Essay 28 Learn to fight the right way, for the right thing

We must learn to lay the sword of truth on its side. Then we can spread truth the same way we spread butter. Smoothly, evenly and without slicing anyone.

It’s 1989 and I have been sober for about six months. Then, almost as if by magic, my career takes a sharp turn for the better as I transition from technical sales to working as a copywriter at an advertising agency. In that new role, I would learn some valuable lessons about what to fight for, what to fight against, and how to fight in the right way.

The ad agency I worked for focused on business-to-business advertising—one business advertising their goods to another business—working primarily with industrial companies. My clients included Johnson Yokogawa, maker of process control instruments, and Georgia Pacific, maker of pulp and paper goods. The owners of the agency had left their previous jobs as engineers to start this company.

Briefly, the agencies I worked for in the 1990s were organized into two main departments: creative advertising and public relations. On the advertising side, there was another subdivision. On one side were the account representatives who went out and met with the clients. On the other side was the creative team.

The creatives were also split into two groups: copywriters and art directors, or graphic designers. Of course, there were also project managers, finance people and human resources departments. The saying I heard about ad agencies was: all our assets go down the elevator every day.

On my first assignment as a technical copywriter, the account representative was floored that the client only had one small edit for my copy. That was basically unheard of. Receiving edits is just part of the job for a copywriter. It’s the feedback that helps get everything right.

If you’ve ever read a good book, you’ve probably noticed the long list of people the author thanks at the end. This book wouldn’t be the same without your help. The editor often gets the biggest shout-out.

Good feedback is vital for doing good work.

The skill of giving good feedback

During the years I worked as a copywriter, I interfaced with many engineers and scientists. My college major was chemistry, with a minor in business, so I could speak their language.

One thing that’s generally true: these people are smart. Also true: they are not typically very good writers. And people skills—also often not a strength.

As a copywriter, I often heard feedback like this: “This is terrible. Here are my edits.” Ouch.

Copywriters, of course, are humans who have feelings. Insulting us is not going to make us want to engage in the editing process. And a writer needs to stay engaged in the editing process. Because editing is part of the job.

Beyond that, such highly educated people often provide awful editing suggestions. As in, taking their feedback verbatim would ruin the piece.

But “the client is always right,” which meant my job was often about fighting to salvage good work. This happened so much, I eventually moved to an in-house marketing communications position where I had more say.

I was reminded of this recently when I asked my husband, Scott, to edit an essay I had written. (I’m sharing about this here with his blessing.) I knew he would have valuable suggestions, because he too has studied the Pathwork Guide’s teachings for decades. I especially wanted his input since, this time, I was referencing a spiritual teaching from another source.

Plus, he’s smart. He has master’s degrees in both aerospace and mechanical engineering. He’s also a good writer, although his style is somewhat different from mine.

All this to say, I wasn’t terribly surprised when he said, “This is terrible. Here are my edits.” I explained to him the importance of developing a better filter so I could receive his edits more readily.

A good filter helps us navigate the rough terrain of difficult conversations. It smooths ruffled feathers and clears the way so that change can happen more easily. Having a good filter is about making an effort to heal instead of hurling unwelcome and unhelpful comments.

It’s an art that opens doors, and an important skill to practice.

After incorporating most of his suggestions—today, I get the final say about my writing—Scott said he thought the essay was really very good. Editing my next essay with him went much more smoothly.

How to hold the sword of truth

One of the most well-known archangels is Saint Michael. In nearly all the images we see of St. Michael, he is holding a sword.

Which begs the question, what does an angel in heaven need a sword for? What is St. Michael fighting?

St. Michael is the supreme military commander of God’s heavenly army who fights against the forces of darkness. He is doing so on our behalf. Darkness is also what we need to be fighting.

To be more clear, we need to fight the darkness still within us. When we truly become ready to join in fighting darkness—instead of aligning with darkness—St. Michael will give us our own sword.

This is the sword of truth.

Darkness always contains untruth. Our work must be to uncover untruth wherever it lies—especially inside us—along with the negative energy attached to it. Then we need to reorient ourselves to the truth.

In short, we must learn how to overcome the darkness by learning the right way to fight it.

“In this land of duality, we often hold arbitrary either/or concepts. We may not even be aware of some of them. One of the most common—and limiting—is our attitude about winning and losing.

In this way of seeing things, being a winner means being ruthless. We must be selfish and trampling—triumphing over others and belittling them. This leaves no room for being kind, considerate or sympathetic.

Should such emotions surface, we fear turning into a loser.

Being a loser means being unselfish. We are then self-sacrificing, kind, good and considerate people.

Some adopt one alternative, others adopt the other. Everyone fears the consequences of being the opposite of what they are.

Neither of these two choices is good. Neither is better or worse.

Both are built on the same misconceptions. And both lead to nothing but loneliness, resentment, self-pity, self-contempt and frustration.

Often, two people come together in a relationship from these opposite sides. The relationship will then be fraught with friction. This leads both people toward hopelessness.

The winner will fear impulses of genuine affection as much as they fear weakness and any inner desire for dependency. For the loser, goodness equates with total approval from others. This means they can’t stand any form of criticism—justified or not.

Both sides resent in the other what they fear and fight in themselves—their hidden tendency to be like the opposite choice.

Most of us harbor something like this, deep inside, to some extent.”

