Donald Trump as fallen Jedi Master?

BY HARV BISHOP

When it comes to Donald Trump and New Thought there are no simple answers.

A recent Washington Post opinion piece by Greg Sergeant said “In the mythology that holds sway over President Trump’s political imagination, the massive crises rocking the country — pandemic, depression, the worst civil unrest in 50 years — are all being alchemized by Trump’s magical reality-bending powers into political gold.”

My first post in this series explored whether there is something inherent to New Thought beliefs that can create someone like Trump. A second question is whether his use of New Thought practices have power making him akin to fallen Jedi-master.  Previous posts about New Thought’s influence on Donald Trump and his use of mind power techniques drew some praise, but have also kicked up dust storms.

The main complaint about my recent post is that it ignored many other components of Trump’s seeming success: his troubled relationship with his father whom he idolized, his father’s money, white resentment over President Obama’s election, long-standing U.S. racism and so on.

To which I only reply, yes, they are all important interlocking factors and without any one of them he wouldn’t be president with or without New Thought and mind power practices.

We could also add a long-standing campaign of voter suppression, the loss of civility, the moral cowardice of most of the Republican senate, and an Electoral College, all of which give disproportionate influence to a minority of angry white voters to the levers of electoral power.

The argument against my post is that all of these things have more to do with Trump’s power than a seeming Jedi-like ability to bend reality to his will.

I still argue that mind power could play an important role. 

Why?

Let’s begin with Mitch Horowitz’s excellent short summation of Chaos Magick. Demonstrations of the so-called Law of Attraction, writes Horowitz, always arrive via “normal channels,” i.e. you are looking for a job and meet someone who knows someone who is looking for your skills. In other words, when the environment is right, some sort of extra-physical ESP-like connection to others can create helpful encounters, lucky breaks — in short, synchronicities. The view of the Law being more like intentionally created synchronicities is supported by the writings of Gary Lachman and David Spangler. Spangler inspired many New Thought adherents including Rev. Dr. Nirvana Gayle (Religious Science) and Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith (formerly Religious Science, now independent). If we’ve been around this approach to spirituality for a while, we know synchronicities can be nudged, but aren’t subject to command and produced at will.

Chaos magicians and New Thought leaders including Ernest Holmes agree that mind power practices don’t guarantee success, but they can tip the odds in your favor via synchronicities. Chaos magician Gordon White offers this explanation for how we can say that prayer is always answered: One prays for a date on the weekend and is still unsuccessful. But the odds of success may have gone from one chance in 200 to one chance in 20.

What are the normal channels in Trump’s case? Everything listed above: the structure of government, his wealth and privilege, a desire to prove his worth, voter suppression, racism and so on. I absolutely agree that absent any one of these things, and many others, he’s likely not in office.

If that’s true is there still room for mind power? 

Yes.

When normal channels are not aligned, the impact of manifestation practices is at the margins. When normal channels are aligned it can very much increase the odds to tip in your favor. Increase the odds doesn’t mean a guarantee.

Negative channels that serve people like Trump can also do the opposite and block manifestations. I often give the example that if Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had been of an age to run for President in 1960 the odds of a woman or a Black man being elected then would have been an extremely low, more likely impossible, probability outcome. Jack Kennedy’s 1960 presidential run was controversial simply for being Catholic. Widespread views on gender roles and race wouldn’t have allowed it absent some miraculous and immediate shift in collective consciousness.  That’s one reason I find abhorrent the view that we are 100 percent individually responsible for our reality.

Trump doesn’t need to be a fallen Jedi master.  His use of mind power isn’t all his own. His fervent supporters create collective thought forms and he has alt-right magicians powered by the internet to spread sigils focused on creating synchronicities in his favor. Gary Lachman covers this in detail in his excellent book Dark Star Rising. (#commissionsEarned)

Which brings us to one of the more outlandish challenges to my first post. The idea that making claims for mind power places blame for Trump outside of us and gives us a bypass on working to overcome current social ills such as racism. In effect, this person said, it passes responsibility onto God. But God, however defined, doesn’t really apply to individuals working with the creative power of the mind in unconscious and destructive ways. It certainly doesn’t say social ills shouldn’t be addressed.  Mind power generated synchronicities most often work within favorable environments and via necessary channels. One way to undermine Trump’s power is to undermine the necessary channels such as racism and voter suppression.

In a complex system, things work together synergistically. It is similar to an allergy overload. One may tolerate a certain number of allergens and then exposure to one more triggers an asthma attack. Which allergen was more important to the outcome? There is no right answer. They all were. If any one  allergen is absent no asthma attack.

Also, in a complex system, small actions can carry outsized influence. While struggling with whether to release the Pentagon Papers, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg encountered the poet Gary Snyder on a hiking trail. Their dialogue convinced Ellsberg to go ahead with his plans. Snyder didn’t know who he was talking to until he saw Ellsberg in the papers and on television. That seemingly small meeting became a necessary channel that changed history. But it required a host of other necessary factors to have that impact.

Books mentioned in this post

(#commissionsEarned)