An enormous amount of energy becomes available once you give up the need to be right. Being right implies that someone else must be wrong. All relationships are damaged by a confrontation between right and wrong. The result is great suffering and conflict in the world. To give up the need to be right doesn’t mean that you don’t have a point of view. But you can give up your need to defend your point of view. In a state of defenselessness, we find invincibility, because there is no longer anything to attack. We are all a single consciousness with unique ways of experiencing the world. Wholeness is a state of profound peace and happiness.
He who accepts Nature’s flow is all-cherishing.
—Tao Te Ching
Most people are trapped trying to impose their viewpoint on the world. They carry around beliefs about what is right and wrong, and they hold on to these beliefs for years. “I am right” brings comfort, but not true happiness. The people you feel wronged by will never apologize and make your wounds and grievances go away. The people you judge against will remain isolated from you. No one has ever been made happy by proving that they are right. The only result is conflict and confrontation, because the need to be right always makes someone else wrong.
There is no such thing as one and only one correct perspective. Right is whatever conforms to your perception. You see the world as you are. Others see the world as they are, too. This insight is tremendously liberating because, first of all, it makes you unique. Ultimately it makes you a cocreator with God. For as your consciousness expands, so does reality. Tremendous hidden potential is revealed.
The opposite happens if you insist upon being right. Because others will disagree, your need to be right will generate antagonism and rejection. As we are all too sadly aware, if the need to be right is rigid and fierce enough, wars ensue, often in the name of God. If the world is a mirror of who you are, it is always reflecting a point of view. Objectivity is an illusion of the ego, created to bolster its insistence that what it sees is right. It’s tragic that people sacrifice the real goal of life, which is increasing joy and happiness, for the cold comfort of judging others and feeling superior to them. If you see the world with judgment instead of love, that’s the world you will inhabit.
Conflicts arise as a result of not understanding that there are as many points of view as there are people. Our unique points of view are a gift. We live in a universe reflecting who we are, which we should cherish and celebrate. Instead, we rush to defend our tiny piece of it. Consider how relationships develop. We get along well with someone else who agrees with our point of view. We feel an intimate connection; we feel validated in their presence. Then the spell is broken: it turns out that the other person has many opinions and beliefs with which we don’t agree at all. At this point, the war between right and wrong starts, and the road to unhappiness unspools before us.
The very fact that you are in an intimate relationship makes it even more painful to find areas of disagreement. At the subtle emotional level you feel abandoned. The beautiful sense of merging with someone you love is shattered. At this point love is compromised, as both people experience the return of the ego, which says, “I am right. My way of doing things is the only way. If you really loved me, you’d give in.” But in reality love hasn’t failed. It was just blocked by the need to be right, to cling to your own viewpoint instead of surrendering to what love would do. To the ego, however, surrender is defeat and disgrace.
If you are mindful of this fact, then every time the urge to be right surfaces in your awareness, look at your circumstances in context. Is it possible that someone else’s viewpoint is as valid as yours? Since the equality of viewpoints is a given, now it becomes possible to let go of the win-lose scenario. Ask yourself, “What do I really want out of the situation, to be right or to be happy?” Can you see that the two are not the same? When you give in to your need to be right, you are turning your back on love, communion, and ultimately unity. Unity is the realization that at the deepest level everyone shares the same consciousness, which is the source of all love and joy.
The more you accept this, the less need you will have to be judgmental. As your experience of not needing to be right deepens, the mind becomes quieter. You start to feel more empathy, and your perception widens. A knowingness arises that encloses both you and the person who disagrees with you. As you relax and become less defensive, you lose your obsession with definitions, labels, descriptions, evaluations, analysis, and judgment. These are all part of the ego’s battery of defenses. They work tremendously well in starting arguments and wars; they work miserably in bringing about peace.
When the need to be right fades, we no longer have so many grievances and resentments, which are the fallout of making someone else wrong. It takes a perception of wrong to create victims. But aren’t there real victims in the world, people who have received terrible injustice and ill treatment? The injustice is very real and undeniable. But the label of “victim” is something else—it’s a psychological wound. A person scarred by it cannot help but construct a story that every new experience reinforces: “I am hurt by life, my situation is weak and wounded. I resent those who have power over me. My grievance has become who I am.” In the end, to be a victim is actually a form of self-judgment. In the name of having been wounded, you wound yourself every day by assuming the victim’s role.
Going beyond resentment detaches you from anger and hostility. Anger closes the door to the realm of spirit. As much as you feel justified in harboring your grievances, at a deeper level you have tied yourself to the one who injured you. That connection becomes so important that it obscures the connection to spirit, your higher self, and your soul. People frequently use spirituality to justify their moral outrage at the world’s inhumanity, which falls so horribly short of the ideal. While it is easy to have empathy for this perspective, it’s also important to recognize that even moral outrage is rage. Since consciousness is a field that embraces everyone, the result is that even more anger, resentment, and hostility are being added to the field.
Outrage tends to become an excuse for inaction. The people who actually combat the world’s injustice are not consumed by anger. They are clearheaded, self-possessed, and certain as to where their values lie. They can distinguish between what is past and gone, about which nothing can be done, and what is present and therefore correctable. Einstein famously said, “No problem can be solved at the level of consciousness in which it was conceived.” This is worth remembering whenever you are tempted to rationalize your anger as righteous. Righteousness never solved anything. It just fuels more anger; it provokes deeper antagonism. Above all, it defies Einstein’s rule: The level of the solution is always different from the level of the problem.
