you will see that even the man who was a greater idealist, such as his friend Thomas Jefferson, could not resolve the issue either through his reasoning faculties. This was, again in hindsight, partly because of the collective consciousness of the time. It was too difficult for them to see through the fog of the collective consciousness and do what needed to be done to end slavery, at least on a personal basis.

George Washington was too focused on the practical aspects, of not wanting to break up slave families. And yet, had he been more willing to surrender entirely unto God in this issue as well, then he would have found the solution. The total surrender unto God is not a one-time process; it is something that is required every time you face an issue, where you seemingly cannot solve an enigma, solve a problem.

George Washington’s law

This could be seen as George Washington’s law: If you do not see a solution to a problem, it is because there is something you have not surrendered. You have not attained total surrender with regards to this issue, for otherwise the solution would become obvious.

This, then, is a rule that you might find occasion to ponder, as you pursue growth in awareness and thereby become the people in today’s age who will have potentially an even greater impact on the collective consciousness by setting examples that go beyond the example set by George Washington or that was set by the founding fathers. For truly, this is a new day and a new age.

So many young people come to the Mount Vernon estate and museum, and they look at the life of George Washington and they think that they should somehow follow his example. But times have moved on; it is no longer the highest solution that this nation of the United States is engaged in conflicts around the world. And therefore still finds it necessary to educate its young people – to program them – to think they have to fight for freedom, as you find in several museums in this nation’s capital. This is no longer the highest possible example, and thus there is a need for those who will set a new example, a higher example based on the collective consciousness as it is today and the potential for the Age of Higher Awareness.

You who are open to a universal spiritual teaching – as George Washington was open by becoming a freemason in his early years – you are the ones who have the potential to set a higher example in this age. And you can learn certain lessons from studying the life of George Washington. But again, you must, of course, go beyond; you must surrender your expectations and graven images as he surrendered his, when he was kneeling in his tent on that cold winter day, where it seemed like the cause of forging a new nation was lost beyond repair.

Nothing is ever lost for higher awareness. It is only for the human consciousness that it can seem as if something is lost. And thus, when you think all is lost, it is because there is a part of your human consciousness that you have not surrendered. And it is this consciousness that thinks all is lost.

What is lost is only your unreal expectations. When you surrender those unreal expectations, you will be reborn into a higher vision, where you see that nothing was truly lost for everything was a transformation. Had they lost that revolutionary war, there would still have been a free nation on this continent. Again, it would have taken longer, but as even democracy was eventually established in England – and India and Canada gained their independence – you could see that, surely, the American colonies could have achieved the same in time.

Thus, there is a time to take leadership, and there is a time to lay down the leadership. There is a time to take arms, and there is a time to lay down your arms and grab the plow. Wise are those who know the timing. This is not hereby saying that George Washington or others in the revolutionary war should not have done what they did. This is not a point of going back and rewriting history. It is a matter of realizing that there was an alternative to what they did. At the time it was not a possible or practical alternative, given the state of consciousness they had, and the collective state of consciousness and physical conditions.

But the point is that you cannot today look back at the founding fathers and the revolutionary war and say that you today should do what we did back then. You should be inspired by their example, but you should transcend the example, surrender your own expectations and graven images and grasp the higher vision for what is the practical solution today.