October 7, 2008

Don't be afraid.

We are incredibly lucky and blessed to be living right now! I am well aware of the awful situation we find ourselves in our world, with financial disaster evolving, climate mayhem, political instability and paranoia, and natural disasters to boot, its all very frightening. But for a person learning and training in compassion, its also a great time to be alive in two important ways. For one, the instability and turmoil gives YOU the opportunity and environment to strengthen and temper your skills in compassion. Secondly, this deluge of disasters demands a change, and a response on the part of many people who, in quieter times, would never think about compassion. Tough times demand decisions and transformations to adapt to the changes in the environment, and people are going to have to decide if they want move forward or backwards. Do they want to give into the animalistic fears and react with warfare and walls, or do they want to react rationally with compassion, strength and vision?

On the television news, in the papers and magazines, on the internet, fear and distrust and disaster and calamity are presented as the inevitible, horrifying reality you live in. These media connections to the "world" are simply terrifying, anxiety inducing and too often present a picture of hopelessness. Do not let this fear get its hooks in you. Remember that the media's very existance depends on your fear. To keep you coming back for more (and to allow them to pay their salaries) it is necessary for you to not only want to know the news, you have to be afraid NOT to come back to their site. This doesn't mean that the news people are bad people, its just the very nature of their business. It is a business, built to take advantage of human nature and to make money from it.

But please know this, the terror they spew out and traffic in is not real. Yes, the events they report on have happened, even if not as sensationalist as they portray them, bad things do happen. Sometimes, in the whole world, lots of bad things happen at once. They always have and always probably will, that is the nature of our world. And yes, right now lots of turmoil and disaster reaches into our lives and can effect us in many ways. However, do this for me. Turn off the internet, the TV or put down the newspaper. Get yourself alone and quiet, and do a quick inventory of all the disasters effecting you right here and now. Notice that the real world, what is really there with you, where you really are here and now, is probably safe and secure. And despite all the troubles, the real effect of those tragedies on you, they will all happen in the here and now and will happen between you and another person. In the here and now, you have power. In the real world of right now, you have the ability to respond. What is really going to happen in your actual, factual, real world, is that you will be required (like you always are) to react personally to what is happening to you. Act with compassion, and just like always, your world, your real world right here where you are, will be a better place.

The news is for entertainment and education. But like a movie or a fiction book, it is not your real world. Do not make that mistake of fear, it is painful, it is a waste of time, and it is not real.

Previous blog entries for your reading pleasure.

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