You are not wrong

Tenderfoot Yogi Podcast and Audio Blog: Perspectives and Insights for Ease in Your Awakening

You’re not wrong for wanting what you want. The reason we feel wrong about something we have done or said or wrong about something that we want or wrong about who we are or who we want to be is that someone else has uploaded their version of right and wrong into our system. Or we downloaded it. One way or another we have inherited, adopted and accepted that there is a right way to be or feel and a wrong way to be or feel. And of course, the truth is that we are not wrong. Also, we are not right. We are neither right or wrong because there is no such thing. There is a path to happiness that rests in letting go of the false notion of right and wrong in favor of the truth. Here is what I’m learning…

Listen to the Podcast version of this post below

Politics

I was reading recently of an example of how the cable news companies present their views to the world. No matter which network you’re watching it always boils down to a version of ‘this wrong thing is happening, those people are the cause because they are wrong and we are right.’ When it is broken down this way it is easy to see just how unhelpful the whole thing is. And it’s a wonderful example of how easily our sense of right and wrong can be tapped and manipulated. It is easy to say that this example makes the idea of right and wrong too simple, that it’s actually more complex and the truth rests in the gray areas in between. The opposite is true. The truth does rest in the area in between, but the area is by no means gray. The notion of right and wrong makes complex the simplest truth of all. And so, the deception continues.

Binary

Staying with this cable news example for another moment, what if the general population was divided evenly into two groups, each one watching one or the other of the two political news networks and buying into the point of view being presented? The result would be a binary condition whereby the population has two opposing views on any given subject. Each person in each group would feel ‘right’ in his or her views while feeling that each person in the other group was ‘wrong’. I know what you’re thinking – “Isn’t that sort of what happens for real?” Yes.

Comfort

It is the limiting black and white, right and wrong binary viewpoint that makes the politics example so frustrating. It is also a source of frustration and limitation in our personal lives. The binary problem occurs at work, in our daily interactions at the grocery store and in our family and personal relationships. It happens because feeling ‘right’ provides us with familiar comfort. Feeling wrong is also deceivingly comfortable not because it feels good, but because it feels familiar. By contrast it is unfamiliar and uncomfortable, at least initially, to be neither right nor wrong in a given situation. This is not the way that most of us were brought up – this kind of ambiguity is not in our operating systems.

The problem with ‘right’

The problem with being right is two-fold. First, if I am right that means that someone else must be wrong. The result of this is blame. How do you feel when you are made to feel wrong about something? The emotions of wrongness don’t feel good – sad, dejected, rejected, embarrassed, demeaned, guilty, shameful, remorseful. It’s not a fun list. By contrast how does it feel to be right? Those emotions are much more fun – proud, vindicated, validated, empowered – this list is downright super. The first problem with being right is that it chooses sides and pits one versus the other. This is neither true or helpful.

The bigger problem

The second problem with being right is that it’s bogus. It does not exist. It’s pretend. The rightness is a complete fabrication of our own creation – as is the wrongness. Yet if we look closely at our lives we’ll see that we tend to spend most of our time in one of these two perceived places. If we are generally living our lives according to plan that feels right. If things get messy, then we spend more time feeling wrong. If we have the job that we want, that feels right. If we don’t like our job, that feels wrong. If we are in a loving relationship that nourishes us, that feels right. If our relationship is not going well or we want to be in a relationship and aren’t, that’s wrong. When we feel right we feel validated and secure – which is false. When we feel wrong we feel insecure and that we need to fix something until it’s right. Which is also false. It’s a completely natural and normal way that we operate. Why?

Security

One of the primary reasons that we make ourselves out to be right, or we allow ourselves made to feel wrong, is fear of the unknown. “If I’m not right about this, or even worse if I am neither right OR wrong, where does that leave me?” You see, the idea of right and wrong provides us with some fabric by which we can define our day to day existence. Whether it’s on one side or the other of an issue with another human or our perception of a life situation as either right or wrong, the notion of there BEING a right and wrong provides a point of orientation. The reality of course is that we are just humans arbitrarily living on a planet in a society for a certain number of years – each of us finding our own path to the same destination. There really are not any rules or guidelines so most of us are just doing some version of what our parents and grandparents did, or our version of the opposite of what they did. This is OK. There is security in this.

Another way to say it

Another way to say ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is the way that things ‘should be’ and the way things ‘should not be’. And this brings us to our stories. We have spoken of this before. Each of us at any given time is running any number of stories through our consciousness. We have stories about how we want our lives to turn out and what our jobs should feel like and be like and how we want our kids to behave and where we want to live and how someone hurt us and what we like and don’t like and who is blocking our path to some place and on and on. There is a ton of space in our consciousness that we give over to our stories and we play them over and over again. Most important here is the theme that runs the foundation of so many of our stories – this perception of how things should and should not be. There is a rightness and a wrongness here, and this limits us.

You are not wrong

The perception of rightness and wrongness, of should and should not limits us because it is both a false truth and a distraction. It is a false truth because it offers the false security of resolution. When something is right and another thing is wrong it fits in with a story of some kind – which feels a lot like placing the final piece into a jigsaw puzzle. Satisfaction. But there is another story of right and wrong around the next corner, and the one after that. And it is a distraction because the time we spend in stories of right and wrong is time that we don’t spend allowing a thing to be precisely what it is. You have likely heard this potentially confusing notion before – that something is neither one thing or another, rather it simply IS. It’s true, and it’s how we move beyond the limitations of binary perceptions of right and wrong. Because you are not wrong.

Possibility

What if you let go of both the feeling of and the need to be right, and also stopped allowing yourself made to feel wrong? About everything. What if the next time you were feeling tense about a situation you asked yourself “am I trying to be right about something here?” Or, “Am I allowing myself made to feel wrong about something here?” Would you fall apart? No. The opposite is true. Possibility exists in this place of in-between – this place of unambiguous letting go.

The Way

I do not pretend to comprehend at this moment the scope of the Tao – of the Yin and of the Yang, also referred to as ‘the Way’. But I do comprehend that there is a balance point that lives between and among the extremes, a place of harmony, and this includes the extremes of right and wrong. The balance point is a perfect point of non judgement, allowance, acceptance and knowing that a thing, a person, a moment is precisely as it is meant to be. And this is good. This is Peace. Surrendering to this trust is where things open. Right and wrong is harsh, defensive and restrictive. It is closed and tight. The space in between is the opposite – it is harmonious. It is where freedom lives.

For what it’s worth, and for the knowing that all is well.

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