Earlier this year, my spiritual partner, Veronica asked me what I thought about Trump as an Essene mirror, to which I replied, “I don’t know, but that is interesting.” I thought about this for a couple days and came to the conclusion that he is a mirror which reflects teachings about ourselves. As soon as I came to this realization I immediately felt joy and appreciation wash over me, cleansing me of negative feelings. I thought to myself, “Of course! Why didn’t I realize this before? It is so obvious now!”

Veronica and I learned about the Essenes through a couple of books by Gregg Braden. The Essenes were the keepers of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or at least had a copy in their library–and when I say library, I mean a multitude of clay jars in a series of caves somewhere in the West Bank territory. The Essenes are a sect of Judaism and a lot of scholars speculate that Jesus and his Earthly parents were Essenes. From the Essenes we have received a powerful and sophisticated tool for understanding interpersonal human relationships and the role of emotion in our lives referred to as the Essene mirrors. I find them to be clever tools for self-transformation and healing. These mirrors won’t solve all of your problems, but they serve well to help expand your consciousness.

I thought it would be a great spiritual investment to try to understand why life is giving us Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States of America. This article allows me to thoughtfully share my spiritual lessons that I learned from Donald Trump. I will first touch upon two of the Seven Essene Mysteries of Self. In the third Essense mirror, I gaze into it as I imagine myself as a Trump supporter in the hopes to gain an empathetic perspective. In the second Essene mirror, I look into the mirror as myself to gain some spiritual insight. Lastly I share some practices that help me cope. In these unique times of Trump’s presidency, I humbly invite you to reflect on who we are and what this world means to us now and going into the future.

Learning From the Mystery of the Third Mirror

Compassion is a universal concept in all the major religions. In order to lead with compassion one must support empathy. I truly want to understand the general viewpoint of a Trump supporter. This was not an easy task for me as I did not vote for the 45th president and I generally disagree with just about everything he stands for. I see Donald Trump as a symbol of narcissism, greed, and prejudice.

As I stand in the shoes of a Trump supporter and gaze into the third Essene mirror of Trump, I see a reflection of what was lost, given away, or taken away. I get a glimpse of someone who feels lost and fearful in our world that is racing away from a time that I cling to–a time when America felt great, which has slowly been taken away. I have a lot of fear about the new world. When growing up I never had to worry about terrorism the way I do now. I never perceived of my Christian based religion being under threat before, but I do now. The America that I once perceived had a lot more familiar faces and share my common beliefs. These days I feel like a visitor in our own land and something in my life feels wrong and incomplete. I used to have abundance and opportunities, but now I struggle to make ends meet. New voices are calling me out for crimes like racism and gender inequality that I don’t feel that we have committed, but I am too worried about going to work and paying the bills to examine this possibility. All I know is that these other voices are against me. The old way of playing the game is play to win, survival of the fittest, but these other voices are saying that’s not fair. I am too old to change. I find myself easily caught up in the vitriolic conservative news and sensational talk shows. I really want to stand up for what we believe in, but I don’t feel the government is going to do anything to address my fears. I am angry about a lot of things in life. It feels good to have a strong leader who will crush the opposition and instill the old traditional way of life to our once great country.

As I step away from the Trump mirror and take off the shoes of a Trump supporter, I contemplate on my new experience. I do not condone hateful actions, but being able to examine their plight makes it easier to forgive and let go of resentful feelings. This exercise allows me to try to understand their point of view and give myself the opportunity to see that there is a lot of me in them. I believe that we are all capable of being compassionate, and sometime we must move between indifference, denial, or polarization before we can have an emotional desire to help those we feel empathy towards. I also see universal fears of separation, self-worth, and trust. Fear of separation and abandonment is very apparent in context to the up-rise of anti-immigrant sentiments. As a minority, I can identify with the fear of self-worth because of racist sentiments. In return I believe those who have racist views tend to have fear of self-worth and use racist ideology to improve their self-worth. Fear of trust can be easy to understand when there is unwillingness to understand each others plight. I am able to see that I also see a reflection of what was lost, I miss the feeling that the world is progressing towards a better world that is peaceful and loving.

Learning From the Mystery of the Second Mirror

The second Essene mirror is a reflection of what we judge. When you have a judgment against something, this mirror will bring those people and events into your life as an opportunity to forgive and let go of your judgement. Judgement can be extremely stubborn, but when paired with an emotional charge it can make one extremely volatile. This mirror can be subtle and elusive, which can make for a significant lesson.

