The modern-day spiritual journey is made up of equal parts insight and authenticity. This means you can’t be so insightful that you forget to hold your ground for what is most meaningful to your heart, just as you cannot project your truths onto others—no matter how clear you think you’re being. A soul cannot evolve without the human vessel to grow within, and the human vessel cannot function without the fuel of your soul’s essence. It is a marriage of two seemingly opposite aspects merging together as One, the more often you show both sides equal respect and importance.
While my spiritual growth has been birthed out of the difficulties I’ve been so blessed to face, it doesn’t take away from the equally valid human experience woven throughout every trial, tribulation, breakdown, breakthrough, failure, and success. My co-dependent childhood may have been a training ground for my expansion, and for all the lives I’ve helped to heal, but it doesn’t discount the heartache, betrayal, and bewilderment I endured. I may have used my experiences of being bullied as a launching pad into greater levels of mindfulness, but that doesn’t take away the nights I cried myself to sleep. I may have an innate spiritual gift of knowing the life that exists beyond the doorway of death, but it didn’t make it any less intense when I was helping my relatives cross over while surrounded by loved ones who were nearing their personal breaking point.
I may have glimpsed greater spiritual truths by questioning the narratives at Sunday school, but it didn’t change how resentful I felt for being forced to study something that wasn’t in my heart. I may have had visions of my future and somehow followed each breadcrumb to live a life of everlasting fulfillment, but it doesn’t change how uncertain I felt in getting there, or how afraid I was of failing.
I may have experienced the deepest transformation of a lifetime as a result of my marriage, but it doesn’t change how earth-shatteringly painful it was navigating the terrain of a heart broken wide open.
Perhaps I am able to see the wisdom in such difficult experiences and view from an expanded spiritual perspective, simply because my human experience has never been diminished or discounted by the clarity in view. The essence of being spiritual is learning how to be consciously human. Meanwhile your human reality transforms into a vivid spiritual adventure as you embrace the wisdom of an ever-loving Universe. This is what it means to be embodied, integrated, and emotionally free. These are the gifts received when learning to let go.
To take the next step, we come upon the eighth Golden Rule: “In order to be emotionally free, it’s okay to dislike.”
In the previous rules, you’ve learned how the Universe always has a plan, how everything changes, but it can only change you for the better. Now let’s add on to that an insightful reminder: you don’t have to like it. It’s okay to dislike.
I think it’s a very common misunderstanding that in order to embody love, you have to like everything and everyone. One of the most common misunderstandings is when the ego is trying to attain perfection on the spiritual journey, the conflict is that it’s trying to like an experience that isn’t trying to be liked in your reality. When adversity arises in your experience, it has a job to do. Its mission is to evolve you to the next highest level of consciousness. It is designed to help you grow. It’s not asking to be liked. All too often, the ego believes, “If I can learn to like my experiences, I’ll probably be in less pain.”
It’s a well-intended aspiration, but instead of trying to blindly embrace your experiences, it’s far more useful to move with the current of reality fueled by the grace of personal integrity. In the new spiritual paradigm, you learn to be in harmony with life simply by not obligating yourself to like what’s happening.
Dislike is the recognition that you are acknowledging something that seems foreign to your core values. To dislike someone’s behavior is because they may be acting in a way that is not an expression of the ideals and ethics you hold to be true. If your deepest core value is unconditional love and someone is not treating you in an unconditionally loving way, your dislike is recognizing that they’re acting from a vibration that you do not resonate with. That’s called discernment. It’s not actually a judgment. Judgment is when you criticize, condemn, and define someone permanently as a result of differences in behavior or perception.
Dislike is just a momentary way of becoming aware of the authenticity of your experience. I’m here to remind you, in order to be emotionally free, it’s okay to dislike. If you try to tell yourself that you cannot dislike because that’s not what it means to be a perfectly evolved spiritual being, you’re holding yourself accountable to an impossible criteria of expectations and standards.
You are not here to be perfect. You’re here to embrace how perfect you already are. The most direct way to understand how perfect you already are is to embrace the authenticity of your subjective experience. Don’t try to like what you already dislike. Give yourself the right to dislike whatever bothers you, what captures your attention that does not match the deepest values you hold to be true.
