Kind vs Cruel: Out Beyond Ideas of Right and Wrong
The polarising opinions that we hold are often a source of suffering. So how to go beyond them?
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a place. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”
— Rumi
A few days ago, we honoured Spring Equinox — a time of balance of darkness and light. I see it as a powerful reminder of our capacity to hold polar opposites. More importantly, I see it as an invitation to go beyond them.
Our minds consume information in this way — they are wired to notice differences, change, boundaries, separation. There is nothing wrong with that — it is useful to know whether it is day or night outside. However, seeing the world as “black & white”, holding tightly onto our opinions of what is right and what is wrong, good and bad, beautiful and ugly can be a form of resistance in our minds to feel the (usually uncomfortable) emotions hidden underneath that. As we militantly support one side or the other, our vital energy is depleted and the seemingly benign polarities become a source of suffering.
A few days ago, one of my clients asked me a beautiful and difficult question how to move beyond “Kind vs Cruel”? Kind vs Cruel seems so difficult to soften into. Some events are so clearly cruel that it seems we can’t ignore them, we can’t drop this battle. Can you relate? I sure can.
But it is not about ignoring anything, it is not about not acting and it is not about getting rid of the polarity either. It is about getting past our ideas, allowing our minds to open and inquiring more deeply.
If our mind is open rather than engaged in this battle, we can ask what we mean by “cruel”, as this is where the tension is. My inner definition of “cruel” had to do with doing harm to another in an insensitive way. It may be something different for you — the meaning of words is not fixed and objective. They are charged with our conditioning, our emotions and inherited ideas.
Then, if we believe that the polarity is “our there” in the world, we can examine this idea too. Does “cruel” exist within me? Very much so. If I followed my own definition of “cruel”, I could see that on purpose or not, I’m often cruel — it’s not just “out there”. I can be cruel with words or lack of words, cruel with actions or lack of actions. I also discovered that outward cruelty is not even close to how cruel I can be to myself. At this point, there is already a sense of “sobering up”, of loosening of the notions of good and bad, victim and perpetrator. There is a recognition that what I believed may or may not be the final truth.
Once we have access to the “cruel” within us, we can explore directly the energy that fuels it. In this particular inquiry, we discovered that it was usually propelled by feelings of righteousness and anger. Then there is a possibility to open to feel this anger without expressing or suppressing it — as pure energy. When we experience emotions in this pure way, without a story, we discover that they move through us and a deeper layer is revealed.
Deeper than the surface level anger, we discovered pain and helplessness. Ironically, what propelled the so-called “cruel” was a very innocent feeling that wanted to be met. Then, we have a beautiful opportunity to open and meet what is truly going on within us. In this brave opening, we reclaim a tender and vulnerable part of us that we have disowned. There is such healing, such self-compassion in this simple decision.
Surprisingly, underneath the “Cruel” side of the polarity appears Kindness itself, deep self-compassion and ultimately, compassion for the cruelty “out there” in the world. The polarity can finally soften and the energy that was spent fuelling the polarity can be spent in right action or right inaction — whatever the present situation requires. Such action or restraint comes out of love and compassion, not out of anger or unprocessed remnants of past experiences. We are free to act in the moment as the moment calls for, rather than react based on past woundings and conditioning.
What polarity depletes your precious life force and no longer serves you? What does you mind naturally drift towards? I would love to investigate with you. This is an invitation to see through the ways, in which we make ourselves suffer and choose differently. We do have a choice, I promise that much — the rest is a question of willingness to be true.
