The owner of a studio where I teach yoga stated he’s an ardent Republican but hates Trump. In our discussion, he told me that Trump recommended drinking bleach to fight Covid. I voiced my doubt to the verity of his statement and he yelled at me, “I saw the video!” I couldn’t imagine anyone would suggest drinking bleach, unless the context was, “…because you’re an asshole and I want you dead!” So I looked up the video.
Trump was giving a press conference on Covid. He said (paraphrasing), “There are things that can kill it 100% on surfaces. Perhaps something could be taken internally that would have a similar effect.” Addressing his medical team he added, “But you’re the experts, you would have to look into that.”
No matter my feelings about Trump, I wouldn’t see his statement as anything but, dare I say, a logical spitballing of ideas. So how does someone swear on the Bible that he saw something that didn’t exist, unless he is instead swearing on a stack of books that contain violent nudity and graphic descriptions of various sex acts, like vice-chair of the Fairfax County School Board, Karl Frisch. https://www.christianpost.com/news/fairfax-county-school-board-member-sworn-in-on-stack-of-porn.html
It is the same reason why an author of several books I’ve read, who meditated 8-hours a day consistently for 20-years, while once a month doing full 24-hour meditations, sent me a writing piece he thought I would appreciate that was a total piece of garbage. Our opposing opinions of the piece was beyond a dissimilarity between palates where one is amenable to chocolate and the other to vanilla.
It was as if someone called me a “doo-doo face” and another person said in all earnest, “Now there is a clever and erudite dig!” Had the insulter said, “You are such a shithead that I can see chunks of corn coming out of your face,” that would be excrementally more clever than the former, not to mention the brilliance of the intentional misuse of the word “incrementally” with a derivative of a synonym for feces. You may say, “That’s gross!” but you can’t argue from your stool that the corny image and “excrement” bomb was a dropping of the ball or a waste of imagery.
The piece sent to me was a rant by someone who hates Trump. It was written like crappy spoken word poetry, where the person speaks emotionally but with no creativity, rhyme or reason, like they’re emoting their way through a reading of a Chinese menu. “Beef and Broccoli! Kung Pau Chicken! Beef with Mushroom” (a single mushroom?) . While the definition of “poetry” is a lot looser than the definition of “rape,” despite Judge Kaplan’s definition gymnastics, and while technically if words are spoken than it is “spoken word,” the digital diarrhea I read by this master of manure, was as worthy of artistic praise as one who has just urinated his name in the snow.
“We don’t see the world as it is; we see the world as we are.”
-Anais Non
So how could a Self-aware spiritual teacher be so taken aback by shitty writing? Because he is unaware that his personal bias against Trump has flavored his view of what is good or bad writing. I suppose it’s possible he actually enjoys shitty writing but, from the intelligent commentaries he’s written on yoga, I tend to doubt that.
Whether we’re talking about Trump or something else, reflect on how your personal beliefs, biases and, to add a few yoga kleshas (causes of suffering), your attractions and aversions affect your reality. If you are a spiritual seeker, you seek to see Truth as it is, not “the truth according to me.”
Like me, Trump’s personality pushes people’s buttons and also offers them a gift of awareness, if they are willing to take it. They can use this newfound awareness to soul search and see where they are trapped by their own mindfucks and spiritually grow the hell up.
But all any good teacher or teaching, like Trump is providing, is only useful when you put it into practice. And most won’t. The danger is not only that you will grow in age and not in consciousness, but worse, you may send piss-poor writing to someone under the false perception that it’s brilliant. Why burden them with your bullshit biases? Not everyone is an alchemist that can turn lead into gold through their writing and you will leave many having to go to the stable and shovel out your horseshit from the stalls.
Hopefully Trump will be elected as President in 2024—not to fix the open borders; not to stop taxpayer money from going to illegal aliens who broke the law by sneaking into our country and being rewarded for their crime with a $2000 a month allowance and free housing (which doesn’t seem a great strategy to dissuade other criminals from entering the country), while leaving veterans to sleep on the streets without assistance; not to stop our in-debt country from continuing to send billions of dollars of unaccounted money overseas that results in inflation and money-laundering (according to U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh, Zelensky took over $400 million dollars from Pentagon fuel funds (not to mention suspended democratic elections in Ukraine, keeping himself as the forever ruler until he gets his Broadway break), probably for his newly acquired yachts and acting lessons) and is destroying the economy—but instead to help people to notice their triggers.
Because looking anywhere but ourselves for truth and happiness is always looking in the wrong direction. Focusing on anyone’s ugliness, even Dapper Don’s, and not our inner biases, attachments and disturbances is a formula for retarding our spiritual growth.
This was originally published on Enlighten The Fuck Up Substack.
