What Does It Mean When We Carry Our Leaders Within Our Consciousness?
As human beings in social environments, we have come to expect that our leaders will lead with integrity and morality, though inevitable weaknesses will often be exposed. If our leader is of high enough integrity, we may even want to pattern ourselves after them, should we also aspire to any leadership roles in our future, including taking charge of our own lives. Patterning after others who are successful is considered to be a normal and natural response, while also being an evolutionary adaptation. To survive, and prosper as a species, we became willing to adopt attitudes and perform actions that others may have succeeded with in the past, as well as remaining open to any new unfoldment in our understanding that will complement our unique role..
For many of us, our knee-jerk reaction has been to hate and despise Donald Trump. There has been much written by conscious, caring people about the necessity of not hating Donald Trump, but to instead perceive him as an ill person, as a poor person, or even as a suffering person. This change of perception may open our personal doors to compassion, sympathy, and love. It is OK to be angry with the 45th President, as long as that anger does not get tattooed into our minds. By clinging to anger and resentment over a long period, there is an enhanced susceptibility to hate-filled memories or personally institutionalized hatred. We witness daily the collective institutionalized hatred within our world culture, manifesting as religious persecution, patriarchy, xenophobia, misogyny, racism, bullying, homophobia, nationalism, earth ecology destructive (including the extinction of countless species) and other self-destructive energy exchanges. We do not want to add to the suffering of others, or ourselves, by creating new neural and verbal pathways for institutionalized hatred.
Anger, when it is a spiritually engaged process, is a good thing. Constructive anger is spontaneous, arising from being an active witness of the present moment, and is always relevant and productive, wakes up the oppressed and repressed spirit, and helps generate extra motivational energy for constructive engagement with a world needing change. Constructive anger gives all parties involved an opportunity to share in the perception of a wrong or injustice and share in a plan to right the wrongs. Hatred and its divisive energy, on the other hand, have much deliberation behind it. Hatred arises from the historical deposits of unresolved anger or repressed pain and suffering within our memories and looks at punishment and/or the destruction of others as a primary objective. Hatred develops from the collective deposits of darkness that our culture has handed down to us over many generations, as well as also arising from our personal painful and negative memories incurred throughout our lives. Hatred, both collectively and individually acquired, becomes entrenched as a mostly unconscious dark power broker within our minds, keeping each of us pilloried to the past, and emotionally chained to the object(s) of our hatred. We are no longer free to respond to each new moment as it unfolds, instead substituting old patterns of self-defeating and oppressive responses to others while repressing the desire to connect with peace and love.
What can be most difficult to consider is the truth that people who habitually hate others also hate themselves. Some may try to hide from self-loathing and hatred through false narratives of their own greatness while deriding and demeaning all unlike self. The multitude of lies and deceptive behavior, and the need to manipulate others’ perceptions show an absolute need to hide from the truth a diminished sense of self. This is manifested through continuously projecting out of this mind, by accusing the innocent, and the guilty, of one’s own personal shortcomings, deceptions, and criminality. This communication style is crazy-making for any rational, intelligent human being, and the witness to his expression can feel like the fabric of sanity is being ripped apart right before their eyes. For those not under a hypnotic trance, this spiritual depravity is easily perceived and felt.
The unwary watcher, in an involuntary and forced relationship with this disfigured being, through negative empathy can inadvertently share in others’ hatred of self. This is another manifestation of the stigmata syndrome, where the entrained observer inadvertently takes on the negative energy of the person under observation, and through the mirror neuron phenomenon, or negative empathy, shares in the disfigured spirit that this darkness continues to manifest.This is a normal and natural response. Yet, as we become more conscious, it is revealed that we need no longer climb into someone’s, say a Donald Trump type, pigpen and unconsciously support them in their self-hatred and self-loathing.
We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.
—-Anais Nin
According to the latest research on the human brain and its capacity to form perceptions, the brain works by “predictive coding”. It integrates new information based on the beliefs provided by old information. A typical human being moving through the world is not just passively perceiving sensory inputs through the senses but assembles a model in the mind based on what is expected to be seen. This mental setup allows the perceiver to move unbothered through the world, taking in each detail without too much analysis. The brain has been found to have the capacity to over-predict, at times expecting something to be there that is not. That expectation can create a self-hypnotic suggestion, and a non-existent thing can be perceived as if it were there.
