Wasted Away Again By Hate In Donald Trumpville

This opsimath blogger strikes again!

Somehow, the words just keep popping up in my mind like popcorn in a hot pan. Feel free to add your own corn kernels of wisdom to this one, and together we can cook up a big barrel of insight!  Add your own butter and salt to suit your tastes!

The Voice Of Awakening

As the slowly shifting desert sands of time,

Create ever taller dunes for lost souls to climb.

It is in this selfish, hateful world of so little reason and rhyme,

That I seek the way of Truth, the path of the Sublime.

I did not start talking until I was nearly 4 years of age. My sister would speak for me, until I finally let loose my first words. I remember having an incredible need to be creative, to tell stories that would capture the limited attention span of my father. It never really quite worked. My father would ask my mother, “Will that boy ever run out of things to talk about?”, and “Will that boy ever shut up?”. When I turned 15 years of age, after years of non affirming feedback from other aspects of my life, I went back into a world where the repression of myself became the norm, and I lost all will to create. For the next 17 years I sank into drug and alcohol abuse, and a suicidal depression almost took my life in 1986.

In 1987, I had a miraculous spiritual healing experience, which catapulted me far beyond all previous understanding that I had about life, love, and the universe. Yet, I struggled for many years to find the language to communicate my new experience to others. I found my new voice in 2016, just prior to the death of my father. My present experience as a writer has been quite similar to my experience with my inattentive father when I was a youth, with a four year trend continuing for my inability to capture the attention of most readers. Such is the life for this writer, but it does not discourage me. I found an updated sense of self once I broke free of my father. And, I am developing an updated sense of self while I churn out material that is unappealing to most people.

I must continue to write to live, or I will lose my voice again, and finish the dying process that I began at age 15. Today, I choose to overcome my feelings of being oppressed by the indifference or inattention of others. Today I choose to overcome my own need to repress myself, as a reaction to my perception of having been rejected by others. A trusted editor told me that with my loving intention for any potential reader being firmly embraced by me, receptivity to my writing is inevitable for those whose hearts are awakening.

Hopefully, the reader’s mental stylus won’t get damaged by the “scratches” or on the deep or uneven grooves of this “album”. This blog, like my life, is a continuous work in progress, and eventually all of the scratches will be removed. I don’t know if I will ever fully heal from the ramifications of toxic masculinity, toxic politics, toxic capitalism, and toxic religion, which are four dark pillars supporting the pervasive spiritual and social disease within our world civilization. Yet, I continue to write about these topics, knowing that eventually our civilization will look completely at these issues, or will die from the continuation of the unconsciousness that results from this darkness. Those four previous listed toxicities, combining with my personally unresolved angers, indifferences, and hatreds, become all of the scratches that have appeared on my album of life. In the interests of sonic bliss, I continue to work towards the healing of my self, and the world. I can do nothing about the deep or uneven grooves, however, for those are innate qualities of life itself.

This writer must profess, from the beginning of this blog, that I have spent much more time in the last 30 plus years hating or being indifferent to Donald Trump, rather than in “loving” him. Donald Trump is the poster boy for toxic masculinity, toxic politics, toxic capitalism, and toxic religion, and I have enjoyed throwing darts at this horse’s ass, err, I mean bull’s eye.

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All that Donald Trump sees are threats against himself. Donald Trump hates any truth that threatens his illusory sense of self. Donald Trump hates anybody with scientific or practical knowledge that conflicts with his selfish, divisive agendas. Donald Trump hates anybody who does bow down before him, and give him an oath of loyalty. Donald Trump hates anyone who dares speak truth to him, including judges, intelligence officers, military commanders, health officials, or climatologists. Donald Trump hates anything that Barrack Obama accomplished as President. Donald Trump hates non-white immigrants, Muslims, “shit-hole countries”, disabled people, poor people, or anybody who might be in need of help. Donald Trump hates anybody who is Democrat, or Republican, who speaks out against his cruelty and incompetence. Donald Trump hates virtually anybody who does not accept his conspiracy theories.

