Information is defined as facts provided or learned about something or someone.  Affirmation is the confirmation of a truth or validity of a prior judgment.  How many times when you believe you are getting information are you actually getting an affirmation for something you already believe?  How open are you to a totally new viewpoint?  How open are you to shifting your paradigm?

Dogma is About Control

One of the lessons that I have learned is that dogma and our staunch belief that what we have been conditioned to believe is “THE” right way only serves to keep us from growing and expanding.  Dogma is  a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.  It serves as the primary basis of an ideology, nationalism or belief system and it cannot be changed or discarded without affecting the very system’s paradigm.  Dogma establishes rules.  Rules are designed to control circumstances.  Truth is NEVER about control.  If you must control someone or something then it is about fear.  Truth sets us free….we all know that.  Oppressive regimes have always used control of the flow of information to keep people in line.  China censors the internet.  Both Syria and Turkey have recently suspended internet access as well.  Information is never a threat except to those who seek to control.  That’s why I am disturbed by recent moves by the FCC to replace ‘net neutrality’ with fast and, in their words, ‘faster’ internet services.  This basically opens up a system that allows large organizations with deep pockets to monopolize content and puts the squeeze on the little guy – who might just have some powerful insights to share.  We are all conscious beings able to establish for ourselves what feels right, what feels true.

The Earth is Flat

Consensus is a powerful force but one that isn’t always to our benefit.  At one point in human history the Earth was widely regarded as flat.  Scientists who differed from this view were considered quacks.  Bloodletting was commonplace in medical treatments until the 1800s.  In the 1830s France imported 40 million leeches for medical use!  Just because it is conventional wisdom, doesn’t mean it is right, it only means enough people have come to accept this dogma as true.  “Speak your truth” is a common expression in the holistically-minded community.  At first this made no sense to me.  How can I have a truth different than that person over there?  Isn’t truth universal?  Truth is simply what we believe to be true.  Nothing more and nothing less.  If you approach your life seeking information and not affirmation you open yourself to infinite possibility.

I have believed many different things in my life.  Some of them I continue to believe and some I have long since dismissed, but I strive to be an open vessel, a sponge, waiting for the opportunity for new information to come my way, to test it with my intuition.   When I am open, when I am willing to set aside any rigidity with which I believe something,  I gain profound insights.  I receive powerful intuitive messages now that I follow because if I don’t the Universe has a way of continually bringing the same scenario around again until I finally do pay attention.  There is room for more than one viewpoint.

I was raised Catholic.  In fact, my dad served as parish council president for several years and was a lay minister.  My mother was a Eucharistic minister, as was my sister Sue.  I went to church every week growing up – although begrudgingly.  I was known as a bit of a nightmare in church.  I would bother with lady’s hats in front of me or I would sprawl out on the pew.  In high school I attended the teen mass, although I often went to Stewarts for ice cream instead…sorry Mom!  I still feel that I was one of the few in my college that did not attend mass regularly at Holy Cross.  I went maybe 6 times (usually for special occasions) while I was there.  I never saw this as making me deficient because I felt that organized religions sure had a lot of rules!  Being gay is a sin, eating meat on Friday is a sin, not attending mass is a sin, if you divorce you can’t get married in the Catholic Church again etc…  All organized religions have established similar rules that if followed leads to salvation.  Yet we often forget that many of the most brutal conflicts in human history and even what is occurring right now in Nigeria is a direct result of one group’s belief that there way is right and the other is wrong.

Political views are the same.  We align ourselves, usually dependent on our socio-economic status and geography, to political ideologies.  We are right.  They are wrong.  The Democrats want to destroy the free market economy.  The Republicans don’t care about the plight of the poor.  The same is true for healthcare.  There are very clearly 2 camps:  Conventional and Holistic.  Conventional care focuses on pharmaceutical drugs and technological advances and holistic care on nature to heal.  The lessons of our parents, teachers, priests and coaches certainly shape us but they don’t have to define us.