A difficult truth must be embraced:
All that we will ever see, unto eternity, is the extension of our consciousness. How we see ourselves determines the quality of our life experience and the integrity of our connection with our “higher power”. Insight into the corrupted matrix of human consciousness and its limited understanding leads to the new pathways of consciousness where intuition and spiritual power are more readily accessed.
This fact has been verified by mystics, sages, and now, quantum theorists, so it should not be passed over like an unpopular dish at dinner time. Historically, the human race has become addicted to the religious junk food continuously being processed from the limitations of our distant past, rather than feasting at the table of the infinite Spirit of Now. Former Vice President Pence justified sharing in hatred of gays and drug users in the 1980s and 1990s by claiming AIDS was God’s punishment for all such people that God hated for not obeying “God’s laws”. We all suffered because of the collective narrative of hatred being shared by the victims and their accusers.
Donald Trump is a pathetic, and, at times, a deplorable human being, as are some of his most ardent supporters, yet we can all be spiritually reduced a notch or two by supporting this devil and his tribe by sharing in their hatred of themselves.. We will no longer “waste our hate” on Trump, or anybody else for that matter, realizing that they (the image of the other created in our own minds) has become a projection of a newly formed aspect of our own unconscious collectively shared negative self-image. “You” can never be real in any ultimate sense, since the “you” or the Donald Trump, exists as only a conceptual image in our minds. The mental pugilist blows that we direct at Donald and his friends end up being directed predominantly against ourselves because we are fighting the creations within our own minds, and the collective mind that we share with others, rather than actually exchanging energy with the objects of our objections, which is the only place where objective change may occur.
Donald Trump, like far too many national leaders, retained an advantage by being a one-way transmitter of negative energy to the world. They rarely place themselves in a vulnerable position where they can be a genuine receiver of the abhorrent behavioral energy that they emit and is continuously attempting to reflect back to them. We all have witnessed deplorable confrontations with reporters, who can only serve as surrogates for us, as a concerned public. So, we must still write our letters to our congressmen, stage our protests (when safe), and hold community meetings to speak our truth and maintain our sanity.
Jesus, amongst many other real, or imaginary, wise people from the past and present has stated that we must not judge others, lest we be judged, as well. On the surface, this sounds like good wisdom, doesn’t it? If I think someone is an asshole, and, they might be an asshole, I risk being judged as one as well.
Talk about the boomerang effect!
Yet, we can easily see the inbuilt fallacy of this perceptual admonition, if it is just taken out of context without other supporting wisdom. And, spiritual misunderstanding continues to aid and abet truly bad people in continuing their egregious behavior (see Donald Trump, amongst millions of others). Who wants to be judged as a Trump equivalent, at least spiritually, because we made an accurate and necessary call on a misbehaving fool and criminal?.. Yet, my behavior towards judging, or not judging, others did not originate with Jesus Christ’s teachings. The “wisdom” originated as a self-protection mechanism for me. i don’t recall the exact first time this happened, but I do remember as a seven-year-old boy thinking that I would ignore X,Y, or Z’s misbehavior, hoping that they would in turn ignore my own. I dared not judge others, for fear that I would be judged. And whenever my father found out I had misbehaved, there was to be an ass whipping by his unforgiving belt, so the immature thought, which is more universal than we may care to admit, was to please turn away from my malfeasance and make no report of it to others, and continue to enjoy your own without fear of recrimination from me! (wink, wink, nod, nod)..
Did you ever wonder why some people would rather just watch the world burn, and prepare for Armageddon than join the spiritual fire department and help douse the flames?.. Did you ever wonder why so many Trump supporters continued to support him, even after he showed his true darkest intentions?.I don’t!. People are more attached to wounded modes of past being, behavior, and experience than openness to the healing possibilities inherent within the present moment. They see reflected in Trump’s outward shenanigans aspects of their own unhealed and unawakened natures. They celebrate their dark hero, rather than feel ashamed. because they have a champion who makes it OK to not be their best self. They may appear indifferent or hateful to the rest of the awakening world, yet, in truth, they are only unwilling and incapable of honestly facing themselves..
Of course, mutual non-reporting of offensive and unacceptable behavior is not conducive to positive change, growth, healing, or mindfulness, is it more turning away, folks? Do not fear your perceptual software but be prepared to add new algorithms to it to aid in more accurately representing our intentions to see truly in this often chaotic, wounded, and imbalanced world.
