What’s the best way to make Good stuff happen? I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this lately.
Back when I was in university, my mentor, the campus Chaplin, would look over my weekly articles for the university newspaper. I loved to tackle controversial religious and moral topics: homosexuality and Christians, Muslims and violence, sex and ethics. My intention with each article was to address the topic and get beneath the stereotypes to the Truth. Yeah, I was pretty ambitious! For example, I would start my articles off by talking about the perception that Islam is violent or the perception that the Bible was against gays.
My mentor would return to me my articles bleeding with red ink. He chopped out words, slashed up paragraphs and questioned my very intention. And I had been proud of the piece– thinking it was all but complete! It wasn’t that he was against my message– just how I was saying. More importantly, the consequences of how I was saying it.
It would turn out to be one of the greatest lessons of my life.
“Russell, if you are really keen to dispel the false perceptions then don’t write about them. Don’t give them any more energy. Pay them no attention. Just write about the good stuff. Put your attention there.”
It took me the entire year to wrap my mind around what he was talking about. Yes. It made so much sense– of course, what we put our attention on, put energy into it! Even if we are writing or fighting against it. Perhaps especially so. What we resist, persists.
I revised my articles the best I could. More significantly, I revised my entire life, declining to take jobs or to give energy to modes of thinking or living that I disagreed with. Instead, I just did what I thought was good, even if the effects of my path were far smaller than what they could be otherwise.
These days there are a lot of petitions and campaigns that go on around the web. People crusade against this corrupt company, this bad way of doing things, or that injustice. Now, it is important not to look away from the bad stuff, but, if change is really what we want to manifest, my feeling is that there is a better way. After all, what we resist persists.
What is that way? Well, it is simply to make the good stuff happen. I am deeply inspired by the power and momentum that online petitions can muster. Could that same technique also be tapped to make beautiful things happen?
YES. This is my dream!
This is the fundamental premise of the 1Mandala and our 1Actions. Make the beautiful stuff happen. Don’t even bother with bad stuff. Be love, be compassion, be kindness, be collaborative, be generous, be the change we want to see. Make beautiful things happen.
What is the beautiful? It is the vision of world where we know we have all that we need and thus can be generous with our possessions and energy, where we all helping each other out whenever the opportunity arises, where we care for our most vulnerable, where poverty is replaced with empowerment and most of all, where we are all working together harmoniously and with joy to make this very vision unfold.
