The phrase “being in the Tao” suggests that one’s thoughts and actions are best fitted to, and in greatest harmony with, the needs of the whole. However, thoughts and actions that poorly address the needs of the whole are nonetheless in the Tao, as the Tao is wholeness and wholeness includes everything.
America just expressed a powerful wave of action in reaction to its governance. Although America is a democracy, with separation of church and state, at a deep archetypal level citizens project onto their president the role of hierophant, or spiritual leader, imbuing him with a divine numinous presence.
The current president has fulfilled this spiritual role through assuming the role of trickster, completely defying all dignified expectations and blatantly exposing and embodying the shadow of America in his daily doings, both day and night.
The impact upon the American psyche of this leadership was to have it brush up against a latent psychosis. The challenge was for the individual to wake up from its trance and take responsibility for the direction of one’s personal life and that of the country.
It truly could be argued that the president went to such extraordinarily bizarre behaviors to shake people to disidentify with their spell upon him and assume conscious control of their destiny. This would represent him as truly being in the Tao in the most necessary sense, but regardless of whether it is actually that or the Tao of extremism, it is the way of the Tao of now.
At the level of the individual the hierophant is operative in the relationship within the divine triune self of father, mother and child. From the father issues the beliefs and deepest desires that impregnate the mother, the subconscious mind, that brings to physical life the child of its intent.
The father, to best be in the Tao in his suggestions, must own and settle with his shadow. The shadow is a trickster that will live out all of our hidden doubts, desires and resistances, whereby diluting the potency of our stated intentions. The trickster will confound our lives with distractions and obsessions that seize our vital energy yet offer us a glimpse at our hidden selves. This is the opportunity to wakeup.
The mother will manifest that which is most potent within our beliefs. Mother may indeed know better but her role is to create, in the most auspicious way. The best being in the Tao with mother is to be sure that the suggestions she receives issue from what is truly needed. Once assured retire doubt and quietly hold the knowing that it is done.
The child is best in the Tao when it maintains its innocence and remembers where it came from, its divine parentage. As the president reflects, there can be great temptation for the child to deify itself alone, setting the stage for cataclysmic extremism in the Tao.
With gratitude for all the gifts we are given, both within and reflected without, that wake us up to our own divine power and responsibility.
Being in the Tao of now,
Chuck