When I was growing up my mother made it quite clear to my siblings and me that there is a right and there is a wrong, and that’s it. No maybe’s, no grey area, and as for wiggle room, well that was still the space inside the front of your shoes.
That was how she had been taught to navigate life’s stormy seas and thus the compass she handed down to us.
Had it not become a little claustrophobic within such rigid and narrow parameters of acceptance, it may have relieved me of some of the effort required for thinking for myself, as well as trying to understand the views of others, all of which can become quite messy and provide fertile terrain for mental chaos. All those questions searching for answers, and often elusive answers! Far neater and easier to stick to my mother’s code of right and wrong.
Neater it may have been, but easier, I think not, and this is why. Homogeneity in culture, religion and just plain human experience, which in turn influences outlook, personality, behaviour and so on, does not exist. It’s nauseatingly old hat to say that we are all different, so how then can there be a uniform right and wrong? How can any one sect have the arrogance to assume superiority in knowledge, beliefs and customs?
Sure parents may believe they are carving a safe path for their children to follow, for example, or religious instructors may believe that they are ensuring a better ‘life’ in the afterlife, or authoritarian bodies may wish to exert control over their underlings.
In witnessing the exchange of views in an adult debate or discourse, it’s quite apparent that effort may well be required for the support of rightness. And depending on the degree of intransigence, effort can quickly turn into tension, defensiveness and even aggression. (What happened to neat and easy?!) The need to be right, to win, and convince others of such, becomes all-consuming with the proof of being right dependent on the diminishment of the other. Why is it so important to some that others agree with them, that they emerge as victor?
When you self-identify with your point of view, then an opposing point of view can be interpreted as an attack on your identity which in turn triggers the fight or flight response - pull out the verbal canons or discreetly withdraw. This can become energetically noisy and drown out the essence of explorative exchange and expansion.
What would it take not to feel threatened? What would give you a feeling of empowerment regardless of what others think, a sense of security within your own thought realm?
As Eckhart Tolle says a conscious conversation is only possible when you put forward a point of view without self-identifying with it, without identifying with your mental position. Only then, he adds, can you play with it and its words.
If having to be right is a default mode, perhaps playing in the ambit of being wrong would loosen the tyrannical grip of right. Sincerely examining the wrongness of your view would offer an overt and legitimate exploration of the alternative without denting fragile egos. I am not suggesting that we don’t already consider alternatives when forming our opinion but I am suggesting that opinions rooted in rigidly imposed fundamentals of right and wrong, can filter through our mental narrative, heavily influencing our judgement while drowning our inner voice.
We are used to arguing two dimensionally, tossing the bone (that one that we pick with the other party!) between right and wrong. But from the premise of I am wrong, we can position ourselves on the other side of the fence and take in the view.
In fact, I would actually like to establish a Discourse Club based on that premise of I am wrong – the premise from which to launch each session. Can you imagine the contortions that a mind, set in the template of I am right, would have to undergo to release itself? Initially it would feel like writing with the non-dominant hand.
To get the pendulum smoothly swinging between opposing views, we need to know what they are and understand both as if both belong to us and neither belongs to us, and only then will the pendulum be balanced enough to swing with rhythm. We create that momentum through the ability to visit both poles with ease, without egoic attachment or rigidity influenced by the past, but purely with flow.
That would ease the two-dimensional swing. But, can we not evolve beyond the confines of right and wrong, which in essence means that if I am right, you are wrong?
There is another dimension and that is the third anticipatory notion where we supersede the language barrier of two dimensionality. It moves beyond right and wrong to the state where both are right and both are wrong. It’s a third perspective taken on behalf of both perspectives. It’s akin to saying “I am that I am.” In other words, I am not this and I am not that, I am this AND I am that. Therefore, I am all of them and none of them - an unbiased neutral.
This may take some time to digest, but it’s the word ‘anticipatory’ that shone a light for me, one that highlighted being receptive, with a mind wide open to all possibilities. The opposite would be closed and therefore rigid, and instead of receiving, more likely to give (or is that impose?) viewpoints.
Eckhart Tolle believes that a state of pure awareness arises when we become comfortable in the state of not knowing. Initially it may seem as if you know less than before because you no longer have the compulsion to interpret and judge everything. When Socrates said “I am wise because I know that I know nothing”, he was, according to Tolle, describing the foundation of the state of spacious awareness or presence, a state in which there is a cessation of mind activity without loss of consciousness. It was out of this state that his enormously creative teaching and deep insights arose.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” ~ Rumi
Perhaps The Discourse Club can evolve from the I am wrong premise to that of Rumi’s field.
A sound and sensible article on the human condition. A premise which, if taken to heart by the many, would naturally and indelibly transform our world into its next stage of evolution. You get a thumbs up from me!
Regards
Sandra Garcia
Gill, this was such an incredibly thought provoking writing. It so resonated with me - especially coming from a family where each one of us was “always right.”