Tag Archives: Trump

Chuck’s Place: The Healing Ticket

In the mystery play of our time, Donald Trump is emerging as Helios, the sun god, a golden redeemer. The stronghold of reason is crumbling and the hunger for divine renewal appears to be landing upon his golden locks.

A religious fervor is stirring in the masses, in all of us. The renewal we really crave is transcendent ecstatic experience. The problem with Donald’s solution is his complete identification with ego as divine Self. In other words, total exaltation of the ego with divine imperative. “Make America Great Again,” as catchy as it is, is complete ego coronation, as it solves the destruction of the world through a restoration of the myth that America is God’s chosen one whose grand imperative is purification and masculine power domination.

The mystery play denies the necessity to take the journey into the depths of the earth to face the truth of the destruction and neglect of the feminine, of its divinity and source of healing and renewal.

How high can we go before we suffer the fate of Icarus? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
How high can we go before we suffer the fate of Icarus?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Trump reflects the ego in all its might—Helios the sun god obliterating all the darkness in its one-sided enlightenment. This is a very personal story for all earth inhabitants. We all have ego selves, that which governs our decisions and actions in life. Ego of our time is dominated by reason. But reason, for all its order, is deplete of body experience. Reason is localized in the head; it is abstract, dissociated from our true animal aliveness.

Our modern religions are dominated by reason, they don’t link us to the living substance within ourself. This is why the modern world is addicted; addiction is our hidden pagan compensation to partake of the divine substance so critical to sustain life. Of course, addiction is equally as one-sided as reason—it knows no limits, like Icarus, who imagined himself as Helios and melted from getting too close to the heat of the sun, falling to his death upon the earth.

Trump is the ultimate symbol of the addict: we can have it all, he says, there are no limits! This is the collective masculine ego’s last stand and it is empowered by ego identification with divine energy, with God, but like Icarus it is really just ego unleashed and if I am reading it correctly, it can only go so high before it is doomed to go down.

This hunger for divine experience has been burgeoning beneath the rule of reason for too long, and the charismatic Trump advantage lies in its fervor. This truly is what happened in Nazi Germany. The irrational fervor latent in the German Volk was galvanized by a charismatic leader who extolled purification and masculine domination, overtaking their cultured humanity and sending them, and the rest of the world, into the darkest time in recent modern history.

To learn from history would be to not repeat it. Collective energy, including all that fervor, is made up of the energy of individuals. To separate the individual self from the collective is Step One, while at the same time accepting the truth that as individuals we are still a microcosm of the collective. The advantage of individuality, however, is one of manageability. For however vast the challenge, it is possible for the individual to take the plunge into the full truth of the many-sided self, where all the ancient mysteries and transformations are possible, without harm to the collective.

Individuals can assume responsibility for themselves, and must, as historical fact shows that collectives are largely impossible to control. Unfortunately, there is now a curious total absence of individual responsibility, in fact, things are devolving into something of a mass blood thirst. The time is ripe for the individual to take responsibility, one person at a time. Let’s hope we are not too late!

Squaring with the divine within the fires of the self... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Squaring with the divine within the fires of the self…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

To begin immediate and active participation in becoming responsible, each individual can square with the divine masculine and the divine feminine within the self, each finding their own unique and individual way to the Middle Way, the ultimate goal within and without. It is impossible to define that Middle Way on a collective level, for all must find legitimate balance and reconciliation within all that one is made up of, within the self.

If enough people can make the effort to find their way to this Tao within, the world will find its way to the healing ticket too!

Squaring with the divine,

Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Furor & Führer

Labor deepens. The world anxiously awaits the birth of a redeemer. The era of Obama has seen great expansion and inclusion. However, the speed of change has caused a swing to the opposite pole, that of boundary and protection, guns not roses. What’s at play beneath it all is the tango of two opposite, yet intimately related, instincts: sex and self-preservation.

What is being constellated, devil or angel? - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
What is being constellated, devil or angel?
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

When sex dominates, we open our hearts, our borders; everyone matters, basic needs are met. When self-preservation dominates, our hearts are closed and steeled; we sacrifice life, we protect our own.

When sex dominates, the spirit of earth-based marijuana becomes legal. When self-preservation dominates, the distilled spirit of alcohol, an artifact of science, reigns.

When sex dominates, African-Americans, gays, transsexuals, Syrians, Muslims are welcomed. When self-preservation dominates, freedom shrinks as old order conservatives restrain the lower chakras. The head rules, the body politic is divided and controlled.

At a higher level these opposites are the interplay of love and power. When power rules, sex is rape. When love rules power is flaccid. When love and power vie for dominance, destruction and rebirth are the consequences. The goal we seek is to reconcile these opposites in a balanced union, and that brings us to the question of where we are now: What truly is the state of our Union?

America seeks renewal. Trump has risen as a potential redeemer. He presents as a freakish Dionysus with his golden locky mop. He embodies the spirit of a spontaneous orgy. He shoots from the hip with total unapologetic humor, sarcasm, and fury. He at once expresses youthful spontaneity and ruthless power. He is at once inclusive and divisive. He is uncontainable. Even the most powerful conservative Republican monied lobby cannot control his chameleon spirit. He’s alive and America is bored.

His appeal touches a latent excitement in Republican and Democratic citizens alike. His enthusiasm trumps reason, and this excites the volk of the American spirit. It’s a layer of the psyche below the ruling ego with all its boring limits and controls.

Under Trump our madness comes alive. We can all play with the Joker as he takes control of Gotham City. Who needs the movies? We can all become lustful, power-driven billionaires who can act out our wildest fantasies. We can simply, impulsively and completely, wipe out a country that threatens our security and our playtime.

Trump is dangerous because in the midst of all this furor we are missing a latent Führer. Hitler came to power because he, like Trump, tapped a latent Dionysian spirit of change that burgeoned beneath the beleaguered spirit of the German people. What broke forth under Hitler’s reign was a mass psychosis and an orgy of death.

Trump is not a redeemer. He is a false prophet, falsely presenting a balanced union of opposites. And yet we cannot ignore the need he excites: a reconciliation of sex and self-preservation, love and power.

True conjunctio, the opposites united by spirit...
True conjunctio, the opposites united by spirit…

However, if we study Trump closely, we see that though he embodies the energy of Dionysus there is no love in his person. This is America’s problem too: the Goddess is completely missing. Mature feminine wisdom is the bridge to reconcile these two opposing instincts of love and power, and wisdom is severely lacking in the youthful mess we find ourselves now steeped in. This is America’s true blind spot.

Youthful furor never stops to reflect and reconcile. And now it has truly upped the ante as it seems we might be swept into electing a Führer. Hopefully, a higher wisdom will prevail as we face this possibility. Or perhaps there will be another step needed before we can find our way to wisdom and advance beyond this dangerous dance of opposites into true conjunctio.

As always, we as individuals are microcosms of the collective consciousness as well as the collective unconscious. Roughly speaking, the instinct of self-preservation finds its home in the power drive of the ego. Sexuality, in contrast, remains largely in the body and the instinctual unconscious. If we approach the relationship between the ego and the unconscious from the place of higher feminine wisdom, that of relatedness, we are offered an opportunity to align these very powerful instinctual forces toward a united, balanced effort of survival, for both the individual and the planet.

However, we better still vote with Wisdom!!!!

Chuck