I was brought up not to trust different. Not only that, but to reject it, judge it, be afraid of it.
And that programming took different forms as I grew up. It manifested differently throughout my life, but the mechanics have always been the same - if I’ve encountered something or someone that was outside the lines of what I considered to be true, good or correct, I would automatically judge and dismiss it. Sometimes I would argue it, needing to prove to the other person they were wrong.
Lately, I've come to understand the many faces of our reality and its paradoxical aspects.
I heard something that I liked from Bashar. He said that we’re all looking at the same thing but from different perspectives, created by our own lens of beliefs and definitions. And that seemingly mystical example actually validates a lot of the things we know to be true in our own reality; in simplistic terms, people will react to the same thing differently, because they will perceive it differently, through their own experience and view of their world.
He continued to say that nothing has inherently meaning assigned to it. Which to me, it means that nothing is good or bad, right or wrong. It’s how we look at it. Something might be perceived as good by one person or a group of people, while the same thing will be perceived as bad by others.
I think it's all aimed at giving each and every one of us complex and various examples to help us choose what we want to experience, who we want to be, and what choices we want to make for our own existence; because that's the only thing we can change. Never anyone else's, only our own.
I found that being open and curious about new things, things I used to consider threatening or wrong, it's giving me the opportunity to expand my own mind and grow more into who I am at the core.
It’s been two years since I've realised the paradox of life and it can still be challenging. When I reach new depths of fear or belief systems, I have to recalibrate and remind myself that I am the one who decides what is real for me, that I get to choose and my choice is correct because it's correct for me.
I came to realise that this way of interacting with the world can actually bring us closer together, because it no longer feels like we’re standing on opposing sides, shouting at each other. It feels more like we’re side by side, deciding if we should walk together or go our separate ways.
However, one thing I had to overcome was bypassing people’s opinions, reactions, and judgments. When I lived in survival mode, everything was black or white, good or bad. If someone did or said something bad, I would judge them and eliminate them from my perspective.
I understand that for people experiencing things similar to what I used to, when I begin to look at situations more deeply and speak more openly, it can sometimes be interpreted as agreeing or excusing. And when the issues are social, economic, war-related, injustice and so on, people are more dual, more cutthroat, therefore there is no leeway. And I had to understand that it does not matter. Other people’s judgments do not matter because I know myself and my intentions. What comes out from an interaction where I express my own mind is only an opportunity for me to reevaluate my own beliefs, to either reinforce or change them to be more in line with who I am at the core.
I know that underneath all the fear, we all want the same thing. We want to be happy, to feel joy, we want our life to be easy and fun, we want to love and be loved. The disconnect comes when, the definition of love, joy, ease and happiness is filtered through belief systems that are based on fear. And the actions will be at the other end of the spectrum had they come from love. But I think that, those of us who have this awareness, can use it to find the common ground, the love and joy and fun we all crave in every person we interact with, no matter how polar opposite of ourselves they are, and use that point to build a new way of expressing it, one more representative of their own unique authentic core.
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