Over an extended period of time, young people are being specifically subjected to a barrage of very powerful yet subtle messages from the all-pervading media industry (television, film, internet, advertising and gaming) about how to think, how to view the world, how to view themselves, how to function in society and how to interact with others.
They are being encouraged to remain on the surface of their self; to dwell in their mind, in their opinions and beliefs, in their endlessly fuelled desires and wants, and in their ideological ideas of who they are and what they stand for.
Depth is not being encouraged, genuine openness, connection and interaction with others is not being encouraged. They are being steered into inhabiting a two-dimensional world that is digital, conceptual and purely cerebral. Their precious attention is being diverted and conditioned by the fast-hitting, instant-fix world of information and entertainment. They are being steered well clear of the depth of life – the peace, inner beauty, quietness and joy – and pulled into a realm of endless stimulation, colours, thoughts, distractions, noise and activity. The futher they venture into this enticing, distracting, and digitally hypnotic realm of information, the more distant they become from their own body, their own being, their own heart. The further away they venture from feeling and understanding what is truly important in life and where the deepest riches are to be found.
Their attention is the commodity being fought over by all the big-money, (and often government sponsored) advertising companies, entertainment companies, technology and games companies. Steer the young people in the right direction, and you can mould them into the desired citizens of the future. You can decide the way they will interact, what they will value in life, and the society they will create together. You create the future of humanity of this planet by influencing the minds of those who will participate and play a formative role within it. This is why young people are being so heavily targeted by these industries, because they are the future.
But there are obviously two forces at play in this world. There is undoubtedly good, and there is undoubtedly evil. Sometimes evil can fool good-hearted people, by encouraging them to take a hostile position against members of their own species – even their own family! – and this is because evil’s speciality is creating division. Its primary focus is to do this and to create suffering in human beings so that evil can continue to exist in humanity. Because once people start healing and coming together, understanding each other and forgiving each other without exception, then evil cannot reside in their hearts, and this is what we all need to do if we wish to be free from its influence.
It’s almost as if evil is a living ‘entity’ that wants to survive and to maintain its existence by the most effective means necessary. Disease is a bit like this. Take cancer as an example. If you have ever seen black mould growing on a damp wall in a dark room of a house, you will have seen that it is an organism that thrives under certain conditions: a lack of light, a lack of warmth, a lack of air-flow. Cancer is an organism that behaves in a very similar way, needing certain ideal conditions (like a deficiency of oxygen for example) to grow and spread. Cancer wants to grow, and it does so if we don’t address its presence, and change the inner environment in which it exists.
Evil is like cancer. It is like a dark mould that wants to create certain conditions so that it can thrive. It wants unconsciousness (i.e. spiritual darkness). It wants inner coldness (a lack of warmth in the heart, a lack of energy and inner vitality). It wants the body to be denied our attention, our consciousness and our love, for then it has a perfect breeding ground for itself; a breeding ground for illness, for darkness, for weakness and disease. Then it can thrive – like a parasite – until it has taken everything it can take from its host.
Like cancer, evil needs a body, and if we don’t create the ideal conditions for goodness, vitality and health to flourish within us, we will fall prey to its influence. We will find ourselves at the mercy of negative emotions and negative thoughts. We will find that our mouth is always ready to engage in negative speech, in criticism, judgements and unkindness. We will notice that our mind is over active with judgement, with criticism, with worries, with fears – for ourselves and for the future. Fear, sadness and anger will slowly become the more predominant forces in our lives, whereas it should be joy, it should be gratitude, it should be compassion that is flowing through our heart and our veins.
Our heart is designed to be strong, active, loving, giving and caring. It is meant to be the most influential force in our life, rather than our thinking mind. But if we find that this is not the case; if we find that we are often at the mercy of our judgemental, fearful and anxious thoughts and that our heart feels week, afraid, angry or grief-stricken, then we must change something immediately.
Because essentially, in any given moment we either play host to goodness (which is Love) or we play host to evil (which is fear). There are no other options, and we are coming to a point in the evolution of our species where each human being has to finally decide which they want to be a permanent vessel for. You can see through the news reports that indeed some people do choose to succumb to evil, and then they do evil things, destructive things and cruel things. Those people were not born evil; they succumbed to it by not developing (or being assisted to develop) the ideal conditions for goodness to flourish in their life and in their heart.
