Aligning Your Multitudes Within: The Art of And
Life doesn’t happen one event, one emotion, or one idea at a time.
We live in a complex world of simultaneity.
I’ve been noticing a trend in the personal development realm toward monotasking rather than multitasking. And while the sentiment feels refreshing and ecstatically liberating, even if we are choosing to complete one task at a time our consciousness is always in a state of simultaneity.
Consciousness design requires us to engage the whole of us: the cognitive, the emotional, the physical, and the energetic.
As Walt Whitman poetically offered in the delightfully obscene and profane Song of Myself:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
So those of us who acknowledge our vastness and the cacophonous crowds within us, find ourselves in a constant state of choice.
Often we approach this choice as one of duality: either-or, this or that, right or wrong, yes or no. While this stance can be practically useful to keep us moving along the path of time, what do we do then with the contradictions within?
How do we countenance this complex world of simultaneity without silencing the contradicting choices and truths within us?
I invite you into the creative art of AND.
In the art of and there is a permission-granting to meld paradigms, to accept your contradictions, to gather your inner multitudes and have a chat all together; no arguing, no making any part of Self wrong or judged.
When we hear our multitudes out, when we trust that the contradictions can serve us if we take the time to create alignment instead of eliminating their wisdom through the duality of judgment, only then can we flow into the fullness of our being.
This art of and mindset requires the intuitive and yet counterculture urge to slow down, acknowledge the complexity, employ nuanced discernment to invite in the creative art of and.
We can feel happiness and grief, creation and the call to stillness, the need for connection and the need to be alone. We don’t have to make any of this simultaneity go away. In fact, it never will.
Waiting for life to come at you one experience at a time will leave us waiting and wanting and feeling like we simply don’t know how to “do it right.”
You are brilliant in your multitudes.
Now it’s time to gather them, notice which of your multitudes speak from fear and hear them out.
Notice which parts of you yearn for freedom and exhilaration and which parts of you require stillness and comfort and let them all live in conscious alignment in each everpresent now.
When we practice the mindset of the art of and our multitudes have no need to compete with one another. There is abundance and flow. Each life-affirming part gets its time in the spotlight to bring its utility and gifts to our existence. And the parts that are pulling in the opposite direction become obvious areas for healing. Again, even those parts are not wrong or bad, but only currently less than whole.
I invite you to initiate yourself into this acceptance, to notice when you feel contradictory within, and ask yourself:
What wisdom might each of these perspectives offer me?
What happens when I reject the duality of ‘or’ and embrace the unity of ‘and’?
How does it feel when I let this part of me dance now and that other part of me dance later?
How can I slow down into the discernment that the alchemy of my multitudes is the embodiment of the art of and?
Invite yourself into the wholeness of your consciousness in every moment.
*This article was originally posted on Medium on March 19, 2022.