To get beyond the level of the problem, you must see yourself clearly. Many people don’t even know when they are defending their need to be right. The signs are not always anger and resentment. But righteous behavior always has one common denominator: the refusal to surrender. Only surrender brings freedom from judgment. When you are dominated by your ego, surrender feels like total defeat. The ego thrives under the following conditions:
You get what you want.
Others agree to follow your agenda.
There is a sense of self-control.
Right and wrong are clearly demarcated.
Nobody crosses the line between right and wrong.
You name the conditions of loving someone else and being loved in return.
Anyone who agrees with you is showing that he/she loves you.
Someone who obeys you feels safe. Someone you must obey feels unsafe.
Ironically, these conditions for making your ego happy turn out to make who you really are very unhappy. There is no joy in being in charge, no love in controlling others, no expansion in defending the line between right and wrong. So seductive is the ego’s story, however, that countless people pursue happiness in the ways described. And they may even achieve perfect self-discipline and power over others, but in so doing they will sacrifice their true selves.
To find your true self, you must surrender to it, and the best way to do that is to surrender to another person. This doesn’t mean that one ego gives in to another ego. That would indeed spell defeat. Instead, you share with the other person the truth about yourself.
You want love without limitations.
You want to feel safe.
You want to express yourself creatively.
You want to expand in joy.
You want to be free.
You highest wish is for unity in a state of perfect peace.
When you can share these deep desires with another, what happens? The same thing that has always been happening. The world will reflect your level of consciousness. In this case, the reflection comes from one other person—the one who shares your truth. When you say to your beloved, “You are my world,” you are being quite literal.
But this is only the first stage of surrender. It isn’t possible for two people to want the same thing every minute of the day. Both want different things; both have different points of view. To carry surrender beyond being merely an ideal, it must be made practical. Many people want to have a spiritual relationship, only to founder on the many obstacles that arise in everyday life—issues over money, career, family, and ambitions, for instance. There is no need to suppress these issues, or to settle for compromises that don’t fully satisfy either party. If you cannot fulfill yourself, you can’t possibly fulfill another.
The secret isn’t to surrender to another person, or even to each other. You surrender to the path. It is a path you share. Your commitment is not to what you want or to what your partner wants. Individual desire is secondary. You commit to wherever the path is taking you. In this way you give up your ego-centered perspective. Your focus shifts to the space between you and the one you love. This is the gap between ego and spirit. Whenever you are tempted to obey your ego, you go to this shared space and ask the following:
Which choice is more loving?
What will bring peace between us?
How awake am I?
What kind of energy am I creating?
Am I acting out of trust or distrust?
Do I feel what my partner is feeling?
Can I give without expecting anything in return?
These questions don’t have automatic answers. They serve instead to wake you up spiritually. They attune you to a process that is more than “me” and “you.” The space you share with someone else allows you to look beyond ego. The advantage of doing this isn’t obvious at first. Your old conditioning will say, “What’s wrong with getting what I want? Why should I consider someone else before me? I have a right to expect good things for myself.”
What your ego cannot see is something precious that is hidden in every spiritual relationship: mystery. This mystery is born of love; it calls to you from a place of peace and joy that the ego can never reach with all its struggles, demands, and needs. Simply by entering the space between you and someone you love, you open yourself to the mystery. When two people fall in love, the existence of the mystery is obvious; it all but blinds them. They feel merged and perfected in their state of rapture. Nothing can ever go wrong. The whole world exists in the other person. But when romance fades, this certainty fades with it. So it takes commitment to keep alive those first glimpses of a fulfillment that lies beyond yourself, yet is nothing but yourself.
When you commit to the path, you also surrender to it. Every day you ask, “What can love do? Show me. I am ready.” The answers will surprise you. Love can solve problems, heal wounds, settle disputes, and bring unexpected answers. Here we aren’t talking about personal love, the feeling contained inside a single person. This is a love beyond the personal that watches and knows everything. When you give yourself to it, everyday differences mean very little: money, ambition, career, family concerns all fall into place. An invisible power reconciles opposites; it creates harmony of its own accord.
To experience such a state, you cannot work for it or try to control it. You allow yourself to be in a state of openness. You witness what is going on; you hang loose; you obey when the right impulse takes hold. This is how life is lived spontaneously. Whatever happens next is the right thing. Whatever you need at the deepest level is automatically given. It is possible to exist in such a state, although few people do. In fact, it is the most natural way to live. But if you judge your life, if you hold on to being right, if you insist on setting boundaries, then the mystery cannot reach you. Living in harmony with the mystery takes time. Surrender, like everything else, is a process, not a leap. Despite ups and downs, the path always goes forward, and every step is a step of love. Ultimately that is the reason for relationships, to be able to look into someone else’s eyes and share the knowledge that the power of love has blessed you both.
TO ACTIVATE THE Fourth Key
IN EVERYDAY LIFE, I PROMISE MYSELF
TO DO THE FOLLOWING:
1. I will catch myself wanting to be right. When this happens, I will observe the impulse and let it go. In witnessing this behavior, I begin my transformation. Every reminder will reinforce my goal in life, which is to be happy, not to be right.
2. I will refrain from qualifying things as right and wrong, good and bad. I will find freedom in a wider perspective that leads to creative solutions rather than judgments and accusations. My happiness lies in the calm stillness that lies beyond all labels.
3. When I am tempted to see myself as a victim, I will remember that I am the creator of the circumstances I see. I will ask myself, “What am I doing in a state of consciousness where I am creating this?” Just by asking this question, I will shift from being a victim to being a creator.
