Beyond Right and Wrong

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.”

- Rumi

For much of my life, I lived by a sense of what was right and what was wrong. I measured myself and others by it. I felt proud when I was “good,” and heavy with guilt or shame when I was not, or even when I simply desired what I believed I shouldn’t. I saw life in black and white. It felt safe that way. Clear. Predictable.

But that safety came with a cost. I judged others through the same narrow lens, unable to see that most people are simply doing the best they can with what they’ve been given. I painted them with the same brush I used on myself, right or wrong, good or bad, without realizing how much of that judgment came from my own fear of falling outside the lines.

Over time, I began to see how small that way of living was. What felt “right” in one season of life could feel suffocating in another. What I condemned in others often revealed what I hadn’t yet accepted in myself. Slowly, the idea that there was one fixed way to be “right” began to crack.

We’re taught to measure life in terms of right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral. At first glance, it feels obvious, even necessary. But if you pause and look back through history, you’ll see how fragile these categories are.

What was once celebrated is now condemned. What was once punished is now defended. Slavery was once justified as righteous. Women were silenced in the name of virtue. Loving across race or gender was seen as sinful. Speaking against authority was heresy. Each era sincerely believed it stood on moral high ground, and yet, looking back, we can see how clouded by ignorance it was.

“Do not be too moral,” wrote Thoreau. “You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.”

If you look to the great wisdom traditions, especially those of the East, you find a very different lens. The dharma traditions don’t put much weight on moralistic battles of good versus evil. Instead, they ask: are you living in wisdom or ignorance, in truth or illusion?

The Bhagavad Gita says, “The unreal has no being, the real never ceases to be.” (2.16)

Here, I don’t mean truth as an opinion or belief, but the still, silent reality that remains when all opinions fall away. The truth of being, what we are before the mind divides life into good and bad.

The fundamental question is not “Am I right?” but “Am I closer to the truth of my being, or further lost in illusion?” And that question must expand outward: are my actions bringing those around me closer to the truth of their being, or pulling them away?

Right and wrong belong to the courtroom of society. Wisdom and ignorance belong to the temple of the soul.

Of course, this isn’t to say that anything goes. Certain actions clearly cause harm, and the wisdom traditions never denied that. But the point isn’t to abandon morality or pretend that right and wrong don’t exist. It’s to see that the truest morality arises not from social codes but from being itself. When we are rooted in truth, love becomes the law. Our actions flow from clarity rather than conditioning. That is the unchanging morality, one not written in books but in the nature of consciousness itself.

Many of us are afraid to turn toward that truth. The mind has been our compass for so long that it feels unsafe to put it down. Social norms and conventions give us certainty, and the mind thrives on certainty. As Francis Lucille often says, being feels like “a freedom without anything to hold onto.” That can be terrifying.

So we cling to the 2D map of morality because it’s comfortable. The mind knows how to argue there. But the 3D dimension of truth and being asks the mind to step aside. And thats the paradox: what we are looking for is so simple that the mind doesn’t believe it could be real. Ramana Maharshi put it plainly: “Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.”

We expect spirituality to be complicated — a mountain to climb, a puzzle to solve. But the truth isn’t hiding in complexity. As Rupert Spira reminds us, “What you are looking for is where you are looking from.” The self you seek is already here.

When the mind recedes, being reveals itself in simplicity. There is no more grasping or pushing away. There is a quiet ease, a happiness untouched by gain or loss. It’s not the happiness of getting what you want, but the happiness of no longer needing to get.

“Ignorance is the cause of bondage, and knowledge is the cause of liberation,” says the Upanishad.

Liberation is not in becoming something else but in ceasing to overlook what already is.

This is why the old categories fail us. They are too rigid, too shallow, too temporary. Life is not black and white. It is not two-dimensional. The only real measure is whether we are moving closer to the truth of our being, or drifting further into illusion.

So stop overthinking it. Stop waiting for something extraordinary to arrive. Turn inward. It’s simple, it’s safe, and it’s what you’ve been searching for all along.

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