Is The World A Psychotic Self-destructive Mess, Or Filled With Wonder And Potential

Or anywhere between those two extremes.

Yes, it’s both a mess and filled with wonder and potential.

But there are two very distinct things at play. One is our experience of the world which is governed by our mindset or state of consciousness and the other, the reality of the world as it is.

Our mindset when contracted feels pain, a sense of dread, something, missing or something wrong, to the extent of the depth of the contraction. And because mindset’s so close and most of us so disconnected from or lost in what we feel, it becomes impossible to distinguish what we’re feeling from what we think the world feels like, and therefore is.

When we’re experiencing an expansive mindset, we feel joy, anticipation and a deep sense of interest in and connection with the world. And again it’s almost impossible to distinguish this inner experience from the outer reality.

We project how to feel onto a world that is neither and both.

The world itself has huge challenges, and in my opinion its share of psychotic self-destructive systems and tendencies, and it’s filled with both wonder and potential. Some of us have more experience with one than the other, but that does not mean both do not exist.

We face two challenges. The first is getting the hell out of the contracted mindset, which is also called the narcissist, ‘spiritual’ ego, scarcity and the victim, and the reason is because it’s almost impossible to engage meaningfully from there. And that has its difficulties.

The second is twofold.

1. Intentionally developing the expansive mindset and training ourselves to hold it even when things get tough, which although may sound demanding is not as challenging as the second. 
2. Developing the capacities and intelligence to look truthfully into the ‘way of the world’ and understand what’s really not working and why. And then to either fix or replace what needs fixing or replacing, based on our particular strengths, talents and skills.

But we need to be clear on our understanding and we need to free from anger, rage, anxiety and naivety, cos if we’re not, we just end up building them right back in again.

The tendency is for those in pain to quickly identify what they think is wrong, and for those in joy to simply not look. And here’s the paradox …

Those in pain and suffering make terrible investigators, but they’re the first to look, and those in joy, who would make better investigators, don’t care to look.

The truth is we need to inhabit an expansive mindset, but we also need to develop serenity, equanimity, maturity, skillful means and intelligence. Lost in either suffering or naive joy, although one may be more pleasant than the other, is still lost.