Ram: Dear Margie, it sounds like you’re a bit frustrated. However, I encourage you to keep at the meditation. If you stick to it, it will take less and less time to enter the silence. Keep it up.
When we talked on the phone the other night and you expressed so much hatred for George Bush, I got to thinking. I don’t think you are being fair to yourself when you take the news so personally. In the first place, you are not getting a balanced view, because the media is obsessed with money and it knows that conflict sells. It knows that America is fear-obsessed and enjoys feeling threatened. It gives them a chance to feel angry and righteous, so it dishes up what people want.
But in fact for every negative story thousands of positive stories never get printed. Secondly, this universe is big enough to contain what little conflict there is without getting fundamentally out of kilter. I’m constantly amazed by the many miracles I see taking place all around me. If you look down on the world from forty-thousand feet you can’t help but notice how beautiful and orderly it is, both man and nature. Everything is connected to everything else and working purposefully. The conflict that the media makes such an issue of is actually a subset of the universal order, not the other way around.
I’m quite bullish on the world.
But if you honestly feel that the world is a mess and it is disturbing you, then the only way to actually make a difference is to take a positive attitude. To become disturbed because the world is disturbed only increases the net disturbance in the world. The people you are fighting against will only dig in their heels. There is no sense worrying about the big picture unless you are one of the movers and shakers who can actually influence events. But a small person can carry a peaceful, loving vibration and spread that to everyone he or she touches.
I think it is also important to understand that everything here, conflict included, serves a higher purpose, so when a person experiences conflict he or she will eventually begin to inquire – to see what is the cause – and this will lead eventually to self-examination and then to some kind of self-correction. In your own case you are starting to meditate and get your life together because of your own subjective conflicts, so this suffering you feel is having a positive result. But there is no need to keep yourself worked up so you can do your practice. You should do it for the right reasons – because you are the problem – the world is fine as it is.
~ Ram
