“In this emotional explosion I am really asserting that everything I think and do is right, and everything the other person does is wrong.” (ODAT, 9 March)
This splitting in my perception between good and bad, right and wrong, victim and persecutor, oppressed and oppressor, siding for and siding against, us and them, is a sign I have ‘lost it’.
What have I lost?
True perspective.
The realisation that there is a mixture, in any practical situation, in any party to a dispute, of good and bad, right and wrong. The observation that, whenever I was victim or oppressed, I was an active and willing participant in the dynamic, for my own overt or covert purposes. The understanding that all changes brings both creation and destruction. The shrewdness of solving problems with others, not at or against them.
The programme has let all of the heat and steam out of the system and allowed me to stand back and observe that reality is far more complex, bewildering, and unfathomable than I had given it credit for, and to realise that navigation requires not my merciless application of what I thought of as reason but was really emotionally-powered rationalisation but requires direct access to God’s guidance of my intuition.
When I realise we’re all in this together and the vast majority of people are well intentioned and are muddling through based—like me—on partial and distortion perceptions, I develop understanding and compassion for others and create the basis for dialogue and cooperation.