Having the Right Attitudes

The MOST powerful tool with which to move into the unknown is the right attitude. There are two very useful attitudes that many spiritual teachings highlight, albeit in different terms: (1) Every event has a purpose. (2) Any event could be either good or bad. The first attitude automatically shifts our attention to what Divine intelligence might be trying to present through that event. It directs our thinking to what is to be learned and to what is to be harvested from the experience. The attitude that we can gain or learn from everything helps prevent us from feeling that life is unfair or that we are being singled out for failure. With this perspective we avoid the victim mentality. When we feel helpless or hopeless, we not only tend to attract further confusion, pain, and suffering but also tend to overlook anything positive that may be available in the experience.

With the second attitude – that any event could be either good or bad – we avoid the trap of judging an event too quickly on limited information. We learn to wait and see, taking stock of the lesson and listening even more deeply for our inner guidance to suggest another step.

People who have survived catastrophic illnesses often said that illness brought them insight. More often than not, women who survive breast cancer will say, “When I got cancer, I began to wake up to my spiritual side.”

The thought occurred to me that, after all our struggles and ambitious striving, each of us may simply end up being lumped together as one of the broad-skulled, square-faced people. It helped put everything into a broader and more humorous perspective! Each civilization has a purpose in giving individuals a life stage to live upon, and each culture contributes a piece to the larger evolutionary picture, even though they have fallen into obscurity.