Both/And
Do you ever get a wee sense of how tiny one person is in the midst of all of creation? Tiny in terms of space, time and every other dimension? When I try to simply conceive what a light-year really means, it becomes clear to me that we live in an immense vastness - a vastness that I, for one, am only barely beginning to comprehend.
At yet here I sit in my little chair in my little office with my little concerns and my little worries and my little accomplishments, acting like I am the absolute center of the universe - when the reality is that I am only a tiny speck of the whole. And yet, from where I sit, I AM the center of the whole universe! It’s not Either/Or - it’s Both/And. And therein lies the root of many of our problems: that we so often think in terms of Either/Or, and that thinking limits our awareness and opportunity enormously.
Recently I heard from a friend who’s in the midst of some very serious health challenges. She said “I am working to maintain a positive focus even while I’m not feeling well.” I find that such a simple, yet profoundly useful concept, that my having a negative feeling does not mean I have to BE negative. The presence of a negative feeling or thought or perception or image does not negate my goodness. I can be aware of negativity without letting it define me or limit me. I can be hurting AND still be happy. I can be angry AND still be loving. I can be afraid AND courageous at the same time. It’s Both/And.
But our society seems to teach us that it’s Either/Or, such that when something we’d call “negative” shows up, a lot of us think and act as if negative is all there is. We lose sight of the larger context in which that negativity arises, the container that is who we are. And that hurts. Or we do the flip side and try to “stay positive” by denying and blocking what we think is negative, rather than acknowledging it and healing it. That also is Either/Or, and that also hurts.
Both/And is not about denying or suppressing the “negative” things that show up in and around us. It’s about widening the view. It’s about acknowledging them while ALSO paying attention to the bigger picture within which those dark things arise.
“We’re not trying to get our feelings to go away,
we are trying to hold them in a vaster perspective.”
With a Both/And perspective, I can feel rotten somewhere in my body, mind, or emotions; but also have - at the same time - the awareness that “rotten” is not the whole of me, but just a small particle in the vast consciousness of who I am. I can give both my attention. The little me who hurts sits within the context of the bigger me who is in peace. The little me who judges sits within the greater me who accepts. The wiser me contains the me who just doesn’t get it. The courageous me contains the scared me. As Walt Whitman said, “I contain multitudes.”
I contain multitudes, yet I am neither defined nor controlled by them. Who I am is too big to be limited by who I am not. Who I am allows me to choose where and how to direct my attention, no matter how compelling my thoughts, feelings, sensory perception or fantasies may be. I can choose to entertain them, learn from them, or even let them run amok, and I can always come back to the awareness of who I am. They are aspects within me, but they are not the whole of me. They do not diminish, let alone replace, who I am. They exist within who I am.
Who I am is here to love them. Who I am is here to love. Who I am is love.
And so are you.
“I am not the content of my life.
I am Life.”