When you are President of the United States, the only way to be successful is to recognize that you cannot govern this nation out of your own power. And thus, you must come to that point of absolute and total surrender to a Higher Power, as you see it. Whether you see it as this God or that God, or your Higher Self, or the Great Architect of the Universe or whatever you will want to call this Higher Power, you need to surrender your human ambition, your human expectations, your human pride that makes you think that you have – somehow – the capacity to run this large and complex nation. A capacity that sets you above most other people.

This is, of course, one of the lies that is easily believed in, once you have been sworn in, and it dawns on you that you are now the holder of what many label as “the most powerful office in the world.” And you might even think you are the most powerful man in the world, as some have thought—and as many among the people would like to think that their President truly is. It is easy – if you have any kind of personal pride – to come to believe in this. And of course, if you had no personal ambition, why would you even aspire to the office, given how conditions are today with the political machinery in the United States? For quite frankly, would anyone who had higher attainment want to put themselves through the political machinery of these United States in this age?

Well, surely, they would not want to, but they might do so, if the people had reached a level of consciousness, where they were able to recognize such a candidate. This, of course, has not yet happened. And thus, what you see is that the people who are attracted to run for office – and who are willing to set aside their lives and give up their privacy forever – are those who have an ambition. And with ambition, of course, comes pride. For when you achieve your ambition, there will be a sense of pride. You will see this in every President, when you look back through the ages, there are very few who have not had this pride.

You will see it in the current President, if you look honestly at his demeanor, at his facial expressions, you will see a certain pride. This is not to say that the current President is worse than so many others that you have seen. It is simply pointing out that it, so to speak, goes with the territory. And of course, this pride is precisely what makes you think that you have the ability to govern. And this is, therefore, also what blocks you from achieving that total surrender, where you are willing to throw yourself on your knees and give up all human, worldly ambitions and expectations and graven images, and simply say to the Higher Power as you see it: “Show me the way to go, show me how you would act in this situation.”

This was what Abraham Lincoln was willing to do. It was what George Washington was willing to do. It was what Thomas Jefferson was NOT willing to do. And of course, many other Presidents have not been willing to do so either.

What higher awareness can do in the White House

Yet, it is precisely this inability or unwillingness to go through this total humility of the complete surrender that determines how higher awareness can intercede in the 

White House. As long as the President thinks he has the power to govern, then he must be left alone, so that he does not receive the light or the sponsorship from Above as an automatic grant. But he only receives it the moment he humbles himself, surrenders, and asks for assistance from Above. When he comes to that point, the assistance will be given in full measure. But until that point, he will literally be on his own, or on the power of those around him. You see that there will be a horizontal form of government, until there is the willingness to reach up for that vertical assistance from Above; until there is a willingness to be the open door, the clear pane of glass, so that you can be “here below as Above.”

And this, of course, is another aspect of what you need to achieve as President: the practical realism. Well, when you have the personal ambition, you also have – inevitably – a personal value judgment based on a relative, dualistic standard. For your ambition is to raise yourself to a certain status, and that can only be done according to a dualistic value judgment. When you have this pride, you are likely to be deceived into doing things that you think will be good according to your personal ambition—which might be to leave a certain legacy. And thus, you are likely to be deceived into pursuing goals that are simply not realistic from a practical viewpoint, because they cannot be achieved, they cannot be manifested, given the state of the collective consciousness and the practical situation that you face as President.

And this is, then, when you become overly idealistic, wanting to hold on to the mental structure in your mind, the mental image, and wanting, with all the power available to you as President, to force the nation, and even the world, to fit into your mental box. And thus, you lose the practical realism of what is the highest good for the highest number in the given situation. And you will not acknowledge what the given situation truly is, for you want the situation to live up to your ideal, to your mental image. And in your pride, you will not listen to the advisors around you, or to the media, or to the people, or to foreign heads of state, who tell you that your goal, while noble, simply is not realistic. And this is another trap of the Office of President of the United States.

Will the United States be an empire or an example?

There is no office that is more difficult to hold in the entire world than that of being President of the United States. And this is, of course, because the United States currently has such a dominant position in the world, where it can be either the next empire that will attempt to take over the world, or it can be, truly, an example of a nation that will not be an empire that will not have a king or an emperor. And was it not precisely this example that George Washington set for this nation, when he resigned his military commission and refused to run for a third term as President, refused to be President for Life. Do you not see that this is the example that must be understood that must be upheld even by the current President?

For indeed, it is absolutely necessary that this nation “Under God” does not become an empire that pursues a human ambition, the ambition of the power elite, who can never get enough power. And who will continue to use the power available to them in a blind pursuit of their goals; their selfish, self-centered goals. Indeed, what has happened since the time of George Washington is that the power elite – who have attempted to manipulate the United States behind the scenes – have indeed attempted to gradually, and not noticeably, inflate the powers of the President.

