Weekly Insights: Turning A Cheek When It Doesn't Feed The Narrative...

In a divided world, some people who feed the division on the planet make choices to accept blindly and faithfully in the beliefs of one of the "sides". They have aligned to a group of people that think the same and believe in the same ideals. This community acts like a family and provides a sense of togetherness and belonging. They offer an identity to cling to spiritually, politically, and morally. It is a space of safety and security that offers refuge in a world that doesn't always make sense. Even though communities like these can be extremely healing, they can also be hindering to any kind of growth or evolution.

We grow when we are open to learning new things and expanding in heart and soul. When we are attached to a group belief that stops us from thinking critically or being open to shifting perspectives, then we are preventing our ability to evolve. Sometimes the truth threatens the very structures that hold up the communities we belong to. Instead of evaluating new information as it is revealed, we get defensive and close off to learning and growing. We attack the sources of truth that we once valued, dismiss the claims being made, minimize the untruths we are attached to, or completely change the topic and move on without addressing anything honestly. This is called "self-preservation" and it is destructive on so many levels, but can be an automatic way of being when the Love of the community overrides the Love of the truth.

The discomfort we feel when we come face to face with information that contradicts our core beliefs is called "cognitive dissonance". This feeds our ability to justify horrific things, question the truth, ignore information that is important to understand, or simply reframe the entire topic to fit our beliefs. This is how the mind makes sense of combatting realities. It wants to preserve our safety and take us out of the feelings of fear, powerlessness, stress, and instability. The mind finds ways to tell us false stories that help us explain our false narratives. Facts become too troublesome to process, and confrontation becomes debilitating.

Turning away from contradicting truths has been happening in all types of cultures, over generations of people, and through sands of time. It is nothing new, and it manifests through indifference, apathy, and self-numbing, among other coping methods. The question is, why do some choose to turn away from the truth while others choose to face it? Some people have no tolerance with discomfort. Others refuse to be wrong. Religious beliefs can prevent some people from seeing different perspectives. If there is so much rigidity that new information is rejected, then it becomes difficult to move forward and evolve. It takes courage to walk away from the group in order to accept new factual discoveries.

The answer is always in the power of Love. We have to be able to honor the truth, and Love ourselves enough to follow what is right, regardless of what side of the coin our findings fall under. This means not dehumanizing others for thinking differently, allowing ourselves to feel whatever we are feeling when learning new information, speaking the truth, and following the truth even when it becomes inconvenient for our personal narratives. Love aligns to justice, integrity, and dignity. It has no ego and does not follow blind allegiance, but instead it is congruent with what is really happening.

Humans are intelligent beings that have choices on what path to take in life. If the truth is not important to us, then we can easily fall into the trap of confusion, false narratives, conspiracies, lies, and deceit. Aligning to mistruths only perpetuates this energy in our lives and in our world. No group of people, belief system, or community is worth the pain and destruction that the environment of lies creates for both the individual and the collective. We are all interconnected, and the truth sets us free as a human-kind. This is the time to wake up to the realities we are perpetuating, and own up to our part of this reality that we are co-creating together. Is growth and evolution part of our path? If so, now is the time to open our eyes, open our ears, and accept the honest truths that we observe unfolding in our world. When we own up to our piece of the whole, we can be a part of the evolution of our species. Are we willing to shift perspectives when new information presents itself - even if it contradicts our beliefs? This is the time to answer the call. The truth is our ticket to freedom, and the power is in the collective consciousness.