DOES ‘HEAR NO EVIL, SEE NO EVIL’ WORK?

There is an idea that has been going around the so-called New Thought community over the past couple of decades that to speak of anything, thereby “giving energy to it,” only serves to “make it bigger.” Therefore, this idea goes, humans should never talk about or “focus on” anything that they believe is not okay in our society, because they are only “spreading negativity” and ensuring that those conditions remain even more firmly in place.

We should only give voice to that which we wish to see expanded in its manifestation and enlarged in our experience, this line of thinking asserts, using as its basis the oft declared New Age principle that “we create our own reality” with the power of our thoughts, words, and deeds.

It is time to debunk this notion once and for all. Holding this idea as sacred can, in fact, be dangerous, by allowing detrimental or damaging aspects of our collectively created life to continue — often by going unnoticed.

This business of never speaking a single word about what is simply not working in our collective experience is what I call a “New Age Bypass.” It is spiritual surgery that does not work, because it promotes a point of view that forever skirts the heart of the matter of what it means to be truly evolved and truly enlightened while being truly human.

If a train is clammoring down the tracks and someone in the car hears this as the family auto approaches a crossroad, is that person not to speak of what she knows is just around the bend, for fear of breaking the New Rule of not “spreading negativity”?

In other words, is simple observation of What Is So a “sign” that one is not among the Spiritually Advanced?

What is the purpose of the increased consciousness and awareness growing out of the spiritual expansion and evolution of humanity, if it cannot be used to apply spiritual wisdom to the challenges of that evolutionary process itself?

This newspaper has been criticized by some for publishing headline stories that in some cases describe what we believe to be less than desirable events or conditions in humanity’s present reality. We have been accused of “producing separation” and “creating more” of what we say we don’t want.

“Why don’t you just focus on what you do want?”, one reader recently wrote.

Yet if what we do want is to bring an end to some of the practices and behaviors of humanity, is never saying a word about those practices and behaviors the way to do it? Or is opening the door and throwing the light onto the darkness one way to change the darkness into light?

This does not mean there is no place for positive, affirmative thought, word, and action. But it does mean that observation is not judgment, and a description of circumstances or conditions is not guaranteed to enlarge them.

Life, says Conversations with God, proceeds out of our intentions for it. It is our intention that the Universe understands, and to which it responds.

So if our intention in observing that the train is coming is to avoid being hit, that observation does not increase the danger of our demise, but reduces it. If it is our intention in describing an undesirable condition or circumstance is to change it for the better, that description in and of itself does not change it for the worse.

Quite to the contrary. It makes it possible for us to make an improvement, to advance, thus to move forward in our evolution.