IN THIS NEW SERIES, we are going to look at the lives of "Rich" and/or "Infamous" people in many walks of life. A wise friend once remarked to me that there were only two ways to be rich : One, someone gives it all to you and makes you rich, or Two, you inherit it all. I have appreciated his insight more than once because it seems that with a few exceptions, this is what happens. In the matter of how one becomes Infamous, this appears to come about due to a combination of personal behavior traits, luck, and the particular moralistic perceptions of other people, especially the press.

In the first article of this series, we are going to examine, from the point of view of Design, the life of the certainly "Rich," and also "Powerful," GW Bush, the President of the United States. We shall also look at the likelihood of him becoming infamous.

When I was a child, my beloved Uncle used to make it quite clear that if a baby was dropped on its head it would probably turn out to become a politician, and therefore, he cautioned, babies should be handled with the greatest care. Perhaps my uncle is right, and this is what happened to GW Bush when he was a baby, but let us have a closer look into his Design chart and see if there are other factors involved. Being a successful politician may also require enormous reserves of either great artifice, or dumb luck, or both.

GW Bush was born on July 6, 1946 in Connecticut. He is born into the Incarnation of "Individuality" and in this incarnation provides for the possible empowerment of other people to find their own integrity. (This "Incarnation" also applies to the birth of the USA as a nation.) He has always and will always be an "outsider," because he has his own unique style of relating to life. He is extremely provocative to others and even sometimes ridiculed by them because of his apparent differences from a "mainstream" of how people see things. It would probably be true to say that very, very few people (including his family) truly understand GW Bush because he lives in an enormous projection field of other people’s suppositions. Inevitably, other people’s projections can prove amazing, disturbing or even frustrating to him.

In his Design chart, GW Bush has three Centers "defined" or constantly "turned on" and available energetically to him, regardless of any energetic influences brought by other people. The three Centers involved are the Ajna, Mental Awareness Center, colored green, the Throat Center, the Thyroid and Parathyroid Glands, our place of articulation and manifestation, the square Center colored brown, and the Emotional, Solar Plexus Center, our place of Feelings, the brown triangle Center. The energies of these three Centers are consistently and permanently available and reliable for GW Bush, implying that here, in this part of his being, these are energies that are always available for him to use.

Anyone who has a defined Mental Awareness Center is prone to be constantly thinking; moreover, when it connects through a defined channel to the Throat Center, they are prone to be constantly speaking their thoughts. No sooner does a thought pop into their mind than they find themselves sharing it with everyone, either as a completed thought or not. In GW Bush’s case, his thoughts at the 11th Gate in the Ajna Center, are conceived "unconsciously," in that he rarely gets to realize what it is he is thinking of, or about to say. It can be said that he unconsciously "attunes" to a situation without necessarily grasping its fully detailed implications, and if he feels in any way pressured, he speaks out, often not relating factually to what he is commenting on. When GW Bush speaks out, he does so by appearing to "tell a story," and regardless of whether details in his story are factual, accurate or even included, most people love to hear a story. His personal wish is that his story is interesting to others and gives them a qualitative perspective of what he feels to be important in life.

The Emotional Manifestor
The other defined channel that GW Bush has in his chart is the 35 - 36, the channel of Changeability and a restless, emotional push to make "progress." This channel gives direct and unconscious access between his emotions and his voice. In listening to GW Bush speak, it is easily recognized that he is emotional and very much a "feeling" person. America, in her own Design, is an "emotional nation," undergoing all kinds of shifts in moods and feelings, and we have enjoyed many "emotionally defined" Presidents, including Jimmy Carter, JFK and GH Bush. Design charts containing defined Emotional Centers indicate someone who cycles through waves of fun and seriousness, successes and failures, expectations and disasters. The emotions are perhaps the most human of all our attributes, and in a human sort of way can be quite messy.

Unlike recent Presidents, GW Bush, in his Design chart, has a direct connection between his emotions and his voice. This characteristic can point towards difficulties in personal expression. It is possible through training to alter one’s speech delivery to sound less emotionally involved than one appears to be, and GW Bush and his speech writers might consider that he is delivering clearly defined facts through what he says, but, nevertheless, the audience is always hearing an emotional story that seeks to bring about change and "progress." If he is not careful, GW Bush might find himself getting quite agitated and even angry if what he is saying, that he considers to be aimed at a natural scheme of "progress," falls on deaf and unwilling ears. Any person with a defined Emotional Center has to learn great patience at one time or other in their life.

In times of greatest challenge and stress, GW Bush could easily find reason to make himself distant and remote, if he feels that his wishes and feelings are not being honored. It is said that he had to face and overcome substance abuse difficulties earlier in his life, and was called on to face and honor his own feelings in all circumstances. Anyone who has ever been challenged in this area of their life, and gone through a 12 step program, either through Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous, will know of the incredible depth of conviction and self-discipline needed personally to succeed in finding their true and spiritual nature. Many people do not complete their 12 step program because the demands of accepting their own spiritual nature appear beyond their grasp, even though they learn to cope without substance addictions. Time will tell if GW Bush was and is able to accept himself as a complete and spiritual being by seeing if he brings war or peace to the planet.

By Design, GW Bush’s sense of change and movement in his world is based entirely in historical perspective and not necessarily on scientific evidence. He is a true "conservative" by Design. He holds a deeply unconscious respect of religious and monarchical personalities and institutions, and members of the status quo. Historical perspective can incline one to favor righteousness rather than diplomacy, and religious beliefs over scientific fact. Anyone who is so deeply driven by historical and religious context as is GW Bush, can be compelled by personal concepts of "good" and "evil," to the point of finding themselves unwittingly endorsing crusades against personally perceived "evils." His-tory is composed almost entirely of such tragedy.

