Seeing and Dwelling On Good Things

"Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts become your words.  Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior.  Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits."  

                                     Mahatma Gandhi

In these recent few days, the war and turmoil in Israel and the Gaza strip, and the civil war in the Ukraine, have flared up again to an all out war.  More sickening and sad, a Malaysian passenger jet plane has recently been shot out of the sky over Ukraine.  A country already engaged in a savage civil war of it's own, has now taken the lives of nearly three hundred completely innocent souls - for no good reason. 

I saw someone post a commentary in social media, for all countries in conflict - to pursue a path of peace.  A very sarcastic and critical individual wrote in the comment section, "Peace has produced nothing".  My immediate thought was, "So going to war and taking lives for land, resources or just pure genocide - has produced good things?"  To paraphrase Gandhi again, "An eye for an eye and now we are both blind."

Is the best way to stop a fight by fighting even more?  Is it good to invite more people into the fight to help settle it?  Does one revenge avenge a loss?  Does another revenge to the first avenge stop yet another revenge?  Soon today's revenge will become decades of renewed destruction and creation of newer causes of anger, hatred, and pain?  Where does it end?  This cycle of pain certainly will not end in your lifetime.

But this is not the only cycle of energy that is out there.  Individually we all carry our own civil wars within our own selves.  Some people with straight hair want it to be curly, people with light sin rush to get tan and get darker.  Some people with dark skin run to make themselves lighter.  Different factions of Christians and Muslims denounce their own inner factions.  If you can dwell on the positive aspects of what you the individual have to offer, you won't be as uncomfortable or upset with what you bring to the table of life.  You should be seeking to blend what you have, with what already exists for the greater good of everyone at the table.  If everyone did that, rather than just seek for only themselves, everyone then could drink from the fountain of success and prosperity.  That is truly what peace brings.  No loss of life, and increased prosperity.

People who crave violence never need much of a spark to start pursuing a destructive path.  They will use any prejudice that they can to justify their actions.  Look at members of your family, neighborhood or work place who have a violent tendency.  They are so ready to start on a path that can become so destructive that they will willingly kill their own in a fit of rage, or completely kill innocent people - in order to justify their violent nature.

Here is the case:  Just as we must have positive views not only of our individual selves, but also of our families, our homes, states, and country - we need dwell on and continuously seek positive solutions to even our most negative problems.  We should be seeing and dwelling on the positive, not the negative.  Involving others in a negative or selfish way to our problems usually breeds further negative results from the positive change that we wish to achieve.  My brother, my sisters, my cousins, my friends...think about and dwell on positive change and the preciousness of life.

"One Bad Apple..."

This photo is courtesy of Inna

It is sometimes bewildering how people will test your patience, your understanding, and your everyday positive energy.  It is remarkable to see how people go through their own inner pain and pain caused onto them by others - whether perceived or real - and then they turn around and turn that pain onto you.  You don't have to be involved with anything that they are involved - however, you just happened to cross their path.  Once you're in their path, you get a full emotional blast of the horrific situations that they are going through.  At the very least, you get showered by their negative energy.

Some days it's even worse.  Instead of running into one negative person, you run into four or five of them, on your way to work, or on your way home from work.  Those four or five people may not even realize how negative they're being, yet they happen to expose you to their depression or negative mindset.  It isn't long before their thoughts start to turn your positive outlook into a negative one.  You begin to sour in your appreciation and understanding of life and people around you.  You begin to hate whatever or whomever they said to hate.  You begin to fear whatever they said to fear.  It isn't too long before you literally hand over your brain into the hands of someone who has no positive vision for themselves or for you.  They usually offer no positive ideas or action to turn situations around.

They hate a member of their family, their town, the neighboring town or have perceived (real or not) wrongs against them by either private or governmental agencies.  By the time you sit down to have your dinner, you've already had a full mental meal of anger, hatred, prejudice, victimization and thoughts of retaliation.  You begin to use words like "them" and "they" and "those people".  You've been stripped of your understanding of your own place in humanity and in the end you begin to dehumanize and generalize others.

However, your day goes, remember these words:  There are good and bad people everywhere and all our life circles.  From our own families, to our friends, neighbors, religious groups, governmental agencies, etc.  No matter how evil some people may be or appear within our circles, there are usually a majority of people who are truly good.  You have simply encountered the bad apples or dirty drops of water if you will?

Do your very best to get past the dark spirits, and embrace the bright spirits around you.  There is far more good around you than evil.  Instead of dwelling on the negative, make solid plans for enacting positive change the next day or week.  Try not to judge other people any more harshly than you judge yourself for your own mistakes and misdeeds.  And remember above all...we all make mistakes.  One bad apple...or one thousand drops of dirty water...does not spoil the whole world.

Love Is Tough

We are all tested everyday for many different aspects of life.  One of the greatest tests of all is to love someone in spite of any wrong doing that they may be involved with around you or even against you.  This could be a significant other in your life, a relative or even a perfect stranger.  You have to learn to not let that person taint or disturb the good energy that is inside of you.  You don't have to like that person, but you must gather the strength to love that person.  That is, you still be the good spirited person inside, and do good things outside.  But, do not let your soul get turned into a negative, vengeful focus because of someone else.

Matthews 5:44
"But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you."

It doesn't take a genius to know that it takes more strength to show restraint than it does to show anger and retaliate.  However, if you spend all day disliking or being angry at someone or something, you know how draining that will be of all your daily strength and positive energy.  So which of the two paths to choose?

In the first path, you are only restraining and redirecting the strength within you to do something positive.  You're actually recycling the good energy within you, and therefore have plenty to spare.  However, in the second path you expend negative energy back into the negative cycle.  It does not replenish itself.  Exacting revenge does not give you to same satisfaction as when you leave someone or something to suffer their demise under their own hand.  That is true satisfaction.

So?  Stay positive! 

Casting Away Absolutes

Extremes and absolute statements are the undoing to us all.  Everyday we judge others using extremes and absolute statements as if .  This is mostly to our own undoing.

All men are ____.  All men are____.  All minorities are ____.  All black people are____.  All white people are____.  All blonds are____.  All people from big cities with crime are____.  All police are____.  All people from the rural areas are____.  All Americans, Mexicans, Russians are____.  All Muslims, Christians or Jews are____.  So many negative absolute statements.

In my lifetime of 49 years, I have found every exception possible to just about every absolute statement.  I myself have lived a life that went against many commonly believed absolutes about my skin color, ethnicity and upbringing.  Yet here I am.

If "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" then does absolute powerlessness make one absolutely incorruptible?

These are all absolute statements that usually carry with them some form of prejudicial thoughts.   That is thoughts that although they may have origins to real experiences, it is impossible for the words to completely rule out any variations and exceptions.  If there numerous exceptions, then the absolute statement is absolutely flawed.

If you're a believer in absolutes, remember that many of them have their origins to some kind or pain or slight.  That in itself is absolutely a shame.  The painful experience that created that absolute statement or thought wasn't made with an objective mind.  No more than you can see your reflection in boiling water, you cannot see issues clearly in your mind when you are in pain.  That's why it is always best to never make important decisions when your mind is upset.

Let us all work on this one possible absolute thought.

That is: If you remain calm and positive in all decision making situations - you are more than likely going to prevail positively in that situation.

If you say to yourself that there is no absolute guarantees of this positive belief, you should ask yourself why?  More than likely you probably recognize a majority of the absolute beliefs mentioned in the second paragraph above?  So what makes a positive absolute belief so difficult to believe in?  If you can nod to any one of the others, why can't you simply believe in something absolutely positive as well?

Stay positive.