Please Don't Agree With Me

And Don't Ask Me to Agree With You

One of our greatest human hungers is for companionship, family, and tribe. Conversely, shunning and isolation are the most severe of punishments. To imagine such penalties, the torturer must know just how deeply the pain is felt.

We live in troubled times, when division within communities, family, and friends seems at an all-time high. As our personal realities become unstable, we want to grasp onto the familiar, to find the right way to be, the right way to see, and to align with others who hold the same beliefs.

We are a species of tribes within tribes, and this is where we have found our sense of safety. It has often been demonstrated that human beings can lose touch with their moral core when confronted by a powerful pull to belong or comply, so terrible is the feeling of being an outlier. The Milgram experiment famously exposed how fragile is the human will.

There is a reason for our present disconnect. To merge away from tribalism, we must release our attachment to these identities and learn to navigate divergent energies. We are asked to let go of what it means to define ourselves by our team, our club, our political characterization, to identify this way with separateness and division, all so we can claim we were on the right side of history. Instead, we are asked to stand, feet planted against the earthquake, strong and even, as we straddle the great divide.

"And yes
the lies are everywhere
And yes
the powerful 
hold the greatest
capacity for evil
because they dance
with the greatest
capacity for good
They have forgotten
alchemy
the demon of division
has seduced their souls
They have become 
the masters of illusion
who claim to be
protector of the lambs
while quietly inviting 
the lion
to eat his fill

Nothing is as it seems
because the old illusions
must fall
and the more tightly
we hold 
to how we think it should be
the more painful
the rebirth will seem
in the grip
of our comfortable 
fears

The truth is
Love is easy
so much easier
than you might think
While vengeance is hard
and eats up everything good
within the soul
Forgiveness
has nothing to do
with the blame
to which you cling
And brutality
is never new
for it breeds and grows
in the gardens
the prisons
and the ghettos
we create

But once revenge is spawned
it will initiate armies of peace
a great rising
of the many millions of aspects 
of Divine Consciousness
to come together
resistance
of the highest order
as the devil
dissolves
starved to death
by our refusal
to feed
what is not born
of true Grace

Be not afraid
for there is no power greater
than our willingness
to love
beyond borders
beyond religion
beyond our forefathers’ 
ancient hate

The day must come
when we do unto others
not what has been done to us
but rather what
pure love
commands..."

~ excerpt Demon of Division

"The truth is like a lion. You do not need to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself." ~ Saint Augustine.

Imagine if we could learn to sit with cognitive disconnect, and instead of fixating on making ourselves right and others wrong, recognize this as a wake-up call to our distinctive personal realities. I am a creator and you are a creator. We are building our worlds.

I am not responsible for fixing you. You are not responsible for correcting me. We are simply listening, learning, feeling, and creating. We respond but do not react.

We are not always reading the same articles. We are not watching the same videos. We are not following the same pundits and we living in very distinct paradigms of belief. So how could we possibly see everything the same way?

I love you. I love you. The truth will set us free.

Adi