Have you found yourself caught in one of these conversations lately?

"You're wrong."

"No, you're wrong."

"You're icky."

"No, you're wrong, AND you're icky."

In case you haven't noticed (and somehow, I'm sure you have,) the energies of polarization are alive and well on the planet these days.

What is polarization? It's when you feel compelled to choose one "side" or another, seeing your "side" as right, pure, infallible, etc. and holding the unshakable view that the other guy's "side" is wrong, evil, irresponsible, immature, unenlightened, etc.

This stuff always kicks up during a Presidential election year, and this fall, it's grown especially heated. A few weeks ago I was at the gym working out (I get there about once in a blue moon.) Two beefy-looking guys with short haircuts and gruff demeanors were having a conversation about people they clearly felt were "the other side."

The highlight of their conversation was when they starting spewing about "Those liberal @$%suckers. They want to ruin this country."

I felt like walking up to them and saying, "Excuse me, I'm standing right next to you. I'm one of those liberal #$%suckers you are mentioning. I'm not sure where you get your information, but contrary to your rigidly held viewpoint, not all liberal @#$%suckers want to ruin this country. In fact, they are deeply impassioned about the same things you care about - the peace and well-being of humanity and this planet. They just have different ideas about how to make that happen."

But I didn't because, at the heart of it, I'm not a liberal or a conservative, a "patriot" or a "non-patriot," a Democrat or a Republican, an apple or an orange, a dog or a cat. I'm just, well, me.

Whenever we start identifying ourselves through narrowly-defined societal templates, we wind up dehumanizing each other. We get all caught up in hateful thoughts, projecting our ire at someone we believe to be opposite to us, the antithesis of us. By objectifying the "other" as something wrong or bad, all manner of spiritual disease manifests. Your whole life becomes an exercise in having to defend your viewpoint, to continually engage in useless debate, and to maintain the "either/or" mindset. "You're either with me, or you're against me. There's no way I will reach across this barrier that I've erected and treat you like a fellow human being again. I declare you less than human and undeserving of my respect."

Have none of us managed to do any growing since kindergarten? I remember having a lot of fun engaging in that kind of "debate" (if you can call it debate) when I was about five years' old.

"You have cooties."

"No, you have cooties."

"Stop pulling my hair!"

"I will when you stop having cooties!"

By six I had, thankfully, outgrown it and developed more of an interest in whacking my enemies off of the four-square court. Okay, so maybe I was still obsessed with "getting" my opponents, but at least I took out my aggression in a relatively healthy way. I focused my energies on spiking my foes out of the fourth square so I could advance to their spot and assume control of the court. I was no longer wasting energy trying to get them to agree with me. I had figured out that that was just a waste of time. Instead, I clobbered them senseless out on the playground. (Yeah, I know. Doesn't sound much more evolved than the kindergarten stage, does it?)

Over the past week or so I've realized that I can't DO polarization anymore. I thought I had moved beyond it in many ways, but I only recently realized how caught up in it I had become. People in the metaphysical and holistic health communities are like every other community. They can be immersed in drama and extremes just like political groups. Usually, there are two main "factions." There are "white lighters" who believe that a positive attitude is all that is required. Meanwhile, they let nasty people stomp all over them and work hard at "forgiveness" instead of taking a justified smack once in a while at the jerks who have hurt them.

Then there are "spiritual warriors" who have identified something or someone as the enemy and have vowed to engage in battle until the military industrial complex, the evil reptilian ET's, the Republicans, the neo-Nazis, the FDA, the Federal Reserve, the Rothschilds, and/or the practitioners of black sorcery are out of business once and for all. If you want to earn your badge as a spiritual warrior, you have to agree to a experience a certain amount of suffering, sabotage, and bad "luck." Your ascent through the ranks of spiritual warriorhood directly corresponds to how much pain you have been through while being a part of such an important "cause."

I'm finding that each of these extremes can suck you in. Before you know it, your whole life is about denying that evil exists (the white lighter approach.) That one doesn't work too well. The minute you try to convince yourself that evil doesn't exist, this dual reality we live in reminds you of its essence, and somebody or something "bad" shows up in your life to remind you of the contrasting energies of this dimension. So positive thinking is good, but denying that the energy of resistance exists is just plain dumb. You are always going to encounter resistance when you try to assert a certain force or essence (in this case, being positive) into your life. It's part of the adventure!

Or, if you're of the "spiritual warrior" ilk, you tend to create one scenario after another that polarizes you against others. People at most metaphysical chat forums these days are absolutely obsessed with the idea that the government expends huge amounts of money trying to break up sincere groups of spiritual seekers because they just might stumble upon some powerful mind over matter secrets and the government has a vested interest in maintaining control over the masses. So spiritually sovereign miracle makers are a direct threat to the totalitarian control that has been established here. Caught up in giving energy to this belief, various forums will routinely ban certain members because they are perceived as being government agents. Forget about the fact that most of these "agents" are living in trailer parks and eking out a meager living on public assistance. (Guess those military pensions don't go as far as they used to.) And God forbid that the person in question has a funky sense of humor, a checkered past as someone who freely admits that he once DID work for the Navy (gasp!) And he mustn't maintain unusual perspectives or theories that threaten the status quo. All of these will get him banned.

