Inspiration
All events are neutral. You are the one that places the value upon it.
What I learned
All events are neutral. Cancer is neutral. My friend calls me an unkind name; that event is neutral. I get fired; that event is neutral. My child dies; that event is neutral. The ego mind which names these things and so gives them different values, screams out that I must be insane. Cancer is not neutral it says. Cancer is horrible, painful, deadly. Getting fired is frightening. What would I do if I got fired? How would I feed myself? Where would I live? My child dying is neutral? My child dying would be so catastrophic that I don’t even want to think about it much less talk about it.
And yet, all things are neutral. I give them all the meaning they have for me. I read an article once in which the author was quoting some people who were fighting cancer. Some of them said that it turned out to be a gift in disguise and helped them to live a better life. Someone else said that it really pissed him off to hear people say that having cancer turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to them. How could some people have such completely different experiences of the same disease? It is because cancer is a neutral event. Each gave it all the meaning it had for them.
Even a child dying is a neutral event. If a child in Bangladesh dies of starvation it is a neutral event. If my child dies it is not a neutral event. That is because I gave the meaning to those events and I have not awakened to Universal Love yet. I still think that some children are more special than other children. I still think that the horrible pain I would suffer at the loss of my child is the effect of lost love. Obviously it isn’t since love is the same regardless of where I look and love cannot be lost. I must not be feeling love for my child, but something else. What I have done is placed value on having this precious body-mind in my life and so have given it special meaning. In truth, it too, is a neutral event, and so its death would be a neutral event.
Inspiration
The events, then that you experience are always neutral. What you see occurring in the world around you remains neutral until you make the decision what it will be – for you. You will name it and, therefore, you will define it. When you define it, you call all of the associations of that to yourself.
This is why I once taught it is very wise to forgive seventy times seven times. It was for a very selfish reason. If one wrongs you and you spend your energy convincing them that they have wronged you, that you have a right to be angry and to be attacking in any way, you call to yourself – even into the cells of the body – the energy of conflict, judgment, war, death disease, unhappiness and separation instantly!
What I learned
What I am trying to do with this is to simply remember that the event is neutral. How I experience it depends on the definition that I give it. If I don’t like how I feel when I experience the situation then I ask the Holy Spirit to show me a different way to see it. I ask Him what He sees, how He defines it.
All quotes are used by kind permission of the Shanti Christo Foundation. To buy a copy of this profound book visit their website at www.shantichristo.com. I invite your thoughts and comments.