Overcoming The Collective Negativity

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." –Seneca, Roman philosopher, mid-1st century AD

I find this topsy-turvy market to be an interesting phenomenon. Everybody says doom, doom, doom, and I say, keep the rudder in the water and make life work. It's easy to turn on CNN and become obsessed and confused and pissed off that you could just jump off a bridge. That's ridiculous.

Many of my students are real estate agents and we've had the chance to discuss the current market at length. Obviously, huge mistakes were made on all sides. The banks were practically giving it away and people who had no business accepting variable rates (regardless of whether or not they understood what that actually meant) overestimated what they could afford to pay, all lead to the morass that's currently underway. Yet now, instead of this being 'their' problem (the banks and borrowers), it's everyone's problem.

I can't fix the mess the market is in. It has to right itself (whether that's allowed to happen naturally and quickly or whether the government prolongs the pain). What I do understand and can advise upon is that we do not have to accept the misery and fear mongering that is coming at us from all sides.

Not sure if you could tell, but I'm not a huge fan of the media. There's not much to it beyond its attempt to entertain at this point, and even the "real news" gets all messed up with sleazy gossip (whether that be celebrity, political, or other). Aside from not really giving us much to go on, it also poisons the well for those of us trying to make positive changes in ourselves and the world, and for those of us who strive to frame the world and our shared reality as a 'win-win'. Collectively our conscious and unconscious minds are being fed a constant stream of gruel, duping us into believing we have no power in the world, no impact, no way to move things toward the better.

I just picked up a book called "Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain" by Sharon Begley (with a forward by the Dalai Lama). It's all about transformation. It combines state of the art, cutting edge neuroscience with the Tibetan Buddhism practice of mindfulness. I'm only ten pages into it, and I'm already inspired and excited.

Our brains have the ability to heal and adapt to trauma, accidents, and can even reverse the negative programming we've been subjected to in different areas (the media being one of them). When we have intention and pay attention to what's really going on, not what's going on in the frames that others set for us, then we can make seismic changes in ourselves, changes which ripple into those around us, which move exponentially outward.

Oftentimes, spirituality and science have been at odds. We see this with the evolution v. creationism battle that is still being waged (and the wrongfully perceived "compromise" of intelligent design). But finally, neuroscience and the spiritual practice of Buddhism (which I do not practice but have a great respect for) have discovered common ground and are doing incredible things in the mind/body realm helping to transform what used to be problems and diseases that were once thought incurable or were only able to be "fixed" with pharmaceuticals (OCD, autism, dyslexia, depression).

Who benefits from us fixing ourselves? Maybe not the big pharma companies, but the real profit is in us rippling out positivity and undermining the negative things that are being spoon fed to us.