These are all aspects of communication, and define our being.
I was woken last week by van lights in the yard below at two in morning, and proceeded to explain them to myself as being the two girls who live in a caravan down there having a party. I excused myself from getting involved by deciding that neighbours more affected would intervene, and drifted off to sleep, thinking that they'd really blown it this time. At four in the morning, a chainsaw started up, and I elaborated my narrative by convincing myself that some guest had been sent out for wood for the stove, and sought to impress his hosts by using a chainsaw. I even started to feel compassion for the girls, imagine them being evicted for this outrage on other peoples sleep, and their homelessness.
When I went down in the daylight, a different tale emerged: of the strong wind blowing high voltage cables against a tree above their caravan, causing sparks and the threat of electrocution, of them being taken in by a kind neighbour, of fire engines attending, and then a team of tree climbers to remove the offending branches.
I had concocted a totally false reality, based on concern but also negative, judgemental attitudes towards the girls and their lifestyle.
I found this a totally refreshing reminder of how the substance of much of our perception is based on confirming a personal or group bias. A closed and self rewarding mindset. I felt both humbled, but also excited to witness how much my perception is founded on projection. Like I'd tracked down a predator on my truth.
There are some people whose hearts are open, who suppress or hold no judgement. Others who adopt judgement with regret. Others who enter a feeding frenzy of communal moral scorn, some who forever look for an opportunity to leak out some of their own, old pain, or sense of not being recognised.
The biblical teaching about casting the first stone occurs to me.
I was the butt of a communal prejudice last year. At the time I called it a Chinese Witch-hunt, as the local community council fed each other more and more inflated rumours of what "that hippie on the hill was doing". It was so wide of the mark, I felt too aghast and wounded to try to engage with them, especially as none of them ever came up to see for themselves. It reminded me of a story I'd heard of how a friend of mine, who was being hounded by the National Park for a string of planning misdemeanours, had in recounting this to a Welsh neighbour, been met with a strange look and the question- "you don't actually Talk to them do you?". I came to see this as feeling free NOT to engage with the ravings of a mad aunt, of not feeding a neurosis by acknowledging its content.
Which is where Clarity comes in.
I have felt for years a distinction between Tribal and Personal morality. Tribal morality is consensual- EVERYBODY does that! As if that justified a behaviour. The righteousness of Church groups does not escape this brush. Personal morality is intuitive,it just KNOWS at some deep level, the truth and rightness, or otherwise, of a matter.
Tribal morality becomes cloaked in law, and the definitions of the unlawful.
If you feel a disparity between an accepted group moral view and your own instincts, you have been offered a precious gift.
It is the opportunity to learn to express your deep truth, in its own terms. I have found that it's when my intentions have been dismissed or rejected, that I have sought to express their impulse with an undeniable clarity. To express it in terms of what it's not diminishes it. Your truth when expressed clearly is Gandalfian in its power.
Just as you plumb deep into and learn to express your truth, so you change the nature of our shared language. You give it back its potency and true meanings.
You manifest the reality of your heart.
