I got a really great question yesterday from a student.
He asks: Is it possible to be with what you can’t accept, killing, rape, and such? And how do you do it without jeopardizing your personal values, your personal integrity, and at the same time still be able to be happy and not be mired in the dark energies of hatred?
This is a really great question. After all isn’t the world REALLY divided to right and wrong? Good or bad? And wouldn’t it put you on the side of bad and wrong if you accepted what you don’t agree with, what you don’t like, what you abhor?
The answer to the question, as almost always, is hidden in the question.
It takes a shift of vantage point.
The Tree of Good and Evil
In the book called the Bible, there are distinctions, the good and evil. They are revealed to the first humans through eating from the Tree of Knowledge. From that point on the world is divided to good and evil.
But what disappears, what is taken out, is personal power. All power is relegated to a “higher power”, an impersonal “entity” who can deal with anything, because it doesn’t exist.
Great hoax, people, great hoax. You got duped, and your forefathers got duped.
There is no inherent right and wrong
There is no inherent right and wrong. Anything that is called “inherent” relieves you from your personal responsibility to have an opinion of your own, to look in your own heart and decide what you will call right and what you will call wrong.
Killing, murder, rape, stoning cheating women, burning “witches” on the stake, stealing your power, enslaving you, Dark Side attacks are not inherently and intrinsically wrong. They are what they are, without a qualifier.
It is just what is.
And then you come along and you have a take on it. You have a sense of right and wrong about it. It is yours.
As long as you can own it as yours, you are free in the world, you are free to be happy, productive, and live a glorious life.
The moment you look to some higher authority to make the decision for you, you have to be, you can’t avoid becoming angry, hateful, outraged, or afraid, or happy, whatever.
Sex is a good example
Sex is a good example. Sex is neither inherently, intrinsically good, bad, right, wrong. It is just sex. If you can find your own personal opinion of it, below the mile high opinions of religion, your parents, your peers, the media, your significant others… it will be yours.
As far as I am concerned, sex is highly overrated, and it robs humans of their energy, misdirects their efforts, and are at the root of the descent from being the top of creation.
Is that true? Intrinsically true? Inherently true? No, not at all. This is my personal take on sex. You need to calibrate in that I am beyond child bearing age, that I was raped, molested, de-sensitized, and didn’t have an altogether good experience with sex. That I can pretty much take it or leave it, and thank to that, I am a high achiever.
Now, to answer the question on top: how do you have personal integrity and not succumb to negativity when you face something you disagree with:
how do you have personal integrity and not succumb to negativity when you face something you disagree with
I have a lot of those, myself.
- My entire family was killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust… I personally abhor and hate the idea of wiping out a whole group of people… but I am not advocating that it is intrinsically wrong.
- I was molested, I was raped. I can be OK with my experience, because I can personally hate the idea, but that doesn’t mean I think that rape and molestation is intrinsically and inherently wrong or evil.
- I am attacked by Dark Side and by Dark Side practitioners almost 24/7. It hurts, I limp from it, I often cannot sit, cannot lie, cannot stand. I really don’t like it. I personally hate it and find it horrible. But I do not say that it’s evil, or it’s wrong. It is what it is. It is happening, and I am fine, it doesn’t effect my vibration, I am ok, because I know that it is MY take on reality, not the truth.
When you can own what you think, what you say, what you hold true about something or someone, then you can be free. Your husband, your mother, even yourself… it is what it is. And you have a value system that your husband, your mother, even yourself bump up against… and telling the truth about yourself is integrity.
I am not OK with that. That doesn’t mean I am not OK. I am OK AND I am not OK with that. But it is mine, and I won’t blame my husband, my mother, even myself for violating my own standards. My standards are my standards, and I am 100% responsible for my standards and the price I pay for having those standards.
I am 100% responsible for my standards and the price I pay for having those standards.
I take it like a man.
I write those vibrational reviews, and the feedback from many people is that I am negative.
Negativity is being hooked on an opinion higher than yours by some higher authority saying “It’s wrong.”
I personally hate, and shake my head when I watch people who sell you bull crap and you buy it.
Do I think it inherently, intrinsically wrong? No. I personally think it wrong, intolerable, weird, evil, and stupid.
And I am fine.
Here is another personal example:
I write great articles (that could benefit from proofreading, by the way!) and you scan them. They are written for people with an IQ above 100. Your IQ may be 100 when you pay attention, but you scan it, which means your attention is on finishing it, not on reading it. You are multi-tasking, unbeknownst to you.
Your 100 IQ is now divided, and you have only 70 available for the article. My article is wasted on you.
Do I say it’s wrong? After all I hate it and hate you for doing it!
As long as I can contain it, and really see and own that it’s my personal opinion that you should read my articles and learn from them. Or that what you are doing is really really stupid. Or that I have the right to be angry with you because I am, I can be OK, and I experience no negative effects of my thoughts. No incoherence.
