My Inner Trump...?! - As within, So without...
As both a private and professional student and practitioner of "conscious relations," I offer this examination of how to own any projections of our less-than-lovely shadowy aspects, and be more wholly response-able to love without conditions... To quote Thomas Merton, " Our job is to love others, without stopping to consider whether or not they are worthy."
Acknowledging My Inner Trump
Confessions and Reflections by Marcia Singer, MSW ©May 2019
"Our job is to love others, without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy."
- Thomas Merton
As a healing artist/therapist in private practice, I’m invested in getting along with clients. Yet there’s more: I marvel that every client who shows up at my doorstep is potentially someone I can relate to, and who will nurture or compel my own growth too, If I’m honest, each one mirrors aspects of myself. Some aspects I’m readily attracted to and cherish, such as dedication to a spiritual path, personal evolution, sensitivity, artistry or a concern for Gaia. With others, a stretch is necessary not to cave into judgment, rejection –or even repulsion when ugly truths come out.
But what if
The Donald
were my client?
For instance, I’m not readily drawn to people who indulge really bad diets, insensitive gossip, annoying approval seeking or poor personal hygiene. It’s a stretch to shift into kind curiosity and just be present. On the other hand, I can feel immediate compassion and simpatico for clients with ‘positive’ qualities that I readily identify with or admire. I feel valued by them. Those persons presenting ‘negative’ qualities require patience, even courage to stretch past initial uneasiness. A quick-tempered client who confesses to having endangering addictions or being a failed human being can be more challenging to help –or like. But a difficult, opposing figure pushes me out of my comfort zones, expands my narrowed humanity, improving my Service. The tough customer tests my resolve to do no harm, and compels me to stay my executions of judgment. Not to do so imperils therapeutic success -the potential growth and grace awaiting at the heart of the matter –for us both.
I’ve learned that I best assist others by being Present with and for them. When I’m ‘here, now’ with you, I see myself in you. You become my mirror. And vice versa: when you are Present too, you can see yourself in and through me. We reflect one another: Namaste, anyone? In other words, “It takes one to know one.” And ‘knowing’ is perceiving both our strengths and weakness, joyful and sorrowful aspects, sacred and mundane tendencies and possibilities. Hey, we’re both human, and both spiritual beings, as well --having our human journeys, at times fumbling and stumbling, needing support and compassion. We also need a sense of humor, to laugh at the folly of taking our woe so gravely, so darkly seriously that we momentarily lose our bounce-back better nature. (Thank you Colbert, Noah, Borowitz, Oliver, et al. )
I have another favorite adage: “As within, so without.” And its converse: “As without, so within.” Which brings me to Donald J. Trump, the man out there, the not-me I most readily loathe and agitate over these days: what a dire list of easy-to-condemn traits. But what if The Donald were my client?Oy vey, what if?! What would I then see, hear, feel besides his obvious, treacherous character flaws? His pervasive insecurity? His insatiable outreach for approval? A grandiose ego in search of real connection outside its impossibly solitary confinement? An addiction to scarcity consciousness so entrenched that your subconscious is a bottomless pit of material lack –no matter how rich you are? Living in an anxious, tweeting, self-trumpeting survival mode hoping to convince everyone you’re not a loser? If this man were my client, would I see the scared little boy whose dad couldn’t love him hiding inside the angry, scowling, pompous authoritarian? Would I not immediately recognize a very desperate guy? And want to help him? Care about him? See my own humanity in him…?
Can I admit to and
love the version of
DJT who lives in me?
Yikes, but you catch my drift. And truth be told, when I feel compassion for this guy who has to live with his own creepy, horrid self –I do see myself, too, my own insecurities: fears of rejection, sense of inadequacy, the ploys I invent to cover up embarrassment or heartache. I can own up to my own ‘scarce’ deal-seeking, not fully considering those who might be adversely impacted by my attempts to get the most while giving the fewest dollars for it. And if I did actually listen with my heart to Mr. Trump, I might own up to my own exaggerations to impress you, or how I hurt people I supposedly loved. I might recall what I did to avoid my existential loneliness, to allay anxiety, buy time or try to win your affections.
Darn! Can I admit to and love the version of DJT who lives in me? And if I did experience the similar essential nature of our vulnerabilities and strengths, would I even like the guy? Or at least, refrain from judgment? And my work with the human Shadow Psyche would be enriched. I would appreciate both my own and Mr. Trump’s worst adaptations to fear –our dark, coping inner mechanisms, as well as our mutual, as-yet unfulfilled capacities to Love ourselves, and each other.
My personal path to redemption has a ‘heyoka’ fork: this is the trail of the ancient, oft misunderstood Trickster Coyote, whose medicine can be very hard to swallow if I think I want only what tastes good all the time. Coyote sets me up to choke on my foolishness, my own ignorance –of my true nature: its foibles, and its graces. Its false appearances, its true brilliance.
“Be counseled then,” advises Trickster, “that gagging on Trumpism is potentially teaching you how to handle poison Kool Aid. Either don’t drink it at all, rising quickly to your own great capacity to love –or drink it, but bear witness to your act, and your similarity to this man you are quick to dismiss or hate. Either way, it’s OK. As below, so above, or vice versa, inside out, backward or upside down.”
There you have it: I Am Trump. He is me. We are he and me and thee. And we three are evolving on Life’s path to experience Blessing -albeit, via great Trickery and Foolishness along the Way.
Shining deLight, Marcia
(1020)
Related Coyote links:
A.
‘‘The joker who is now our president has served an important function, waking us up to what we’ve not yet admitted in ourselves... Despite his lies, Donald Trump is a potent truth teller.” James S. Gordon for The Guardian
B.
“The most important thing I learned is that when you are actively learning about someone else you are passively teaching them about yourself.” ---Daryl Davis
Grammy nominated Blues/Boogie-woogie Musician Daryl Davis, Black-American
“A black man says he has accidentally persuaded around 200 white racists to abandon the Klu Klux Klan simply by befriending them…travelled theUSfor around three decades, actively seeking out white supremacists as a hobby….” Link
Other Davis links: :
A black man’s quixotic quest to quell the racism of the KKK, one robe at a time
Black Man Gets KKK Members To Disavow By Befriending Them
Ram Dass: "But the soul has in it the witness, and it witnesses our whole incarnation. The soul watches the game without judgment."
"On my puja table is Donald Trump. When I look at his picture, I say to him, “I know you from your karma, and I don’t know you for your soul.” And I am compassionate about that soul because he has heavy karma. "
