Saturday, February 16, 2019

Hopeful Thinking - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - Facing the Light

Something special happens in our brains when we face the light. Among other things, we get happier. When we give ourselves twenty minutes of sunlight in the morning it resets our body clocks, it improves our mood and increases our activity levels. It produces vitamin D as well.
Many know these things already. What do we do with that knowledge? Typically nothing. But let’s say your psychiatrist has told you that you need a slight mood stabilizer. The prescription she offers you is a choice between either a pill or a practice. You can either take a chemical with side effects and a co-payment, or you can get into the daily habit of twenty minutes of sunlight and short walk. Which would you choose?
Even a few seconds every now and then of just turning your face toward any light source at all will incrementally change you from within. Whether it’s the sun, a light bulb, or even a candle. There’s a prayer in this. It’s a prayer to feel better.
There is another, more metaphorical source of light as well which greatly deserves our attention. It’s progress. Think of progress as its own light source. Turn toward it. Notice it. Point it out to others when you see it. Recognize every achievement. There’s a prayer in this as well. It’s a prayer for the whole world to feel better, including you.
When we notice good things happening they tend to happen around us more often. Perhaps it’s only in our imagination, but isn’t that enough? The goal here is to feel better, after all. It’s helpful to others as well. Many of us are so busy being anxious we forget to notice the good. Let’s help one another see the light that’s already around us by pointing it out and honoring it.
We love to wallow in doom, but statistics prove that homicide rates worldwide have fallen dramatically over the past two hundred years. Violent crime is way down, too. And despite our society’s move to pull our children indoors—when most adults of a certain age remember being free-range until the streetlights came on—kids are much safer now than they were a few decades ago. Yet, paradoxically, we are more afraid for them now. Why? Because we have we been manipulated into believing we are in greater danger so that we are willing to purchase (and vote for) a greater sense of security. Alarm companies don’t make a habit of producing commercials that tell you violent crime is down. They need you to be alarmed. Politicians get more votes when we’re afraid of what might happen if we don’t vote for them. We fall for it all the time.
Facing toward the light, both literally and figuratively, gives your brain chemistry an opportunity to rebalance itself and allow for equilibrium. Feeling good is meant to be our natural state. That’s good news. Because it means we don’t have to start doing something as much as we have to stop doing something. We have to stop giving bad news so much power over our lives.
Of course we must remain aware of what’s going on around us. This is not an invitation to stick your head in the sand. It’s an opportunity to recreate how you perceive the world so that you are a better friend to it.
In 1993, a study was conducted. In it a large group of people all meditated on the thought of the crime rate going down in Washington DC. Over the course of the six week experiment crime went down 23%. The odds of that happening on its own were calculated to be less than 2 in 1,000,000,000. What does this mean? Something powerful happens when we deliberately orient ourselves toward what we want.
We each emit a frequency at all times. We literally broadcast vibration. Of course we don’t know much about it all, but we see the effects of our poking at it. Technology has given us glimpse enough to tell there’s more there than meets the eye. So let’s make an assumption that we can broadcast whatever vibration we choose.
If we’re facing the light, what might we be broadcasting at that exact moment? If we’re looking for every bit of forward movement in the world, what frequency are we emitting as we watch? What becomes of that transmission when it bounces off someone else? Use your imagination to wonder about it.
This is what faith really is when you come down to it. It is an assumption we were made so perfectly that how we feel is what we project, as well as what we tend to attract. This theory is of course without direct proof, yet many observations point to it being true. Is that enough to make you curious? To be a lightbearer for others, one must first be willing to see light for themselves.

No comments:

Post a Comment