Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate

A few people have told me about spiritual teachers or personalities who have said that Trump is a light being, doing light being work, and what do I think about that … so here’s what I think about that. (Maybe don’t  get hung up on an idea before reading all the way through.)

Everyone is a “light being.” This isn’t my language, but the idea is that every person is an expression of the One, the All. This is the very essence of what we are so we cannot be otherwise, no matter what we believe, say, or do. Someone can tell you all your life that you’re a pink sheep, and eventually you may come to believe and therefore act like a pink sheep, but you will never BE a pink sheep. We’re told all our lives in subtle and obvious ways that we are not intrinsically holy, and we believe it. We’ve been told all our lives that we have to earn worth, prove we mean something, improve to be saved. We’re told we’re not holy so many times, we believe it – but it’s not true and never will be. The very fabric of all being is one fabric. Oak tree, lamp, tiger, tyrant, holy woman, the essence of one is the essence of all. We are all of the same fabric, and that fabric is light, love, God, Spirit, All, One, Allah, Tunkasila, whatever name you care to use.

Most of us don’t know how to think clearly about people who do or say bad things; we believe bad people are wholly bad, with no lovely qualities at all, and they certainly cannot be “light beings.” Hitler cannot be admitted to be either good in any way, or understood to have an essence that is infinite and holy. We want to believe in black and white good and evil. It’s easier. And our enculturation will not comfortably allow a paradox of the horrific and the tender held within one person, and our philosophies and spiritual beliefs rarely carry the maturity to comprehend the true implications of creating our own reality, being responsible to and for it, and what it means if everything – everything – that exists is of the same fabric.

Whether we can wrap our minds around it or not, Hitler was of the same fabric of being that each of us are made of because we are all One. And Trump is too. That does not mean that what Hitler said and did was an expression of that essence of light. It very obviously was not. And Trump being recognized as a light being does not imply that all he says and does is an expression of that light. It obviously is not. Light doesn’t insult, threaten, attack, kidnap, lie, kill, condemn, or incite others to violence and hate. These are never expressions of light. A person cut off from their own light does these things. Someone who needs healing does these things.

We have free will in this reality’s experience of cause and effect. If we want to explore the idea that we’re separate from the One, the All, we can – and have been – having that experience. The belief creates the experience. And the primary and foundational way of functioning created by a belief that we’re separate is fear. Anger, competition, jealousy, envy, greed, obsessions, aggression all come from a basis of fear – fear that there’s not enough for all, that others mean you harm, that you can be harmed, that you have to earn a place or prove yourself to be included. 

If we’re honest, we can all recognize these expressions in ourselves and our everyday lives, these symptoms of a base fear, microcosmically. The symptoms are also present in cultures, in countries, macrocosmically. No matter what we state as ideals, we in the United States, for instance, are not a country whose basis of value is fully that of kindness, generosity, and caring for those who are unable to care for themselves. Our base value is monetary, upheld by might makes right. (Everything is stated valuable in terms of monetary worth, from forests to insults and compensation for deaths.) We espouse ideals in our self-image, and in our State of the Union and Constitution, then cherry pick what we want from that and ignore the ways we trespass on our own ideals, whether through innocent ignorance, willful denial, or aggressive rationalization.

Trump can be understood to be the embodiment of all the worst aspects of our culture: the adolescent arrogance, the unchecked and admired greed, the systemic and deeply historical racism, the aggressive misogyny, the lying to ourselves and others, the willingness to use might to strong arm those who don’t give us what we want, the belief that bad things don’t happen to good people, the need to be special and subsequent belief in manifest destiny, the claiming of victimhood and use of that in competition to claim validation (I’m the biggest victim, so I’m more valid than you are). All of these things deserve a careful ponder, because they’re certainly all present in our culture, and probably present in some form in our individual personalities (and once seen, can be dismantled). 

This is important: what can be seen can be healed. It’s been easy for many people to be ignorant of the ongoing experiences of Amerindians, blacks, Hispanics, LGBTQ, and other marginalized communities … it’s easy to say this is just how the world is and always has been: there are always some people who get a bad deal, a rough time of it, and it’s not my problem. But it is and always has been the way it is only because we have believed it and allowed it. Many people in these groups are not shocked by what’s going on now in this country – it’s been going on in their lives for a long time. It is simply now blatantly visible, to the world, if not yet to all of us. We have to see it. We have to see it to be able to stop choosing it.

The ugly things that Trump acts out on a  world stage are those ugly aspects of our culture that have always been present. He is a light being, yes – and he is not acting in accord with his own light. He is an out-picturing of our own ugliest aspects. The racism, hate, misogyny, aggression, greed, and arrogance have always been present, but many of us were able to ignore it, or deny it as our problem. But we live in a country that perpetrates and perpetuates these beliefs, which creates misery for our fellow light beings. We are complicit in this way. We are responsible to and with what we participate in whether we consciously create it or condone it or not. If we see it, we are able to respond and the lies that we live with are now being exposed in ways that won’t be ignored. They have to be seen and acknowledged, because that’s the way they can be ended. They can’t be ended if they can’t be seen. 

It’s my understanding that this shift of healing could have been done in a gentler way, but we get what we create, the effects of our communal beliefs and choices and momentum and community, and this is what we have. So how do we best handle it, is the functional question.

I believe Trump’s actions and words are those of a person cut off from their light. He – like this country – needs healing. Standing up to his and anyone’s destructive actions and words has true power when the essence of the individual is first recognized as intrinsically of the divine, beyond or deep behind the person’s actions and words. Hate of the individual as a soul individual is hate feeding hate. No one is more special than another, no matter the valuations we make up within the physical world. And no one exists outside of the All, because the very fabric of being makes all things beingness. And no one gets left behind: either we all lift, or none of does. When we are able to say hello to the intrinsic divine within someone, before we stand up to their actions or words, we have energetically shown them their own divinity, and invited them to live up to it. If you think this has no power, you are mistaken. Everything is energy before it is anything else – energy and intention are creation.

It’s my belief that we must stand up and speak up against harmful words and actions in every way that we know is right for us. We must do what we can to interrupt words and actions that hurt or diminish others. And it’s necessary to recognize that our own fear in the form of rage, arrogance, hate, or violence feeds what we fear, microcosmically and macrocosmically. When we know ourselves and every other being, first and truthfully, as infinite essence, as a constant and unassailable aspect of the fabric of being, our own words and actions will originate in love, and as Martin Luther King truthfully said, hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.