The key word to raising our frequency
Most of us have been taught that things, events or people are either good or bad, right or wrong, with us or against us, acceptable or unacceptable. We have to choose one side of the coin or the other.
We can’t have both.
Living in a world of duality, we are taught that certain aspects of us are unacceptable, undesirable, dirty, wrong, not good enough, and that they need to be hidden away. We do this so well that we often don’t realize ourselves that those parts are still there, and are, indeed, ours.
These parts usually come out when we are at our most triggered and unconscious, and it can be vicious. We don’t know what came over us, we feel remorse and promise ourselves and others that this will never happen again.
But it does.
ALL potential and actual human behaviours, emotions and experiences are available to all humans. Each of us is capable of being self-righteous or inconsiderate or selfish or cruel, just as much as each of us is capable of being loving and caring and compassionate and kind.
And this is why the word AND is the key to raising our vibration.
If we can accept that we can be cruel AND kind, loving AND judgmental, compassionate AND nasty, vicious AND loving, creative AND destructive; if we can accept that being a complete human means having access to all the possible human behaviours and emotions; if we can give each of these parts of us a seat at the table and a voice at every choice point, we have the ability to consciously choose how we are going to show up in the world at any given time. With each choice we can access the behaviour that is most in alignment with who we want to be and the consequences we want to reap.
It also empowers us to meet people who do “wrong” or “bad” things with compassion and curiosity about what would cause a person to act in this way. Nobody does anything wrong by their model of the world. If we feel deeply enough, we will usually encounter intense levels of pain or hurt or disconnection or disempowerment or lack of self-worth or similar, and we can find compassion for that person.
This does not preclude us from removing ourselves from a situation that is harmful or detrimental to us. We may understand why someone is acting in a particular way, and still decide that this is not how we want to spend our precious time and energy. That is called discernment.
We can love someone AND never want to see them again. We can care deeply about animals AND still choose to eat meat. We can feel compassion for people on BOTH sides of a war. We can observe someone living their life in a way that we would definitely not choose for ourselves AND still be at peace with them.
Knowing that we might, under certain circumstances, do exactly the same thing as what we are currently judging someone else for doing, moves us deeper into acceptance and compassion. It softens the line between “them” and “us”, because we realize we are more alike than we are different.
We can see both sides of the coin. And in doing so, we start relaxing into the full experience of our glorious, flawed, inimitable, unique humanness. And in doing so, we raise our frequency.