The top nine principles of toxic humanity that Donald Trump’s life has been partially defined by are as follows:

1. I am the center of the Universe. The rest of humanity is here either
   for my pleasure, for my profit, or for my disdain. I may attend a prayer session occasionally with my religious puppets, so that I can create the impression that I worship a higher power than myself. But, I already know that there is no higher power but me. HUMILITY IS NOT AN OPTION FOR ME, and is only for the poor and weak among us.
2. Truly loving another human being is a sign of weakness, and thus I
   must continue to suppress all such impulses so that I can achieve my
   selfish goals. I will carry on a campaign of hatred, judgement, and
   condemnation of all people unlike myself, all the while claiming to
   represent their interests at the highest level of my being. The ignorant people populating my tribe will hopefully associate my hateful behavior with their understanding of what love is, thus damaging the hearts and souls of all who may fear, respect, and/or follow me. My schizophrenia will be confusing to others, but may still be normalized, as others that I have influenced model and support my behavior.
3. People are most valuable if they can be monetized. If I can’t make
   money from my relationship with people, then I don’t need them,
4. Never admit that I am wrong. Always blame somebody else for my
   problems. The admission of guilt is a sign of weakness, and only for
   those who do not have sufficient monetary and legal power. I don’t need your forgiveness for my mistakes, because, as far as you should be concerned, I do not ever make mistakes.
5. If I can’t get my way through truth-telling, then the telling of lies
   becomes my most potent weapon. If I am caught in a lie, then it is only your misunderstanding of my point, and not what I said, that is wrong. If I tell the same lie often enough, then people will start to accept the lie as the truth.
6. If I can’t get my way with another human being, then I will cajole or
   bully them into submission, or attack their name and character, and/or impugn their dignity, until they either submit, or are discredited by my allies.
7. I have a right to use my strong emotions to intimidate and threaten
   anybody that I need to in order to get my way. My anger is a weapon, to be wielded whenever necessary, and its expression is my first selection from my arsenal of control tools in manipulating and controlling my world.
8. Never spend any time in self-reflection or meditation. Developing
   insight is difficult and time-consuming, and I have more important
   things to do I am already perfect, I always have been perfect, and
   everybody else needs to change to accommodate my needs. If I am not “perfect” today, I always have someone, or something, else to blame.
9. If there is no conflict currently in progress, then I must start
   creating the conditions for the next one, and politically position myself so that I can maximize emotional and monetary profits and visibility for myself. I will never obtain enough money, power, sex, or attention to make or to keep me happy. I will take from others as needed to achieve my aims and promote my agendas.

These are NOT the indicators of a man who loves the wholeness and integrity of life, who loves himself, who loves other people, who wants to unite and collaborate with everybody, or who has any self-respect.

From the first time I saw him promoting himself in the National Enquirer in the 1980’s I saw what a fraud and a huckster that he was. It was like I was watching a cartoon of the fable “The Emperor’s New Clothes” every time that I saw him. My “little boy” of reason kept calling out to the world “that con man does not have any clothes on!”, except for the magic invisible golden threads of hypnotic suggestion that are trying to deceive the world out of its gold and respect.

Beginning in 2016, I started writing about the danger of supporting this mad man, because of the apocalyptic vision of many corrupted Christians that he was commandeering to support his quest for the Presidency. I feared what would unfold in our country, and our world, if this conniving human devil made it into the White House. Any reader that has made it to this blog, and stayed to read more than one post, probably can resonate with these statements. Yet, having lived with the pendulum of hate and indifference towards this corrupted human being for so many years, while attempting to live a more conscious, spiritual life, I continued to seek another more spiritually expansive way to experience and to bring some measure of healing to the insanity of our collective situation.

Thus, the following missive was inspired.

Love, hate, and indifference are three terms that we use to help describe the quality of our relationships with each other. To some extent, in various proportions, all of us employ these three qualities of energy exchange in our lives, depending on the person and/or the situation involved. As human beings we experience love and hatred as powerful emotions, which guide all subsequent feelings and perceptions in divergent directions. Love is an open system of frictionless energy exchange and hate is more of a closed, attenuated system of energy exchange, both of which bind us to each other, in easily identifiable, though differing manners.

