The Power of Neutrality

Our world today is highly polarized. Families and friendships are regularly torn apart because of opposing ideological beliefs. This country feels split down the middle, and everyone is friend or foe depending on one’s opinion around the myriad of social justice issues we find so polarizing – race, religion, abortion, gender identity, gun control, immigration, criminal justice reform, etc. You are on either end of the spectrum – right or left. And rules and laws are being enacted to bolster one side’s beliefs while leaving the other side enraged. Even something as simple as when to wear a mask can set off a powder keg of emotion. The middle ground has vanished. There is no longer a neutral place to rest in this country.

If we view society as the bigger picture, we can focus in on ourselves to see the same polarization being reflected within our own spiritual beings. Setting aside what is happening in the world around us, internally we are a bundle of hopes and fears based on the attachments that hold up our identity – our stuff, feelings, memories, beliefs. Each of us has our own set of rules and laws we feel we must adhere to and our own potentially polarizing relationship to things like personal style, parenting, family, food, alcohol, work, etc. Often, we forget that what is right for us, may not be right for others. We latch on to these self-identifying beliefs as if they were the only truth, which is not a neutral place.

Imagine a spectrum line with negativity on one side, positivity on the other, and a perfect neutral place right in the middle. Balance along the line happens in the middle, not the edges. Using light as an analogy, you must balance the light and the dark to be able to see anything. This is where neutrality finds its power. Neutrality takes away the charge and attachment so that you can rest with something, not how you want it to be or not to be, but simply how it is.

Renegotiating Internal Relationships

Many of us stepped on the spiritual path to encourage more of the positive – kindness and love - and release the negative – hatred and anger. Sometimes, however, we get stuck in pushing away the “bad” feelings rather than facing them. We also try to pull or hold onto the "good" feelings rather than appreciating them in the moment. We don’t understand why certain feelings keep coming back to haunt us or seem to elude us. What we fail to realize is that when we push something away or ignore it, we are relating to the feeling with fear, which keeps it stuck there. In the same way, when we try to hold tightly to a feeling that we like, we are relating to it with a desperate hope that shifts the original feeling to something more neurotic. However, if we stop engaging with our hopes and fears around our feelings and begin to relate to them in a more direct way, then the feeling has the freedom to leave or stay. We shift our way of relating by bringing something charged into a more neutral space. We’ve renegotiated our internal relationship with our feelings and are now free to have things work out differently for us.

Let's pretend that you make an agreement with another person to give them a full meal a day. Every day, they come at the same time and you give them the same meal. Then, one day, you look around and realize you are giving all your food to the person at the door and that you are left with crumbs. You think, maybe I should start treating myself better and keep some of this food for myself. So you start splitting the meal 50/50. However, the person at the door reminds you this wasn’t part of the original agreement. But rather than renegotiate the relationship and risk confrontation, you just stop opening the door. You eat everything yourself, slightly panicked and not really enjoying it while the person bangs on the door demanding the food you promised them. Ignoring them does not make them go away.

You’ve got to renegotiate any internal relationship within yourself that is holding you back, no matter how painful, scary, or upsetting it may be. Finding the bravery to face these fears is essential to releasing attachments of the negative AND the positive. By renegotiating agreements, you let go of attachments. By letting go of attachments, you bring your life into a more neutral, balanced place. Then you have the opportunity to see the world more clearly and engage more authentically.

So why would I want to let go of the positive?

Using the analogy of light, we can explore this idea more clearly. Without light we cannot see because everything around us remains in complete darkness. However, we also cannot see with too much light. We go blind in either extreme. Too much of either light (the positive) or dark (the negative) prevents you from seeing the world clearly.

In between the extremes, where light and dark play, every object has a shadow. Shadows help create dimension and definition for an object. However, if there are too many shadows, the mind mistakes a rope in the corner for a snake and panics. If there aren’t enough shadows, you may walk into a glass door. Somewhere in the middle, you can see things clearly without the drama of too much or too little light and dark. Everything is illuminated properly, and you can see things for exactly what they are.

If we use the idea of a spectrum, with 10 being the blinding light of the positive on one end and –10 being total darkness of the negative on the other end, we can place zero as a perfect spot of neutrality right in the middle. To live at zero is incredibly difficult so we want to aim for a life in the middle of the spectrum, rather than the poles. In the middle – I'd say between 3 and –3 is a safe place to live while accounting for personal preferences, random encounters, and the subtle beauty of life experiences. There will always be things that happen that send us toward the poles (like the death of a loved one, or the birth of a child), but remembering to engage with those experiences more along the middle of the spectrum will help us live more in balance.

