Moral Bankruptcy

I have never cared for DJ Trump. I suppose there will be a rush to step away and try to authenticate one’s revulsion. People will find pride in when and why they spat him out. Long before any US mayors declared their city would not allow DJ in their limits, reasonable people, everyday people refused him safe passage into their homes via NBC. The tower, the golf course, the fully augmented gold encrusted life was enough for people who work for a living. Surely his vile talk about Rosie threw me off with no returns.

 

However when he began to run for political office, there was something nagging me, like a low battery light deep in my internal library. It needled me. There was something chirping which came into focus the day DJ Trump lied about his love for the bible and its second place winner, The Art of the Deal. BINGO. 

March, 1995, I found a book, What Really Matters by Tony Schwartz. It was pricey. It must have been reviewed in one of the dozen spiritual magazines I got back then. I was diving deep into Ken Wilbur and Andrew Harvey at that time and Tony Schwartz was swimming in that pool of conscious mindful seekers. He was on the physical journey that I was taking through books.

In 1988, Tony took a 4 year road trip to discover what really moved Americans. He crossed the country making inquiries with all of the named luminaries of the day.  From Esalen to the Enneagram, from Ram Dass to Betty Edwards, from Maslow to Kornfield; Tony was making his way on a starship, through a galaxy of the mind.

Why did this NY Times reporter and Newsweek writer get bitten by the bug of spiritual inquiry? He explains it clearly in the forward. Tony Schwartz had been the ghost writer for The Art of the Deal.

A few disparate sentences:

• It was in the aftermath of The Art of the Deal that I became interested in meditation.
• I began to look more widely for wisdom. Only much later did it dawn on me that I was following a tradition that dates back thousands of years: the search for the Holy Grail, for meaning for the true self—the path that Joseph Campbell calls the hero’s journey.
• I was determined to identify a path and a set of practices that truly led to a more satisfying and meaningful life.

At the publication party, Tony was in a receiving line with DJ & Ivana. Gold everything, champagne everywhere. Leon Spinks, Michael Douglas, Cheryl Tiegs and Norman Mailer made their appearance. “I’d spent two years seeing the world through Trump’s eyes, and I’d grown accustomed to living at his dizzying pace, cramming my days full of action and activity." 

It is a BIG dream but I am capable of BIG dreams and I am dreaming that this whole country takes the escalator down, leaves the golden tower and the moral bankruptcy of DJ Trump and begins a meaningful pilgrimage for wisdom and, “pursues a richer, more authentic and more complete life.”