The Time I Guided Donald Trump Through a Meditation Session

No stranger maybe than non-fiction

Twenty-three years ago, I took a leap of faith with my whole life savings and opened Lazy Buoy Meditation on 24th Street in Manhattan. In the space of thirteen months, my dream went from a fantasy to a plan and then to a reality full of surprises. The last thing I ever expected was to someday get a visit from a former president of the United States.

I’d been vaguely aware of Donald Trump appearing at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse that day. When four men in dark suits and darker glasses came through my door, it startled me, but I specialize in recovering quickly from shocks. I took it in stride when a severe young fellow approached the counter, took off his sunglasses, and told me the president had noticed my sign.

The man furrowed his eyebrows when I told him nobody was around but me. The receptionist had called off, the assistant had run for a bagel, and the scheduled client was late. I gave permission for four agents to sweep the facility while two more stood on the sidewalk with their backs to the windows on either side of the door.

It felt like they had choreographed the whole thing. Two went efficiently through the waiting area, bathroom, storage room, and reception area with electronic devices. They stopped every so often to touch an ear and say something like, “Bravo Tango seven five eight, east front clear.”

The other two checked the meditation chamber where a pair of chairs sat back-to-back in the middle of the room. They called me in.

“Why does one of the recliners have a control panel on the arm?”

“For sound and visual effects.”

“Can you demonstrate?”

“Sure.”

I pressed the double-wing icon. Bird seed dropped into a feeder on the aviary side of the room. Parrots fluttered and squawked. I pressed the flower icon. A waterfall gurgled into action on the botanical side of the room. We went through all sixteen effects twice. They seemed most worried about the maracas sliding along a channel in the ceiling toward the easy chairs.

No sooner had I returned to the counter than the former president strode matter-of-factly through the front door. The corners of his mouth were turned down, seemingly more in boredom than malice. He appraised me with a slight squint and then glanced at the motivational posters on either wall. He stopped at the counter, smiled without crinkling his eyes, and said, “Everybody says your the best. Tell me how it works.”

I gestured for him to follow me into the chamber. “Let’s start by showing you the set-up.”

He smiled from one side of his mouth and turned to the agent who had just closed the door behind us. “I like his style, Paul. He gets right to it. I told you this wouldn’t take long.”

Next, he asked me to keep his visit to myself: “I’d rather not let word of it get out.”

“Do I have to sign anything?”

“Non-disclosure agreement? No. I’ll trust you,” he said with a smile from the same side of his mouth. He patted my arm just underneath the shoulder.

I have an attention span that’s as long as it has to be. — Donald Trump

As we stood in the chamber, I said, “Mr. President, we’ll start by sitting in these chairs and reclining. The backs of our heads will be facing each other, so you’ll hear me without seeing me. I’ll guide you through a meditation called Journey to the Center. Go ahead and have a seat. Good. Pull the lever and lay back. Good.”

I did the same.

“Where’d you get the idea for this?” he asked. “Some people would call it a gimmick.”

“Not a gimmick. Thirty-five years ago, when I started meditating, my teacher showed me how to get into the lotus position and kept telling me to sit comfortably. C’mon, I thought, sitting cross-legged will never feel right. So when I did it on my own, I just used my favorite chair. Never went back.”

“Don’t you ever fall asleep?”

“Sometimes. The dreams are pleasant and restful.”

The president chuckled.

“You ready?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“There’ll be three phases. In each phase, we’ll start at the edges and work our way to the middle. Keep your eyes open during the first phase. I’ll direct your attention to the left, right, forward, backward, up, and down.”

“Is my up toward my head or toward the ceiling?”

It was a good question. Lots of people asked.

“Toward the ceiling. Your head is pointing mostly behind you while you recline. We’ll call that backward, and down is underneath you.”

“Got it.”

“Phase One is a journey through your visual field. Two will be your audible field. Three will be tactile. I hope my assistant shows up in time.”

The agent walked over to stand above me and asked, “What does your assistant do?”

“She tickles the president with a feather duster.”

“I need a serious answer.”

“No, really, she does — she’ll brush his right hand, left hand, hair, toes, nose, and back of the neck. She’ll do it all in sequence as Part One of Phase Three.”

He made a face.

I said, “Mr. President, please take off your shoes and socks.”

I heard shoes drop to the floor. I was glad he didn’t make any rude comments or ask how pretty my assistant was. She was indeed pretty. Very pretty. She came into the room just then looking as if a white rabbit had pulled her into a hole. I introduced them. She stammered a greeting.

