Use the Golden Rule, the first Unity principle, and the “Middle Way” to find relief from your suffering

If you are like me, you probably have at least one friend or family member who has opposing political views from you. That is not an easy place to be at the moment.

First, because you love these people.

But also because there are plenty of things to argue about—and plenty more to know with absolute certainty that you are right about.

Not to mention the important issues we are dealing with that have a life-or-death, right-or-wrong edge to them—race issues, climate issues, gender issues, gun laws, and more.

My coworker said it so well when she said, “It’s like we are living in two completely different realities. And each of us knows absolutely that our reality is the right one.”

This is a hard place to be: feeling such an urgent moral responsibility to ourselves, each other, the planet, our rights, our freedoms.

All the while trying to follow our understanding of the Golden Rule, a teaching that is so fundamental that it crosses virtually every major religion and belief system.

Who hasn’t asked themselves recently: How can I love and respect someone when I am sure that the other person is utterly wrong?

The Nature of Interdependence

For me, when I want to move away from divisiveness, I start by letting nature help me. Nature reminds me it’s impossible to be alone in this. Its ultimate principle is the interconnected web of life—including humans—of which we are all a part, interdependent together.

Each little part of nature does not get to select what it is interdependent with. The cycles of life are often simultaneously brutal and beautiful. The season changes from summer to fall, and the harvest and leaves dropping bring on beauty, nourishment, and death.

The spiritual principles taught in Unity rely on the understanding that “God is Absolute Good, everywhere present,” according to The Five Principles. This is the first key to grasping human interdependence.

It’s a relief, actually, to meditate on this idea.

When I sit with this idea, I know that wherever I go, the divine Creator is there with me. I am wholly interdependent with the Divine and have access to this goodness at any time of the day or night, regardless of circumstance.

“Could our minds and our hearts be big enough just to hang out in that space where we’re not entirely certain about who’s right and who’s wrong?”

Pema Chödrön

Externally, it isn’t hard to see this—once again, the sea, pets, and thunderstorms continually remind me of this expression.

And since God is “everywhere present,” that means the Divine is also always present within you and me. Here’s a hiccup. Who here hasn’t battled with their own self-worth from time to time? It’s easy enough to see the Divine in the cardinal’s flight.

But in me? But (pardon me) in that guy?

“When I was still new to this spiritual path,” writes The Five Principles author Rev. Ellen Debenport, “I was assured by books and teachers that all the answers and guidance I needed were within me. I was alarmed! …

“If God was within me, then I would be praying to myself, and that was a hopeless proposition! It took years for me to understand a new concept of Self in which I am an expression of God.”

Debenport goes on to describe human divinity as “waves on the ocean” with the same energy and attributes as the ocean itself.

“We are not the whole ocean, but we are the same composition, nothing more or less, part of the divine flow."

Rev. Ellen Debenport

Judgment, Jesus, and the Golden Rule

Once I can see myself as a wave in the divine ocean, I can move toward accepting that my friends and family members—who perhaps I see as raging racists or ludicrous liberals—are integrated into that same divine flow.

Waves, like humans, move and reshape. People have the power to alter their lives and the world, with only our thoughts.

“Humans, even as violent as we seem to be, are the first species to … have the capacity to change,” Debenport writes.“We are not the whole ocean, but we are the same composition, nothing more or less, part of the divine flow.”

However, as we know, we can only change ourselves, not others. This is the crux of the issue with divisiveness. When we are caged by our “rightness,” we feel compelled to try to change others’ minds.

I have been known to comment madly on Facebook in the hopes of fixing someone. I’ve desperately tried to save them from themselves, to make them see the error of their ways.

This is an error, however. The foundation of the Golden Rule we all learn in kindergarten—Treat others the way you want to be treated—comes from the radical teachings Jesus gave during the Sermon on the Mount.

“Do to others what you want them to do to you. This is the meaning of the law of Moses and the teaching of the prophets” (Matthew 7:12 NCV).

The Golden Rule is not about fixing others but about our own actions and judgments.

There are two Bible descriptions of the famous sermon: one from Matthew and a second one from Luke. In the Luke passage, Jesus says:

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Luke 6:37-38

Unity minister Rev. Ed Townley offers a metaphysical explanation of Luke’s passage, which he says has a “universal” meaning.

“There’s a definite cause and effect at work. It’s not ‘Do not judge and as a reward God will cut you some slack and refrain from judging you,’” he writes.

“It suggests that judgment and condemnation do not come from God in the first place. They are human consequences of human choices. What causes us to feel judged or condemned—the only thing that causes us to feel judged or condemned—is our own tendency to judge and condemn others. 

“If we stop judging and condemning, we will immediately stop the rebound effect that brings back onto us the same energies we direct toward others.”

Rev. Ed Townley

Finding a Way Into the “Middle Way”

Abandoning judgment of others and focusing on the Self is a key part of the Buddhist teaching of the “Middle Way,” the Self moving away from the typical dichotomy of “right versus wrong.”

In her book When Things Fall Apart, Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön explains how when we start moving away from right versus wrong, we widen our circle of compassion. She calls it a “middle way.”

“We could see it as sitting on the razor’s edge, not falling off to the right or the left. This middle way involves not hanging on to our version so tightly. It involves keeping our hearts and minds open long enough to entertain the idea that when we make things wrong, we do it out of a desire to obtain some kind of ground or security.

“Could our minds and our hearts be big enough just to hang out in that space where we’re not entirely certain about who’s right and who’s wrong? ... Could we see, hear, feel other people as they really are?”

The “middle way” asks to “hang out” in uncertainty. It asks us to choose feeling and hearing other people—as they really are—over needing to prove one side right and one side wrong.

Empathy and Patience When Dispelling Fear

For myself, I often struggle getting to that middle way. Why? I find it so hard to accept people because of the ideas they spew. To accept them, I have to try to slow down, to close my ears to their words. I have to try to see them as their underlying emotions.

I have to try to do that by applying my own feelings—fears, worries, anxieties, and hopes—to their situation. That usually takes more time than our very fast life demands.

“If we stop judging and condemning, we will immediately stop the rebound effect that brings back onto us the same energies we direct toward others.”

Rev. Ed Townley

Science tells us that fear is a powerful driver of people’s decisions and thoughts. When I started to understand how fear and trauma played into the lives of my foster children, for example, it became much easier for me to be patient and compassionate about their wild and violent responses and reactions.

Writer and poet Mark Nepo in The Book of Awakening reflects on how the power of patience can help us not only to understand the fear that others are reacting to, but also to slow down enough to feel our own.

“Fear wants us to act too soon. But patience, hard as it is, helps us outlast our preconceptions,” Nepo writes.

“Given enough time, most of our enemies cease to be enemies, because waiting allows us to see ourselves in them. Patience devastates us with the truth that, in essence, when we fear another, we fear ourselves …”

When I feel the need to be “right,” I am ultimately afraid of the consequences of being either proven wrong or perhaps of it not mattering in the first place.

If I can patiently let go of my desire to change others’ minds, if I can try to release my judgment of them, I can be free of my own fear—and free to see my friends and family (and even strangers) again as they truly are: my beloved.