Growing Goodness

There is a woman and she wakes up in the morning to the sound of her alarm clock. She presses snooze 3 times and then, finally steps out of bed. She doesn’t take any time to delight in the day, to think of all the goodness that is to follow. instead she thinks about what to eat, the places need to be first, the things and people she needs to avoid today. She gets upset because she ran out of milk; no coffee. She gets upset over a blemish on her skin. She spends her time thinking about when would be the best time to pick up the milk, and which face cream to buy. She is always rushing, and always late. She spends a lot of time on public transport, trying to get somewhere, trying not to miss her next train or next meeting. She arrives at work and her mind suddenly begins to fill with information. This information allows her to create a business-like facial expression. This information makes sure she can do the work that she gets paid to do. She spends the whole day floating aimlessly in this “information” but she is actually thinking about her ex, her girlfriends and her colleagues – and she is getting angrier and angrier at them too. She’s angry at the things they did, or didn’t do, what they said or what they didn’t say enough of. She thinks about them the whole day. If she happens to run into one of these people, she seems nonchalant and even friendly, but her conscience is not clear. It is deeply guilty because she has been discussing them all day. She smiles, but she is unsettled, and she realizes that neither seeing them or thinking about them makes her happy at all. She listens to everything that is going on around her.

On her commute home she puts on the mask of a happy and successful woman. But she has no real peace of mind – because she’s busy thinking about her problems, her problems with love, her make up, or she’s looking at catalogs and magazines for new, beautiful items and products that she thinks might create a miracle in her life. She goes home and cleans the house. She thinks she is relaxing when she makes her dinner and watches television. Even when she goes to bed, she finds it hard to sleep because she is thinking about her daily problems and is stuck in the same mental rut as she always has been. It’s only when her brain gets absolutely tired, that it switches off, with the same mundane static playing in the background.

—-

This is what life is like for most of us. We believe we are good, but in reality, we spend only a few seconds truly thinking about goodness. How can we believe that we are living a good life if we spend such little time thinking of good things.

I recently realized that my day is quite similar to this. The things I “do” may be different, but this lady and I have similar background noise. I realized how self-obsessed and self-important I really am. By that I mean that I can give the illusion of being good but really, I just love to think about my problems. Well, I must love it, or I wouldn’t do it so often, right?

And I can be so busy thinking about what she said and what he said, that I don’t take enough time to stop and consider that person from my heart.

So I try to change this dynamic in my inner-noise by regular meditation on goodness; on all things good, on all good in people. Because, how can I possibly consider myself a “good person” living “a good life” when contemplating goodness is something I barely make time for in my day?

If you want to start acting in goodness and benevolence, you have to start thinking goodness first. That has to come first. If you say affirmations of goodness and try to “do good things” but without first consciously thinking, contemplating, considering and wishing goodness first – then your affirmations and actions will be empty. They won’t make you good.

When we think good, benevolent and radiant thoughts we send bright energy rays into the universe. They will return back to us. The dark energy that come from us sink into the core of the earth and eventually reflect off the core and come back to the surface of earth as volcanoes, wars, earthquakes.

So if you want to act in goodness, and benevolence you have to start thinking goodness. Pleasantness and optimism are the results of a benevolent mind. When you start to create more time to think of goodness, and quite simply – the habit of actually thinking of goodness – you will start to make better decisions in your life. That’s just how it is. You will start making decisions that lead to happiness. If you are making decisions in your life that sometimes lead to unhappiness or suffering, it is simply because in your mind – you are already suffering, you are already unhappy. So of course, your life will show you the same thing. You will make decisions that lead to the same thing.

Here are 4 really simple things you can do to start growing more goodness in your mind.

1. Wish other people happiness.

Goodness is directed outwards and not inwards. So although there is some form of positivity in wishing happiness for yourself (“Dear universe, please bring me happiness in my life” doesn’t sound too bad right?) there is even more power in wishing happiness upon others.

It’s interesting to see how my “Goals of meditation” have evolved over the years. When I first attempted creating a meditation habit, my goal was to “calm my mind.” Eventually, I achieved it (took a while alright). Then my goal of meditation shifted to “Help be connect with spirit guides so that I can develop my psychic abilities” – well, as always, I asked for it and worked for it, so eventually it was also given to me. And then the intention of my meditation was “wishing for happiness, wealth, success, love for myself.” It seemed fine. I was asking God to bless myself.
And now I shifted my intention during meditation further, and now I wish happiness, wealth, success and love for others. I ask God to bless you. It is the most satisfying and humbling meditation I have done.

So if you want to try this, sit down in meditation, and begin my repeating “I wish everyone happiness” or some other variation that feels right for you. I then begin to go through every person I can possibly think of, and I wish them happiness. You might feel overwhelmed at first – WOAH, every single person I know, where do I begin? But it is not that overwhelming when you start. I just allow each person to “appear” in my mind and go from there.

2. Have a collection of positive memories to think about.

You should have a inner mental arsenal of positive memories that bring out a feeling of joy in you. You can go to this inner joy reservoir whenever you think you need to be more focused on goodness, and not just the normal every day negative static. If you don’t have such memories, it’s important that you start creating some right away!

3. Ignore the dark side of people.

Another way to develop your goodness-focus is to ignore the dark side of people and concentrate only on their bright side. Only respond to, react to, talk to, care for, relate to that bright side of them. The best way to motivate someone is to address their brightness, and not their darkness. Ignore the darkness and do not consider it as important. This is a very challenging thing to do, but I believe that over time and with consistent effort and practice – this ability can also be achieved!

4. Listen to good things, speak good things, watch good things.

Slowly begin to filter the “darkness” out of your life. You can do this by adjusting the things you expose your senses to. Start to listen to brighter things. Listen to lectures about self and spiritual development. Listen to optimistic people. Talk to optimistic people so that you can learn to speak with pleasantness and optimism too. Stop watching all the garbage on TV that spread negativity and messed up story lines. Ask yourself – is that what I want to strengthen in my life and in myself? Try to bring positivity wherever you go. That doesn’t mean you have to be annoyingly and unrealistically positive everywhere you go. If you feel like you can’t contribute something positive, then at the very least, be pleasant. They must come hand in hand. Optimism without pleasantness is insincere (and appears kind of dumb?) and the state of being pleasant means you are choosing to be optimistic.

—-

How about you? How much time do you make for goodness in your life?