Indifference is a quality of attention that attempts to keep everybody and everything separate from the observer, and the emotionally detached individual is choosing to live in a closed system, or spiritual vacuum. Those practicing total indifference live in an isolated world, with little real emotional connection with anybody or anything other than their own emotions, thoughts and feelings. Indifference is the emotional and spiritual oppression of others, as well as a repression of the personal spirit, as well. For most normal people, indifference is only applied to special situations, and is not applied to a complete life experience. Yet, the quality of indifference gives the practitioner the illusory sense of having no personal accountability to that which is being witnessed. Personal responsibility for a collectively shared error in the heart is denied, and the potential for a shared healing experience is negated.

We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to
say ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’
Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those
people my heroes.
— Fred Rogers

Empathy, in both its positive and negative expressions, is a name for the mechanism for transporting emotional energy to create a form of resonance or attunement between sentient beings, and is always in play in both love and hate relationships. In positive empathy, energy flows freely in both directions, between the “giver” and the “receiver”. There is a shared sense of the “expansion” of the self. (In a radical variation of positive empathy, one may even experience shared mental images-telepathy-and spiritual healing, but those are subjects that I will not address here). In negative empathy, energy flow is uneven, and dominated by one party, potentially resulting in forms of oppression of the other, and repression of aspects of the self, by the “giver”, and, potentially, the repression of aspects of the self by the “receiver”. There is a strong sense of the “contraction” of the self by at least one party in this energy exchange.

Contemporary research into neuroscience tells us that our brains, like those of other primates, contain mirror neurons. These neurons are triggered in our own brains when someone else is sad, angry, or happy, and those mirror neurons, in coordination with other pre-cognitive and cognitive functions, helps us to feel what that other person is feeling. What they actually help us to feel is what we would experience if we were in that person’s place.  If our experiences are similar enough, we can empathize in a way that promotes a connection which can be soothing to the other person. The effort to understand someone else, when made in good faith, can go a long way towards helping them feel better and even, sometimes, to change their behaviors. This can be considered to be a collaboration between the spirit of the individuals in communication. The changing of another’s behavior is not the conscious intention of empathy, though most find that through the empathetic connection each participant is taken beyond the former boundaries of their understanding of self and other..

Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.

– Anaïs Nin

Human beings are usually quite empathetic beings. Studies are showing that all animals, especially those mammalian in nature, share in this often times sublime characteristic. It is very difficult to harm another person if we can sense the suffering that they are presently experiencing, or that we may actually be causing them. The exceptions being when one is in an extremely hateful state, or those whose indifference may arise from sociopathic or psychopathic natures. A conscious person would never abuse any person, or animal of any species (including eating it, unless there were no other choices for food), after recognizing the unity of sentience that exists in our natural world. Of course, much of mankind is unconscious, and we can’t even keep from harming each other, let alone the whole of the animal species. Mankind has “dehumanized-de-sentienced” humans and animals so as to justify cruel and destructive relationships, as well as with the natural world that supports all of us. The Judeo-Christian western religious tradition and its misunderstanding of the wholeness and unity of life, and it subsequent influence on thinkers throughout the ages has been at the forefront of this travesty for millennia.

Empathy has been found to have not just a positive or “good” aspect to it, but that empathy can also drag an unsuspecting empath into the ditch with someone who may be of low consciousness. It might be termed ‘negative empathy’, which is a state of being so sensitive to other people’s experiences that we become overwhelmed by their suffering, to the point where we begin to suffer ourselves. This has the opposite effect of the collaboration that occurs through positive empathy, instead becoming an alliance of shared mutual personal pain, which eventually results in new forms of emotional isolation. The extreme form of this empathy is the stigmata syndrome, where the empath takes on so much of the suffering energy and experience of a hated or a treasured person, that they manifest in their own bodies and minds the wounds and symptoms of the person that they have become obsessed with. Those who have read all of my works are well aware of my profound experience in 2017 with a dying friend with brain cancer, and the dangers, and spiritual growth potentials, of such an extraordinary relationship.

