Changing the World

 It is easy to be overwhelmed and disheartened by the world in which we live. How do you not feel that the world is lost, how do you not fear that we are at the point of some sort of Armageddon?  The senseless violence and hatred combined with the personal stresses of family and attempts to meet our financial responsibilities can bring one to the brink of personal destruction if not even suicide.  What can you do?

First, it is important to frame the situation in terms that you can succeed.  Remember, you have great power, and in many ways that power begins in your framing of the challenge.  You are a mystical being that exists at the nexus.  There is an infinite universe both outside and inside of you.  Apparently external events such as world conflict and disrespect.  Internal ones such as health issues and out of control thoughts and emotions.  This can be altered by learning to control the lens of your focus.  

A person who has bias of any kind can and will see proof of their view every day everywhere they look.  They will see Islamic or people of color commit evil acts, or Americans or Jews, or women or men.  Whatever the passionately held belief is, there will be the proof before their eyes;  and they will be right in their assessment.  There really will be these elements.  We create our own world.

We must train ourselves to see the positive.  We must train ourselves to see people from these various groups doing what we know to be right and good.  These things are also happening, but we cannot see it.  The brain finds answers for the questions we ask it, and if you ask what is wrong with the world, the brain will seek to please us by defining answers we would choose to see.

Second and more importantly, when we deal with another or group of people who are charged in their sense of ego, we must resist the temptation to take up the word of judgement.  Ego is the sense of being separate from the world.  We frame the limits of our existence by feels different.  When faced with someone charged with their sense of separateness it charges our own sense of ego, or separateness.  We are not separate.  We are truly one.  If you define yourself by a falsehood of any kind you will eventually get yourself in trouble.  False definitions create false conclusions.

We must bring a level of commitment to see this unity equal or stronger than the person who has a commitment to separateness.  This does not mean we will not defend or take precautions.  However the intent will not be to prove separateness.  If a person strikes out in a fever we may restrain them without seeing them as evil.  This also true when dealing with violence.  We also do not deal with the delusional by simply saying we think they are crazy.  We find compassion by learning to feel another's pain as our own.  We find kindness by seeing that the other as our own, of being of like kind.  We are the same.  

Finally it is most important to realize that subtlety is more powerful than intensity.  Softness is more powerful that hardness, and water is more powerful than rock.  Do not be fooled my friend.  Learn to be soft, to be subtle and you will find the power to change the world.