There is still so much needless and unnecessary suffering in our world, yet if we are still suffering, we will remain under its dark controls and not be fully inspired to reduce its damaging influence, both on ourselves and on others..First, let us heal ourselves of our own glaring deficiencies, and traumas, so we no longer look through those fogged lenses at our world. Then, let us look out at the world with a more coherent healing intent. No one likes being judged, especially by a person with so many glaring deficiencies of their own..Often, though, the judged deserve every bit of our assessments of their, and our own, ongoing wayward behavior.
Let us not rest and celebrate until we turn our wounds into wisdom..
Here comes the judge, here comes the judge, here comes the judge. . . . .!.
Your Honor, what is your most accurate verdict?.
GUILTY?
INNOCENT?.
We are all guilty as charged, until we regain our lost innocence, and can see that innocence in others, as well..No more turning away from our wounds as suffering human beings..No more turning away from the inherent goodness and beauty that lies, often ignored, within the heart and soul of the other..
“Remove that log stuck in your eye, so that you may more accurately see the sliver stuck in another’s eye”—Jesus of Nazareth.
The only way to permanently remove spiritual eyesores from our vision is to heal our inner sight, realizing that profound changes in our own consciousness eventually impact our world, remembering that “all that we will ever see unto eternity, is ourselves”. Because we also remember that our minds are inextricably intertwined with the collective consciousness of the world, we will continue to have ample opportunities to bring healing to the world, and to our sense of self which is in relationship to the collective.
We remain wary of the theological theories and dogma surrounding Jesus and Christianity. In their misunderstanding, Jesus negatively empathized with THE WORLD, and took on the sins of the world, in the ultimate act of the stigmata syndrome. Love and Truth do not accept any scapegoating! This folderoll is an unfortunate leftover from from the Old Testament Jewish tradition. The dogma of his crucifixion was that his sacrifice to God was to save us from our sins. Apply grains of salt liberally here, ok? There is no God in heaven or on earth that would EVER use this dysfunctional philosophical vehicle to bring redemption and “salvation” to the human race. If Jesus truly believed that by sacrificing himself, the world would be saved, Jesus was much more unevolved than history would leave us to believe that he truly was. The only sacrifice acceptable on our unique way to our resurrection and transcendence is letting go of our false sense of self. People, and civilization, hate negative feedback, and punish liberally the innocent, to discourage further review. Sadly, he was victimized by the evil projections of others, as are all true prophets…
If you believe that bringing harm to others is a wonderful pastime, suffering continuously is acceptable, and death is the only hope for release, and for heaven, that you have, you might want to reexamine that mindset.
Our “salvation” is only worked out within the individual minds and hearts of true seekers of Truth and Love, and can never be delivered through the efforts of someone else, no matter how historically exalted of a position that individual occupies in the religious pantheons. We must sacrifice our misunderstandings of who we mistakenly thought that we were, and who and what we thought the rest of creation is, allowing for the new universal truth to resurrect our understanding of self and others. Failure to do so will make us more vulnerable to unconsciousness, where the process of negative empathy, and in the extreme, collective suffering and the stigmata syndrome, may expose us to spiritual chaos, and potentially death. We do not need to self-crucify, to remain connected with the rest of the human race, and to bring healing to the world.
The world will always be reminding us how far we are, collectively, from healing. We do our best to remain engaged with the world, while not allowing the world to overrun our morals, ethics, and spiritual intentions. And we need not spiritually die because of the “sins” of the world, whether it is toxic capitalism, toxic masculinity (and patriarchy), toxic politics, or toxic religion. We always retain freedom of choice and must exercise and accept personal responsibility for those choices, in all of our lives. If our choices bring harm to ourselves or to each other, we are free to choose again. We make amends wherever possible after any error in our presentation, which keeps our empathy channels fully open.
While what Donald Trump is, in truth, remains impossible to ascertain, his negative, self-defeating behavior will likely continue to be troubling to all thoughtful, moral, ethical, and caring beings. Is he the Devil? Is he a rattlesnake, just waiting to bite all of us, and inject us with deadly venom? Or is he an angel, and we just don’t have the perceptual tools to see it? Well, I am sure that he is not wholly just one of these assessments. Trump probably carries a fair amount of all of these qualities, though unevenly weighted toward the darker sides. The point is for the rest of us to maintain a keen curiosity about our world, and all of the people in it, including Trump, and continue to be conscious, and aware, of our tendency to overreact to each assault on our spiritual and political sensibilities.