How do I engage more with neutrality?

If everything in our world is charged with positive or negative – we love that lamp, but we hate that car – we can renegotiate our internal relationship with the object to find another way to feel about it. Most often, our attachment to objects are actually our attachment to the memories we associate with them.

If we look at the lamp that we love, it is really just a lamp. But let’s say you bought it for your first apartment, so it always makes you feel like you are home. It is your emotional connection to the lamp that brings about the positive feelings, not the lamp itself.

You may feel fine keeping the memory associated with the lamp, but you want to bring it more toward neutral by understanding at the end of the day it is just a lamp. If it breaks, are you going to become hysterical, lash out and become depressed because such an important representation of your identity is now ruined? If so, then this reaction is the expression of your over-identified attachment to that object. If you renegotiate your relationship to rest in a more neutral/positive place toward the lamp, you are able to feel some disappointment when it is broken, recognize that you still keep the memory and feelings within you and let the object go.

Going back to the spectrum, when we over-identify with the lamp itself, we are at about a 6 on the spectrum. Its loss upsets us in a deep way because we feel a part of ourselves has been lost. But if we maintain that the object is just what it is, a memory and a lamp and when one goes away, the other remains, then we renegotiate our relationship and begin to rest at about a 2.

Taking the example of the car we hate, we find that there is a traumatic memory associated with our feeling for the car. Let’s say your ex drove a car like that and one time they threatened to drive you both off an overpass when you were having a fight. Driving around town, whenever you see that type of car you are reminded of your ex and don't trust anyone who drives a car like that. However, the car is just a car. The memory associated with the car is what you hate, and by tacking it onto an object in daily life you keep that disturbing memory around you until you decide to renegotiate your internal relationship.

Releasing the association of the car with the memory frees us from pre-judging others and being frequently reminded of the traumatic incident. If on the spectrum we were at a -8 and begin to neutralize our association with the type of car, we can slide our attachment to the car down to a -3 just by renegotiating our relationship with the memory and associating the pain with the actual situation and not the car itself. You may still genuinely not like that car, but this falls under the realm of preference. You may still have unresolved anger toward your ex, but you are free from carrying their memory with you every time you drive.

Exercise for Moving Toward Neutral

1. Find a personal object that you feel something for – positive or negative. Preferably nothing with a screen.

2. Hold it in your hand or sit looking at it. Become curious about it.

3. Notice how you feel about it – positive or negative or maybe a little of both

4. Are there any memories associated with it? How do you feel about those memories?

5. Are there any people associated with it? How do you feel about those people?

6. Ask yourself where on the neutrality spectrum this object and associated feeling falls.

7. Wherever it falls, we are going to try and bring it more to neutral. Close your eyes and really feel the feeling(s) that have come up.

8. If you are working with a memory, reimagine the scene and remove or replace the object. For example, if someone gave you the object as a heart-felt gift, imagine, rather than the object, they gave you a ball made of light and love. Or, in the car situation above, you can reimagine that the traumatic event happened in a different car. The memory still happened, just independent of the object. (This is also helpful when letting go of family heirlooms you keep out of guilt!)

9. If you are working with a person or just a feeling tied to the object, but no memory, you can imagine cutting the attachments to the object as if cutting cords that bind the person/feeling to the object. Let the person/feeling float away, leaving just the object.

10. When ready, notice where on the neutrality spectrum the object is now.

Be patient. It may take several tries to get the hang of this or it may be a simple shift for you. If the memory or feeling is still very charged, try the additional steps below.

Taking it further:

1. Once you feel confident with objects, you may want to find a belief that you have about the world or yourself that you would like to renegotiate your relationship with. It could be as simple as feeling that you are bad at math, or as profound as “I don’t deserve real love”. It is best when starting out to choose something simple.

2. Close your eyes and breathe, holding the belief in your mind's eye. Become curious about it.

3. Does the belief live somewhere in your body?

4. Is the belief adopted from an outside source like a parent, friend, or society?

5. Does it have a color or shape to it?

6. Where on the neutrality spectrum does it fall?

7. Take deep breaths. With each inhale let the feeling become larger. With each exhale, let some of the charge go. Imagining the charge as a bright color can be helpful. It may start out bright red and over several breaths the color may lighten as it goes more to neutral so that the red fades to pink and then to blush. Neutral would be a glowing clear white light.

8. When ready, notice where on the neutrality spectrum the belief is now.

Remember that relaxing your attachment to something allows you to more easily let something go.

Go let go!