We have all studied magnetism in school. We’ve played with magnets and seen how stubbornly they repel each other when the two north poles of a couple of magnets are put together and how, if you put the north-pole end of one magnet next to the south-pole end of another magnet, they link together and won’t come apart easily.

You can have magnetic polarity or ionic polarity, political polarity or spiritual polarity. In general, the term has to do with having two opposing attributes, tendencies or principles. For magnetic and ionic polarity it is about positive and negative charges. In political polarity it is about two opposing viewpoints. In spiritual seeking, which as an active channel is my field of work, it is all about the extreme difference between the two ends of spiritual polarity.

We can call the north pole of the spiritual magnet radiance, fearlessness or good. We can call the south pole of the spiritual magnet control, fear or evil.

Spiritual seekers have choice points all day, every day, when we decide either to act in a loving, openhearted and radiant manner or to try to control the situation by the use of our will and our cleverness at manipulating people. And oh, how easy it is sometimes to choose control and manipulation. Often it seems a real time-saver. However, every time we choose control over radiance, we are polarizing toward the south pole.

In terms of fear, the north or “good” pole is fearlessness. When we are not fearful of how people will receive us, we can focus on loving, supporting and serving them. We are not worried about how we are coming across. When we are fearful about meeting people or how events will go, we invoke that south pole of acting to minimize our fear, creating a good defense against possible attack and controlling the situation through the use of our will.

Good and evil are buzzwords in our culture which have been so overused by dogmatic people of religion — whether Christians, Jews, Muslims or believers of other world religions — that it is hard to use the words cleanly. Yet we do, in general, have an instinctive feel for what is good (or positive) and what is evil (or negative). In terms of our working with the principle of spiritual polarity, we do not have to solve the great mystery of the fundamental nature of good and evil. We can take things situation by situation and figure out what is the positive response for us in each case.

Anyone who drives a car knows the dismal state of affairs that occurs when we cannot get the engine started. The cylinders are sitting there in the engine block, but without power they cannot start going up and down to create the energy to move the vehicle forward.

Similarly, without acting to increase our spiritual polarity, our cylinder of action and evolution sits, powerless, in the gravity well of indifference. Choosing to act for the good starts the engine of our spiritual evolution working. The second choice for the good helps it gather speed, and after a few consistent choices for love, fearlessness and radiance, we are motoring happily along the road to being the person we hope to be, powered by our polarized choices.

If we keep flip-flopping, choosing first to be loving, then to be controlling and going back and forth, we remain pretty much powerless in spiritual terms. A great virtue in terms of pursuing polarity is simple, bloody-minded, stubborn tenacity. Think of the coyote victimizing Road Runner for a good example of negative polarity and the Three Musketeers with their motto of “All for One and One for All” for a good example of positive polarity.

Take heed at each choice point today. You’re at the four-way stop, and the person who should go next is balking. Do you wait with loving patience for the idiot to get it together and move on, or do you impatiently cross the intersection first?

Someone roars up the on-ramp and into your lane. Do you put a foot on your brake and mentally intone the mantra “Okay, buddy, you go first,” or do you tailgate and honk, upset at being disrespected and ignored? I have done both. My horn has not been silent in this life! However, on the whole I find the first choice, stepping on the brake and remembering the sacredness of all other human beings, even those challenged in driving skills, to be the more useful and helpful response as far as developing my quality of being.

It is a learned response, not an instinctive response. We do not come into this world sharing space, time, attention or anything else. We come into this world as one of a species of great apes with great-ape instincts. They serve us well for taking care of our families and gathering resources to feed, protect and defend them. These instincts, however, do not serve our spiritual needs entirely. So we spend a lifetime training ourselves to act more as our souls call us forward to act and less like the great ape which is our genetic heritage.

If you are feeling stuck as a spiritual seeker, maybe the use of this resource of polarity will get you off the dime and working at new growth, new learning and a new way of being. Have fun with it! For instance, one way to lessen the impact of having to interact with people new or challenging to you is to mentally undress them down to their underwear. Somehow this reduces their fearsomeness!

Or, in a situation in which you are looking for some mental and emotional space to “do the right thing,” look at the picture of what is happening and imagine it as a newspaper cartoon like “Dennis the Menace” or “Ziggy.” What will you write as the caption? Thinking about that will help take the stress out of things and free your mind to find the love in the situation.

Sometimes there are tough circumstances in which yours will be the only love visible, if you choose to invoke it. And you may well save the day by having that generosity of spirit.

I open my arms and embrace your soul in love and light. May your day on the spiritual road fare well indeed.