The President

The word president sounds powerful. Official. Important.

It carries weight. Uniforms, flags, microphones, applause.

But the word itself is much simpler than the image we have built around it.

President comes from the Latin prae-sedere….

to sit before, or to sit in front.

Originally, a president was not someone who stood above others,

but someone who sat before them.

Someone who led by presence, not by force.

Someone who held space, kept order, and represented the whole.

A president was meant to be a guardian, a listener, a servant of unity.

Today, the word ‘president’ often evokes power over others,

rather than responsibility for others.

And when words spoken from that chair diminish, belittle, or erase the sacrifices of others, something essential is lost…not politically, but humanly.

Because words spoken by a president are never neutral.

They land in homes.

They echo in the hearts of parents who buried a child.

They shape how we remember suffering, sacrifice, and history itself.

And yet… A Course in Miracles gently shifts the entire perspective.

You are the president of your mind

ACIM does not ask who rules the world, it asks who rules your perception.

In that sense, each of us is already a president.

You sit before your thoughts. Before your judgments. Before your reactions to what you see.

Every moment you decide: Will I let fear speak first? Or will I pause and listen again?

To preside, in the truest sense, is not to control. It is to choose.

To choose interpretation over reaction. Meaning over impulse.

Love over noise.

The Course reminds us that we are not victims of what we see,

but decision-makers in how we see it.

So the real question becomes: Who is presiding here?

The ego presides by shouting.

It governs through comparison, attack, and defense.

It loves applause and fears silence.

The Holy Spirit presides quietly.

It does not argue.

It waits until we are willing to listen.

. . . .

Perhaps the problem is not the behavior,

but the mismatch between the title and the function.

If someone governs through fear, division, and contempt,

‘president’ may simply be the wrong word.

Maybe such a figure deserves a more accurate title.

Something like: Commander of Chaos…Chief Divider….Executive Ego Officer….or, more honestly, Loudest Voice in the Room

Titles matter, because language reveals truth when we stop decorating it.

True presidency is leadership without followers.

Authority without force. Presence without a microphone.

And perhaps this is what the world is slowly relearning:

That the most powerful seat is not the one on a stage, but the one we take inside our own mind.

That is where real presidents are made.

And quietly…..peace begins to sit before us.

With love and light,

G.