ACKNOWLEDGING MY INNER TRUMP:
Loving Mine Enemy via a Compassionate Look in the Mirror — T’is (always) the Season
By Marcia Singer
When I was 14, I had an Anna Frank moment, arguing with my Jewish dad that there must have been something good about Hitler. Poor Daddy worried that I couldn’t “perceive evil.” I could; I just knew though, there has to be something inherently good in everybody.
But it’s hard to feel compassion for someone you don’t really like or trust, especially if they don’t like you either! It’s hard to even want to muster sympathy. My first muster motivator was professional: Wanting to get along with clients, to like, respect, care about each one who came to my doorstep. Some were naturally easy, others harder. Some had similar lifestyles and values to mine; others not. Some smelled good, others — nope. But I was highly motivated!
My second big motivator for compassionate caring was my emerging spiritual orientation: It felt right to aim for kindly inclusion. It physically and emotionally felt better too — better than feeling disgusted or hopeless! Also, when I’m motivated to care, for whatever reason, I always find a desirable aspect. If not motivated, I won’t find a reason to care. We mirror for one another what is in our hearts and minds, at any given moment. You see in me –and I see in you — what we’re expecting. We hear what we’re attuned to, what is being allowed. Remember the famous adage, “It takes one to know one?” In order to perceive any quality in another (valued, not valued), that aspect must be active — or at least a latent potential — in myself. The axiom is profoundly true. So I had to ask myself, what if someone I distrusted and despised walked in the door, wanting a counseling session? Isn’t my chosen Path to honor and respect and even feel compassion for the “other?”
Are you familiar with a Buddhist lovingkindness meditation practice called “metta?” I tried that first, offering statements of safety, peace, resilience, happiness to myself, then to someone I loved, working around to someone I might even hate. DJT came immediately to mind. I admit, I don’t readily feel kindness towards him… But I faithfully repeated the kindness phrases until The Donald’s lonely, scared Inner Kid was clearly before my inner eyes. My compassion was flowing now…remembering how we’re are all alike at heart.
I went a few steps further. Using the “takes one to know one” idea, I began to poke around for matches between us, those character flaws I readily judge: Like pervasive insecurity; insatiable bids for approval; a grandiose ego in search of real connection outside its impossibly solitary confinement. There was more: An addiction to scarcity consciousness, no matter how rich you seem to be. Living in an anxious, tweeting, self-trumpeting survival mode hoping to convince everyone you’re not a loser? Engaging in corrupt enterprises, whatever seemed ‘necessary,’ to prove you’re a winner? 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, grifting authoritarian? Would my heart not recognize a very desperate guy? See my own humanity in him…? Care and want to help?
When I feel compassion for a man having to live with his own creepy, horrid self, I do see myself, too, my own insecurities. Like fears of rejection, sense of inadequacy. I recall ploys I’ve invented 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. I might even own up to my exaggerations to impress you. Or how I’ve hurt people I supposedly loved, or tried to avoid my existential loneliness, allay anxiety, buy time or try to win your affections.
Dang. Can I admit to and love the version of Trump who lives in me? And if I did experience the similar essential nature of our vulnerabilities and strengths, would I like this man? Or at least refrain from judgment? My understanding of the human Shadow Psyche would sure be enriched, our wounded adaptations to fear –our dark, coping inner mechanisms. And appreciate our mutual, as-yet unfulfilled capacities to Love ourselves, and each other.
I flashed on another of my teachers: The Coyote Trickster and her backwards ‘heyoka’ medicine (which is often hard to swallow.) “Do you think you want only what tastes sweet all the time? No lessons from the bitter?” She asks, setting me up to choke on my foolishness, ignoring my true nature — both its foibles and its graces. Its false appearances and its true brilliance?
“Be counseled then,” advises Trickster, “that gagging on Trumpism could be the trick to teach you how to handle poison Kool Aid. Either don’t drink it at all, rising quickly instead to your own great capacity to love. Or drink it, but bear witness to your act. And thus to your similarity to this man you are quick to dismiss. Either way, it’s OK, with loving presence. 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.
