The battle between good and evil is not an intangible, irrelevant struggle, nor one that takes place only in movies and history books. It is taking place all around us, inside us, between us, right now, every day. But it doesn't feel like it... Our daily struggles feel personal and largely under our conscious control. It really feels like the choices I make regarding my career path and investment strategy determine the future, but I can't see the forest for the trees. There is a bigger picture, an invisible network of life that is all-encompassing and driven solely by my intent and the power of my mind.
The day-to-day decisions I make in the physical realm are really not decisions at all, but misunderstood effects of a cause that's been right under my nose for years. There is an important distinction between making a decision and changing how I think about the decision itself. Any choice I can make is only possible within a mindset that can conceive it, and its importance necessarily pales in comparison to that of my mindset itself. My mindset dictates possibilities and determines the very decisions I have to make, as well as the options from which I can choose.
It hardly seems like I have any control at all over this seemingly static and ingrained level. No, it seems like I'm at the mercy of how I think, bound to feel certain ways about certain things and live inside the parameters within which I've allowed myself to tread. How can I change the very basic concept of what seems possible when that decision, more than any other, seems to be completely beyond my control? It's a Catch-22, and I'm drowning in logic. The good news is that my logic is flawed.
Abandoning my logic is integral to unlocking my mindset, which is based on and relevant only to my perception. Indeed, the mindset I choose shapes my perception and my resulting system of logic, not vice versa. There are steps I take in an attempt to transcend this world and my perception, steps that don't make much sense to me as a person who clips his toenails and attends civilized gatherings. But I remind myself that there's more to life than toenails and civilization, that it's possible there is wisdom and knowledge larger than myself, and that I have nothing to lose and everything to gain by tapping into it.
You'll notice I write this in the first person, present tense. I don't even necessarily write it for you. I write it for myself, because all this nonsense I believe is strengthened by me writing, thinking, and reinforcing these thoughts. It's only as true as I believe it to be, and by the time I finish this essay my power to shape my reality and perception will be that much stronger than it was before. In fact, it will be double-plus strong because I just wrote that last sentence. Some people say this is all in my head and that I'm not “really” any different than I was before – not scientifically... And I say they're absolutely right.
So while they revel in being right, I tell myself things that I want to be true, things that I want to believe. I literally tell myself that I am the opposite of feelings I have but don't like. If I feel stiff and sore I tell myself that I am flexible and relaxed. If I feel anxious I affirm that I am calm and centered. If I feel redundant with my examples, I remind myself that it's good to be thorough. And if I genuinely want these feelings that I affirm to be true and concentrate on believing they are instead of concluding that this is all nonsense before I even try, they are true.
I practice this. It has a cumulative effect and saying “I am confident” ten times won't magically transform me overnight. But the more I spend my time saying “I am confident” instead of thinking “I'm so horribly shy”, the more confident I am. Whether or not they're a stretch to believe, the more positive thoughts I have about myself, the better my self-confidence. After all, that's the whole point – to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. For sure, we believe the things we say as much as we say the things we believe.
Yes, I have learned that the most important decision I can make is to be happy, hopeful and positive, so much so that there isn't any room left for negative. For a long time I didn't make a choice at all between happy or sad, positive or negative, or good or evil. Making a conscious effort to feel any certain way seemed contrived, insincere and impossible, but I discovered that to not consciously seek good is to choose evil because evil seeps in through any cracks and openings not sealed by good. There is tremendous power in this choice between good and evil, power to create everything from ecstatic joy to hopeless despair. And as always, with power comes responsibility.
II. GOOD & EVIL: THE RESPONSIBILITY
Please excuse me for sounding a bit like a “you're weak and don't even know it” Evangelical, but there is a kind of truth in the idea that good and evil work through us without our knowledge. However, the Bible Belt and I differ in the judgments we make about this phenomenon of evil and what they propose to “fix” a person so possessed. Their position seems to be that I'm chock full of inherent flaws, sin, and so forth. They further insist that I must surrender myself to a conceptual being whose very existence is widely disputed in order to be saved. However, I favor the idea that I'm responsible for myself as a part of this world, and that while the strength and help I need are out there for me, the decision to seek them out is entirely up to me.
