(CW: Christian deconstruction. Read at your heart’s discretion .)
Being right and being wrong has been one of the biggest shame attachments in my life. Especially thanks to the Christian church teachings. And if I’ve ever done anything that is “sinful” to the eyes of the church, then I’ll be prone to reproach, shame and correction. Well, sick and tired of that. And now I’m learning to integrate all the “dark sides” that have once been so shut down and repressed in me when I was so trapped in that cycle of religious shame.
As I was tapping, I wondered if I can reframe the concept of “right” or “wrong” or one that is gentler - “New” or “outdated”. (Sure, they may not be an exact substitute but just proposing a concept!)…! The usual “wrong” way of life can be seen instead with an “outdated” way of life. Maybe an inefficient one, but that doesn’t make it bad or shameful. The “right” way of life doesn’t make you superior, you just have a "newer’ way of living, that is more improved and maybe more efficient. Whether “new” or “outdated”, we still live our lives at the way that’s best for us!
(and yes disclaimer again: I know they can’t be absolute substitutes and may have areas where the 2 words aren’t interchangeable in this way)
Right-Wrong as a binary always felt wrong to me (haha).
Perhaps it is because I’m more “spectrum” – rainbow more than black and white, with some frequencies beyond color and hearing.
New. Outdated.
I add things like congruent, discordant, out of alignment, useful, unhelpful, depleting, disconnecting, repairing, restorative, refreshing, adaptive, resilient, chosen…
…and more.
Yeah, I find the binary like that, especially when determined/proscribed/insisted by people outside myself or my own relationship with Co-Creative Intelligence to be… boring. Unattractive. Contrasting with what I want to cultivate in my shared reality.
Yes…feeling ‘sick and tired’ probably because that binary thinking (right/wrong) is very capable of creating dis-ease…sickness and tiredness. Maybe because a much wiser and more aware part of us knows that those binary concepts are not the way toward Thriving…and ‘sick and tired’ are VERY strong signals from deep parts of ourselves that that way just ain’t working.
Thanks for another great collection of ‘word portals’!! So important for us to have an ‘embodied vocabulary’ like that Rick.
That sure describes for me my experience of the world we’re being directed to live in and accept without critique currently…I feel the dis-ease of it’s insistence and I’m struggling currently with creating ‘parasympathetic rituals’ to balance that force. As a result I’m aware of my descent into ‘right/wrong’ thinking as a Primitive Brain survival tactic. I desire a different, more Thriving response but I’m having great difficulty in crafting one.
.)