takingSidesI have been bumping up against this internal issue for awhile. It happens so often, that it feels as if it is a huge wall. Insurmountable, impenetrable and too vast. The internal issue is my natural tendency to choose a side.

With small everyday events or circumstances, it is so ingrained, that most of the time I am not even aware I am doing it. Hearing a piece of music, food choices on a menu, service offered at a business. The list goes on.

However, when I slow it down and I look at how I am sorting an categorizing these daily norms… I realize I am choosing a side. I like it or I don’t like it. It is good or it is bad. It is right or wrong. I am sorting and classifying every situation in my life.

Now imagine (since this is my standard operating procedure), what happens when it becomes more significant. Politics, religion, racism, LGBT issues/civil rights, abortion, war, terrorism, pollution, cruelty to animals, diseases and their treatments. The same thing happens. I choose a side.

As soon as I become aware of something happening in one of these areas, I decide which side I am on. I decide that the person or people who are on the other side are bad or wrong. I have chosen a side. I have effectively created a separation between myself and anyone who has a different perspective. And I don’t think I am alone!

As a matter of fact, I usually have many allies on my side who appear to agree with me! We have effectively isolated ourselves into a like-minded group. Together, we reinforce our “rightness”! And then a different issue arises and we realign and choose sides again.

We have become conditioned to a world where it appears duality is inevitable! Where separating ourselves into groups and factions presents itself as normal. Where we feel safe and protected by isolating ourselves in our comfort zones.

Yet…, it’s not working for us! It is not working for me.

This is where the huge wall comes in. I have known and felt this for awhile, but I don’t actually know what to do about it or how to change it. To even start to evaluate it feels as if I begin to loose my identity. It feels like if I don’t choose a side, that means I have given up and the other side wins. I don’t actually have any experience NOT choosing a side!

When I try to imagine not taking a side, suddenly it feels as if my only choice is to become very passive. I feel weak.., as if I am giving up. I tell myself that this means I have lost my passion and have given up my perspective. My mind can’t figure out how to exist.

Well actually.., my ego can’t figure out how to exist!

The world around us is changing. It is becoming more complex and yet there is a call to simplicity. We are evolving at a rate we have never known before. Not because we are separate, but because we are more connected than we have ever been before. We have created a web of communication that relays tragic events in Paris and Lebanon around the world instantaneously. Not because we are on separate sides, but because we are one.

Duality and separation have ruled for too long and want to die away. But that worldview is not going to change by itself. Instead each one of us will have to find our own journey towards unity and oneness. We will have to begin to see the circumstances of our lives for what they really are; part of a continuum. An inclusive scale that contains it all. Every color of the rainbow, not just black and white.

I long for the ability to own where I am along this continuum, and the freedom to allow others to be where they are without feeling isolated from them, simply because the only tool I use is a wall of separation.

I wish I could say I know how I am going to make this internal shift. But the truth is, it is all new territory for me. To begin with, I think I will begin to pay attention to whenever I feel separate from another group and then ask myself “How it would feel to have a preference, yet not choose a side”?

Any thoughts or recommendations?

With Light, Love, and Laughter
Charles