If you see a political figure abusing power, allow yourself to feel what it instigates on an emotional level. If movies like Schindler’s List devastate you to your core, allow that devastation to be felt. There are countless souls who selflessly incarnated to perish tragically, just to be a part of a bigger wake-up call that activates the consciousness of a spiritually evolving species. No matter what depth of unimaginable cruelty drops you to your knees and twists your stomach into knots, allow each sensation to be a catalyst of our own transformation, instead of reflecting back the same unconsciousness by judging the actions of others. The first step is to feel as deeply and openly as possible. In order to do so, it’s okay to dislike.
EXERCISE: Permission to Dislike
Can you take one moment and give yourself the right to dislike something? Notice what happens. Maybe you start smiling. If so, it’s because when I gave you permission to dislike, you instantly shifted into a state of harmony. Do you know what the harmony you felt in your body was? A state of true acceptance. To actually be yourself, by reserving the right to just be honest. It’s such a clarifying moment of relief when shifting into the authenticity of the soul where it’s okay to dislike.
Dislike doesn’t have to lead to violence, judgment, condemnation, ridicule, resentment, or cruelty. It can actually inspire a greater response of noble behavior if you give yourself the right to just feel how you feel.
True acceptance doesn’t require effort; it’s just confessing the gravity of your most honest experience.
I remember my parents used to take me to the ice-cream store as a reward for a job well done, after a baseball game or a good score on a test. As a kid, what’s more fun than sampling all the flavors? I would sample each and every one until I found the taste combination I enjoyed the most. In order for me to decide which one I enjoyed the most, there had to have been flavors that weren’t the ones I totally loved. Now as a kid, I was a fan of anything that had chocolate with peanut butter, cake pieces, and even pretzels. Basically, the ice cream flavor that had the most stuff in it. The one that barely even looked like ice cream because there were so many ingredients. That’s what I wanted! The ones I liked the least were the fruit-flavored ones that to my young palate tasted boring: lemon, orange, raspberry, especially sherbet. I mean, what is that?
The one thing I never did when I was at the ice-cream store is feel bad about the flavors I liked the least. I never thought I was hurting their feelings. I only appreciated that I got to try all the flavors so I could figure out what I enjoyed the most.
Let’s apply this to your spiritual journey: you have the permission to sample all of the experiences, all the vibrations, all the various combinations of experience. In order for you to actually find the things you want to embrace and resonate with, you have to also encounter things that you don’t respond well to. This helps you develop the skill of discernment.
Somewhere along the spiritual journey, there was a secret memo that went out that said, “If you’re a spiritual being, you’re not allowed to have an opinion. Since we’re all one, no one gets to be an individual.” Let’s unravel this misconception, because a true heart-centered spiritual journey is about being an individuated expression of your divine consciousness. It is where you are one with all that is, while also standing for everything that you hold near and dear to your heart. Just because you like something and dislike something else doesn’t mean that anything is being judged as less than; it’s just you appreciating the fact that life is giving you a chance to figure out what you uniquely resonate with. This won’t turn you into a negative person. Quite the opposite; the more you dislike, the more it evaporates out of your field. If you have the right to dislike it, it will rarely show up. The gift of dislike is you are only disliking what is helping you draw your attention toward the things that are really resonant with you.
Once you are clear on what resonates, you become very decisive as a human being. Simply put, in order to receive your highest potential, you have to be discerning. Not everything will be a yes or meant to be chosen by you. How else can each yes become powerful and unwavering, if you’re not able to stand in the truth of every no?
I’m not saying to lead with dislike, but to accept when it comes up for you.
In order to have a direct experience of this insight, try repeating these words out loud:
I allow the one
who is capable of dislike
to be accepted and loved as never before,
contrary to my past.
I do not
require this one within me
to always be on their best behavior,
trying to earn my loving attention.
When as a child,
that was the very game
I never seemed to have won.
And instead what’s occurring
is that I am facing my own conditioned
nature.
It has the right to lash out,
based on the attention it never received.
It has the right to use thoughts
to dislike anything in existence.
And my job
is to meet that dislike
and any form of discord
as an opportunity
to love and accept myself as never before.
Simply because
dislike
is giving the part of me
that felt suppressed and silenced by my past
the right to speak
anything it wants on the inside
with no punishment coming its way
and only greater acceptance and love to be offered.
What dislike suggests
may not always be the clearest truth,
but the opportunity is always clear and available
to use any internal experience of dislike
as an opportunity
to love and accept the parts of myself
shut down by the judgment of others.
