The Venus Flytrap

And Other Marketing Practices

The Venus Flytrap is a carnivorous plant. And in that sense it is even more pernicious and deceptive than the average, mostly harmless pollinator, especially if you’re an insect. To put it into human terms, it uses deceptive marketing practices. It is a predatory plant and we humans seem to be fascinated by apex predators, perhaps as a reflection of our own predatory behavior.

However, the use of deceptive marketing practices, whether you are a plant, a politician, a product or a spiritual pundit looking for quarry is they all require what we used to call in brand marketing, a USP - a unique selling point. But, behind all that positivity often lurks a host of deceitful practices, behaviors or ingredients which shrouds the offering in darkness and harm.

We are all aware of the whole chicken in the grocery store injected with a pound of water, which the FDA allows, and which evaporates at your expense during the cooking process. There is also the deceptive use of the terms “natural” or “free range”, “grass-fed”. Then we have the more serious cases such as Big Tobacco denying their own research to Congress. Or Johnson & Johnson quashing years of rumors that their Baby Powder contained asbestos, a dangerous substance which co-exists in the natural talc deposits which they mined. Johnson & Johnson traded on the soft, intangible brand assets of Baby Powder - the deep psychological bond between a mother and her baby, freshly powdered - an olfactory bond so powerful it maintained the brand’s sales and profitability despite the rumors repressed by lobbyists and yes, even death threats leveled at investigate journalists.

The old adage that what we don’t know won’t hurt us is not true. It hurts both the deceiver and the victim. And yet, there are millions of people working in companies unaware of the deceptions their employers are perpetrating against their customers, and even themselves. But, once we become aware of these deceptions we can no longer remain complicit, because it violates our sense of truth.

In my opinion, and I’ve written about this extensively, motivation matters. Motivation will tell you everything you need to know about why a corporation or a person acts the way they do.

In the metaphysical worlds there are two forms of light: Magnetic light and the Higher Light. The former can easily be manipulated, the latter cannot. We often hear about magnetic personalities who become cult leaders or evangelical church leaders. Sometimes consciously and other times not, they have an ability to appear shrouded in light on the inner planes. Even to a clairvoyant they can appear, at first glance, to embody the Higher Light. It is simply the manipulation of the lower magnetic light to appear as such.

There have been many authentic spiritual masters who have indeed embodied the Higher Light and have lost that ‘office’ through manipulation, often through the abuse of power, sexual or otherwise. And there are those who have chosen to embody that Light for a certain period, for a particular purpose which is then relinquished within the same lifetime. Some who still hang onto that period will use magnetic light to mimic the authentic Light they once embodied. A very few will let it go and therein lies the reason for this article.

True power is readily relinquished, to be as it needs to be, and authentically so. When we have a need to manipulate power for money or sex or for whatever reason, we are working only with lower magnetic light, the ego. It is not until we are willing to work authentically that we begin to glimpse and experience the Higher Light and the Higher Light will only remain with us for as long as It is able to remain true unto Itself. It is, as W. Somerset Maugham so eloquently put it, The Razor’s Edge and anything else is tantamount to sliding down the razor blade using your balls as brakes!

For those interested in how we give away our power away to (spiritual) authority, there is a fascinating Netflix documentary entitled Kumaré which examines this very topic as a social experiment.

Gavin J. Chalcraft is an artist and CEO/Executive Producer at Golden Ratio Media Group, a film, television, and theatre production company. Prior to working in the arts, he owned and ran Isosceles Consulting, a global brand development and management consulting firm.

*** Gavin Chalcraft and Golden Ratio Media Group, Inc. strictly prohibits the use of any generative AI software to upload and analyze any material attached to or contained in these Substack posts. ***