Seeing Trump As a Gift

Whether your mind reacted in disbelief to the idea that Donald Trump is a gift or you believe he is the answer to all your fears, I’d like to invite you to explore the concept of Donald Trump as a gift for all of us. For the past year, I have been reading historical novels that started in 900 AD and I am now in the early 20^th century.  It is a marvel to see how history repeats itself.  We have lived the “them and us’ and the “for and against” energy for all of that time.  Isn’t it time to try something new?

Rather than reacting to everything that is going on in these increasingly chaotic times, we are being given an important opportunity to intelligently respond rather than react to all that is unfolding after the election.

What does response look like?  We start with the truth that you have been given the exquisite gift of a mind. It is a wonderful tool for maneuvering through reality. But most people think it is reality. In other words, very few are actually here for life. Instead, most think about life rather than experiencing it, living it second-hand. Or, as the Zen teacher Alan Watts once said, “No matter how many times you say the word water, it will never be wet.”

How do you use your mind rather than being lost in it? How to you respond rather than react no matter what is happening in your life? The first step is curiosity. When you discover how to be curious about what your mind is talking about, you can see that it has a running commentary all day long about what it likes and what it dislikes; what it feels is right and wrong, good or bad. If you look a little closer, you will see that is fueled by fear and glued together with judgment.

Most of the time fear shows up as a subtle sense of unease, but it can flare up into waves of anxiousness and even terror. The same is true about Judgment.  You, like most people, judge a lot but mostly don’t notice it.  It is just there, permeating so many of your thoughts.  The place where you can see it most clearly is when you have a strong judger attack about somebody else or when you unmercifully judge yourself.

Life will bring you different situations where you can begin to see your fear and judgment rather than being run by them. As the beloved Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron once said, “Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?”

This is where Trump is such a gift. I am inviting you to realize that one of the most powerful things you can do to bring healing out of what looks likes chaos (or order to others) is to use all this divisiveness to heal yourself.  Or, as it says in one of my favorite songs, “Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me.”

Even though I will be talking about Trump, none of this is judgment of him.  What we are exploring here are the qualities that block our hearts, mainly fear and judgment. Trump right now is expressing both strongly enough that it can become easier for us to see them as they operate inside of us.

Fear is seen in his limiting immigrants, whether they are Mexican or Muslim. It is also seen in his belief that enhanced interrogation (torture) is okay. It is even there in his push to win, whether it’s in trade wars, or having dominance in the world, even to the extent that he feels nuclear proliferation is okay. If you are honest with yourself, you can see that you too live in a quiet sense of fear a lot of the time.

We can also see his judgment – of women, of disabled people, or anybody that speaks something about him that he doesn’t like. When he feels threatened, he attacks and defends. Again, if you become curious about what your mind does, you can see that judgment is a big part of its story too.

We can also see his inclination for exaggeration.  He said he had the largest inauguration crowd that has ever been on the planet, although the pictures don’t show this to be true. He is also saying that he would have won the popular vote by 3-5 million if there wasn’t illegal voting.  And yet the people in charge of elections say there is not a bit of evidence for this. Can you recognize that you exaggerate too?  If you doubt that, think of things you have said when meeting someone new you were trying to impress – a date, a boss, the parents of your girlfriend.

Oftentimes when Trump is challenged around what he has said, he then denies it. If you doubt that you have done this too, think of a time when you were caught doing something you didn’t want anybody to know about.

What I am offering here is an invitation to see that we all live in fear and judgment. We all exaggerate, deny, attack, defend and judge. These qualities inside of us may not be as evident as with Trump (we are very good at hiding them even from ourselves), but they are there inside of us just the same.

What would happen if you contemplated the possibility that one of the reasons he was elected was to bring up the collective fear and judgement inside of all of us so we can heal it?  If you get lost in your fears (or cheers) of where his choices might possibly take us; or if you judge him – positively or negatively – for his actions and reactions, then you are aligned with fear and judgment. But you can realize that everything that you react to in him is also inside of you! You, like all people, have also judged, have wanted to be right. You have pulled back when you were scared, and the more scared you were the more you may have attacked. If you doubt all this, go back to the last big argument you had with a friend or a loved one.

The whole movement of ‘them and us,’ out of which Trump operates, is not what will heal the world. What heals is more and more of us looking and unhooking from the storyteller in our head that lives in fear and judgment. This is not about trying to get rid of these qualities or even saying they are bad or wrong. It’s just what the unconscious human mind does, and we are discovering how not to be run by them.

Fear is very seductive, but if you are honest with yourself, most of the fears you have ever had about the future have not come to pass.  Rather than being afraid about the possible future that could come from any President’s choices, the healing will come in being able to meet that fear inside of you. (“Fear is here,” rather than “I am afraid.”) There is no accident that the acronym for fear is ‘False Evidence Appearing as Real.’ As you discover how to relate to fear rather than from it, then, no matter what challenging situation you are in, you will be able to respond to it rather than react, staying in contact with your own innate intelligence that knows exactly what to do in any given situation.

We will be exploring in upcoming blogs about how to work with fear.  In the meantime, when you find yourself going into fear of the future, let go of the story and meet the fear inside of you. Say, “I see you fear,” rather than falling into its story.  Trump is here to wake up your fears, so you can see them more clearly and not be run by them. (Just as Obama woke up the fears of another part of the population.)

Rather than judging Trump, you can discover how to respond, meeting what his words and actions bring up in you with the intelligence of your heart.  For he is just “God in drag” inviting you to heal the war inside of you, so you can be present for life, all of it.

When you find yourself judging Trump – or those on the opposite side of the political spectrum – realize that what you are judging in that person you are also judging in yourself.  I invite you to say, “What am I ready to see about my own judgment?”  In that moment, you are not lost in reaction.  Instead you are responding to yourself.  You can even get to the place where, when you notice you are judging Trump or someone else, you can add, “Just like me.”

As we clear the clouds of fear and judgment, what is there to meet us is the phenomenally intelligent human heart – the heart that is inclusive rather than exclusive; the heart that is empathetic rather than judgmental; the heart that sees that no matter what the color of our skin, our religion, our sexual orientation, our gender or even our political beliefs, we are all in this together, every single one of us a necessary thread in the tapestry of wholeness.

We could go so far as to say that Trump is here to wake up our hearts. And if you doubt that, recognize the millions upon millions of people all over the world that gathered – without violence – the day after Trump was inaugurated. There were people of different genders, ages, religions, nationalities, but they gathered in togetherness.  I have talked with a couple of women who were at the walk in DC and many others who were at their local walks.  Every single person talked about the wonderful energy that showed up.

Life is constantly evolving, and every time an old way is fading away and a new is arising, there is always chaos. What would happen in your life if you understood that the old way of fear and judgment is giving way so that the intelligent heart (which science has shown is our main brain) can come to the forefront?  This is happening inside of you and all over the world. The invitation is to use your whole life, including your response to Trump, to get to know how fear and judgment reside inside of you so you can live from your aware heart and become a part of the healing of our planet.

Note:  If you wish to explore these ideas in more depth, there  will be another Free Teleconference on Sunday, February 19th at 10:00 AM Pacific Time (email marysue@maryomalley.com to register), and I am offering a 4-week telecourse, “What’s In the Way Is the Way” beginning February 28th at 6:00 PM Pacific Time for $160.  To register for this class, please click on this link.