You have heard the old adage, “When you assume you make an ass out of u and me,” cause when put together the words, ass, u and me spell assume. I know I probably didn’t have to clarify that, but just in case people didn’t know it. There you go. Here’s the deal with that though, it is more than just a saying. There is truth to it. Assumptions are often the root of our suffering and they cause us to make other people into assholes when they are not, and then we react in a defensive asshole way because we think they are being asses, and we all end up angry, judgmental, and asses.
Here’s how it happens. Someone says something, like, “That is an interesting color you are wearing.” We live in a world that tends to assume the worst of other people and ourselves, so we interpret “interesting” to mean the other person does not like the color we are wearing. We also are taught that if we can’t say anything nice then we should not say anything at all, and so if someone does not like something, well, that isn’t nice to say, so if they are saying it, they obviously are not nice. If they are not nice, then the obvious reason they are saying it is to be mean and try to hurt my feelings. They are an asshole. Why would they try to hurt my feelings on purpose?
What if . . . the person just really thought the color was interesting, in that it was unique and they had not seen it often being worn? What if they didn’t really have an opinion of whether they liked the color or not, and even if they did, their opinion was about the color and not about you personally? What if, they were just spontaneously expressing a sense of wonder at the uniqueness of the color and it didn’t mean anything positive or negative? If any of that is true, when we go down the rabbit hole of, “They are an asshole for saying that,” we literally make them the asshole, and show our asshole nature as well all at the same time.
Our society has gotten really off track here. We assume the worst of others. We assume people are trying to hurt us, defeat us, make us look bad, fail, etc. Why are we so conditioned to think like that? It’s really paranoid. Everyone is out to get me! They did that on purpose to hurt me! They made me make a mistake on purpose. They are trying to embarrass me. What the hell are we thinking?! If you are thinking of all the ways in which you can prove that it is true that people are out to get you and hurt you on purpose, you have your evidence of evil in the world, and you are living in a conditioned delusion.
We are literally able to prove any point we wish to make. If I open my mind to notice all of the beauty and kindness in the world, all of the people who are awake and creating a loving world, guess what I will see? I will be able to find just as much evidence of love and peace as someone conditioned to track evil can find of evil. I will even be able to see love and peace in the same place as someone who saw evil there. I can turn anything into loving kindness with just my mind. Just like that, I can see only peace and love. Just as I can see evil, just like that, all with a simple twist of thought. I am not magic though. We all have this ability to see whatever we want to see.
Dr. Joe states that wherever we put our attention, so goes our energy, and we will create that which gets our attention. It is a simple equation. You will see what you seek to see. You will get what you are looking for, and create what you expect to get. Most of us were conditioned to see the worst, assume the worst, prepare for the worst, put up shields, protect ourselves from bad people, be aware of strangers, etc. and so on. We are taught that evil is everywhere and we need to be prepared to deal with it. Our society is one of fear and preparation for war. All you need to do is look at the news, watch a popular movie or TV show. It is all doomsday prep. When it is not that, it is comedy of people putting each other down, trying to pull one over or cheat each other. It makes our world look dismal, but that is all just fake news. Most people are not really like that. That is the propaganda of people who are asleep.
And now you get to make a choice, believe the hype that evil is all around us and we need to gird our loins and prepare to fight or flight it, or believe that evil is an unintentional byproduct of not being spiritually awake and instead wake the “F” up! Being awake is not being a “Polly-Anna” thinking the world is a beautiful place and no one is evil and nothing bad ever happens. Being awake is knowing that inside every human is a spiritual being that was created with love, and is the essence of love, and if they only knew how good they were, they would be as good as their spiritual self knows they can be. Egos disrupt that knowledge though. The fight against the ego is real. Evil is not real, but egos totally are. They can make a human do some pretty awful things, but that is not evil, it is survival of the ego. What an ego who has lost touch with its spirit will often do is protect itself at all costs, no matter who is hurt, including itself. That might seem counterintuitive, and well it is, but egos are not logical, they are animalistic and simply there to create protection at all costs. That is not always good for the human or others.
Instead of following your ego, what if you followed spirit instead. What if you assumed the best of people, gave them the benefit of the doubt, believed in their good intentions and kind souls? What if you used your own great love to see the love in others? What kind of world would you see around you? Would you see something different from what you see now when you look out there? We get to choose what to see in our world. We can choose to see evil, or we can choose to see love. What if we assumed that a person who may be trying to hurt us is only doing that because the are really hurting themselves? And what if instead of protecting ourselves from them, we realized we could simply love them instead?
Something to remember is that no one can hurt you unless you let them. Sure they can do harm to your body regardless of what you do to protect yourself sometimes, but you are not your body, and only you can allow mental or psychological harm come to you. Our bodies are temporary. Our spirits are forever. You don’t have to protect your soul or spirit. Your higher self has that covered. You don’t really even need to protect this body you live in, whatever it is going to have to deal with is what it is suppose to deal with. We chose that before we were born. Our job is to wake up and realize that Love is the thing we are all seeking and here to create. In the midst of any environment, we can create peace and love, regardless of what is happening around us.
Remember the equation, where you put your attention is where your energy will go. If you put your attention on evil doing people, your energy will create evil doing people to match that energy. If you put your energy into seeing the love in people and all that is good in them, then guess what you will see and create all around you. People think that is naïve, that if we don’t look out for evil and protect ourselves from it, people will take advantage of us and harm us because we are not prepared. You know, that is possible. What I wonder is whether all of the protections you are putting in place, all of the energy you are laying out there to seek the evil to avoid it, is actually drawing that kind of evil to you. I also wonder if you would have less contact with evil by seeking love and beauty and creating an atmosphere where evil isn’t a part of your energy. Would evil even see you, if you could not see it. Laws of attraction are real. The more you seek to avoid something, the more energy you put into drawing it to you. The more you seek to draw something to you, the more of it you receive.
You choose. Be happy. Choose love. Or be afraid and choose to put up walls of protection. You keep out more than bad things with giant walls. Good things can’t get in either, and the bad things, they are already in there with you because you are creating them.
Mindfulness though, that is what we are talking about here. Be mindful of when you start to project evil intentions onto other people and see if you can shift them to another thought. Even if you can’t shift them, simple entertain other options. Try the Work with Byron Katie, (thework.com). Ask yourself if it is true, and what it creates for you to think it, and who you could be if you didn’t think it, and what are other options to think about and how are those also true or truer than what you think. It is a simple task to do that opens the possibilities that life is full of the love we seek, if only we choose to actually see it.