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Being You

What if Being Ambiguous Were A Key to Consciousness?

August 02, 2012

Ambiguity is not usually considered a strength, and it can even be considered a weakness or an insult.

On the contrary, according to best selling author and Access Consciousness™ founder Gary Douglas, it is an asset and a pathway to increasing your own consciousness.

Yes, ambiguity does mean what you think it means: “unclear, uncertain, or vague.” How is that a strength?

As Douglas describes it, when you’re being ambiguous, “it means you haven’t latched onto an answer or conclusion. You haven’t defined things. You haven’t made decisions or judgments. You haven’t decided what can and cannot be done. You’re alert and aware. You are in the question—and when you are in the question, you are open to everything that is possible.”

Many of those characteristics that are impossible when you’re being ambiguous create limitations for you. Answers, conclusions, definitions, judgments are all limitations. As soon as you’ve settled on even one of these, nothing that doesn’t fit into that box you just adopted can show up in your universe. That includes all kinds of outcomes that are better than you ever imagined possible.

Another source of ambiguity getting a bad rap is that many people confuse it with ambivalence. Ambivalence is “where you see the difference between two things and you can’t choose one or the other.” The limitation occurs because when you can only see two options, that locks you into the either/or universe, which is in itself a limitation. In the either/or universe, only two options are available. If you’re willing to be ambiguous, the possibilities become infinite.

Being ambiguous gives you infinite choices. When you’re ambiguous, you haven’t settled on anything and therefore you live in the question. Questions create possibilities and empowerment, whereas answers disempower and create limitations.

So how would you live if you were willing to invite a little more ambiguity— and possibility—into your life? Douglas suggests living in the question when you perceive a feeling or sensation. “Instead of calling it what you think it is, such as ‘oh, my back aches,’ or ‘I feel tired,’ remain in ambiguity.” Instead of naming what you’re feeling, ask a question. A good question to start with could be, “What can I do with this?”

Going into the question allows you to shift your perspective away from imposing judgments on your body, for example, says Douglas. When you define something as “feeling bad” or “I have a headache” you are defining what you are feeling which blocks your awareness. You destroy your possibility of discovering what else might be going on.

“What if it’s a non-cognitive awareness you are having?” Douglas describes a non-cognitive awareness as those moments “where you get a feeling about something or you sense that something is not quite right, but you don’t know what it is.” If you’re willing to acknowledge this awareness rather than labeling it as a pain in your body, you automatically become more questioning and hence more aware. “When you function from non-cognitive awareness, everything gets so much easier.”

Douglas acknowledges that this willingness to be ambiguous and aware runs counter to everything we’re taught. “You’ve been taught your whole life that you’re not supposed to have ambiguity. Ambiguity is considered wrong in this reality. You’re supposed to have a fixed point of view. You’re supposed to nail things down and define them.”
He continues, “You are taught to believe that if you have a sufficient number of fixed points of view, then you really have something. I’m not sure what it is you’re supposed to have with all those fixed points of view—but you’re supposed to have something.”

Contrary to what we’ve been taught, “It’s in your best interest to be ambiguous” Douglas says. “When you’re being ambiguous, you’re in the question. What if ambiguity is your primary way out of this reality? It is! It is the place from which you ask questions—which gives you greater awareness— which then creates greater possibility.”

So if you’d like to create a world that works better for you, you might consider being more ambiguous. What would that be like?

Ambiguity is just one of the counter-intuitive concepts included in Douglas’s new book, Right Body for You, available from amazon.com and his website, www.accessconsciousness.com. Other tools to create ambiguity are included in his classes and teleclasses offered worldwide, as well as in the Access Consciousness™ Core Classes taught by facilitators he has certified worldwide.

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