The Open Self Center
One of the fascinating details about GW Bush’s chart is that he has an "open" Self Center. In metaphorical terms, an "open" center is like a black hole, into which all energies pour, or, alternatively, an "open" center can be like a brightly polished mirror, reflecting away any outside energies. In describing GW Bush’s sense of himself, it would be true to say that he has absolutely no idea of who he is, other than that he "takes on" any environment into which he moves. He "becomes" the person or people with whom he is.

He truly can be perceived as "presidential" if that is what his immediate environment holds out for him, in a particular way that might not be the same for another person. Alternatively, he can be perceived as almost anyone or anything, depending on what people expect and project onto him. You might say, in this case, that he is the "perfect politician:" being all things to all people. Everyone can make of him what they want. If they want a scoundrel or a saint, a friend or an enemy, an incompetent or a commander-in-chief, or anything in between, they have their man! It is all projection.

What I see as fundamentally important to understand is that GW Bush, with his "open" Self Center, can reflect back to his company (or absorb from them) their own reality or "sense of self, love and direction." If someone approaches GW Bush with patently dishonest intentions, those intentions may easily come to be realized and manifest through the contact with GW Bush; however, if there is any backfire, that backfire will almost certainly be aimed at the person with the originally dishonest intentions. GW Bush will most likely walk away completely unscathed. After all, he was just reflecting back to that person their own reality and empowering them to see and experience it for themselves. (Exit Kenny Lay of Enron infamy, one of GW Bush’s major financial contributors).

However, there can come about a situation in which GW Bush unwittingly takes on, absorbs and identifies with the personalities of the people he is dealing with. If those people are masking dishonest proposals, it might be possible for GW Bush to become directly linked with them and suffer from any fallout. These days, any politician is surrounded with people who are continuously doing background checks on the motivations of those seeking access to their power. In GW Bush’s case, he would need to have an extremely capable team taking care of this side of things for him, because within his Design is the potential of unwitting gullibility: unconsciously, he tends to trust people implicitly. Also, when it comes to questions of morality, GW Bush is most likely to relate to his feelings and beliefs of righteousness rather than any facts surrounding an issue. Feelings, no matter how innocently conceived, might not always be perceived as politically correct.

The Undefined Centers
GW Bush has a undefined Spleen Center in his Design that can make him prone to fears that actually have nothing to do with him. He carries with him a sense that others know how to do things better than he does, regardless of how much he tries to prove otherwise. Unless he is watchful, this can incline him to pay more attention to parents and advisors’ influences than to trust his own feelings on issues. Seen in a different light, he can be very wise in recognizing who makes quick and good decisions, but for his own decisions, he needs relaxation, emotional clarity and patience. He also carries an irrational fear of drastic change that can freeze his whole cognitive process. (It is said that for at least 8 hours after the announcement of the September 11th tragedy, GW Bush was airborne, destination unknown. He was never a target.) He is also particularly concerned about his own future, and how he will be perceived by others in time to come.

With an undefined Ego Center, GW Bush rarely achieves his goals through willfulness but more often through provocation, and then standing his ground and holding to an inbuilt sense of destiny. He can turn other people’s willpower on themselves as he managed with Al Gore in the TV debates during the last election when Al Gore seemed to want confrontation and a "fair fight," and GW Bush would not give it. His undefined Sacral Center does not give him the amazing staying power exhibited by his predecessor, but requires that he work only during sensible working hours without overexerting himself. His great skill in this area is in delegating work to other people, and curiously, this characteristic might eventually be seen to trickle down and manifest in the form of an expansion of government.

GW Bush’s undefined Root Center, containing the Gates associated with his conscious Sun and Earth, opens him potentially to be highly susceptible to stress. This is something that his wife and his personal secretaries will have been continuously aware of, to the point that they would need to schedule GW Bush regular vacation time after extended bouts of intense activity. GW Bush can be brilliant, direct and exemplary in handling a difficult situation, but he is also susceptible to becoming overly stressed and exhausted when exposed to them for too long.

With an open Crown Center, GW Bush is able to find fascination in almost anything. He can look at a sunset as though he had never seen a sunset before. He can find great pleasure in the very simple things that this world and the people in it have to offer. This ability can be a saving grace for him in this increasingly mechanistic, busy and complex world. Allowing oneself to be straightforward in one’s approach to life is a great talent. From many reports of the press, it would seem that GW Bush is most at home, when at home on his ranch in Texas.

In Conclusion
Many people would say that GW Bush was born into the role of being the President of the USA, and certainly it would seem that he was brought up with enough background information to be able to handle such a role.

In these times, we, as a species, are struggling to come to terms with our feelings. Honoring our feelings has not, to date, been the easiest thing for us to do and yet it is the gateway to our spirituality. In GW Bush, we have the example of a very "feeling" person, who literally cannot hide his feelings from us unless we really allow him to do so. Our great responsibility is to hold GW Bush in line with his true feelings and not be put off by the pomp and circumstance of his office, or the vested interests and agendas of those who have had the closest access to "their man."

Remember that whatever you project onto GW Bush is the reality you appear to see. Do not allow your vision to be clouded. In GW Bush as the American President, each American and each individual in the world has the opportunity to reflect and integrate towards the identity he or she seeks personally, as an individual. GW Bush is doing his thing, provoking us with feelings, and giving us the opportunity to find our own integrity aligned with our own natures! He can be the most perfect mirror for these times.

Next Month: Sir Mick Jagger, by Design.

© Chetan Parkyn, 2002