Empathy, positive or negative, is one of several powerful transmission vehicles for human collective consciousness to be carried to us as individuals, as well as acting as a return vehicle for our individual experiences to be delivered back to the collective field. Collective consciousness contains the history of the knowledge that human beings have accrued over eons of time. It contains a vast matrix of dedicated/fixed pathways of responses to all manors of environmental and social interactions. This is the entirety of our species’ training which has been transmitted to, or handed down to, countless generations of human beings, through parental interactions, education, religious training, and the lifelong social and emotional training gained by our continuous interface with other members of our species . Yet, as so much of this “common knowledge” is a result of incomplete or inaccurate information, and is the accumulation of all the theories embedded in our cultural past. If we act in a “knee jerk” reaction, or unconscious manner, to any societal or environmental stimulus, our response is all too likely to be dated, and inappropriate. The Judeo/Christian religious metaphor here is that our “first born” of thought may need to be “sacrificed” so as to make way for the truth of the moment.

In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

– Eric Hoffer

Perhaps 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 own personal doors to compassion, sympathy, and love. It is OK to be angry with the President, as long as that anger does not get institutionalized into our minds. By clinging to anger and resentments over a long period time, there is an enhanced susceptibility to them becoming transformed into hate filled memories, or personally institutionalized hatred. We witness daily the collectively institutionalized hatred within our world culture, manifesting as religious persecution, patriarchy, xenophobia, misogyny, racism, bullying, homophobia, nationalism, earth ecology destructive (including extinction of countless species) and other self-destructive energy exchanges. We really do not want to add to the suffering of others, or of ourselves, by creating new pathways of institutionalized hatred.

Constructive anger is spontaneous, arising from being an active witness of the present moment, and is always relevant, productive, wakes up the oppressed and repressed spirit, and is helpful in generating 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 an injustice, and share in a plan to right the wrongs. Hatred and its divisive energy, on the other hand, has 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 over the course of 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 Donald Trump hates himself, and is truly indifferent to most of America. He tries to disguise his self- loathing and hatred through false narratives of his own greatness, while he derides and demeans all unlike himself, as well as any sincere detractors. His multitude of lies and deceptive behavior, and his need to manipulate our own perceptions of him show an absolute need to hide from the truth of his own diminished sense of self. He continuously projects out of his mind, and accuses the innocent, and the guilty, of all his personal shortcomings, deceptions, and criminality. His communication style is absolutely 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 his hypnotic trance, his 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 Trump’s hatred of himself. 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, share in the disfigured spirit that Trump continues to manifest.

This is an absolutely normal and natural response. Yet, as we become more conscious, it is revealed that we need no longer climb into Donald Trump’s pigpen and unconsciously support him in his 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 actually 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 overpredict, at times expecting something to be there that is not. That expectation can, literally, create a self-hypnotic suggestion, and a non-existent thing can be perceived as if it was really 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. The Vice President Pence justified sharing in hatred of gays and drug users in the 1980’s and 1990’s 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.

One can only wonder what the twisted, secret narrative that both Mike Pence, and Donald Trump, are entertaining in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. I am not sure that Pence has evolved much from his hateful AIDS postures of the past. His own self-hatred, as represented by a corrupted view of the “will of God” may well be one of the primary reasons behind the administration’s incompetent, hands off approach to the disaster unfolding in our country. Pence has entertained more than one “apocalyptic narrative” that justifies his position as a passive witness to God’s wrath punishing the wicked and the heathen, rather than him acting as an active participant in the salvation of the oppressed. Like Trump, he disregards the seriousness of the pandemic, and won’t even wear a mask to protect others from the potential of his own viral infection. They both continue to manifest their hatred of the world through their shared callous disregard for the safety of the people that they make contact with.

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Trump and his administration are guilty of many mistakes over the course of the last three years, but their response to the pandemic is enough to stir anger and distress in any saint, or sinner that I know.  Pardon me if I mistake Trump’s moves as the “mark of the beast”, or the actions of a broken, spiritless man.

* refusal to heed early warnings from abroad,

* refusal to listen to expert advice from within the US health care system,

* punishing those seeking to implement a timely strategy,

* lying to the American people about the pandemic,

* failing to provide enough tests soon enough,

* failing to produce adequate medical equipment soon enough,

* refusing to get samples of the virus necessary for work on vaccines and therapeutics,

* prioritizing contracts for companies connected to Trump or to the Kushner family,

* failure to implement enforceable social distancing and face protection rules,

* failure of federal leaders to practice safe social distancing and face protection,

And, most damningly,

* failing to formulate a coordinated national response.

