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Healing Division, Being Compassionate And In Our Truth...

finding solid ground Aug 26, 2021

This time last year I ran a program called "Shine your Light". As someone who had always felt like a bit of an outsider, it was a chance for me to share some of the things about myself that I wouldn't normally share with the world, and create a space for others who may have felt the same to feel more comfortable sharing more of themselves too.

There was no major marketing to the program, other than an email that I wrote randomly one day sharing some of these formerly hidden interests to my mailing list. The email broke every rule in the book for marketing. There was no web page. No sales pitch. Heck it wasn't even obvious that there was anything for sale until the end of the (very long) email, where there was a discrete payment link. My mind expected crickets when that email went out, assuming that being so open and breaking so many marketing rules would cause others to turn away, leaving me to have that all too familiar outsider feeling.

I was wrong.

Soon after that email went out I found myself with a beautiful group of 25 people who wanted to come and play. We spent 7 gorgeous weeks together, owning and sharing more of ourselves and experiencing more and more peace for allowing ourselves to be seen.

Apparently in that moment of writing that email and sending it out, something within me 'knew' what the right thing to do was, even if apparently I was breaking every 'proven' marketing technique ever written.

At the beginning of the program, I told people that what I was sharing was 'my' truth, but that it wasn't necessarily 'their' truth. The point of what I was sharing was not take on board the content of what I was saying as if it was 'right'. My sharing was simply a way of giving people permission to look and see what they 'knew' to be true, and shine it into the group.

I knew when I was running that program that one of the things that holds us back from sharing is that the mind often wants proof of what we know before it will give us permission to share or do things, which brings me to the point of this note.

Lately I have found myself trying to work out my position on things going on in the world. There is so much science 'being' thrown at us, and it's easy to get so lost in it and go down endless rabbit holes trying to understand it all. When I caught myself doing that recently, I was reminded of a video that I shared with the Shine Your Light group at the very beginning of the program.

It's a short two minute clip from one of my favourite movies called 'Contact'. In this clip Jodie Foster plays a scientist (Ellie Arroway) who has just discovered an alien signal from the SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Life) project. She's having a conversation with Matthew McConaughey (Palmer Joss), a religious leader, about her need for proof before she will believe something. Palmer asks Ellie a question for which she 'Knows' the answer, but has no way of proving to him and it stops her in her tracks.

You can watch the very short clip here (and if you haven't watched the movie go see it!):

CONTACT - Science VS God Discussion

For me what this brings out is that there is, of course, a place for science and rationality in life. But it is important to realise that science and our perception of what is rational can change and it isn't always fool-proof.

There are also things that science and rational thinking can't or may never prove, but that does not make those things wrong. Right now it seems to me more important than ever that we remember this as we are asked to establish where we fit in with what the changes going on in the world.

As I see it, our Knowing is connected to an intelligence far deeper than our intellect. My launching of the Shine program and the apparent breaking of all the marketing rules in launching it is one such example from my life of where my Knowing trumped my thinking. But there have been many times when I have been moved to do something Knowing I was doing what seemed to be the right thing, but with my thinking screaming I was crazy.

Were those decisions and choices the 'right' thing? Well ultimately that's hard to say. Given how our thinking can evolve, sometimes those decisions might seem 'good', and sometimes they might not depending upon our thinking in any moment. To someone with different thinking, they might have a completely different perspective of an event, which tells us how much we are all living in separate realities. Which of us is right? Well it seems like the answer is both of us AND neither of us!

The more I look to see if there is such a thing as an objective truth, the more I wonder if the only real objective truth is that we are living in a subjective reality?  This is actually quite hard to accept, since it means that sometimes some of the most difficult or horrible things in life could be perceived by some as a good thing (yuck), and some of the most wonderful might actually be seen as bad things. For a great example of how this works, take a look at this old advert for the Guardian Newspaper from the 1980's. It' not a long video at all - just 30 seconds. But as you watch it, become aware of how many judgements your mind makes up about the people in the video and if what is really going in each scene is a good or bad thing:

For me what this brings out is how inaccurate the mind is at knowing the full picture of any situation and why we cannot take it's judgements of good and bad objectively.

