Live Your Greys

We are all born with an infinite number of different qualities or energies within us- different archetypes, sub-personalities, or selves within us. In a way, it's as if there are many different characters living inside of us, each with its own task and purpose.

I met with this idea at 15 when I wanted to reassure everyone that having a multitude of selves is only but normal and went to name my personal blog, Our Alter Ego.

From the time we are born, we begin to experiment with the different selves we possess. However, being completely dependent on our caretakers and parents and society at large, we are extremely sensitive to their reactions to us.

If we express a version of ourselves that invokes approval and positive attention, we highlight that quality since birth. If we behave in a version that draws disapproval, criticism or punishment, we discontinue it, (unless rebellion gives attention you choose to enjoy.)

In this way, not only do we get a sense of the accepted selves and the rejected selves, but we also are pushed to live in a world of dual polarity- of black or white. This, when the truth is that the world is a spectrum, and a spectrum of greys it's meant to be- for achieving a balance, evolving towards the yin and yang is that constitutes of our growth and development into the grandest version that we can possibly ever envision of ourselves.

For example, many of us have been taught that it is virtuous and admirable to give to others; a person who gives a lot is a good person. Living in a plane of duality as we have been taught since birth, therefore, taking is thought to be selfish; a person who takes a lot for himself might be judged as less worthy than a giving person.

Someone else from a different upbringing or value system might think of this in an opposite way. He might admire a person who knows how to take a lot for himself and think of that person as smart and successful whilst looking down on someone who is less aggressive and more giving as being foolish and easily taken advantage of.

Either way, one polarity is honored while the opposite is devalued.

In reality, however, both giving and taking/receiving are equally important and valuable. If we give too much and aren't able to take or receive equally, we become depleted and resentful. Likewise, if we take too much, and are unable to give, we lose the satisfaction of making a contribution and incur the resentment of others. The analogy in terms of colors is that too much white and too much black will never be a soothing answer to our state of beingness. Grey stays the answer. If we can give and receive more or less in balance, we experience a healthy sense of beingness.

And that's the paradox, we believe that in order to experience wholeness, we need to be entirely white or black. But the truth is that wholeness lies in the balance, in the integration of both sides of every polarity, the white and black: the grey area.

Yet, most of us, unfortunately, are not accustomed to thinking in this way. We have been taught to think in a linear, exclusive fashion- good and bad, right and wrong.

And that is perhaps why the grey area gets us so uncomfortable, that is perhaps why we feel that it is too much effort to live in that area, or at least to even work towards it and invest into ourselves for our own growth and well-being.

Still, the fruits in the grey garden are so beautiful that you'll always notice the two extremities pull on the other. What's the point of resisting something that is innate in us? What's the point of resisting the various selves, sub-personalities, archetypes that reside deep within us? What you resist, persists anyway.

The first step is always the hardest, but once you set foot on that path, it'll become a child's game. We don't want to be out of touch with a very important part of our human experience, do we?

If you say that the grey zone is hard to work towards (to be assertive, yet soft at the same time, to be calm yet active at the same time etc) then remember one line: Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.

With this, I send you light and love. Until you balance and find your greys, May you find peace after the storm.

A 33 minutes write, I'm proud! :D