What I have discovered is that whatever we believe is what is true for us.  But we are galloping through life like race horses with blinders on.  We see what separates us from one another much more than what unites us.  Can you imagine as a 6 year old that you are given a set of tenets to follow that will be your truths for the rest of your life with no expansion?  As a 6 year old I thought summertime catching caterpillars and frogs and playing Superfriends  (I was the only girl in a boy’s neighborhood so I got to be Wonder Woman) was just about the pinnacle of existence, and at that time it really was!  But I am so glad I didn’t stop growing!  Life is about growth.  The lessons of our parents, teachers, priests and coaches certainly shape us but they don’t have to define us.  In our desire to make sense of it all, we reach a point in adulthood where many of us turn off the valve of knowledge and declare “I’m full”.  We spend the rest of our lives justifying our beliefs.  We do this by deciding which media outlet is accurate, which messages and causes we will support and even which friends we choose to be with.

ESPN Wisdom

I am blessed that my husband Mike and I often have deep conversations on the greater meaning of life.  We are both on journeys of self-discovery and growth and we find that the Universe brings us opportunities to engage, listen and learn from each other and (really everyone and every encounter we have) day in and day out.  Mike’s favorite ESPN radio show is The Herd with Colin Cowherd.  Often he has me listen to a part of the podcasts.  I have virtually zero interest in sports other than to find a way to connect with Mike and my 11 year old son but I must admit that Colin Cowherd is a very insightful guy.  In fact I credit him with the inspiration for this blog title.  On one show he was discussing the fact that to be on radio you pretty much need to choose an extreme.  You can be a bleeding-heart liberal, a staunch conservative, a shock jock or a sports guy.  We don’t really leave any room in the middle for discussing topics without an agenda.  We often wait in a conversation for our turn to talk, for our turn to make our point, rather than really hearing what the other person is saying.  We rarely go into a conversation willing to change our views about it.  We go into most situations looking to affirm our already ingrained dogma.  Many of us are afraid to upset others by speaking what is true for us but in an advanced society we are all entitled to believe exactly what we want and not to be shouted down or ridiculed.  We live in a world of affirmation-seekers, continuously striving to reinforce the walls that we have put up in our lives that we believe protect us….but from what?   Liberals watch MSNBC and conservatives watch Fox News.  Both are forwarding an agenda.  This is not news.  This is opinion disguised as news.  What’s the point?  We will never grow if we only seek sources that reinforce our viewpoints.  But if we began each day with the expectation that we would learn something new, as a global society our rate of conscious expansion would skyrocket.

Live Your Life Like a Sponge, Allow Information in and then Filter Out

My beliefs are continually evolving.  I will never know it all and neither will you.  I certainly believe in holistic healing as I have seen it happen and it makes sense to me but I do not shut off the valve to conventional medicine.  I have told my oncologist repeatedly that if he finds a cure for what I have, hook me up, but until then please stop pushing me to accept a protocol that simply doesn’t work and would leave my body exponentially weaker.  I believe it can be very difficult to release your dogma and be open to other possibilities when you have built your career around it.  In those cases, challenges to dogma can feel downright threatening.  Outside of the medical field I see violence and fear all the time when people’s dogmas are challenged.  This I don’t understand.  How can information be a threat?

I believe fervently that everything that happens in the body first begins with thoughts and feelings.  I believe that I don’t know everything there is to know about this and that I likely never will.  I believe that we are powerful creators in our lives.  These are all intuitive insights that occurred to me after my diagnosis.  This is my truth but I am open to seeing other sides and I respect those who differ from me.  I used to think part of my mission was to convince people to see the world the way that I did but now I know I am here to shine my own light.  If you like it, if it illuminates your path in some way that’s great!  If it doesn’t, that’s great too.

Live each day of your life as a sponge waiting to be filled with new ideas.  We are all here to expand and grow so do yourself a favor and get out of your own way.  Leave your dogma behind and observe the conflicts that you experience from another perspective.  Challenge yourself to truly see the other side of the coin.  If you are a Republican get your news from MSNBC and if you are a Democrat give Fox news a try.  Don’t do this expecting to be converted but do it instead to open yourself up to understanding why those on the other side of the issue feel as strongly as they do about the cause.  We are in a time of tremendous growth and change on this planet.  Change is really uncomfortable!  It’s so much easier to continue on the path we have laid for ourselves early on but as Robert Frost so beautifully wrote:  “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”  Don’t cross your arms and close yourself off.  Take off the race blinders.  Live your life with arms wide open, with your eyes wide open and be prepared to be transformed because change is the only constant.