Of course, this may be easy with relatively 'trivial' things, like for example whether I choose one brand of bread over another. It's not so easy to accept with some of the bigger things in life like we are having to consider right now like our health and wellbeing and everyone else's.

But notice even in saying this, that for some with certain thinking - the brand of bread that they choose may, for them, be a very serious decision with consequences for their health, the health of the planet, the system they are supporting e.t.c. It could be so serious as to lead them to go to another store if their chosen brand isn't available or to boycott bread altogether! For others, it may simply be an issue of eating whatever is available to survive or choosing what is available on the supermarket shelf in that moment.

It's really worth taking a moment to consider the paragraph above if you've found yourself in judgement of anyone's decisions at this point in time.  As I see it, we have no idea how anyone completely sees the world at all.  You may think that they are crazy for doing what they are, but I wonder if you'd feel that way if you had their perspective or their 'seeing'?  Apparently ANYTHING can potentially be perceived as serious or trivial, right or wrong and good or bad depending on the picture our minds have of that thing. It is true of EVERY aspect of our lives.

Good to see and sometimes not so easy to accept, and I think it is human to see certain things as objectively 'good' or 'bad' no matter what...

It seems to me that 'how' we see things isn't really up to us. Some things look more important to us than others and that's just the way it is. Those things will change and evolve as we live our lives, but we can't force ourselves to change them.

We can always be curious to see more, of course, but the noticing of the fact that we all innocently see things differently and that this only really evolves as we grow in our understanding is important.

First, it allows for compassion when we come across different perspectives. We are all doing the best we can given how we see the world, and the more we can see this the more we will deal with conflicting perspectives from our hearts than our fearful ego's.

Second it allows us to be more at peace because if we can really see that it is universally hard for human beings to actually establish an objective truth, then we start to see the futility in trying so hard. We begin to recognise that ALL human beings are living their subjective perspectives and accept that no matter what somewhere someone will think our perspective is a 'bad' thing.  This allows us to see that any judgement we receive is to be expected and isn't personal and removes some of suffering that we might experience being on the receiving end of it.  Crucially, in the absence of trying so hard to figure out objective answers, we actually find ourselves in the space before thought - a space which is by it's nature already at peace.  To read more about this check out this blog:

The Ultimate Answer

Third, it frees us up to just trust more of what we 'Know', with the knowledge that the mind will always be making up a judgement, probably for the rest of our days, as to whether our perspective was a good or bad thing, but that we cannot ever really lock this down into an objective truth because the mind NEVER knows the full picture of what is going on.

But perhaps that part of us that 'Knows' does see the full picture and how we are to uniquely navigate the world we find ourselves in?  Perhaps, and worth considering....

So if you have been struggling to figure out your 'position' with all that is going on, and not really getting anywhere, then I invite you to play with two things:

1. Get interested in what you already 'Know' but cannot necessarily prove. Does the fact that you can't prove those things mean that you are somehow 'wrong'? Does the fact that others might 'Know' differently mean that they are 'wrong'? Seeing what I have written here in this blog, could you entertain the idea that both of you might actually be right?

2. Take a look at events that have happened in your life that maybe you judge as being 'bad' or 'wrong'. Can you entertain the idea that there are aspects to your judgement that maybe flawed or that if further information came to light, it could completely change your perception? Reflect on some examples of what sort of information might change your perception and consider what if we NEVER know the full picture? Would that change your relationship to your minds judgements about life and other people in it at all if you could really see that?

Sending lots of love,

John x

P.S If you found this helpful or would like to make a comment on the blog, you can do so on my Telegram group.  You can access that by going here: https://t.me/joinchat/V65a-tK3CNjT5gJU

 

 

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