In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle demonstrated how human
consciousness becomes imprisoned by the controlling mind, and how that mind, so
much focused on the task of controlling and centralizing one's attention on the
past and future, may feel threatened by any attempt to escape from mental
control. The imprisoned mind will seek
to reassert its enslavement at the first hint of change.Just such a separation of consciousness from Being, or, if you will, of mankind from God, is exactly what is at play in our current national drama.
A powerful mental
construct – the liberal myth of a progressive utopia brought about by surrender
of the individual to state control – is at risk of being swept away by a great
movement to free consciousness from the controlling ideas of the liberal
past.
As Shelby Steele wrote in a
remarkable March 6 op-ed ("The Exhaustion of American Liberalism"),
we stand "at the end of something," that something being the radical
mindset that has dominated so much of American intellectual life since the
1960s.
"The jig is up." Liberalism no longer possesses the moral
authority to control our national politics.
Liberals are terrified of Trump because they know that
their great myth, once the light of consciousness has been shined on it, will
dissolve as quickly as a grain of salt in water.
As Steele puts it, the "president rolls
his eyes when he is called a racist, and we all – liberal and conservative
alike – know that he isn't one."
Elizabeth Warren's Jeff Sessions rant was just that: a hysterical rant,
and everyone knows it. "White
guilt," and all that goes with it, is now just tiresome noise. There is no reality to liberals' mental myth
of the enlightened state. Once it comes
under awareness, it dissolves.
In Tolle's thinking, the concentration of consciousness
on the "now" to the exclusion of past and present awakens presence, a
powerful field of energy that can be directed toward learning, acting, healing,
or any other endeavor.
Presence is
transformative in a way that the mere chatter of mind can never be because
presence transcends the self-limiting contradictions, inhibitions, and mental
rubbish of regret, fear, and false hope.
Donald Trump has brought to American politics a
liberating presence that we have not seen since the days of Ronald Reagan.
And Trump's powerful presence – not just his
"presence" (as in "attendance"), but his presence (his
"aura" and sense of authority) – has liberated half of America from
the mental cage of progressive thought and struck fear into the rest.
The great panic on the left and the resultant attacks on
Trump are the left's response to this fear.
The left is desperate to prevent the light of consciousness from being
directed at the intricate mental structure leftists have erected.
Once a single pillar has been removed, the
entire structure will begin to crumble, and it will become apparent that the
progressive fantasy is merely a construction of ideas with no basis in reality.
The left has created a mental cage in which much of the
world has been imprisoned for the past half-century and more.
Now, with nationalist movements in Europe and
Trump in America, that world is changing.
No wonder the entire progressive establishment, from the liberal media
to holdovers from the Obama bureaucracy, is trying to bring Trump down, even,
if need be, at the cost of national security and economic prosperity.
From their perspective, it is the end of the world.
If they believed in Satan, they would be
labeling Trump "Satan."
As it
is, he is merely "Hitler."
(Interesting, but predictable, how very materialistic all
of the left's categories of thought have become and how totally uninterested it
is in the higher plane of liberty, goodness, and selflessness. In effect, our two political parties have
been replaced by two great movements: the left's ever greater reduction of life
to physical categories and interest groups and conservatism's aspiration to
restore wholeness and freedom, the condition that Tolle calls
"consciousness" and that others would label "sanctity" or
"human dignity.")
The fear and panic on the left are palpable.
Network programs that once, long ago, were
respected news outlets are now little more than vicious rants declaimed in
raised voices.
News anchors have become
mindless megaphones of victimhood and defeatism, totally absorbed by the idea
of stopping Trump because Trump threatens the end of their world.
Why is it that Trump poses such an existential threat to
progressivism?
How does that threat
operate?
Why is Trump so much more
dangerous than Christie, Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich would have been?
It is because unlike those who merely oppose
the left, Trump dissolves the opposition by holding it up to ridicule.
With his laser-like tweets and incisive wit,
with his very presence, Trump brings the preposterousness of the left's
positions into the light.
Everyone knows that the left has failed in its governance
of cities like Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia , Baltimore over the past
half-century.
It took Trump to make
people realize it.
Suddenly, the left's
credibility is toast – not because Trump has argued against it, but simply
because he has directed the public's attention to it. So also with jobs, national security, health
care, and the rest.
Join the president and shine your light of consciousness
on the left's mental prison, and watch it dissolve under your gaze.
America stands at a great spiritual
crossroads, where we must choose either to remain imprisoned by the left's
dehumanizing materialism – a politics focused on the "right" to abortion,
racial reparations, unlimited benefits, and transgender bathrooms – or to rise
and realize our great potential as free and enlightened human beings inhabited
by divinity.
It is the end of their world, if not the world per se –
the end of all that has been constructed by the left from Wilson to FDR to LBJ
and Obama, to exert control over consciousness.
Free your consciousness, and shine its light on what remains of the
left's moral authority.
Watch their
grand illusions dissolve.
Sit back and
enjoy the end of the world.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on
American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