– Finding Gold, Chapter 8: Winner vs loser: Interplay between the self and creative forces

As we start doing our personal development work, we will gradually unwind the twisted wiring in ourselves. This will bring us into increased clarity. Our confusion about what to believe—about what is the truth—will go away.

What can happen, as we start to see things more clearly, is we pick up the sword of truth and use it to stab people. Because even though we’re accessing more light, we still have darkness within us.

Overcoming our own darkness is a long, slow process.

What we must learn to do is take this sword of truth and lay it over on its side. Then we can spread the same truth, but we can do it the way we spread butter onto bread. Smoothly, evenly and without slicing anyone.

Getting better is a co-creative process

Due to this need for getting good feedback, the art of writing is an inherently co-creative process. This doesn’t mean the editor gets full credit for our work. They don’t become the co-author. But we want to gratefully acknowledge their contribution.

In the end, writing well requires we have the humility to ask for and accept feedback. We must also have thick enough skin to receive feedback, however it comes. We could extrapolate this sentiment to all of life.

If we don’t have the humility to ask others to help us see the error of our ways, we’re not likely to live better.

Living in relationship with others can be considered a co-creative process. We are still the authors of our own lives. But if we want to make ourselves—and therefore our lives—better, we must become willing to take in feedback and correct our ways.

Finding our faults

By their very nature, relationships will tease all our darkness to the surface. This is a divine plan that—when used the right way—can help us work on transforming ourselves. If we lean into our relationships—if we use them to surface our faults—we can become better, faster.

In the teaching on finding our faults, the Pathwork Guide explains that one of the hardest parts of the fault-finding process can be simply identifying our own faults. Here’s one way to go about it.

Look for a pet fault, which is one of our faults we rather like. Yes, oddly, we’re rather fond of our faults, which is partly why they’re so hard to resolve. Then notice how we find the same fault highly irritating when we encounter it in someone else.

Here’s another way to get at our faults. We can ask our partner—or someone who knows us well—to tell us what they see. What are my faults?

This is where things get interesting. The thing that typically motivates someone to give us feedback about our faults is that our fault is really annoying them. People are constantly triggering each other with their faults.

When we ask someone to share feedback with us, it may seem like an invitation for them to attack us. To bring out a sword and use it to be destructive, instead of constructive. In fact, most people—if they care about us and we ask nicely—will do their best to give us honest feedback.

Two suggestions for receiving feedback

If we have the courage to ask someone to help us see our faults—and if they have the courage to give us such a gift—there are two things to keep in mind. One is that we should always search for the grain of truth.

The other person may bring their own distorted view. In fact, since they’re human, they probably will. But if they are willing to try to help us, that’s not nothing.

We must be willing to give the other the benefit of the doubt. If they say something in a way that feels hurtful to us, it’s possible they didn’t mean to hurt us. For our old residual pain—which easily gets rubbed the wrong way—is not their fault.

Or maybe they did mean to hurt us. Perhaps they didn’t lay their sword of truth on its side. Then we might give them a chance to try again, but this time more gently.

Not a linear process

In my final job in the corporate world, I worked for a manufacturer of high-performance polymers. Over the course of 15 years, I moved through various positions in marketing communications, marketing and sales. By far, my favorite role was in marcom.

Marcom handles the many promotional activities for a company. At times, our department directed the process for naming products or product lines. To help us, we hired an outside agency who specialized in this.

One fascinating aspect of the naming process was the lack of line of sight to the final name during any stage of the process. In the first meeting, we would talk about various influences and factors to consider. Then the agency would come back with a list of name-parts that were more like syllables.

Each person on our team would select the ones we liked. Then, in the next meeting, we would come down the funnel a little more. Even during the third or fourth meeting, I often couldn’t see where we were going.

Miraculously, it would all come together at the end. We would have a name we could get behind and that we could trademark.

Similarly, sharing feedback with someone about their faults is not a linear process. We shouldn’t go into a fault-finding adventure with someone thinking we know exactly how this ends.

This is not a time to say our piece and expect the other to simply agree. Course-correcting is a co-creative process.

Once we become willing to open up and talk—to really try to both hear and be heard—the other person may offer a perspective we never considered. They may have a history behind their fault we never knew.

In fact, there is always a story behind people’s behaviors. The work is to sift through our stories to discover where we strayed from the truth.

Where did we get lost?

Fighting the good fight

Fighting is a fact of life, even though what we’re ultimately fighting for is peace. On this plane of existence, people carry destructiveness in their Lower Self.

If we want the light to win, we’re going to need to fight for it. We must fight the Lower Self, in whatever form it shows up.

The trick is figuring what is worth fighting for.

What’s truly in our best interest and what’s just rebellion and resistance that spreads more darkness?

What are our motives? How are they mixed motives? And what’s the best way to fight?

What will carry God’s goal of peace and harmony forward, and what will allow the forces of darkness to prevail?

The answers aren’t going to be easy. The solutions aren’t going to be simple.

But if we are fighting for the cause of the light, and we are truly doing our own work to clear away our Lower Self obstacles, then we will be guided to go the distance.

We will have insight about how to fight the good fight.

From Scott:

The story Jill tells here is true. I gave a lot of constructive feedback, but I was also harsh. I actually did use the word “terrible.”

Overall, I didn’t feel the piece could ever “get there.” I felt it should be abandoned.

Yet when I read the final draft, everything worked. So although my feedback was helpful, I was also wrong. Very humbling.

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