Elephant in the Oval Office: The Trump Transition and the Morphogenetic Field

The idea of a Morphogenetic Field or Limbic Resonance may seem abstract, however, we all might just be able to have direct experience if we stop, listen, feel, and rest in the presence of awareness. There have been those times when you have sensed that someone was looking at you, to find out they were. It is well documented that dogs seemingly know when their owners are coming home. Have you ever 'known’ when someone was cheating on you? Do you remember when Obama was elected president? Was there a feeling in the air? Just an empty campaign slogan of hope, or something more visceral, more real?

I'm not old enough to remember the assassination of John F Kennedy or Martin Luther King jr., so I can’t say what it felt like to experience those events. I've heard people say with a confused laugh, as they reflect on their youth, that they “don't remember the sixties”, and I have wondered what prompted such a curious statement. This was a time when television was just becoming common in every household which gave us a window to the world. Humans were viewing earth from space and war from earth for the first time in living Technicolor. The hippies created a huge counter-culture uprising, there were protests about civil rights, and rock and roll had become a new and powerful medium through which the youth could express themselves. The devastation of WWII was still fresh in the minds of many, and the peace sign was created as a symbol to represent the disarmament of nuclear technology. Bob Dylan spoke of the elephant in the room when he droned, “Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?”

Most of us today remember 9/11, and we all have had moments in life that seemed to facilitate a surreal moment in the collective consciousness whether global or local. When we find ourselves in these surreal moments that cannot really be put to words, it may seem that we are alone when nobody speaks about the feeling directly. Like an elephant in the room, we avoid addressing the issue and pass it off to a story of “Because...” The question of,”what is happening?”, goes unanswered.

We can say today that there is an Elephant in Oval Office, but let’s not be too quick to blame it away with a story. Our feelings have nothing to do with the Oval Office or whose job it is to work there. Our feelings are the result of a shift within a complex relationship dynamic. So then, what is happening!?

In Buddhist Psychology there is a concept called The Three Defilements; attachment, aversion, and ignorance. Being attached to something and then losing it is what makes us sad, having an aversion to something and not being able to get rid of it makes us angry, and ignorance, we could equate to the Jungian unconscious. Those attachments and aversions that we are unaware of, we are ignorant of. These are our mind’s relationship to emotions. Ultimately, we can transcend all three by resting in 'equanimity’ without emotionality. But what happens then if the emotionality is not rising from our individual thoughts, but from the collective? We probably all have noticed at some time or another that when someone says something in an emotionally charged way, it can be triggering even when not directed at us personally. Perhaps a stranger in a public place speaking to no one in particular; a proselytizer, a schizophrenic, an angry protester. Now imagine you are Helen Keller, you can’t hear or see, but are notoriously emotional. Limbic and Morphogenetic resonance say that it is likely that you, Helen, would feel this elephant in the room as deeply as anybody else, however, you would have no story of “Because…” to blame it on. You couldn’t say, “I am upset because he or she said this or that.” You would only know your own visceral experience as it arose within you from emptiness.

We can view this empathic Spiral Dynamic subjectively, and we must lest we fall back into the Gamma Trap of scientific religiosity. The rational reductionism and objective determinism that has propelled us forward could now just as easily hold us back. At MIT and Harvard, some research has been done to explore the usefulness of this elephant in the room, which has simply been called “tension”. In Tibet there is a common meditation practice called tummo that utilizes this tension productively. The Global Consciousness Project at Princeton has explored the effects of it. Still it is not commonly talked about, and perhaps the reason being, is that it is difficult to notice for precisely what it is. It is difficult to notice due to our propensity to quickly explain it away with our story of “Because…”.

Anyone who has been in an intimate relationship for an extended period time has noticed that people tend to sort of grow together, they tend to become each other. We generally choose who we would like to be in a relationship with. In intimate relationships it is called courting, in many political relationships it is called voting. The President of the United States of America, is globally recognized, politically and culturally, as the position having the greatest power and influence over humanity. Is it absurd to wonder if it is Morphogenetically possible, for the person holding that office to have a direct effect on all of us due to our collective agreement to participate in the social architecture that is upholding that position? Our own fears, arrogance, attachments, and aversions arise within us to meet those with whom we have freshly established a new relationship? A reflection of our own level of emotional responsibility, flagrantly emblazoned in front of our noses. In any case, I feel there is an elephant in the room, The Earth, The White House, or even simply in my own insignificant little heart, and I am sharing that here.

It may not seem fair, it may not feel nice, and the fact is that we are all here experiencing this together, whatever it is, whether we have words for it or not. We are all connected through a complex emotional dynamic, and perhaps the only thing we can do, to the best of our ability, is to rest in equanimity without attachment, and without aversion. Observing, with discerning awareness, our emotions and our thoughts. I feel we can all agree that stories of blame will not make things better.

Thanks to C.G. Jung, R. Sheldrake, Thomas Lewis, K. Galbraith, Thomas Kuhn, Don Beck, and Jason Jay for use of terms.