The Price of Right and Wrong

We live in a world of right and wrong. When we are confronted with a person or object or situation, we immediately assign it a category and rank and decide whether or not it is acceptable in our world. We then dig our heels in, defending our beliefs, at times to the point of death. All conflict that exists in our world is the result of such thinking.

Who determines right and wrong? God? Society? Some internal knowledge of truth? My personal belief is that societies create the concepts of right and wrong. The proof is how the definitions of right and wrong have changed throughout history. For example, today in conservative Christian America, it is definitely a sin the sleep with anyone other than your spouse. However, there were ancient cultures where sex was considered a sacred act, and it was practiced with various partners in religious settings. The rules change over time because they are not based on any one standard.

How in the world can we achieve peace and harmony when we have two warring sides? Someday everyone will magically see "the truth" and they will naturally be drawn to what is "right"? It hasn't happened in thousands of years of recorded human history. Why should it happen now? Because God is on our side? I've got news for you. God doesn't choose sides!


Time to adopt another paradigm. Time to look past the labels we place on everything in our world and see things for the perfection they truly are. When all is acceptance instead of fear, the energies that make up who we are and our Universe are allowed to flow freely without hindrance. It is then we can truly have peace and harmony. Thinking in terms of right and wrong, by its very nature, can only lead to destruction. It's a price I am not willing to pay. Are you?

And I Weep

There are days when
I look at the world
And all I can do
Is weep.

So much pain.
So much anger.
So much judgment.
So much ignorance.

People live their lives
Believing
What they have been taught
Is truth.

Truth is not
"Out there".
Truth resides
Within.

So we live in a world of pain
And anger,
Judgment
And Ignorance.

We live in a world
Separated from itself
And we do it
By choice.

And I weep
For I mourn that which
Could be
But is not chosen.

~Cindy Shippy Evans

Glasses: A Parable

There was once a man who wore glasses so thick that, without them, the world looked monstrous and horrible. It hadn't always been that way. When he was very small, he didn't need glasses at all to see the world perfectly. Life was always beautiful with his crystal clear vision.

Then one day, someone pointed to something in the distance, and the boy realized he could not see it. Try as he might, those objects pointed out to him by others were blurry and misshapen. He could not perceive what others saw! He must be having vision problems! His mother took him to an eye specialist, who indeed pronounced him to have less than perfect sight. A pair of glasses was prescribed for him, and they corrected his vision...for a while.

Gradually over time, the distortions came on so strong he finally needed the strongest prescription possible, and even that didn't seem to help anymore. Indeed, his current eye doctor had recently told him he could not do anything else for him. If his eyesight continued to get worse, he would be blind.

It was in this state of near helplessness that the man heard about a new doctor who had just come to town--a miracle worker some were calling him! He was helping people all over town to see better. Some of them had even been pronounced blind by their other local eye doctors. He made an appointment to see this new vision expert.

The doctor checked the man's eyes, asked him to read the eye chart with and without the glasses on and asked him the usual questions. With some trepidation, the man asked, "So doc, is there anything you can do to help my sight?" The doctor's enthusiastic reply was, "Absolutely!" Without further ado, the doctor walked over to his new patient, snatched the eyeglasses off of his face, and wildly threw the glasses on the floor, breaking them into hundreds of tiny pieces.

"What are you doing?" the man cried! "I am almost blind with those glasses on, and now you have broken them into a million pieces! However will I see? However will I even take care of myself?"

The doctor looked at him, smiled, and with a very gentle tone said, "Your sight needs a rest. Go home, relax, and allow your vision to return to you without the glasses."

The man was furious! "That's all you're going to do? I paid hundreds of dollars to you in the hope that you would restore my vision and all you do is break my glasses? How will that help?"

"Make another appointment with my receptionist in one month's time. In the meantime, go home, rest, and allow yourself to see your world without the benefit of your glasses. I assure you, the world will look very different when you return."

The man, still clearly angry, walked out of the examination room, but did make a new appointment with the receptionist. As he was the last patient of the day, she offered to drive him home and patiently saw him to his door.

The man's neighbors, hearing about his fiasco at the doctor's office, immediately came to his aid with offers of food and help with laundry and errands. He smiled at the thought there were so many people out there who cared for him, and he quickly got over his anger.

The next morning when he awoke, the man realized something. Colors he had not noticed before were appearing in the room--the black rim of the clock, the red of the curtains, the yellow of the sunshine that peeped through his window. He could not see them clearly, but it was enough for the man to know the colors were there. He continued to relax, not pushing himself, but occasionally opening his eyes to see what else he might perceive.

Over the course of the next month, others things began appearing to him as well. He could now distinguish softer, more subtle colors. He also began to see distinct outlines of furniture and other objects in his home. Every day, he could recognize more and more until he was finally at the place he could do everything that needed to be done to take care of himself. He was amazed at the difference one month without his glasses had made!   He began to look forward to his follow up appointment to the eye doctor.

As the man walked into the doctor's office the next day, the smile on the doctor's face told the man the doctor knew of his progress. The doctor checked his eyes once again and had him read the eye chart, this time read almost perfectly. The doctor told the man he was pleased with his progress and would require no more visits.

The man, filled with a new awe and respect for the doctor he had been so upset with one month before, asked the doctor a simple question. "How did you know all I needed to do was to get rid of the glasses?"

"It's simple, really," the doctor replied. "Most of us live our entire lives looking through objects created by others which distort our true vision. We become so dependent on this view of the world we can no longer tell the difference between what is real and what is not. In order to see clearly, all we need to do is remove the distortion."

"I could have thrown away my glasses years ago! Are you telling me the power to fix my sight was within my grasp all this time?"

"Of course. The problem is, we often rely so much on the opinions of others we feel the need to ask for help in order to make the leap. The power to see and heal has always been yours. You were just afraid to use it."

And with that, the man walked out of the doctor's office a new creation--full of hope and the understanding that everything he needed to see was already inside of him.