So now is the time to take responsibility for your choices, because there are many, many negative influences in society. They flow through television and computer screens, through magazines and newspapers, through advertising and film. And most significantly, they flow through the collective mind of humanity. Our thoughts do not belong to us; they come from the collective pool of thought which humanity shares, and this pool is currently very polluted. It is polluted by thoughts of greed, selfishness, judgment and hatred. It is polluted by thoughts of fear, regret, guilt and shame. Such flavoured thoughts enter our own mind, and we either energise them with our attention, or we ignore them and dismiss them. We either choose to get involved with the thoughts and use our mind to elaborate them, or we don’t.
We have the freedom to choose, and this is why so many people practice meditation, because it helps us see that entering into thoughts is a choice. We don’t have to go into a thought. We can choose instead to turn our awareness to our body, to relaxation, to our heart, to a feeling of gratitude and peace. And when we do this, the thoughts we attract will change. They change to thoughts of how we can help others, to thoughts of how we can use our creativity to have a positive influence on the world. We begin to think in harmony with love.
The consequences of what we give our attention to are felt throughout our entire being. Occupy your mind with images and stories of conflict, division and hatred (which are promoted by nearly all the media on a daily basis), and you’ll find that you have no peace inside. You will feel conflicted, agitated and divided within yourself. There will be no inner harmony. Your mind will be active with thoughts of who is right and who is wrong, who deserves what, and how unjust the world is. But you need peace inside of you. You need to experience a sense of inner harmony where there is no anger towards any person or group, so that you can appreciate and enjoy being alive, and thus make a positive and constructive contribution to the world. It is essential.
So this is the direction that we all need to be steering ourselves in. We need to significantly reduce our obsession with media and technology, and remember the simplicity of life, of spending more time in nature, of connecting with people face to face, of doing creative things and helping others as much as we can. We really need to develop a sense of inner harmony, that is not disturbed by what we hear or what we read. We need to develop a focused and wise mind, that is understanding and considerate of all peoples’ perspectives, rather than being quick to judge and condemn.
We need to develop our heart so that it is compassionate to all people without exception, understanding their need for peace and security, happiness and love, just as we do, and realise that everybody goes about this pursuit in very different ways. Some seek power to feel secure, others seek money, others seek attention. We all are seeking the same things, just in different ways. Understand this and you will be able to understand and have compassion for all people, even those that choose to succumb to evil influences. When we think more about others, and try to truly understand them and their motivations, we begin to dissolve the inner sense of hostility that is so often projected upon other people and other groups. Compassion and forgiveness arise instead.
We are encouraged by the media and by the consumerism it promotes to think mostly about ourselves; about what we want, what we need, what is our identity, how do we want to portray ourselves to the world? This self-focus makes us blind to the needs of the people who are actually in our life. We are not concerned with them, with whether they are struggling or suffering. And usually, those who are behaving anti-socially are suffering.
But we tell ourselves that it is not our problem. Perhaps we even believe that they are the problem. This is the self-centred and self-righteous way of thinking which is actually totally un-human and un-natural. We are deeply social, compassionate and empathic creatures. We take great joy from easing the burden of others, and it is possibly the most meaningful and fulfilling pursuit we can engage ourselves in. This is when our heart is really active and strong; when we are helping others.
Selfishness is a disease, and one that gives birth to evil. You could call evil ‘extreme selfishness’, because it is absent of any concern for others. Quite the opposite in fact; it despises others and resents its obligation to others. This is what fuels the destructive and hateful behaviour that will inevitable flow from extreme selfishness. And we must remember that if we are living selfishly, then we are dwelling in a place that could easily lead us to the extreme, under the conducive conditions such as stress, fear, and anger, especially if they are prolonged and sustained. This is what the media is encouraging within us when we consume its divisive information every day.
We must be very careful what we give our attention to, what we read, what we watch and what we listen to. If we want peace and if we want to contribute peace to this world, we must foster it within by choosing positive influences; influences that feed our heart, that inspire us and encourage constructive creativity.
An angry person can never make the world more peaceful. They will simply dwell in anger until they finally vanquish it from their heart. This is what we all must do, along with fear and guilt also. Yes, there is great injustice in this world, but anger and punishment do not redress the balance. But compassion and forgiveness are guaranteed to do so.
“Develop the Strength of your heart”
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The brightest light conquers the deepest darkness 