Incoherence comes when you don’t own your opinion, when you don’t own your standards.
It is even true with fear! When you can say: it is not scary, it is only that I AM SCARED… in that moment the fear stops making you incoherent, and you can return to your intelligent, happy you.
Responsibility is your access to personal power.
And owning what you think as your thought, owning what you feel as what you feel, owning your reactions as your reactions, owning your standards as YOUR standards is about 80% of responsibility.
So here is the key to the kingdom… the kingdom of personal power. 80% of it.
the lack of wrong does not mean right. The lack of right does not mean wrong.
it is all subjective.
When you can own that YOU say it’s wrong, thank you stop complaining, stop carrying on, and do something about it.
If you see it inherently wrong, you are reduced to a complaining miserable wretch who bemoans the world’s fate
I don’t get the ‘inherently right or wrong’ bit,,,
right now at this present time apart from my own personal shit that’s going on,,, I find that it’s hugely inherently wrong what’s happening to all the peoples/humans/children in this crappy world… seriously? something is ‘inherently amiss ‘ big time,,, and I can’t get my head/brain around it to see it as ‘right’,,, sorry 🙁
oh no, good luck with finding another place. xoxo
Sophie, I miss you and your coaching so much! I had a crazy week. I had two big exams and Wed. I lost my little cabin I stayed in. I’ll find something else though. Thank you!
it’s a hair trickier… it is all in the language. Please try coming to class… I missed you on Wednesday
Wow! This is amazing to me. I think I get it now. I can own my idea or a thought of something being wrong but it doesn’t mean that inherently or intrinsically it is wrong or evil or good. Which means I can’t make it wrong. That is cool.
The good thing about spiritual work is that everything is looked at it from many different aspects. When you actually do the work, continuously, then things don’t fall by the wayside.
For example, the moment you realize that there is a complaint, the same issue will come up, and only the distinction through which you look will be different, but you can let go of being right, because you can see that being right has a serious cost attached to it, in aliveness, in affinity, in financial success, in health and wellness, and it’s not worth it.
This is how you can trust that you don’t have to remember, just have to commit to always work through a distinction.
Spiritual work is holographic, which means that you always work with everything in addition to working on the little piece you are working on.
Thank you for bringing this up.
Great article. A while back, I had the insight that you speak of, that there is no good and evil, and wrote it down. At the time I felt like I had found the keys to the kingdom. When I could live from the insight, forgiveness was instant and a lot of inner space opened up (I felt it physically and emotionally). Some old hurts disappeared, never to return. The ones that didn’t disappear, I now see I was too invested in being right, so even with the insight, these stayed the same. While I was reading this article, I realised how far from living the insight I have gone, and now I am wondering how it is possible to know something so important, and then forget it. Is this an example of being stupid, or did I take my insight for granted, and not work hard enough on weeding out the old belief? I forget a lot of important things. It bothers me.
very valid insights.
yes ok that makes total sense. I guess this is why unconditional love is a pipe dream at lower levels of vibration. It’s something you have the capacity for or you don’t, it will come when the vibration gets to that point. It makes me think that there are a whole lot of people beating themselves up for not having the capacity to just love, let alone love unconditionally. You can’t do something you don’t have the capacity to do. It makes sense that a better use of energy is to focus on catching ourselves so we are at least practicing the muscle. Good stuff. Thanks Sophie
Yes and no. Yes, this capacity is underneath and needed to love unconditionally. But loving unconditionally is not the capacity to be able to return to love, it is to never not love. If you need to do work to return to love after a mistake, then it is conditional love, but a generous one.
Good question Deneen. Thank you.
Is this how it is possible to forgive and love unconditionally? If it is what it is, and something is not inherently good or bad, then we are able to remove blame and accept that things happen in a split second of decision, sometimes it’s a good thing for us and sometimes it’s not, but it’s only what it is because of how we decided it to be. Once we’re able to take responsibility for our decision, then we can forgive and keep the integrity of the relationship, thus loving unconditionally.
Kathryn, you are not alone, in fact I dare to risk that most people, as in 99.99% of them believe it the way you do. And if you really look, most misery comes from that.
It’s taken me 66 years and that amazing student question to get what is going on, and verbalize what happened to me when I went from being prone to utter misery and devastation to an utter peace of mind, not long ago.
Even though I had had pieces of this puzzle, the unifying idea was still missing until last night when the coaching session happened.
Thank you for being the first to get it.
Wow, Sophie, this is mind-blowing. As far back as I can remember, I’ve automatically believed things are inherently good or inherently evil. I didn’t even consider that they might not be and that, in fact, it was my decision. I even imposed the supposedly inherent good and evil on the people around me, judging them for allowing “inherently evil” things.
What you’ve written here is a totally different view and I feel freed up and empowered by it. Another piece of my blinders wiped out. I’m excited about tackling life from this new view! Thank you Sophie.