He said, “Nice to meet you, Latarsha,” in a polite tone.

“Going forward, Mr. President,” I said, “you can speak if you want to, but you’re likely to get more out of the exercise if you remain silent.”

“Okay.”

I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That’s where the fun is. — Donald Trump

“Latarsha, please hand President Trump the headphones. Mr. President, our journey starts in the visual field. We’ll block out all sounds other than my voice. I’ll direct your attention at every step.”

He put on the headphones and raised his right hand when I asked him to show he could hear me. I told him to blink normally and keep his eyes focused on the screen with the kaleidoscope directly above him during the whole phase.

“Your attention is on the screen. You see the kaleidoscope churning. Purple, orange, gray, gold. Now, keep your eyes on the churn but bring your attention to the birds on your left behind the bars on their perches against the wall. Notice their plumage. Appreciate the red, the green, the yellow, the blue. Keep your eyes on the churning. Keep your attention on the birds.”

Latarsha later told me he kept his eyes straight the whole time. That surprised me. I was also surprised he kept quiet the whole time, not just during the outer circle with its birds, smoke, waterfall, and sparks, but also during the middle and inner circles.

I would have laid money he’d at least squirm during the audio phase, but I would have lost every cent. He quietly handed Latarsha the headphones and then closed his eyes — didn’t even peek. She said he smiled serenely when the initial gong sounded and kept smiling through birdsong, falling water, and crackling sparks. People often do smile, but the idea of him smiling in violation of what I expected felt creepy.

He neither giggled, flinched, nor fidgeted when Latarsha brushed him with the feather duster. He didn’t make any smart comments when I told him to imagine Latarsha tickling him on the inside — his ankle bones, wrist bones, and the inside of his skull and rib cage.

In the finale, I told him to breathe in deeply and hold it. I heard his steady inhalation. I said, “You took in a breath. You now feel it as a part of you. Keep holding it. Allow it to surround your center. Feel your center. Now let your breath go.”

I waited a few seconds, then continued. “Breath in again and hold. Your attention today went in circles through your vision, getting closer and closer to the middle. Your attention went in circles through your hearing, getting closer and closer to the center. Your attention went in circles through your feeling, getting closer and closer to the source. Now, your attention is the source. You are the attention. Know yourself.”

I waited a full three seconds, then told him to release his breath.

Agent Paul said, “Okay boss, time’s a wastin’. We can debrief at the spa.”

The former president sat up and started putting on his shoes. He looked sad but calm, like a cuckold gazing at a beautiful sunset. He said, “Paul, I doubt if you’d be any good debriefing me on this one. Maybe we should take Latarsha.”

She looked startled and then worried.

A little more moderation would be good. Of course, my life hasn’t exactly been one of moderation. — Donald Trump

On the way out, Trump told me we did a great job. “What happens next? How many sessions are there? Can we do it again the Tuesday after next?”

The agents were all straining toward the door, so I crammed a lot of words into a tighter space than usual. “Usually, the next few sessions are repeats. Later we get into other fields. We drop the visual field and add taste plus olfactory. By week twelve we’re into the cognitive and emotional fields — the mind and heart.”

I was happy to see his eyes glaze over, thus confirming at least one of my preconceptions.

“Is it Buddhism?” he asked.

“I’m Christian myself,” I answered to his approving nod, “but the techniques have some Eastern roots.”

“No West Coast crap. I like that.”

“It might be closer to Hinduism than Buddhism,” I offered. “We’re searching for the true self, not the no-self.”

His eyes glazed again, and he gave a double thumbs up. As he walked out the door, he said, “Paul, write him a check and schedule my next appointment.”

Paul told me a check would come in the mail, and someone named Alycia would call to schedule. He picked up a business card and asked if they should make the check out to Lazy Buoy or put it in my name.

“Lazy Buoy Meditation,” I said, and just like that, it was over.

Latarsha shook her head and made a “whew” sound before spending fifteen minutes in the bathroom. I almost hoped the check would bounce so I could break my nondisclosure promise and tell my friends.

Stop here to avoid the moral of the story. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The memory still feels surreal, like I should pinch myself to see if it actually happened. For the better part of a week, I felt disappointed. Not only had I agreed to keep the whole thing secret, but nothing interesting happened anyway. Trump didn’t make a total ass of himself. I didn’t confront him for any of the awful things he did when he was president. Nothing funny happened either — nothing to laugh at — just the day-in and day-out humdrum routines of birds eating, kaleidoscope churning, and Latarsha feather-dusting. I had no story worth telling.

