From Inside
Good and Evil, Positivity and Negativity, Healthiness and Harmfulness, Happiness and Misery — all are not things we create, but things we encounter. We encounter them through our will. Our experience of these ideas happens in our minds.
Cultivating a larger meta-conscious space, through mindful meditation, can give us more psychological bandwidth. This additional processing capacity is especially necessary in times of great stress or anxiety, when our minds are more likely to become preoccupied with intense and complex emotions.
While God is the penultimate source of all that is good in the universe, He has given each of us free will. We are free to choose to encounter goodness, positivity, healthiness, and happiness in each moment of every day. Likewise, we are free to make different choices.
As Jimi Hendrix said, “It all has to come from the inside.” The choice to encounter those things that will make you a better person has to come from your own God-given free will.
No one can force you to feel miserable, negative, harmed, or evil; and no one else is responsible for your happiness, health, positive attitude, or good character. Those are all the result of choices you alone can make.
“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”
Mohandas Ghandi
© 2021 Noel Bagwell. All Right Reserved.