When I look at Trump as an Essene mirror, I see a mirror of that which is judged. My judgements against him are also extended to judgment against those who support him. This creates a lot of stress and suffering for me, especially in my relationships with those who I discovered support him. It hurts to know that some friends and family members do not value the most intrinsic moral beliefs that I hold dear. To an extreme it feels like betrayal, otherwise it is a big let down and disappointment in those relationships. As a person of color, I feel fearful about my own safety and the safety of others. I fear the government will change its legislation and take my mother away even though she is a legal immigrant. I fear the police will see me and the ones I love as a threat and shoot me.

By looking into this mirror, I discovered that my judgement has invited the exact same qualities in myself. I listened to a rabbi talk about ego and judgement once, and what he said has stuck with me. He said that if you judge something bad in someone then you probably have it in you, because you are arousing that judgement inside yourself against that person. Once it is inside you it can fester quietly and slowly consume you without you ever realizing it. In this life lesson, I learned that our negative judgments of those who are being fearful and hateful, is creating the same fear and hate in myself. It made me realize that my judgement toward others creates a division inside myself and outside myself, which ultimately keeps me from being happy.

Living With Trump

I have been trying to practice forgiveness, letting go, and compassion by allowing others the ownership of their experiences, even when I don’t agree with it. When I am able to do this, I feel myself being released from my judgements. I believe judgement, control, fear, and hate share outcomes of separation. I like to believe that separation is an illusion and that everything is united in wholeness, both in matter and consciousness. I find it easier to not judge others by trying to identify the judgement within myself, which reminds me to remember that the judgement served its purpose as an opportunity for me to experience and learn from.

Love has a cost. To love I must let myself be open to pain. My capacity to feel pain, and be empathetic for the pain of others, shows how deeply I can love. Some of the ancients believed that the meaning of life is to experience life in the physical, so that we can eternally keep those spiritual lessons. If we open ourselves when we love, it seems natural that we close ourselves when in fear and hate. When we hurt, we can heal ourselves through forgiveness and letting go, but this is not the same as “blowing things off”. I find a deep healing when I confront the pain and turn it into a life lesson. Otherwise the feeling is stored in my inner basement with an unmarked box waiting to be opened or triggered.

If someone is driving aggressively and cuts me off, I can either get angry, turn off and disregard my feelings, or I can acknowledge it without judgement. The latter helps release everyday annoyances and stress. I believe this is what it means by striving to not have any attachments in life, but I think a lot of practitioners fall into a mode of shutting off their feelings instead of living life. Perhaps a better way to think of it is that you have power over your attachments and that your attachments don’t have power over you. When you “bless” something you don’t like, it gives you time to replace the negative feeling. Shifting your perspective of receiving a gift is a powerful shift away from feeling like a victim. What is this aggressive driver trying to show me? Is it a challenge of my ability to be patient, or a sign that I need to be patient in other areas of my life?

The choice to find beauty in the most unexpected things is a power that goes beyond the conventional and superficial standards. Take breaks and observe your surroundings and feel gratitude. It is a way of being present in the moment. Beauty is in all things when you take the time to admire them.

Choosing a healthier lifestyle isn’t easy. I fell into an unhealthy lifestyle when I moved from Colorado. I began having chronic back pain. It thankfully led me back into a life of martial arts, qigong, meditation, and spiritual awareness. I have made better considerations on how I choose to spend my time viewing media. Our smart phones and social media have changed us. Our cell phones can be tiny narcissistic mirrors that encourages entitlement, intolerance, and a lack of respectful boundaries towards others. By using my smartphone less, I am using social media less. We have all experienced bad online etiquette, but do we really think about how is it affecting all of us? Some people make careers out of being internet trolls. Do our words really matter? Should we pause to think about what kind of energy we are putting out there for everyone to see? I think we should be concerned. There are some studies starting to confirm that words can affect your emotional health. This shouldn’t come to a shock as cyberbullying is now a thing, and how it is influencing teenage suicide. Think of a time when someone verbally said something that put a sting in you and remember how it affected you. Now imagine that emotional content put through a loudspeaker.

How about you? What has helped you? Please let me know down below.

Amongst all the division of political ideologies, class, race, and propaganda (or fake news), it is hard to escape what Donald Trump shows about us. As the leader for the most powerful country in our world, his representation shows us qualities about the modern world, that reflect who we are and the qualities that we have in us that we wouldn’t proudly want to share in normal conversation with others. I believe Trump’s behavior of narcissism, greed, and prejudice are traits that we have in all of us. Donald Trump shows all of us, even if we are unwilling to pay attention, even if we are laughing and scoffing at it, what it looks like when someone abuses their power over the lives of others in pursuit of fulfilling their pathological needs.

