Accepting Reality One Step at a Time
Dear friends,
Another tough week of news. While the details change and each event is sadly tragic in its own way, the “news” might properly be called the “olds”. Conflict, atrocities, and other horrible news has unfortunately been around as long as human life. Whatever we choose to call it, how can we relate to it as responsible citizens and as children of Spirit? I’m glad you asked… :-)
The news is designed to stir up our emotions. It is designed to do that because that’s what gets the eyeballs (whether social media, TV, or other media). But there is a difference between emotion and pure feeling.
There is verse in a favorite song of mine:
It’s not that I don't know what grief is. This poor heart has had its full share.
But grief’s one thing and complaining another. Why multiply grief with despair?
It is natural for the heart to be severely tweaked when learning of someone in pain. I have a very large circle of friends. A goodly number of them are facing things like health crises, painful divorce, issues with children, etc. at this very moment. It pains me to see their challenges. I wish things were different.
But I deeply know this is the nature of life. In all my work with NASA over the decades, I never once had a NASA scientist show annoyance that Earth’s gravity was so strong. “Think of how much money we’d save on rocket fuel if it were less!”
While the pains of this world are much, much greater than something so trivial, the point of the story is to accept what cannot be changed. "There will be poor always" was a deep and profound statement of Jesus'. Surely he did not mean we ought not to care, and just as surely, he could not have meant not to help, as he often encouraged service to the poor.
But despair, losing sleep, anxiety, and worry are much more than just sadness over tragic events. There are things I can imagine in my life that would be enormously hard for me to accept. But there are hundreds – if not thousands – of things where, with some effort, I could overcome the negative emotions that would tend to arise. Why focus on the few too horrific to accept? Work on the ones you may realistically be able to best. That’s how we build muscle; by gently pushing the envelope. Our mental “gym” is filled with opportunities for acceptance. Let us not focus on the few barbells that are clearly more than we can lift. Let us instead strive to become stronger by working with the barbells that are only marginally too heavy for us.
Our worry and anxiety about things means we lose twice. Once as humans watching our human family suffer. And again when we internalize the distress to the extent it also damages us ourselves, though we are half a world away from the actual danger. Let us instead be beacons of peace in our own lives as we face the many smaller challenges that arise every day. As Yogananda said, if we take care of the minutes, the incarnations will take care of themselves.
Blessings,
David G., manager
for the Gang at East West