We all must cultivate a better spiritual presentation for ourselves than did this President. To hate Trump is to negatively empathize with him, and subject ourselves to his divisive energy. We must save our empathy and energy for those who truly can benefit from it. Donald Trump does NOT want to change, he wants everybody else to change to conform to his disfigured understanding as to how life should be. Yet, most mindful people have certain aspects of their own lives that they would like to change, to enhance their self-image and self-worth. These are things that we can work on successfully. Those others who also want to change, while still suffering under the disfiguring conditions of our civilization, want and deserve our empathy and compassion.
Wasting energy on a man who is wasting himself is not a productive endeavor. I am not advocating indifference towards the President or to his supporters, but instead more like taking the posture of a detached witness to him, his continuing shenanigans and his minions, while responding in emotionally intelligent manners that do not bring harm to ourselves or to others. We can cultivate the thought and feeling of wanting better for the man than he wants for himself, remembering that Trump is indeed sick, and suffering under the conditions of his spiritual disease.
Donald Trump created the conditions for his disrepute and destruction. This is why Donald Trump is now dying, for he has lost love and self-respect for everyone but his limited tribe of understanding. Roger Stone, the sleazy political operative and personal confidant of Trump, has publicly stated, as far as political advertising is concerned, that “hate is a more powerful motivating force than love”. We can see that Trump enlists and employs that energy to mobilize his base. We need not follow him and his supporters into the darkest of ditches. Trump steers his consciousness towards chaos and division, while we steer our own towards unity and understanding.
It is little wonder why any of us found ourselves becoming repulsed by this man, and some even hating this demon. Yes, negative empathy, in sharing Donald Trump’s hatred of himself, while not sharing the objects of his hatred, has brought to us many lessons about ourselves, and how we might see the whole of life more clearly. We have cleared the film off of our glasses, but Donald Trump remains blinded by his hubris and self-hatred. We have healed the parts of ourselves that would create hatred and havoc as a response to this damaged, corrupted human being. We can hope and pray for this disfigured man to see the light of love and reason, yet none of us are holding our breaths until it happens.
There is as much to learn from a spiritually disfigured human being as Donald Trump, as there is from exalted figures from our spiritual heritage and history. Trump is part of our present existence. Trump remains an emanation of our universal consciousness. Yet, the thought of Trump brings few to a state of bliss or contentment. By seeing of Trump as he is, we can see the blocks to our access to that which exists BEYOND such a distorted image, which just might be universal love and truth. In the seeing, we may transcend that which is seen, and soar to new heights of understanding and experience. Some of us may even experience the same realms as those pointed to by Jesus, the Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, or other revered saints and sages.
A long-term friend of mine, who is also a long-term friend of the Dalai Lama has said that my understanding is contrary to the teachings of this Buddhist monk, but I will not let that deter me. Had the Dalai Lama been raised under the same conditions of life as I had, and vice versa, our spiritual theories and realities would have been significantly different from our present positions. There are millions of opinions as to how to best live life, and even my friend’s take on the Dalai Lama is only an opinion. Today I choose to not allow other people’s opinions to support my tendency to be repressive of my true nature, and I instead opt to be more fully present for my truest sense of self in this moment.
The conscious people, the people who have already embraced healing and transformation, are co-writing with me a new story for mankind. Together, with my spiritual brothers and sisters, we are co-creating the new religion, the new world order, the new blueprint for humanity and its eternal evolution through this universe. Together we are overcoming millennia of oppression and repression of the human, and the animal spirit. Together, we are defending and honoring our sacred Mother Earth, the true creator and sustainer of life on this planet.
We must remain spiritually vigilant as we continue to be a conscious presence engaging with a world still dominated by toxic masculinity, toxic politics, toxic capitalism, and toxic religion. We must be able to access our anger, not hatred, as we address the injustices wrought upon the human soul through the ignorance and toxicity of others. Love will be our guardian as we make the difficult confrontations with those who do not respect, or honor, the wholeness of life on our Mother Earth that we all share in love and in truth.
If we lose love and self-respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
—Maya Angelou
In case it was not directly observed, what I have presented here is a meditation on love, hatred, indifference, anger, and the process of forgiveness. Mindfulness allows for us to see what is immediately before us, and choose between the knowns of the past, and the unknown present. Forgiveness is an openness to the mystery of the present. Forgiveness, however, does not forget or excuse the offender from his misdeeds, especially while the offender continues abhorrent behavior. Forgiveness releases the practitioner from the damage of incurring negative perceptions of others. We still must act consciously and decisively against all forces that continue to imperil our lives, our family’s lives, and the life of our planet. We must continue to be willing to speak truth to power, whether the power is in the White House, or in our hearts.
