The Journey

I’ve been absent from the blog lately which has simply been a result of life. Although I have not been expressing through this blog, rest assured that I have been “in it.” Life’s lessons keep arriving, with daunting consistency, and I keep stepping up to them with varying levels of confidence. But one thing that I can say with clarity and conviction is this: My resolve is stronger than ever; my intentions increasingly clear.

In the past month that I have been silent, I have been grappling with death, personal relationships, the idea of family, and the ever-evolving understanding of life’s purpose–specifically, my life’s purpose. That’s just to name the highlights. And although I could go on for pages about each of these various topics, there’s something seemingly minute that I want to focus on today, and that is the compulsion to be right versus actually being right. That’s a convoluted statement at the outset, to be sure. But just stick with me here as I attempt to muddle through this.

I possess an urgent, nagging, compulsive need to be right. The way that this “need” so often manifests for me is in a deep, underlying craving for others to understand me. My mind tells me: If I could just make them understand what this means, if I could just make them see my perspective, if I could just show them where I’m coming from..etc etc, then they would accept, approve of, and “love” me. I find myself repeatedly frustrated by the seeming inability to reach the minds of those by whom I would so like to be understood and accepted. For the most part, this entire struggle exists only in my mind.

You see, there will be folks who read this blog and for whom it resonates deeply. They will think “Yes! I know just what you mean!” And then there are those who will come across this blog and think it sounds just like jibberish. The ghosts of my past that so often occupy my mind space fall mostly into that latter group, and it is to them that I present my mental testimonies over and over again. “If I could just make them understand, then I could be right,” I think.

The fact of the matter is, there is nothing to be right about. There is, in fact, a road less traveled, and as my life progresses, I find myself further and further down that road. I didn’t know, when I began this journey, that it would evolve in this way. I didn’t know where the path would take me. But as it turns out, it’s not a particularly popular path. It’s not that it’s lonesome…it’s just quiet. What I mean by that is things fall away. Your old habits, occupiers, party friends, distractions, worries, goals, and agendas fall away. It’s not necessarily a dramatic change, rather a gradual evolution. There may be relationships you have to proactively quarantine yourself from because of their abusive or toxic qualities, but for the most part, you don’t actually end these relationships, habits, and preoccupations–you just wake up one day and they’re gone. And you find yourself, quite simply, by yourself.

While this alternative road is not very popular, it is quite enjoyable. There is peace to be found, personal satisfaction, and mind boggling epiphanies. Every day brings something new! It’s really quite exciting. That’s why I’m so dedicated to this path that I am on. I can’t give it up. It’s too late. I’ve gone too far and I know too much. I could never go back and take the blue pill now. But to those who are still in the matrix and loving it, I mostly appear to be bat-shit crazy. And bat-shit crazy people are not right.

The desire to be right, to prove not just my sanity but my uber-sanity (which, I find, the matrix-loving world is in serious lack of), derails my whole happy train. This is why A Course In Miracles so famously asks, “Would you rather be right or happy?” Shockingly, the two rarely coincide. This is because the need to be right is always an outcropping of ego, and ego has no interest in you being happy. Alternatively, Holy Spirit has nothing to prove and is completely devoid of any need to be right because He is inherently correct, and it is He who reveals to you your natural state of happiness.

So, if you’re going to take this path–the increasingly quiet one–you’re eventually going to have to let go of your need to be right. Trying to do both will eventually derail you. The need to be right runs directly counter to the surrender and humility that is required to listen to the Holy Spirit and follow Him down this road. But it is a hard thing to lay down the need for rightness, because doing so requires a terrifying level of vulnerability and loss of control. It feels like laying down on the train tracks with the rumble of the locomotive beneath you. It feels like you will be demolished. Without being right, what defense do we have?

As is always the case, true sanity runs directly opposite the “sanity” of this world. ACIM says, “In my defenselessness, my safety lies.” What the hell kind of jibberish is that?? In what two-bit, shanty-town of a loony-world does defenselessness pass as safety?! …And yet, any time that I have truly accepted this teaching, I have awakened to a sense of complete invincibility. No, it doesn’t make sense in the brain–but at first glance, the Truth rarely does.

The grim fact of the matter is that choosing peace, happiness, and Truth requires letting go of any need to be right…about anything. It must be let go because, at the end of the day, there is nothing for you to be right about! Truth = Love and Love contains no fear, and the need to be right is always rooted in fear.

To make matters even worse, choosing to do/be that which is right, is even scarier! It means, quite commonly, choosing not only that which is unpopular, but that which personally pisses other people off. The choice to live in Truth involves making choices that many others will not understand. Not only will they not understand it, but sometimes they’ll hate you for it. They may slander you for it. They will definitely resent you for it. Doing what is right (being righteous) requires a level of bravery and humility that leaves no room for the cracks of self-rightness (self-righteousness) that would compromise you with an agenda. Doing what is right means embracing, living, and speaking Truth, even if others don’t understand, or worse, get pissed off.

Doing what’s right is free of any agenda. Needing to be right always has an agenda. Doing what’s right is always liberating even if often terrifying. Needing to be right closes us off, separates, and isolates. The price of doing what is right is personal pride and self-righteousness (they must be let go). The price of needing to be right is personal peace and true safety (they cannot coexist).

It’s ironic how trying and wanting to be right makes us feel safe and strong, and actually doing what is correct on a deep level often feels scary and vulnerable. That is because the ego walls us up in our need to be right in such a way that we cannot see, consider, or hear anything but our own defense. Doing what is truly right, however, requires letting go of all defense and every agenda (including the desire to be accepted and approved of). Truth needs no defense; It stands alone.

Right now I am grappling with the choice to leave my need for rightness behind. So far, it really hasn’t gotten me anywhere. The inestimable longterm value of following this path far exceeds the meager payoff of attaining fleeting approval from others. I’ve already lost the approval of those whom I spent most of my life seeking it from. There is no way for me to ride the line of seemingly making others happy and still live according to that Truth of which I am learning more and more every day. I must lay down my weapons of coercion and manipulation in favor of defenselessness and vulnerability. Despite the new-agey speak you may hear to the contrary–the Truth is not a popular commodity.