I created the table below to illustrate a couple hypotheses:

1. Donald Trump displays pathological narcissism.
2. There is a correlation between NPD Symptoms, Greed, and Prejudice.

Using Donald Trump’s media persona, I’ve matched them to all nine NPD Symptoms. In the three sections below, I use a few examples to support these hypotheses.

 

NPD Symptoms	Greed	Prejudice	Donald Trump
Grandiosity, with expectations of superior treatment from others	Narcissism feeds on power and control and supports an individual’s sense of grandiosity. Materialism is a display of power and control, which also supports this sense of grandiosity.	Nazi eugenics helped shaped the belief that they were the master race.	Trump believes in eugenics.
Fixation on fantasies of power, success, intelligence, attractiveness, etc.	Success and power are perceived through material displays, which feeds into narcissism.	Institutional racism is a form of oppression designed to keep material wealth out of reach of those being discriminated against.	Trump has a deep-seated fear about public embarrassment and being forgotten. These fears drives his preoccupation with success and power.
Self-perception of being unique and superior	A narcissistic approach to resource is greed, which is antagonistic to communal solutions. From a narcissistic framework resources are not to be shared, because elites need power to fulfill their sense of superiority, and uphold their sense of uniqueness.	Neo-Nazism with respect to  Ultranationalism and eugenics is an example in which oppression is justified to carry out ideologies of uniqueness.	Trump is obsessed with media, and being in the media makes him feel special and unique. Trump makes vague remarks about Nazi superiority: “You know I’m proud to have that German blood…Great stuff.”
Need for constant admiration from others	A narcissist’s appetite for admiration is fueled by materialism. We can understand admiration through materialism by car advertisements in which female models are often displayed with nice cars. This type of advertisement speaks to the stereotype that women love expensive things, and wealth attracts attractive women. This fits into the framework that all of this is to be acquired and admired.	Propaganda in Nazi Germany was successful in promoting admiration for ultra- nationalism and Aryan pride, as well as in disseminating fear and anti-semitic sentiments.	See any news clip of his rallies.
Sense of entitlement to special treatment and obedience from others	Studies have shown that narcissistic entitlement is directly linked to materialism. This is because monetary rewards are exactly what a narcissist feels entitled to.	Plantation owners felt entitled to own slaves for their business.	Trump’s temper tantrums show his self-entitlement.
Willingness to exploit others to achieve personal gain	Karl Marx is considered the most influential theorist of exploitation. Marxism asserts capitalism suffers from a class struggle between the ruling class that exploits the working class for their labor to support the wealth and power structure.	Slavery in the United States was an economical exploitation of Africans and African Americans for material profit.	Trump exploits through fear and racism. He is also known for not paying his bills, and exploits government loopholes to stiff contractors.
Unwillingness to empathize with others’ feelings, wishes, or needs	Research shows that materialism is antagonistic to pro-socialist values, and a lack of empathy arises as money is involved.	Many proponents against welfare among White voters have been shown to be related to their  attitudes toward race.	Hours after the Orlando nightclub massacre Trump tweets: “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism”
Intense envy of others and the belief that others are equally envious of them	Envy is the desire for other people’s material possessions. Desire for a narcissist’s material possessions supply an excessive need for attention or admiration.	In 1921 the Tulsa race riot in America’s “Black Wall Street” resulted in the massacre of hundreds of Black residents by White residents that destroyed an affluent Black community.	Trump, “The old rich may look down their noses at me, but I think they kiss my ass.”
Pompous and arrogant demeanor	Materialism is at its core both arrogant and domineering given its pursuit to fulfill endless desires, which is unsustainable and antagonistic toward nature, and life in general.	The New Order (Nazism) was a political order to ensure a state of total post-war continental power over conquered areas.	Most anything quoted from Trump is arrogant and domineering.

 

Donald Trump’s Narcissism

Donald Trump shows us what pathological narcissism looks like. Narcissism is the pursuit of gratification driven by egocentric admiration and insecurity. Long-term patterns of abnormal behavior can lead to a condition called narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), measured through DSM-5 criteria. There is a lot of speculation as to whether Trump has NPD. We cannot diagnose Trump from a distance, but we can evaluate his words and actions, which share many characteristics with a malignant narcissist (aka: dark triad).

