Thoughts are Things

It is easy to be disheartened when tuned in to too much technology. I subscribe to a few *cause* newsletters having to do with the environment and animal welfare. The television is awash with stories about corporate greed, environmental apathy, loss of habitat, species extinction, etc. Although I care deeply about the environment and animals it has come to the point where I delete or another documentary on village life being destroyed by toxic runoff from some mine in PNG. Or just now on Deutsche Well TV, Asian carp taking over the Mississippi River moving in on Lake Michigan. The bad news is relentless.

I started to believe it. Started to believe we are past the point of no return. That the earth is screwed due to runaway global warming and we may as well open another bottle of champagne - and not recycle the bottle. That we have become so estranged from our mammalian ancestry that we treat ourselves, our animal cousins and the earth as though they are The Other, something to be dominated if not eradicated.

Of course this mindset had to stop. Even during the 'good thought' section of my daily yoga routine I was focussing on the negative; help this, stop that, change this. I was getting pretty depressed. Very dangerous. Thoughts are things. As I've quoted Arthur Eddington before, I don't mind doing so again. 'The stuff of the Universe is Mind Stuff'. So you think, so you are. So how does one fly in the face of all this bad news? Being blind to it all, pretending it isn't there won't make it go away. So how to help without succumbing?

By community. I realized that while I am thinking good thoughts, sending out thoughts of loving kindness, there are tens of thousands of people doing the same thing. I may not be very good at it but the intention is clear. I can add my good thoughts to the stream of prayer being created all over the world all the time. I did this and immediately felt better, felt part of a powerful merging of minds to save ourselves and the world. For all the bad news, there is much good news. And good people, people who are doing their bit. I don't have controlling shares in Rio Tinto but I can grow my own veggies, recycle almost everything, live in an eco and animal friendly way and, to save power turn off the darn TV.