Believe

I was just listening to an old interview with John Lennon, and was struck by how ahead of the times he was. He talked of spirituality and positive thinking, voicing a dislike for the way people put down all the hard work of the sixties—even going on to mock them in a pathetic voice, "It didn't work! Nobody listened to us and now we're just going to give up and get high!" He was really looking ahead to the eighties: how we were going to change many of the social ills and break down the walls of Communism and Racism, and he didn't have time to listen to the naysayers.

Of course, he was robbed of that chance. I think people took his death in two ways, much as they did back when Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. Some of the population saw it as a strike from unseen forces: that the days of the poet were over, time to go back to work and stop dreaming, or in some cases, time to strike back. Another sect of people saw it as a time to celebrate what can never be taken away, because Spirit is everlasting. They were glad to have a small part of this person's vision, and went on to develop it with everything they attempted in life. I can feel that Spirit through so many people, through works of art, through a smile, through music and literature. I can see it in children and in all works of nature. It was here before these wonderful people came to earth, and it will be here after all of us are gone.

One of the most important lessons I have learned is that the worst cultivators of Spirit are negativity and fear. When you think of something bad you literally send a message out to the universe to make it happen. When you send out feelings of fear, you attract the things you are afraid of. Of course, it's only natural to have fears, but you have to override them with positive thought. Positive thought cleans up that which plans to destroy you.

Have you noticed that negative people never really seem to be happy? They spend their whole lives expecting bad things to happen, and when good things come, analyze it to no end in the belief that nothing good is ever really good. There's gotta be a catch, they say. When you train your mind to understand that good things don't just come, that they're always around, then you will know happiness. Car broken down? No money? Hair falling out? Bad romance? TV only showing Fox network? Look for what is good and let it erase all the bad.

Picture a man standing in the middle of chaos. The rest of the world is running, crying, but he is smiling. Not because of the chaos or the pain, he's smiling because he knows joy. It's inside him, it's inside all of us, it's eternal and it's real.