Always act from love — MAGA as the American Shadow: A Spiritual Reflection

Re-post from Eileen Workman. Highly recommended.

For my more spiritually inclined friends, here’s how I’ve come to see the entire MAGA movement—not from a political perspective, but from a deeply spiritual and psychological one:

I view MAGA as a living embodiment of our collective American shadow.

I see a movement that protectively encases a vast and volatile storehouse of repressed emotional energy—shame, blame, betrayal, mistrust, rage, helplessness, self-pity, and existential insecurity. These shadow energies are being defended by thick walls of reactive bravado, bullying, denial, and increasingly hostile bluster.

Layered on top of this lies an inflated, fragile ego—one that asserts its righteousness through exaggerated displays of patriotism, unwarranted arrogance, and performative outrage. But this posturing, to me, does not reveal strength. It sounds more like the voice of deep and unresolved pain.

What we are witnessing then, can be described as the projection of disowned inner content.

Everything MAGA rails against—liberalism, multiculturalism, gender fluidity, environmental consciousness, academic freedom—says less about those things than it does about what those things represent to the MAGA-identified ego. They symbolize everything that unsettles, threatens, or contradicts the tightly held narrative of “who America is supposed to be.”

Consider: MAGA is actually at war with what it fears within itself.

These “evil others” become convenient vessels—projection screens onto which MAGA casts all that it cannot or will not face within. This is spiritual shadow work 101: the louder the demonization of the “other,” the more potent and buried the internal wound.

If we take a step back and look from a higher altitude—a meta-perspective—we can see that something archetypal appears to be playing out here:

The progressive movement, in this dynamic, functions like a collective Higher Self.

Not because progressives are superior (they aren’t), but because they often hold the visionary ideals for a more beautiful future: equity, compassion, inclusion, ecological stewardship, and peaceful cooperation. These are the aspirations of a more conscious humanity.

But just like in our personal spiritual journeys, we know how the ego resists the voice of the Higher Self.

How many times have we each felt that internal recoil when our deeper wisdom tried to show us something painful or unflattering? How many times did our egos fight back—lashing out, making excuses, projecting blame—just to avoid admitting: “I’m afraid.”

How many times did our inner child scream: “You’re trying to destroy me!” when all the Higher Self was doing was lovingly inviting us into a deeper wholeness?

That’s what progressivism represents, in this dance: the emerging awareness of our collective future self, meeting the fear-fueled, survival-clutching identity of our past.

And so, of course, MAGA doesn’t want to hear what progressives have to say. Because the shadow doesn’t want to be seen.

The ego doesn’t want to change. It wants to feel safe. And when it equates safety with control, dominance, or identity preservation, then even the gentle voice of wisdom can feel like an existential threat.

This explains why so many progressives feel confused, exasperated, or heartbroken when trying to engage meaningfully with MAGA-identified individuals. Progressives don’t suffer from a failure or lack of reason; rather, they suffer from misreading the level of consciousness with which they seek to engage.

We fail by trying to engage in a dialogue of facts and logic. Why? Because we are actually experiencing, in real time, a deep, psychic collective struggle between self-preservation and soul-evolution.

And so we cannot meet this moment successfully from our own egos, or by projecting outward our own shadows.

We must become—as individuals and as a community—a living embodiment of the Higher Self. That means leading not with righteous indignation, but with grounded and peacefully intentional compassion.

Not with judgment, but with discernment.

Not with superiority, but with wisely steady presence.

The collective human ego, especially in its current American form, reveals how deeply afraid it now feels. It fears failure, change, humiliation and complete erasure. It fears that if it surrenders control, it will lose everything it ever fought for.

And so, paradoxically, it fights harder. Louder. Meaner. All while the pain inside continues to grow.

We are not witnessing anything new here. We observe the same inner war playing out that we each must fight on our personal spiritual path, only this time playing out on a national stage.

Reintegration serves as the primary path for our communal healing. Yet that cannot happen without the steadying, consistently illumined presence of grace, compassion, wisdom, and peaceful intentionality.

So what can we do now?

We do not give in. Nor do we coddle abuse or abandon boundaries.

Yet we can stand firm in the frequency of our own awakened hearts.

We can become the calmness in the eye in the storm.

We can listen, while maintaining inner awareness. We can witness, when it’s safe. We can intervene powerfully, when necessary.

But always—always—act from love. Not reactivity or “other judgment.”

Just as the higher self knows the ego exists within itself, so too can progressivism honor the presence of MAGA within humanity, AS a frightened and insecure representation of the past, still existent within the greater living whole.

Only then can we hope to reweave the frayed fabric of our shared humanity.

Because if we lose sight of love, then we’ve already lost the future we profess to be working toward.

---

Eileen Workman
Social Synthesist :|: Author

Eileen Workman spent sixteen years in the financial industry as First Vice President of Investments at a major Wall Street firm. After a profound spiritual awakening, she departed the high-powered world of money and wrote Sacred Economics: The Currency of Life, which questions assumptions about the nature of capitalism. The book is about directing our attention toward the purposeful design of a more compassionate, cooperative, and abundantly flowing economic system from a spiritually driven perspective. Her recent offering, Raindrops Of Love For A Thirsty World, is a timely spiritual guide to surviving and thriving in today’s pervasive, gloomy atmosphere of alienation and fear. Raindrops of Love For a Thirsty World lays out a path to lifelong self-actualization and reconnection through a shared consciousness.

---

Concerning Ken Gray’s blog takenote.ca you may also wish to visit my HOME page for a colourful display of hundreds of other blogs which may interest or inspire you.