I Love Donald Trump
I am a woman. I am a feminist. I am a childhood abuse survivor. I am in my right mind. I love Donald Trump.
As the words ring in my ears, the dissonance is jarring. But the peace and serenity I feel are how I know it is true.
This past month I’ve been reading and listening to Paths to God, Living the Bhagavad Gita based on the Ram Dass lectures at Naropa Institute in 1974. Dass died a few weeks ago and I found myself sad over a man that I knew little of, only ever having glossed over his life and teaching during a whirlwind of disjointed, desperate spiritual seeking done on my journey toward recovery from mental illness. I wondered why I grieved. So I started listening. I started reading.
Toward the end of the lecture series Dass said, “If we go out into the woods and we look at all the trees, we don’t say, ‘l wish that oak tree were an elm.’ Somehow, we can allow trees to be what they are; we can grant that each tree is perfect just the way it is. But when it comes to people, if everybody isn’t the way we think they ought to be, all hell breaks loose!”
What I’ve come to understand is that my visceral reaction to Donald Trump comes from a perceived threat that he poses to me. From pussy grabbing to political assassinations, his behavior is antithetical to everything I believe to be true and right in the world. So when I perceive myself as separate from him, my fear takes over. I get angry and fearful.
But Dass says, “we are each other’s karmic predicaments.” I think this means that we are connected. We are all in this for the benefit of each other and we are all perfect just the way we are.
Donald Trump is my karmic predicament. The choice I’m presented with is to live in fear and anger, or to live in love. I choose to live in love.
By choosing to view the world’s people as interconnected and dependent on each other, including Donald Trump, I can shift my perspective. I can have faith that things are unfolding as they are meant to. Even as the life I thought I was creating unravels before me, I can maintain that faith.
This morning, when the idea that I could love Donald Trump popped into my head and flowed onto the page, I also saw a clear path that leads beyond the debilitating shame I’ve been carrying about my relationship with my family. I have recently separated from my family. I’ve detached from them, perhaps permanently. I don’t know what the future holds. I realized this morning that I’ve worked through the karma that kept us bonded in this lifetime of abuse and enmeshment, and I can detatch with compassion and love. The karmic choice is to detach or remain steeped in the fear and anger I’ve been blinded by my whole life.
So I love my parents who abused and traumatized me. And I love Donald Trump who abuses and traumatizes a country. They are my karmic burden. I accept that they are all the result of generations upon generations of dysfunction, wrong thinking, and tragedy. I pray for them what I pray for myself.
The god of my understanding is in me, is bigger than me, is greater than my comprehension. My faith tells me that if my god is in me, then it is also in you. It is in my parents. It is in Donald Trump. And that god is just waiting to be called on. It is a universal god. But it is up to each of us, in this lifetime, to call on that god to influence us, to guide our thoughts and actions, to move us toward love. All of the fear, anger, and hatred comes forth when we’re trying to function separate from the god within us.
Maybe if we can all let go of the fear and anger, and ask the god to intervene, we can all love Donald Trump. And maybe if we all love him, he will have the strength to turn toward love, to ask his god for guidance. Maybe he will find the strength to work through his own karmic predicaments in peace and leave the country and the rest of the world alone.
Just something I was thinking about this morning.
