As humans, we often get caught in polarity. We identify with black or with white, focussing on these as opposite poles. “I’m a caring good person; That person’s a selfish bad person.”
But what we neglect to consider is that these two poles exist on a continuum, with many shades of grey in between.
We are each salt and pepper, not black and white.
Where do you sit in the black-white continuum?
I have been re-reading (for the fifth time) one of the most impactful spiritual books I’ve ever read, which is The Lost Teachings of Atlantis by Jon Peniel. And I’m up to a section that talks about spiritual schizophrenia.
It’s amazing how we can read a book so many times, and each time a new thing will jump out at us!
This section is talking about how we all have two voices within us, hence the concept of “schizophrenia”. We have the voice of our Spirit (aka God), and we have the voice of our Ego.
As with black and white, these are two poles of a very long continuum, and we all sit somewhere on that continuum.
We’re either more aligned with Spirit, or more aligned with our Ego.
But we’re never just one or the other…..at least, not until we reach that state of Universal Consciousness, or enlightenment. It’s only at that point that the Ego is fully dissolved, and we know only our Light.
So how do we know which one we’re more aligned with?
Given that we have both within us, we express more of the one that we feed the most. This is where our Free Will comes in.
It’s easy to judge ourselves for our lapses, when we slide along that continuum towards the opposite pole, and suddenly it is given some of the emotional real estate in our life. But this is our human journey. We’re here to stumble and fall and fail and learn.
If we control our life so much that we never witness the opposite pole, we are not being truly authentic.
That opposite pole exists, whether we like it or not. It’s a part of us.
We are a soup comprising a certain percentage of vegetables, and a certain percentage of water. We create the consistency by how much of each ingredient we allow into our soup.
In the words of The Lost Teachings of Atlantis:
“[Our] free will decides which of these two sides will have its way in our life, at every given moment….The struggle is nothing less than the war between good and evil. There can be no harder battles. And with our free will, we can decide who wins the battles, and ultimately, the war….
“One side wins out over the other, simply because we use our free will to choose which side we will go with – which side we will lend our mind to, our attention to, our thoughts to – and ultimately, which side we will lend our actions to…..
“Each individual has made one side primarily stronger than the other. Yet [even] in the worst [people], there is still a divine spark of Universal consciousness buried deep within them, and in the best people, except for the enlightened ones, there is still the seed of selfishness.
“Thus all can still break from their norm at any time, and make different choices, and change their consciousness, and thus even turn their lives around. Just by applying free will, one step at a time…..
“People who have not become totally Unselfishly Loving beings [aka enlightened], are always in pain, always in internal turmoil. They have an unrelenting unpleasant disturbance within them, that they are constantly trying to emotionally cover-up, and get distracted from.
“They do all these things to run from the part of them that is God within them. But just like there is no running away from yourself, there is no real getting away from God. There is no peace without oneness with God….
“We are always faced with choices between our sides, between being selfish (wanting and taking), or being unselfish (considerate and giving).”
So what does it look like to be unselfishly loving?
That’s something only our heart can tell us. It’s very different to being “unconditionally loving”. Being unselfishly loving means we can give tough love or gentle love according to each situation and each person’s highest interest.
It doesn’t always look calm and peaceful, but it is deeply authentic and actioned from a place of genuine care.
This summer, I’ve been relishing every beach walk I can gift to myself. I visit my favourite beach before the sun gets too ferocious, and I enjoy the play of the wind in my hair, I smile at the young seagulls squawking for their parents’ attention, and I imagine my feet growing roots deep into the Earth. It’s a beautiful way to start every day, and to clear my own energy.
Yet I also observe people. I smile at others as I walk past them, yet many of them simply don’t see my smile. They look straight ahead with air pods in their ears, unable to receive a simple blessing that was just sent their way.
I find myself unable to walk past a piece of plastic or litter on the beach. I think about our sea creatures, and the impact that litter will have on them – and I just have to pick it up.
Every day, I end up with a fistful or more of rubbish, which I pop into a bin as I leave the shore. But what astounds me is that in the almost 8 years I’ve been regularly walking that beach, I’ve never once seen another person do the same.
I see so many people enjoying the gifts of that beach, but never thinking to give back.
This is an observation, not a criticism. So many people are so caught in their own bubble, that they forget to open their eyes and see the world around them. I have no doubt that I, too, have my areas of blindness.
Our world has so many gifts to give to us, and so many opportunities for us to help another. We just need to decide to open our eyes, so we can really see.
