Energy flows where thoughts go
Facebook seems to have become a breeding ground for anger and hatred lately. I remember the days when the status prompt wanted you to share how you were feeling or doing or what was happening in your life, and for the most part, people felt an obligation or were polite and considerate enough to post mostly good things. The warm fuzzy feel good stuff. Statuses were succinct and personalized. One or two sentences. Neat. Not requiring too much engagement. Nowadays, the bloggers and the tech guys have made it far too easy to press 'share on Facebook/ Twitter/ whatever' button at the bottom of a slew of political, racist, violent or irrational news reports, opinions, and generally bad vibes which do nothing but rile everyone up. This is particularly dangerous in a society that has not yet learnt to wield or tame their emotions. We are not equipped enough for compassion, understanding, forgiveness. We see images of dog fighting, we react by swearing and cursing and calling the perpetrators all sorts of disgusting names...instead of doing something civilized like doing a bit of research about that particular article, finding out if it's actually valid, looking at the socio economic climate of the area, looking at culture, value systems, questioning our own value systems etc. and then looking at ways to fix what we perceive to be the problem i.e. violence against animals. No, we're far too rooted in our moral high ground and our desire to exalt ourselves by publicly displaying our offense to even consider doing anything positive like volunteering at a dog shelter, or neutering our animals. Is our rage and ugly words on Facebook going to solve anything? How are you making an already toxic situation less toxic? Do you even want to? Of course you want to...but by cursing and getting mad? In the dog fighting example I've given, I will refer to the Hindu/ yogic concept of Ahimsa. Ahimsa means 'non violence' and is one of the basic rules for living. In fact, the yogis put it above all else. We interpret ahimsa very fundamentally as not killing each other or animals, we say no to domestic violence, child abuse etc etc...but this is merely scratching the surface of the true challenge of ahimsa. Ahimsa, more importantly, includes violence in thoughts, in words, in everyday deeds against ourselves and against each other. This includes not feeling worthy, thinking we've failed at something, wishing our ex boyfriend harm etc. Cursing the dog fighters and wishing ill on them compounds the amount of violence related to that scenario. It takes far more emotional strength and wisdom to understand your reaction, and then refrain from dumping yet another steamy turd on the already large and offensive pile of angry words. It would be far more heroic and rewarding to try to understand the situation fully, and find other ways of reducing violence towards animals if in fact there is nothing you can do to resolve that particular incident on Facebook. Raise awareness for adopting abandoned animals? Adopt an abandoned animal? Try put an end to abusive breeding? You may even decide to go vegan! This would be far more productive than swearing like a loon on Facebook. By refraining from hateful words, I am by no means saying that you should condone violence. That's just dumb. What I am saying is that you cannot fix violence with violence, or hate with hate. Be mindful of your words and your thoughts - they can get pretty violent and often disguise themselves as noble and valiant! Energy flows where thought goes... Make sure yours are always good and wholesome and lead to warm fuzzy feelings!