What do you do when someone close to you makes a choice that you feel is not true for them, but they are convinced it is? It could be with your partner, sibling, teenage son or daughter or a close friend. How do you handle that disagreement… with love?
We often see things as a choice between Right and Wrong, but there is also Truth.
The most loving thing we can do at any time is to express the Truth of what we feel, but it is not loving if our own expression is laced with our reaction to their choice, or with our need to maintain a good relationship, or simply with our need to avoid being hurt.
When we express an absolute truth with love, we are offering someone an opportunity to see things differently and move out of their comfort zone, but they may react if they feel they are being judged. The disagreement comes when they are convinced that their opinion is the absolute truth, because it’s what they have experienced in the past and therefore what they believe to be true.
So… how do we break the impasse?
If we compromise and hold back our expression to avoid a reaction, we are slipping back into our own comfort zone. We can numb ourselves to what is going on, ‘forget’ that we disagreed, and appear to support their choices just to be ‘nice,’ but that is not love. That is not supporting them to feel Truth and it does absolutely nothing for our evolution or theirs.
When we both are complicit in this game of ‘let’s pretend’ we are both denying Truth.
How can we change this?
We cannot draw on any outside sources because anything we say that comes from outside ourselves is purely mental and so can be argued with. We all have our own authority and inner knowing within our own bodies.
If we live in such a way that we are sensitive to what our body is feeling, then we can be aware of subtle shifts of energy that happen as situations arise, and we can express these. Sometimes we can sense what is going on in another person’s body that they may not be feeling for themselves at that time and we can choose to express what we have felt.
Before we say anything, we need to let go of the need to be ‘right’ and be open to all possibilities. We all learn things in our own time and everybody needs the space to make their own choices with no judgement, no attachment, and no pictures or ‘hope’ of a better outcome from us.
When we can offer a holding space for others, they have an opportunity to reconnect back to themselves and can make different choices in their own time. We can provide a loving reflection for them through the quality of the way we live more than any words we might say.
It’s not loving to hold back what we feel and if we do speak, it cannot be laced with any judgement or they may react, so we need to do our best to be sure we are well supported, well nourished, well rested and tender in our movements so that what we feel is a truth can be expressed and shared with the other.
Anything we express from emotions – with our own reaction or with judgement – is harming, not healing. If we are not totally connected to our body, our minds can go around and around in circles, working us into a state of mental chaos that we can’t see our way out of. We may then move into blaming the other person instead of feeling inside ourselves first and observing what is truly going on.
Instead of going around in circles, we could use more discernment with our expression: we are not perfect but we can learn from our experiences. If we don’t say anything, no-one learns anything, although sometimes it is more appropriate to say nothing and simply offer a loving space for people to work things out for themselves.
So, back to the original question of, “How do you handle a disagreement with love?”
The answer is simply to be in your body, feel what is there to be expressed, and feel if it needs to be expressed in that moment. Or we can stay respectfully silent and simply provide a tender, loving, holding space with no judgement while allowing the other to evolve in their own time.
By Carmel Reid, a student of life
Further Reading:
Having The Right to React?
Being Nice
Why Do I Do That?
69 Comments
We have been brought up with the belief that having disagreements or different views is not loving. This is simply not true – it’s actually the energy of supremacy and anger that we let through in reaction that taints it all. Keep our true steadiness and anything is possible.
If we are honest it’s easy to tell when we are speaking out to bring harmony, greater understanding and true love or attempting to win an empty victory. The latter always comes with a horrible force.
A much needed discussion on the absolute love that can be delivered even when tension arises.
Sometimes responding in haste to something written or said can worsen the situation and cause harm. Where there’s potential for conflict, and if uncertain, better to pause (even overnight) and feel before expressing or writing. Often a droplet of wisdom comes in that allows us to express what needs to be said with love, elevating understanding for self and other.
Wise words Kehinde. Often when we react and do or say things in haste we can come to regret them very quickly. Learning to pause and support a situation by checking in with myself first – checking to see why I am in reaction, allowing myself to come back to a place of connection, supports then with a much more loving expression. In supporting myself in this way I am much better able to support the other without investment either.
Yes I agree responding or rather reacting in haste can always make a situation worse something I have experienced a while ago from myself and also another with me. It is always better to stop, take time out (walk away) reflect and evaluate and then express from a place of clarity rather than reaction.
One way to handle a disagreement with love is to separate person from words and actions, which may not necessarily be theirs, but comes through them. It is possible to read an email or blog disagree with it’s content or way of expression and see beyond the words, to something deeper for example a childhood or family hurt, resentment, or long held grievance. And in some cases, the true response is to not respond because the person is not communicating with you, but expressing a hurt or much worse.
I so love this, “When we can offer a holding space for others, they have an opportunity to reconnect back to themselves and can make different choices in their own time. ” it is is so true the more we let go, don’t judge and just love someone is when the magic really happens.
Last night a friend and I went into proving ourselves to be right, there was no consideration of what the other person was saying just an absolute determination to prove ourselves right. And the funny thing is that we both came up with evidence to back ourselves and yet neither of us was the least bit interested in looking at the other person’s ‘evidence’. It feels to me that when we are trying to prove ourselves to be right that we never reach the point that we are trying to reach’ i.e. the other person saying ‘yes, you know what, you are right’.
Great blog. So with this ‘How do you handle a disagreement with love?’ to me as well as what you have shared it is seeing and holding the other as an equal in the same love I hold myself in. The moment I think or see another as lesser or greater than me then I know I am off track.
Being able to see where another is at, without getting entangled in their emotions and expressing your truth simply and clearly supports them to find their own way.
Not reacting to their emotions and expressing without attachment to an outcome allows the other person the space to explore their options.
Wanting to be ‘right’ is a hook I’ve a attached to in the past for sure. Holding on to fixed positions, intensifies arguments and pushes us apart from one and other. Feeling the space of listening, observing, without judging, staying silent if there is nothing to add is more likely to deepen relationships.
Wanting and trying to be right closes down space as do so many other behaviours and anything that closes down space greatly reduces our access to Universal Intelligence because space is Universal Intelligence. And unfortunately most of us live in a way that almost constantly reduces space which is why we are so ignorant to what life is truly about.
Little do we know the harm caused when we shut out another or put them down in pursuit of being right, or because it is ‘what we do’. In doing so we also reduce ourselves and another and deny ourselves ‘ access to Universal Intelligence’.
Indeed – any form of contraction closes down space. This in turn over time, can leave more hurts in the body (sadness, anger, frustration and so on) that then have to be worked on and cleared before we can get to that original form of contraction and why that happened in the first place. Understanding and feeling that everything in life is about energy and that we are vehicles of it, supports greatly in our awareness of what life is about, even in the imperfection that we are and in the recognition that contraction is always going to hit us in places.