Healthy amounts of narcissism help shape our self-esteem. However, studies show that narcissism is on the rise, possibly connected to the spread of social media, reality tv shows, and the entertainment industry in general. Actors and actresses are prone to narcissism because of their trade, which should make us question what we are learning from them as we consume their products. Donald Trump is no exception, as a reality TV star who regularly engages in late-night Twitter storms. On almost every public address, Trump makes the topic about himself, whether it is appropriate or not. His tweet “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism,” only hours after the Orlando nightclub massacre, shows a lack of empathy.

Donald Trump’s Greed

Greed in America can be seen in the economic crisis that it created and how capitalism encourages materialism. Materialism is a preoccupation with material wealth and status, which is essentially the definition of greed. There are correlations between narcissistic and materialistic behavior; materialism can feed narcissism. Studies show that both narcissists and materialist are inclined to be insecure. Materialism and consumer consumption is on the rise while our well-being has declined. Narcissism feeds on power, control, and the appearance of success, which materialism spurs on as it plays into the perception of those qualities. Materialism also supports a narcissist’s lack of empathy, because when money is on the line, morality can often be ignored or distorted to justify one’s materialistic greed. Narcissism and materialism lead to segregation. The narcissistic traits of grandiosity, superiority, and exploitation can only thrive on the perception of separation and the use of divide and conquer techniques. Narcissism objectifies people and materialism dehumanizes people because both treat human beings as resources. Trump supported the privatized prison industry immediately after taking office by rescinding Obama’s executive order, which essentially allows capitalistic greed to turn human beings into cattle for material profit. Trump was quoted saying, “(Mexico) They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Trump has increased the deportation of illegal immigrants, which keeps privatized prisons more than full. Donald Trump is costing taxpayers billions of dollars by funding his lavish lifestyle. Amidst all of his many vacations, he still finds time to cut education funding and defund the poor. Trump came into the office owning a lot of money through bungled business deals, but now he reports that he is getting richer as President.

Donald Trump’s Prejudice

Narcissism and materialism are a platform upon which prejudice stands. Narcissism, materialism, and prejudice are qualities we have in all of us, and Donald Trump is showing us what it looks like when it goes unchecked. While  hate crimes have risen in America since Trump entered the Oval Office, racism has always been present.  Narcissistic and materialistic tendencies are easier to identify and accept in yourself than racism. Try thinking of all subtle moments in your life when implicit bias, split-second judgments and decisions, dictates your actions. Do you have stronger emotional reactions to babies of lighter or of darker skin color? When you are in a vulnerable situation does someone’s skin color become a factor in how you feel? A recent study supports evidence for racial bias by showing that White test-subjects reacted to pain suffered by Black people significantly less than that suffered by White people.

Narcissists have a sense of entitlement, which is also a theme in many racial topics such as White privilege. White privilege is an often misunderstood term, which means that people who are identified as White have not only a world whose rules and prejudices are stacked in their favor, but also the privilege of not knowing they have racial privileges or seeing discrimination. Despite the increasing amount of viral videos circulating on the Internet of African American men being unjustly brutalized and killed by police, Black Lives Matter has been met with the backlash of Blue Lives Matter, All Lives Matter and, most recently, White Lives Matter movements. These movements are admissions that they don’t understand/accept African American plight, and instead of using the power of empathy and compassion, justify ignorance and maintain White privilege through a show of solidarity and mob mentality.

Summary

The behaviors of narcissism, greed, and prejudice are inherent in the ideology that has infiltrated, organized, and shaped the culture that we live in. Donald Trump and those like him are a byproduct of a system that promotes these behaviors. They are showing us the consequences of these behaviors in there extreme form including:

• Sexual assault and rape culture
• Police brutality
• Disregard for environmental health
• Mass shootings
• Large scale corruption

When we are born into this system and shaped by it, we are all the more susceptible to having materialist, racist, and narcissistic tendencies that we have to recognize with within ourselves. By accepting that we have some of Donald Trump’s narcissism, greed, and prejudice in us, we can understand that we have the capacity to be like Donald Trump.

By using Donald Trump as a mirror, we can better understand the complexities of ourselves, and by understanding ourselves we can better understand the complexities of others. Our level of understanding reflects in our ability to unite or divide. This type of understanding isn’t just about individual bandages, more importantly, it is about allowing for new ideologies for dealing with hard issues.

Our old ideologies might have served some of us in the past, but they don’t seem to be serving most of us now. We must change the way we see our world. How do you see our world? The change must come from us, not solely from those we put in power.