Life’s spiritual journey is forever like a dotted line pathway. It is the quality of our connections with each other that fills in the space between the dots. Empathy is the major vehicle for our consciousness to transcend our apparent differences, enabling each of us to connect the dots in a mutually affirming manner. It is only through each other that we can see who we are. I am you, and you are me, and together we are everything, apart, we are still chained together by whatever separates us. We find our shared meaning, which links us together on our journey in Spirit.
Love unifies, while hate fragments and traumatizes. As human beings, we must be conscious enough to choose the best way to present ourselves to the world, and to ourselves, as we face the challenges of the insanity within our world. Our world is in greatest need of hearts that are expanding through mutual positive empathy, rather than contracting through negative empathy, or indifference. We did not create the world as it is now, we cannot control it, nor can we cure it. But we can evolve, and, collectively, we can address the disease of the spirit that is dominating our world civilization, and which continues to bring devastation to our world, and to all of the life upon it.
Each of us are beings with infinite potential. Yet, each of us must break free from the conditioning of our personal past, and our cultural past. Four pillars are supporting higher consciousness, which are (1) via negative- through negating what is not real, seeing what might be real, (2) via positiva-through constantly affirming the goodness inherent in life, reading the writings of mystical poets and saints, and being a grateful participant of life, we may experience Grace, (3) via transformativa- through re-creating or re-birthing ourselves through educational means and/or mystical connection, and bringing forth a new person, or our new understanding of our self, into the world, in the image and likeness of a more universal consciousness, and (4) via creativa- developing and/or expressing our innate ability to co-create with the Universe, by expressing ourselves through art, music, writing, or other means. We must access the deepest of desires to transcend the boundaries of self, and to reimagine our existence.
Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.
– Matthew 9:17 (NIV)
We must travel new paths of consciousness, letting go of all controls that keep us tethered to the past, with its incomplete perceptions and understandings. In the end, no teacher will affect our salvation, for it is a personal journey, where we must accept responsibility for the totality of our lives, and make all necessary adjustments in the course that will take us to our spiritual goals. We can rebirth ourselves, into a new understanding that the Universe has birthed itself in an infinitude of forms through the portal of Mother Earth, and each of us is “one verse” of the song of creation.
As we see the totality of the movement of thought as time, and its nature of keeping us tethered to a past, or to a future that is always an extension of this past, we can free ourselves from those illusory controls. We can live more of a life based on the ever-unfolding now, or present moment, thus unleashing vast reservoirs of intuition and spiritual power. As we look upon all of life, we finally gain the insight that ALL is the extension of the “I am” that we are. All that we will ever see, unto eternity, is, thus, our SELF. for “I am” is distributed throughout all of creation. Everything that we see is our brothers and sisters in Spirit, and, in Truth, and all are extensions of the “I” that “I am”. Our collective error in understanding is believing that “You” has any reality in ultimate Truth, for “you cannot be real”. “You” is forever just an image of thought, created by the collective, or by the individual, mind of man, while believing that he is a separate, isolated being in a lonely universe.
The further along the path of Truth and Love that we travel, the more that we understand that all we will ever see, unto eternity, are extensions of our Self. How we see ourselves today determines the quality of Love and Truth that we manifest in our lives. How we see ourselves today determines how much spiritual power can be brought to our damaged planet, which is now dependent upon us. How we see ourselves today determines how much, as awakening beings, we can bring healing to our shared, damaged human consciousness. There is no power in Heaven or on Earth greater than “I am”. Yet our world suffers, because of the collective belief that we are not of this world, not of each other, or not of this Universe. The unconscious people of the world continue to bring harm to Mother Earth, and to all of her inhabitants, in the name of their religions, their own disfigured political and economic principles, and their ignorance. We all suffer accordingly.
I realize that I am an insignificant voice. I am yet another voice calling out from the wilderness of human misunderstanding, trying to locate lost fellow travelers and aid whoever I may make contact with, in whatever humble way that I can, in our shared journey towards healing. We will heal together, or die alone. I am one of the millions of spiritual “Johnny Appleseed’s”, spreading the seeds of our potential for transcendence on the rocky grounds of human consciousness on our planet Earth.
I will not live to see the good that may arise from my work, and the greater good from the works of others, and that is OK.