As it’s been said over many, many lifetimes, with great power comes great responsibility. With that said, do you know that you already possess the responsibility to handle the power of dislike and to do great things with it? Maybe the greatest thing you can do with dislike is to not only be discerning and clear in what you resonate with, but to love, adore, and heal the most damaged, hurtful parts of yourself. The moment dislike happens, now you know where to send more kindness. Now you know where greater self-care needs to go. Now you know where greater acceptance is required. And you’ll find that in dislike, you have an innocence that is trying to prove that it lives within a universe of unconditional love. It just wants the right to think and act differently just to see for itself that no punishment will be handed down.
This is why in Golden Rule #8, when I say in order to be emotionally free it’s okay to dislike, you are cultivating the soul’s attribute of acceptance. Accepting the deepest purpose of dislike is an opportunity to commune with your hurt, damaged aspects of self and to meet those parts who use dislike as an attention-seeking device, begging for the healing resolve of your most tender attention and affection. The first level of dislike is giving yourself the permission to be discerning in your choices. The deeper invitation is to recognize dislike as a chance to bring the gift of self-acceptance to your most insufferable rebellious parts. Beyond this inner emotional process, if a moment of dislike leads to creating solutions to remedy the plight of broken political and socioeconomic systems, it can only positively affect the sum of the whole. All of these benefits and opportunities could never be made possible if believing dislike is wrong to experience.
When it’s okay to dislike, you are able to access the attribute of true self-acceptance. This leads you to the mantra of acceptance. It’s two of the most powerful words your heart yearns to hear:
It’s okay.
Simply repeat this mantra to your heart for 1 to 3 minutes at a time. How does it feel? How does it affect your nervous system? How much quieter is your mind? Can you sense less physical tension—no matter the circumstances in view?
Just because divinity resides in every form, doesn’t always mean it’s trying to win a popularity contest. Yes, divinity is the light of all-knowing, all-loving truth, but only once it’s fully realized. Much like children are more likely to act consistently mature once they reach adulthood, human beings become conscious vessels of Source energy as they evolve. Dislike doesn’t mean you don’t respect the divinity in another. Initially, it means you are not resonating with the very behavior that could only inspire greater expansion, once those hurtful parts in you are seen, acknowledged, and embraced.
Even when consistently treated poorly by someone, the gift of dislike ushers you toward the next milestone of courageous decision-making to move yourself out of any perceivable danger zone and into the safety of a more supportive environment. How could you have ever mustered the tenacity, drive, and determination to rescue yourself if you were not keenly aware of how much you disliked the abuse?
Attempting to like what triggers discord will only cultivate greater inner conflict.
If you tried to like the actions of a serial killer, you might be surprised to hear the Universe say, “That’s not what we were trying to inspire in you right now.” You might think, “But I honor the divine, no matter the form.” And the Universe would say, “If you truly honored divinity, you’d respect the purpose of each form.” You might imagine, “What would be the purpose of seeing the unthinkable actions of a serial killer?” To which the Universe would say, “To inspire the social justice and political reform that brings communities together in service for a greater good.”
Sometimes you may try to like everything across the board because you don’t like how it feels to dislike. And yet if you are outraged enough by the actions in view, you’ll be inspired to do something that will bring greater resolve into the lives of others by serving the role the Universe has designed.
Spiritual beings can be thoughtful, inquisitive, and generous, but it tends to be a passive way of being. This doesn’t mean to oscillate from passive to aggressive, but to trust in the clarity of dislike that might be setting the stage for you to inspire greater positive change in the world.
Spiritual evolution is not a “one size fits all” approach to life. If it were, you would be robbed of the beauty of thinking your way through situations and recognizing the heroic ways in which you can contribute to the evolution of every innocent heart.
Only an ego judging itself for the way it fails to behave believes it has to like everything across the board. In order to maintain respect for the divinity of all, while honoring the integrity any character is destined to play, simply bow to the dislike in view and say to it, “Thank you for calling me into greater service for all.”
In the new spiritual paradigm, it can’t be all divine and no human, just as there is no spiritual growth in an all human, no divine viewpoint. Instead, we respect the divinity in ourselves that came to this planet to choose boldly, equally honoring the divinity of those who inspire dislike, only to remind us of parts we have a chance to accept in ourselves.
While conflict doesn’t ever lead to peace, in order to cultivate peace, you can’t be afraid of conflict in any way. Equally so, in order to be the most loving, passion-driven person you were born to be, it’s okay to dislike.
The nature of dislike doesn’t take us out of spiritual alignment. It’s often the most potent way to place you on your highest path that can heal your deepest wounds and positively affects others—when letting courage take the lead.