How to manipulate the President

Do you not see – if you study the history of this nation – that when the original delegations formulated the division of power between the Presidency, the Congress and the Supreme Court, they gave far-reaching powers to the President. But they did this partly because they had in mind a President of the caliber of George Washington, who had already shown his willingness to surrender his ambitions relating to exercising power. And thus, they felt comfortable in giving the decisive powers to the President, without limiting them as has indeed been done in many European nations, where in some cases they do not even have a President but only a Prime Minister.

You see that although Washington was able to exercise these powers in a balanced manner, other Presidents have not been equally able. And since then, what has happened is that the Office of the President has taken on far greater powers than is healthy. And this, of course, was made even worse during the Bush presidency, especially during the so-called covert efforts of the Vice-President, Dick Cheney. Who attempted to take the use of Executive Orders and Executive Powers far beyond what is actually constitutional, or at least beyond what is the intention of the Founding Fathers and what is good for the nation. You might ask yourself: why it is that the power elite have attempted to inflate the Office of the President? Well, is it not simple? It is far easier to manipulate one President than to manipulate hundreds of Congressmen or a larger number of Supreme Court judges than the one President.

Can you not see that, throughout history, there are many examples of how – when power was vested in just one person – that person was so easily deceived by his or her personal ambition into making precisely the wrong choices? And this is what the power elite knows, and thus they know that if they set up a political machinery that is simply a sorting mechanism – that sorts out those who are not willing to compromise in order to achieve their ambition – well, then they can make sure that anyone elected to the Office of President is willing to compromise in order to achieve his personal ambitions. And thus, they know they can manipulate that individual into making decisions in a crisis situation that are not good for the all.

And thus, what has happened since George Washington’s time is that the Office of the President has morphed into a position in the collective psyche that is different from what it was back then, where they often compared the president to a king or an emperor. But now the Presidency has taken on a life of its own in the American psyche, and they now look to the President as almost a god-like figure who has, they think, unlimited power.

The President is not God

Is that not why you see that people can elect a president who comes into office with a large approval rating, because the people have believed in the promises he made in order to win election? And then, after only a few months in office, the people begin to realize that he has no chance of delivering on his promises and thus his popularity, his approval rating, begins to go down. Does this not show that the American people have been deceived into thinking that the President alone has greater powers than he actually has, even though he has greater powers than he should have in a more balanced political system?

The people think that the President can save them from their troubles, for they fail to realize that beyond the divisions of power set up by the Founding Fathers to limit the powers of the President, the greatest limiting power for the President is precisely the collective consciousness. If theoretically you had a president with higher attainment right now, there would still be a limit to what he could do for the nation. For he would not be able to get anything through beyond what the collective consciousness is willing to accept. And thus, you see that no president can bring a change that the collective consciousness cannot handle. For the people are not willing to change accordingly, they are not willing to change their state of consciousness based on the changes in the nation.

A new view of the Presidency is needed

What is needed – if America is to make the transition into the Age of Higher Awareness – is that not only the political powers of the President need to be adjusted, but especially the collective view of the President and the Office of the President need to go through a transformation, so that people have a more realistic view. Where they realize that it is not enough for them to go to the polls every four years and elect a new President. For if they are not willing to transform their consciousness, to transcend their old mental boxes, well then it will make no difference that they elect a new president from a different party or a different background.

This is the change that needs to happen. It is necessary that the Office of the President is taken down in importance. And for this to happen, it may indeed be necessary that one or two presidents will suffer some humiliation while in office that not only the presidents might learn the lesson of humility but that the nation might have an opportunity to learn. And thus begin to realize that the President is not God, but that the President has the potential to be the open door for God—if indeed he or she is willing to go through that total surrender and become a clear pane of glass.

In order to be a successful President of the United States, you need to hold the overall vision. You cannot focus on one quality, you cannot focus on one area of society, you must look at the all. And this, of course, is what can only happen when you have achieved some degree of higher attainment, where you have mastered the one requirement for higher attainment: non-attachment.

Non-attachment to anything on earth, so that when the demons of Mara, or the prince of this world,  come to knock on the door to the Oval Office, you are not tempted into reacting against what you see as a threat or acting in other ways that are unbalanced. Do you not see that when the demons of Mara came to tempt George Bush into reacting against the so-called terrorist threat, he was all too easily deceived into going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And had it not been for the difficulties encountered in both places, he surely would have been deceived into taking down, or attempting to take down, the entire “Axis of Evil.” For did he not, in fact, define his true goals when he gave that speech?

You cannot have a Reactionary president

A good President cannot allow himself or herself to be pulled into this pattern of reacting against anything—or even reacting for anything in the material world. The President must be non-attached so that he can reach – or she can reach – for this higher vision that comes through higher awareness. You cannot achieve this through the intellect or through the reasoning faculty.

You cannot achieve higher awareness through the outer mind, through reason. And thus, as President you must be able to look at the many different interest groups in this nation and not see them as being in opposition to each other, or as being mutually exclusive, but seeing past them and seeing the greater unity behind the individual expressions. And then serving as the open door for making the people see that greater unity as well. Whereby they give up their animosities and are able to transcend their differences, and thus also fathom the higher vision, whereby they all become individual facets in the diamond that is the United States of America—or any other free and balanced nation.