* failure to acknowledge a massive loss of life, and a massive amount of suffering, with no caring, conscious leader to lead the national mourning for our victims.

As their response to the “outer world” is their response to their “inner world” (remember, all that we ever see, unto eternity, is ourselves), it is obvious that they do not respect or honor much of who they are, or their neglected, but sacred, relationship with all of humanity. As we “empathize” with Trump, or even Pence, with their self- hatreds, that hatred attaches itself to neglected or disassociated fragments within ourselves, and circulates within our consciousness underneath the surface, taking on a disturbed life of its own. We have allowed this administration to plant seeds of their own self-destruction into our minds. We are all susceptible to some extent, depending upon the depth of our own self-awareness and personal insight. Thus, a “trickster” of hatred can be introduced into our consciousness, taking us to sometimes undesirable and uncomfortable psychological places. Yet this awareness may lead to amazing, healing insights for ourselves, so we need not judge or be harsh with ourselves. In the “seeing”, these illusory processes, or “mirages of thought” are no longer unconscious, and our freedom of perceptual choice is returned to us. We are learning and healing!

Trump is a pathetic, and, at times, a deplorable human being, as are some of his ardent supporters, yet we can all be spiritually reduced a notch or two by supporting this devil and his tribe by sharing in his hatred of himself. 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 ends 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 always retains his advantage of being a one-way transmitter of negative energy to the world. He rarely places himself in a vulnerable position where he can be a genuine receiver of the abhorrent behaviorial energy that he emits, and is continuously attempting to reflect back to him. We all have witnessed his 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 own sanity.

The only way to permanently remove this spiritual eyesore from our vision is to heal our inner sight, realizing that profound changes in our own consciousness eventually impacts 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 of 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. His crucifixion was his sacrifice to God, 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.

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 own 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 other. 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 opened.

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, 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 does 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 our own lives that we would like to change, to enhance our own 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 own spiritual disease.

Donald Trump continues to create the conditions for his own disrepute and destruction. This is why Donald Trump is now dying, for he has lost love and self-respect for everyone but his own 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.

Donald Trump, like all self-haters, just wants to watch his world burn. We need not burn with him.

The Voice Of Awakening (continued)

Oh seekers of Truth, God’s high mount we must climb, while sometimes stumbling through the desert dunes shifting sands of time.

We must stop being fooled by culturally accepted rhyme and reason, for they are surely to get charged by Love with treason!

Are we but marionette’s dancing images trapped upon ATM screens of corrupted monetized minds?

With Trump’s and Corporate America’s dollar driven beliefs in control, what freedom can we find?

We must release ourselves from the spiritual imprisonment of these choking, binding strings,

And unleash our hearts’ truest wisdom that our liberated Intelligence can then bring.

As shadow boxers of Trumped Up Evil, to what ends do we hope to aspire?

Becoming co-champions with false leaders’ in their nightmares creates situations that are perpetually dire!

When we first heal our own illusions that promote self-destructive mental pugilist blows,

Our hearts can then support the real fight against Dark Ones who are now on public show.

As an entrant in hate’s marathon, only on Life’s treadmills will we perpetually stand,

To make these missteps over and over dooms us all to fail and become life’s also-rans,

Who forever just chase in vain Sanity’s unifying, healing voice.

So step off of all divisive, circular belts, and share first place in the Life all may rejoice!

As seekers for Peace, on Truth’s high mount’ we must eternally climb,

Or we will stumble through the swirling sands of chaotic, corrupted minds.

That tempts and confuses distracted minds with the lies of false rhyme and reason,

So our wisdom must object to this deceit, and charge those thoughts with treason!

To finally realize the Truth, is to see ignorance’s agendas are illusions that limit and bind,

Spun together with the golden threads of the Emperor’s New Clothes, his evil tailors still wind,

To corrupt the minds and hearts of all innocents, and all of the vulnerable that they can find.

So we must continue to seek our own truth, and then our struggle becomes Sublime!

The non-illuminated, restless mind is devoid of all of Love’s rhyme and Truth’s reason,

And only chases after desert mirages, until it sees the internal corruption that is guilty of treason.

Shame on you, Donald Trump, your minions, and the pseudo-Christians who continue to support you.

