Learning how to shift into neutral is a critical skill. Even more so in these über polarizing times.
There is a negative polarity. It is real. These are emotional states such as anger, vindictiveness, condescension, disdain, hate, despair, any type of fear (from anxiety to absolute terror), guilt, shame, and even indifference towards others.
The positive polarity includes hope, acceptance, mercy, harmony, willingness, reason, and wisdom. And it becomes even more positive as we move towards joy, peace, love, and unconditional love.
The line between the negative polarity — which uses force to try to control others and uses coercion to get everyone else to agree (or beware!) — is courage, integrity and neutrality.
If you want to move into the positive polarity, it is near impossible to make that leap from the lower negative states. (See this link for more on vibrational frequencies and for the Map of Consciousness.)
Think of it as a ladder. First you must work your way up to courage and the ability to ‘shift into neutral’. And it does take effort to lift yourself up out of the darkness and reach for more light. It takes even more effort and training to be able to maintain the higher states around negative people.
You experience yourself through communication with others.
What do you want to experience more of?… Your anger? Or your kindness?
Emotions are addictive. They literally create chemical superhighways as strong as the drugs and alcohol that we ingest. So we tend to default to old patterns. We have to break the old emotional habits to establish new pathways.
We must learn how to break the connections, abandon the old highways, and move onward, forward, upward.
Your experience is not ‘reality’. Every day different people experience the same things differently. Your experience is based on your perspective. It is based on your programming. It is based on the ‘stance’ you take.
What made the Dalai Llama and Charles Manson have such different life experiences?
Where they were coming from, their inner stance, their perspectives.
From a neutral state you can learn to ALLOW, REFLECT, ACT.
This is in opposition to just reacting, which is what most people do most of the time.
Neutral does not react.
First you allow what is happening to occur. Then you reflect on it. Then you choose to act (or not).
This requires self awareness (the ability of our Self to observe our self) and the ability to be at least neutral. (Even better is neutral with a leaning towards the positive. But at the beginning, just aim for neutral.)
And neutral does not mean shut down or checked out or superior to others. It is fully present, on an equal playing ground with all other beings, in balance within ourselves.
I feel it as an internal shift, like driving a car, not braking, or accelerating, zero resistance, zero agenda, no judgement, just observing and internally resting in neutral.
Most of the time we actually react before thought even happens. Just a split second, but this has been shown repeatedly in martial arts and scientific studies. And this is why just dealing with thinking often isn’t enough.
We must clear the subconscious and unconscious layers, which are running patterns in the background of our lives. Then we can become able to stand in our own clear center and deal with anything and anyone from a grounded, clear, kind and compassionate position.
Ideas come and go, but who we are in our essence doesn’t change. And that is true for every single one of us.
The only way to heal ourselves and relationships (and thus the world) is to drop judgement, heal what causes fear, and to be available to each other.
And a critical skill is to learn how to shift into neutral.
‘We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.’ – Thomas Jefferson
Check out the Resources for Self-Help page for books, videos and other ways to help yourself.
Consider reading Getting Past Your Past and explore EMDR therapy if you have trouble getting over emotional triggers.
Contact me with questions or to get started with affordable therapy that can help you reset your emotional energy struggles and discover your own inner neutral state.
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Emily Marshall is an Intuitive Psychotherapist who specializes in helping clients transform and release negative emotional energy and re-discover their True Selves. Online and in-person sessions in Boulder, CO. Rates are ‘Pay From the Heart‘.
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