-----> I rely solely upon myself because it's impossible to do anything but. <-----
As a part of this world and universe, I am intertwined with everything and can draw strength and guidance from the puzzle into which I fit. However, any blessings I may reap from this symbiosis are contingent upon my diligence in seeking good – good, not forgiveness for evil I'm told I was born with. But many believers deny their own part in determining their fates and blame external “forces” that are merely the effects of their own choices and actions. Living life from inside the comfort zone of their fable, they make misinformed, immature judgments about the world and vow to abstain from many areas of life out of fear.
Believe it or not, I do my best to restrain myself only to constructive criticism and I understand the futility in chastising other people and beliefs. However, I also believe that continually berating oneself with feelings of guilt about inherent flaws is unfair and makes for an extremely inharmonious way to exist. I criticize in an attempt to foster growth and change, and accordingly I attempt to focus on constructive criticism. And it's certainly important, second only to choosing to make a choice at all. That is indeed the most pivotal choice I can make – whether to assume responsibility for my own life and what I contribute to this world.
III. GOOD & EVIL: THE AWESOME POWER OF GOOD
Regardless of what I think about any of this, the system of choices is still in place. And whether or not I’d like to admit it, I'm shaping my own life with the decisions I make. I can fight it or run with it. And when I run, access to primal power becomes available to me. When I listen to my instincts and try to make choices that I know are good for me, my power grows. A calm but strong sense of confidence settles over me, and problems that would have otherwise seemed overwhelming simply work themselves out. That's the thing about problems – they're only even problems if someone is willing to care about them. Besides, they always get solved one way or another. If I just relax and try something, anything that seems like a positive step, I'll make progress – either by figuring something out or by completing a task. I might end up making progress in a completely unrelated subject or learn something resulting from a mistake I make in the process, but I'll definitely learn and progress. Conscious thought needn't worry itself much; its role is overstated and marveling at how clever I am for solving a problem is about like admiring my elegant handwriting on a plagiarized homework assignment.
The power to choose is the key to unlocking the truly awesome power of good. Good is self-sustaining, continually gaining strength and momentum, and its powers are available to me as long as it remains my focus. Evil is self-destructive, stagnant, and always agitated and discontent. Followers of the paths of evil are continually being drained and depleted, always trudging two steps forward and sliding back one. These paths are riddled with briars, quicksand and harsh winds, which sap both strength and resolve with each step. Agitated, discontent, and feeling trapped in this most unpleasant place, the weary wanderer has two options. He may choose to pacify his immediate comforts and continue down his current path, sinking deeper into the quicksand, or he may instead summon all his strength and boldly blaze a new path through the dense wilderness in search of a path of good. In fact, this newly blazed trail itself promptly becomes a path of good by very nature of the wanderer's decision, and he begins to build momentum and strength the second he changes course.
The wanderer's most difficult and pressing task is to choose good. This isn't as simplistic and trite as it sounds. It is certainly true that to choose good frequently involves a considerable amount of difficult work and decision making in the day-to-day physical world. But the whole point, so to speak, of doing acts of good in this world lies in the power it generates. Behind the curtains, mind, body, and spirit grow stronger as one travels along paths of good. There are countless trails winding across this universe, paths that frequently intersect but have very few clearly marked sign posts to guide us along the way. Though sometimes the destination may be unclear or unknown, each one is a path to somewhere. This is a reality that deserves some thought and reflection, for this is all life really is – one long path. Each step down any given path leads the traveler closer to one polar extreme and equally further away from the other. A spirit wandering with no stated direction will quickly find itself heading down the most well-worn paths, the paths of discontentment and despair that no one would consciously choose to explore.
Together, we will continue to explore these paths and help guide each other towards and along paths of good, bearing in mind that the virtue of any given path is different for everyone. We will regrow genuine, personal connections and communication between people who are otherwise empty shells with labels – coworker, doctor, teacher, parent. More and more, we will proudly project our unique personalities into genuine interactions instead of masking them. We will further abandon the idea of uniformity, for one man's success is another man's carefully planned self-imprisonment. As we focus on these efforts and ideals, our collective power as a people grows, just as our power as individuals grows. And the more that people participate, the more the world becomes the kind of place a person, tree, or animal would want to live. As a brutally honest, cohesive community of genuine people who each accept responsibility for their own life and aren't afraid to be themselves, we will build an alliance of spirits stronger than any government, organization, or ideology. And we are going to do all this with the most powerful force we've ever known – the power of our own minds.