It also bothered me how quickly it ended. Given my lease payment, I have to charge fees that attract a wealthy clientele — so rich that one of my nonpaying clients on a charity Wednesday told me I should change the name from Lazy Buoy to Eye of the Needle. I felt an obligation to deliver real value for the money through a post-session talk. The former president disappeared before I could tell him what he had learned, that there aren’t just six directions (up, down, left, right, forward, and back), but seven. You can look inward.

I’ve always believed Solzhenitsyn’s description of the boundary between good and evil. It cuts through every human heart. Nobody is without both. Even so, putting that belief into practice sometimes makes me feel silly. My hope that the good in Trump’s heart would resonate with the good in mine struck me as foolish. The feelings I tried to hide from him showed me that his evil was more likely to resonate with my evil. Maybe he sensed my attitude. I doubted he would really come back for another session.

My intuition was right. Never heard from him again. I wonder if the meditation did him any good. Obviously, a single session won’t change anyone’s life, and Trump had been playing the wrong game for too long to get much out of it right away.

Even so, something had drawn him toward a spiritual place. Not even an authoritarian sexual predator is beyond redemption. Maybe we planted a seed. Heck, maybe he constructed a grand meditation chamber at Mar-a-Lago and hired Latarsha to guide him.

She ghosted me a couple of weeks after his visit. Maybe she went for the big bucks.

I had a nightmare about it, a resonance with evil. They were doing week fifteen. She was speaking and he was echoing: “I am the attention circling within me. I circle within the visual me, within the audible me, within the tangible me…” But they didn’t end up at the sacred center of the heart. On the wall, I saw shadows of a blouse, gloves, and hair ribbon dropping to the floor as they chanted together, “We have found the magnificent center of the erotic us.”

The memory of that nightmare makes me shudder. I hope Latarsha didn’t leave me for him.

Maybe she left because of something I said or did. Maybe I did a poor job of hiding the way I yearned for my lost youth in her presence. You might think a professional extinguisher of egotistic desire would be free of such things, but you’d be surprised how spiritual an erotic fantasy can be. I miss her and don’t blame her a bit if she found my secret longings repulsive.

Please don’t show this article to Deepak Chopra or my wife. They’re having lunch right now at Oscar Wilde.

At this point, you might be wondering if the author is trying to convince people this story is true. No, it’s fiction. My wife (to my knowledge) never had lunch with Deepak. There is, however, a restaurant called Oscar Wilde over on 27th Street.

There’s a serious point hiding here. Loving enemies feels like wisdom when I watch a sunset with them. It feels like idiocy when they use a racial slur. When I feel distant from God, I remember wisdom but embrace contempt. Trying to force love doesn’t help.

What does help is replacing expectations with openness and readiness. Former Alabama Governor George Wallace went from segregationist anger to inclusive compassion. Improbable things happen. Always expecting the best would be foolish, but opening my heart to good possibilities while remaining ready for bad ones does have a healing effect.

One way of opening my heart is to imagine more good stuff and less bad stuff. So long as I don’t kid myself, I don’t end up disappointed. Neither do I kid myself into thinking all the good is inside my allies and myself while all the bad is inside my enemies.

It’s always good to be underestimated. — Donald Trump

Writing this fantasy felt worthwhile. It reminded me the architecture of every self has an avenue to observe what is sacred. Every person carries within the heart some hope of escaping the prison of alienation.

Will I feel like a fool having written this nonsense if Trump becomes dictator after ten million Americans lose their lives to a second amendment solution? No. Liberalcide is a more likely future than Fox-fed enlightenment, but that doesn’t mean I should preoccupy my heart with worries. While readiness is necessary, obsession is unhealthy. My preparations are already complete. I plan to hide drag queens in the attic and pity the right-wingers who lynch me for protecting them. I’ll forgive them on my way to heaven.

Trump stands for a whole class of enemies, millions of them. With or without a civil massacre, thousands of extremists will eventually take the first step toward restoring a healthy connection with the rest of us. Don’t ignore the tail end of an enemy’s normal curve. We will neglect to welcome those who deviate from right-wing standards if all we ever fantasize about are the stupid and ugly things we remember about them and expect from them.

We may not win. The right has armed itself to the teeth with anger and ammunition enough to see its fantasies through to the end. I don’t see any way of kicking their asses, but we might succeed at saving their tails. Fantasies in line with divine will need not satisfy the ego to gird the heart.