06/10/2026
HAVING NO OPINION IS NOT A SIGN OF MATURITY
I keep receiving the same criticism in different forms under my posts. When I comment on a social or political issue, draw a boundary in a discussion, or tell someone that their comment has simply become rude, sooner or later somebody asks how that fits with meditation, yoga or spirituality.
Behind that question, I think, is a rather strange idea of what a person who works with consciousness should become. They should gradually lose their sharp edges, remain calm, understand everything, judge nothing and ideally see the whole world bathed in light.
Good and evil do not really exist, truth and falsehood are only a matter of perspective, and everything is ultimately some kind of play of consciousness. If something makes you angry, or if you take a clear stand against something, then apparently you have not worked through it yet.
I think this confuses different levels of reality.
There are traditions and states of consciousness in which opposites dissolve and reality can be experienced as unity. But at the same time we live here. We have children, families, relationships, work, a society and a country in which we live.
At this level we have to discern. There is truth and falsehood, decency and rudeness, helping and harming. I cannot take the principles of one level of consciousness and mechanically apply them to another.
The idea that I have spiritually transcended something and therefore the world no longer concerns me may look like perspective. Sometimes it is simply a very elegant way of avoiding responsibility.
The Bhagavad Gita does not begin with Arjuna wanting to fight. Quite the opposite. He stands between two armies, sees his relatives, teachers and people he knows on the other side, and refuses to act.
Krishna does not tell him that he has transcended duality and that the conflict therefore no longer concerns him. Their whole dialogue deals with why a person sometimes has to act, and above all with the place from which that action comes.
There is a difference between reacting from wounded ego, anger or the need to defeat someone, and discerning something and accepting responsibility for one’s own action. In yoga we have a very important word for this, viveka, the capacity to discern.
I also do not think that people with experience, education, perspective or the ability to see wider connections should be the last people to speak about what is happening around them. What use is perspective if it only leads me to say that the world is no longer my concern?
Each of us chooses the circle in which we accept responsibility. For one person it is family, for another their profession, society or politics. But consciousness, to me, does not bring less responsibility for the world around us. If anything, it brings more.
And the same applies to boundaries.
Recently we spent weeks preparing a longer piece of writing and an audio version of it. Kristýna recorded it for people who prefer listening to reading. Then somebody commented that it was AI, awful, monotonous and impossible to listen to.
I have no problem with disagreement. Someone can stand on the opposite side of a political, social or philosophical question. If they express their view with basic decency, we can reach entirely different conclusions and neither of us has to persuade the other.
But rudeness is not another opinion, and an insult is not an argument. If I tell somebody that their comment is rude, that does not mean I am emotionally unstable or that I have failed as a yogi. It means I have shown them where my boundary is.
I once said something in a conversation with Kristýna that I keep returning to. I would rather be whole than good.
People often imagine that working on themselves should gradually make them nicer, milder and more accommodating. I do not think that is the point. There is a place for aggression, anger, irritation and the ability to say no as well. These qualities need to be integrated, not simply pushed out of the image we want to have of ourselves.
Aggression itself is not the same as violence. It also contains the force to step forward, stand for something, change something or protect something. If I repress that force completely, I do not necessarily become kinder. I may simply become someone who cannot say no and then rename that inability as gentleness.
This is one reason I value the image of Durga. She fights demons, carries weapons and is anything but passive. But the destructive force is directed towards what causes harm, not towards hatred of another person.
I can oppose something without hating the person involved. I can reject something without needing to humiliate anyone. I can believe that someone’s opinion is wrong without believing that the person themselves is worth less.
There is, of course, an opposite trap as well. I begin to see something differently from the people around me and create a new identity from it. I am awake, while everyone else is asleep.
That is not an expansion of consciousness. It is simply another box.
So for me the question is not whether a person has an opinion or sometimes takes a stand. The more important question is where that position comes from.
Am I reacting from wounded ego and the need to win, or have I discerned something, decided where my boundary is, and accepted the fact that standing behind it may have consequences?
That seems to me a much more interesting question.
Full essay on Substack.