Blessings to all of America’s holy warriors, who seek for, and hold onto, all that is just, equitable, and true.

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 is an emanation of our universal consciousness. Yet, the thought of Trump brings few to a state of bliss or contentment. By the 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 together 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 damages of incurring negative perceptions of others. We still must act consciously and decisively against all forces which 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 own hearts.

Love unifies, hate fragments. 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. There are four pillars 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, there is no teacher who will effect 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 course that will take us to our spiritual goals. We can actually 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, is extensions of our Self. How we see our Self today determines the quality of Love and Truth that we manifest in our lives. How we see our Self today determines how much spiritual power can be brought to our damaged planet, which is now dependent upon us. How we see our Self today determines how much, as awakening beings, we are able to 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 own religions, their own disfigured political and economic principles, and their own 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 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 works of others, and that is OK.

“The finger pointing at the moon, can never be the moon”.

—The Buddha

Were the reader to ever have a similar apocalyptic spiritual experience as I did, on July 21, 1987, the reader would see, as I now see, how pathetic and inadequate can be our words. Words are limited containers for infinite energy, and though they point to a shared reality, they will forever fall short in their intention for communicating what lies deep within the heart. While living in a verbal consciousness, the word remains the way the human world is measured. And the word, because of its inherent limitations, continues to create imbalances within the mind of man. Mankind, with its religions and its political science, continues with its pride and hubris, and clings to its knowledge like it was truth itself, forgetting that our words and thoughts will forever only be theories chasing after the truth that is continuously being updated by the present moment. The universe laughs with us, when we see that all of our words are but simple pointers, to that which exists within each of us, yet also exists far above and beyond the limited and limiting boundaries of human consciousness.

The sun shines, and the artist interprets its light upon the beautiful landscape, and paints a classic piece of art. The wolf howls in the lonely, cold, snow-covered wilderness, and, miraculously, another wolf a great distance away howls back at him, reassuring both that each other is still there, waiting to bridge the distance and make a meaningful connection. The bird sings alone in the forest, yet, a hiker stops for a moment, listens, and her heart begins to sing and her spirit soars with the bird. The divorced and lonely man sings in the shower, and the travelling salesman at his door hears him, and is so impressed by the man’s voice that he encourages him to try out for a local band. An isolated man stumbles upon the miracle of silence within his being, and a resultant bridge of words many years later connects this sacred silence to his latest writings, creating poetry and healing balms for all who are receptive.

“Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate’er you may believe.
There is an inmost center in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception which is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and to KNOW,
Rather consists of opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.”

—–Robert Browning

As I look at my life’s history, I bear witness to Love and its healing Mystery. The greatest insights that I have ever had continue to arise through the sacred silence within my being. Words are formed to become the bridge from that silence, to the conscious mind, in its attempt to bring balance back to which the verbal universe has brought imbalance to. Yet those words, though sacred to me, are only pointers to the potential for others. Yet, to continue to point I must.

In retrospect, My father only appeared to cast a shadow over my life. And, more recently, Donald Trump only appears to cast a shadow over our world. It was up to me to find my own unique voice, in my search for my own truth, so that I could arise from my own self-imposed shadows, and be with Life as a partner on love’s endless journey. It is up to all of us to arise from our self-imposed shadows, and confront those demons, both within our hearts, and within our political world, and demand necessary change so that our world, and ourselves, can be embraced by each other’s, our Mother Earth’s, and our Universe’s, healing caress.

And, no, father, in whatever form that you may now be appearing in my life, I will never run out of things to write or talk about, and

I WILL NEVER SHUT UP.

The Silence continues to reach out to the turbulence within our world.

My world will never be the same.

How about yours?

Never judge an album by its cover.

Never judge a cover by its album.

Has anybody seen my lost shaker of salt? Some people claim that Donald Trump is to blame, but I know, it’s all of our own damned faults.

(tip of the hat to Jimmy Buffet)

Writer’s note: Writing in my blog is like singing in the shower. Few people ever hear if I am off key, especially when I go for the high notes. I encourage all readers to continue their own writings, and do not let the off-key “high notes” discourage you. Our creations are precious, and sacred, when wrapped with loving intention. Like all writings, and speeches from others, please salt this one to personal taste.