Dear friends,
It seems to me, that which you dwell on, is what you become. Dwell on hate, and you become bitter, angry and vengeful, dwell on love, and you become happy, naive and forgiving. Some people dwell on how much suffering is in the world, they become nihilistic, angry, and hedonistic. Others dwell on racism, economic inequality, crime and/or hate the rich, they become zealots who will defile any norm to harm those they see as oppressors. Still others dwell on the joys of life, they become excited, happy and enthusiastic. All of us are guilty to some extent. The well balanced however, don’t dwell, as much as try to stay balanced. Recognizing there is love, oppression, joys and sufferings, one becomes enlightened in a sense. Stop dwelling and you learn to see the world as it is.
I wager, every single person who is clinically depressed, not because someone they loved died or other personal tragedy, of which there is no way around but through… dwell on foolishness. Allowing stray crazy thoughts free range in one’s mind is a sure path to becoming those stray crazy thoughts. The depressed person’s thoughts become a merry go round of circular thinking. This same thing holds true for many mass shooters. They get it in their head that there is no sense to life, it is irrelevant, we are but tiny motes on a microscopic planet, circling a solar system in a superfluous galaxy. That thought circles in their heads like a vulture a dying man. Eventually it lands and eats him. People who are depressed or nihilistic can change their minds… by changing what they think about.
You all know someone who is perpetually angry. I knew a guy like that. At his core he was a terrific guy, but he was quick to anger. He would set across the break table from me, smoking his Bel Aire, and stare into my eyes. His would go red as he would recount, the people attending the church next to his house had knocked down his snow banks… AGAIN! Of course, you could put a plumb bob on any of his snowbanks, not one would be out of plumb. The veins on his forehead would bulge and he would go nearly apoplectic… days later. One Sunday afternoon I was called and asked to do his job. I said, “Of course… Is John Okay?” “No, he died today, his wife found him in the driveway, he had a heart attack shoveling snow…” It hadn’t snowed in a week. John was 52.
Dwelling on things that made him angry didn’t serve his interests very well did it? While dwelling on every bad thing that has ever happened to you, is a sure path to that end, dwelling on the love you have for your children, wife, husband, brothers, sisters, mother and father, is a path to all encompassing love. Because we project onto the world what we think and hold in our hearts. Moreover, we create in the world that which we think. I am of the opinion that quantum physics teaches us that reality is not at all what we thought it was… is. Our thoughts effect reality itself, and there are ground breaking experiments proving this hypothesis every day. The IONs Institute and the experiments of Tom Campbell are doing yeoman’s work in this area.
The truly enlightened don’t dwell on anything, they incorporate all of existence into themselves, forgoing dwelling on one aspect. In doing so they become wise. Yes there is great evil in the world, evil we create by our thoughts, by dwelling on it we make it corporeal, both in the world and in our own lives. When we dwell on the good we manifest good both in our lives and the world as well. When we incorporate the good and evil in the world, that is when we transcend normality and become visionaries. In a land of the blind the one eyed man is king. Dwelling on things blinds us, all we can see is what we dwell on. Not dwelling however, instead seeing the world as it is, gives us extra sensory perception, making us… the one eyed man in the land of the blind.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
