Bruce Muzik’s Ted Talk got to me. What’s your deepest, darkest fear…. the thing you desperately don’t want anyone to discover? Mine, if I’m honest, is this: I’m terribly, secretly, afraid that I’ll be discovered to be useless. I’m afraid that it’ll be found out that everything I hold dear, that I strive to share with others, that I believe to be priceless is, in fact, of no value at all. To anyone. Because it’s all wrong …..
Since admitting this fear out loud about a week ago it’s been swirling relentlessly in my mind. How do I cope with this? How can I make sense of it in a way that diminishes it’s hold, integrates it, and gives me freedom to move forward? How does it serve me?
The last of those questions is my go-to recourse. It immediately brings me up to my pre-frontal cortex and sets my intelligence on a quest that inevitably opens my eyes, informs my experience and, with persistence, reveals an under-lying order that seemed previously inaccessible.
This weekend, in the middle of presenting an intense relationship workshop, 2 thoughts occurred to me about the phenomenon of being wrong. The first thought was this: everything in the known universe has an opposite. Every particle has an anti-particle, every thought has an anti-thought and every belief has an anti-belief. Stephen Hawking wrote: “We now know that every particle has an antiparticle, with which it can annihilate. There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you meet your antiself, don’t shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.”
The second thought: being wrong, or rather, realizing that you are wrong, is vital to making you whole.
In the process that I facilitate, meeting the anti-story of the story you’ve been telling (that has thus been affecting your physiology and all your relationships) …is exactly what we deliberately do, for the very purpose of annihilating the entire story and setting you free….
The process always involves a profound moment of realizing that you’ve been wrong …which is immediately followed by gratitude, integration and then, evolution.
Realizing the rightness, indeed the profoundly beautiful necessity, of being wrong, has given me a whole new perspective on my fear. It ‘clicked’ for me that no matter what I believe so sincerely to be right, has to be wrong, from the perspective of it’s anti-particle. Finding my antiparticle ie discovering my ‘wrongness’ is exactly what will further my journey into knowing, loving and being authentically – wholly – myself …..
It’s a challenging idea. Can I, will I, move forward while holding this paradox …. ?
My answer is an unequivocal ‘yes’.
Why? Because loving myself – being wholly myself – is the most meaningful thing to me.
How about you?
“And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Marianne Williamson