Here's how the dialogue in that situation usually goes.

"You're icky."

"No, you're icky."

"You're icky AND you're a government agent."

"No, you're icky and you're wrong."

"You're double decker icky and I'm older than you/have fought more wars than you/are more psychic than you/have studied with Guru X for two decades longer than you so I'm, of course right. I am withdrawing my energy from you (or banning you from the forum) but I will always love you. Bye!"

That last part is the uniquely New Age twist. You see, we New Agers like to try to maintain the love and light thing but find it hard when we're wounded and our hackles are up. So the message we send when we're up against the wall is too often a direct transcript of the above.

Pretty messed up, eh? No wonder nobody ever takes anything that the New Agers do very seriously. They discredit themselves with all of their insane behavior and their sheer inability to get along. So much for being enlightened. Enlightenment doesn't seem to take you very far these days. For many people, it doesn't even allow them to go out of the house, they get so caught up in fear and paranoia.

I'm realizing more and more that the definition of true enlightenment for me has to involve moving beyond polarity. This isn't easy to do.

There ARE many government agents and government sub-contractors working hard to discredit most alternative health and metaphysical groups. They also work actively to recruit members. A cutout organization tried to recruit me years ago, and their group was hooked into the old CIA Stargate program, which was the remote viewing program that the government finally admitted existed for years.

Of course, that program doesn't exist now *cough.*

I found those guys completely disconnected from any form of loving spirituality. Their work was focused on the weaponization of psychic abilities - i.e. spy for us and find such and such target so we can take them out with bombs. I don't think so! Thank you very much. The military mindset meshed with metaphysics - what an ugly combination.

And of course, the alternative health movement is always under threat. God forbid we return to using natural substances to heal ourselves. Those drug company CEOs would have to find new jobs at the local supermarket working at minimum wage because they'd suddenly be unemployed. We can't have that.

So I'm not saying that any of the stuff that the self-identified "spiritual warriors" are fighting against is wrong per se, or that they are deluded in their beliefs. Many times, they're perfectly right.

I'm just finding that, for me anyway, the balance point and the place in my life that is closest to God or Goddess consciousness is a place of unity. It's the balance point between extremes. It's the place where you can stand comfortably with one foot in each reality, without having your balance upset or getting tripped up.

This is unity consciousness. And I believe it is the new consciousness that we are all being prompted to switch into, much as it can appear hard to get there from here. When you're down and dirty in the mud trying to defend yourself (or your point of view,) it takes a huge act of humility to back off and admit the other guy may have a few things right. That neither extreme is completely healthy or completely wise. That, in fact, each guy has at least a few things right and nobody is completely wrong.

Extremes are harmful. They pull people, families, couples, and countries apart. They cause hardened attitudes and hardened hearts.

It's time to reach across the divide that separates us and start embracing a higher, different, and possibly foreign-feeling level of perception, one that is neither dark nor light, bad nor good, us vs. them, or right or wrong. A place without extremes. A place of greater balance, efficiency, and peace.

How do we do this while still having to occasionally defend ourselves from attack, whether the physical onslaught of potential terrorists or the psychic onslaught of negative energies assaulting our auric fields? It can be hard. For instance, a lot of psychic people deal with the latter all the time, and it's very devastating and confusing. One minute, you're friends with someone. The next minute, they're telling you that either you or something you're hooked into is "icky" and they can't be friends with you anymore. I've been caught up in a lot of these kindergarten struggles lately. And yet, the energies are real and have to be dealt with. You can't keep sliming someone with energy when they are feeling bad from it. You have to withdraw or they have to withdraw or both. Hence the "I love you but I'm never going to talk to you again" that has become a pandemic in so many metaphysical circles. People who have been wonderful comrades in arms disappear from your life in the blink of an eye, and you just find yourself scratching your head, wondering what the hell that whole experience was about.

Did I say this process was going to be easy? I believe it can be, if we allow our consciousness to shift and change and evolve where it needs to be. It might not happen overnight. But we'll get there.

And noticing how much the demons of polarity have you in their death grip is the first step. Once you see how you have gone to extremes and how it's just magnetizing more of the opposite energy, well, there is the dawning of wisdom. Time to try something different, to be something different, to just BE.....in a different way.

That's the challenge that is presenting itself now to each and every person on this planet. If you find yourself locked in some life and death struggle right now, whether you're trying to preserve your reputation, convince others that your political views are right, or insisting (as many New Agers do) that you have the sole pipeline to divine wisdom, well, then, this essay is about YOU. It's time for you to open your mind up to a different way of experiencing reality, unless you enjoy feeding your addiction to drama. (Admit it. It can be fun once in a while.)

There's an old Chinese curse that says, "May you live in interesting times." The implication is that, if you're living in a time that is TOO interesting, there's bound to be some drama, some pain and tears, going on.

Well, these days, we are ALL living in "interesting times." But I believe it's up to us what we make of them. They can either turn into a curse or become the ultimate blessing, depending upon which attitude we bring to the table.

Myself, I'm focusing on perceiving this reality as a blessing and a wonderful opportunity to break free of polarity's grip, to become more balanced, centered, and ultimately free of kindergarten drama.

(That's not to say that if I encounter you on a four-square court that I won't try to whoop you senseless. 'Cause I will.)