Dear God, please let me be anything but normal

Meet the new boss (spirituality) same as the old boss (religion)

Going from an either/or way of thinking to a both/and way of thinking is difficult. It’s particularly evident now when people are taking sides in the Israel vs Palestine debate. There seems to be a requirement for Political parties, Brands, Corporations, and Institutions to take a side. Pick Israel and you are impervious to the years of suffering endured by the Palestinian people. Pick Palestine and you are condoning barbaric levels of brutality as a “means to an end.”

To say they are both right and both wrong engenders a feeling of powerlessness. Rage is empowering. Certainty is empowering. Nuance is complicated. Complexity is complicated. This is why there are no solution-focused placards on the protest marches. The placards read “Free Palestine” or “Stop killing babies”. These don’t move anyone towards a ‘both/and’ way of thinking, because they’re conceptual. Everyone loves freedom. Everyone agrees that killing babies is a bad thing.

Turning these phrases into a rosary bead style mantra while marching through central London doesn’t summon up an Archangel with a flaming sword to settle things on our behalf. It certainly doesn’t summon an angry God who’ll come down and send everyone to their respective rooms. We’re in this together. Help isn’t coming. We are the help.

Religion is responsible for lazy thinking. Religion aims to take something from the higher realms – love, creativity, and a sense of awe at the wonder of being alive (how complex is that?!!) and reduces it to the lower realms of good/bad; right/wrong; for/against.

In this duality, love is limited to people or things we like; creativity is restricted to things we’ve defined as art (poetry, painting, performing); awe is reduced to things we find ‘awesome’… anything from a colourful sunset to a chocolate cake.

Spirituality was supposed to be the both/and solution. Spirituality unifies all religions, because at their core they have the same principles – love, forgiveness, gratitude, generosity, compassion, inclusivity, self-awareness.

In other words, we’re not ‘better than’ or ‘worse than’ other people, we’re normal… humans who conform to type. Particularly when the rubber hits the road or the shit hits the fan. Sometimes we rise to the higher realms and sometimes gravity pulls us towards the lower ones.

We rise together by understanding that we’re one human family. Most biological families have massive differences of opinion, yet we strive to understand where each of us is coming from so that we can, dare we say it love each other. Sometimes creative brand planners can help us in this regard – many a hard-assed cynic has been known to shed a tear over the John Lewis Christmas advert. The emotion is real (the tear) even though the goal is contrived (spend more money this Christmas). It’s a both/and situation.

Unfortunately, as Phil Collins pointed out “Something happened on the way to heaven”. Spirituality got seduced by identity, in the exact same way that religion did.

Religions based their identity on being right (go straight to heaven) or wrong (go directly to hell). New age spirituality bases its identity on being either special or normal. Being special means being better or at least different from Muggles who have to do things the normal way. Being special allows entry to an exclusive club of manifesters, wealth magnets, enlightened warriors, wisdom keepers, and business alchemists

The internet is awash with meaningless words and phrases that may sound cool on a placard, a website strapline, or a mission statement, but as we march towards self-destruction, happily chanting our rosary of affirmations, we might find that we should have spent a little more time considering what it means to be a creative spirit while living in a human body. It’s complex. Because it’s a both/and situation.

Our human bodies are the same – unless we’re kidding ourselves we all have the same needs, desires, and fears. Our creative spirits are the same – they all want the same things – love, connection, and free expression.

The battleground is the space between.

We can solve this tension by pretending we’re “not normal”. We can buy an Access All Areas laminated pass to the Magic Kingdom.

Or we can pull back the curtain and be the person who does the thing.

I coach smart people, who are both normal and extraordinary. Because it’s the smart ones who can bridge this divide. The less smart cling to the bank of brand identity. The bank is rigid and rocky.

There’s no Flow there.