Imagine this. I have in front of me a large sheet of white paper on which I have drawn a black dot in the middle. I show it you and ask, “What do you see?”
What do you think would be your reply?
Chances are you would say – “I see a black dot.”

Why is it that we see the black dot but not the white paper?

News only becomes news because it is out of the ordinary – it is the black dot in the middle of the white page.
War and violence are only worth commenting on because our normal state of living is peaceful.
Crime only makes the headlines because most of us live upright and law abiding lives.

Corruption and dishonesty only makes the news because most of us live honest lives.

Bad news is only news because so much of life is good.

It is the extraordinary that captivates us not the ordinary. Because of this we end up giving large amounts of our attention to what is wrong in the world while paying very little attention to what is good.Many of us have literally become hooked on drama and are unable to function with it!

What we give our attention to becomes our reality because our thoughts are powerful magnets that attract into our lives whatever we are placing our focus on. By the energetic law of attraction the universe relays back to us the things that we focus most intently on.
If we concentrate on the black dot then we will see a world that is black. If we concentrate on the bad news we will see a world that is bad. If we focus on terror then we shouldn't be surprised when we experience terror in our live's in the form of fear, unease, distress etc.
And it’s not just the news that portrays the black spot. Reality TV, soap operas and drama all play their part too. In fact it never ceases to amaze me how we can be enthralled by violence on the big screen and yet abhor it when it turns up in our own back yard! Still we somehow manage to stubbornly refuse to see the connection.

Even adverts have a power all of their own  – they give out the message that there is something that we need in order to be happy, healthier, richer, more popular etc. Adverts focus on lack and greed and so have the power to attract these into our lives. Much of popular TV works on our desires for more – more money, more experiences, a new home, a better home, a home in the sun, a better body, a new romance....it goes on and on!
It's a great marketing tool – but we need to be aware of which market we are buying into!

Rather than push the darkness away what would life look like if we embraced it the ways stars embrace the night sky?

Rather than trying to fix our pain what would life look like if we softened to feel it?

If we stopped fighting our pain, our worries, our discontentment, our fears and our disappointments would we find that rather than them engulfing us and destroying us, as we fear they will,  we come to see that we are more than them?

Let us think about this for a moment.

Because we are aware of our emotional scars, our physical ailments, our thoughts, our worries, our concerns and our judgements means that there is a part of us that is not them. There is a part of us that is purely aware (conscious) of these things. This part of us that is aware is slightly removed from all of these things; it holds them but it is not them – it is the part of us that is perhaps best described as our spirit, the part of us that witnesses our life but is not affected by it; the part of us that remains pure and untainted by anything that goes on in the physical plane of life.

This is good news because it means that there is apart of us that is always free from judgement, pain, distress, unhappiness, worry and worldly concerns. There is a part that of us that is always unconditionally accepting life without judgement, without fear, without the need to change ALL or ANY of our life’s experiences.

Everything that our minds and bodies experience is held in the gaze of this loving field of awareness. This part of us extends nothing but love (total unconditional acceptance) to ourselves and others without the need for things to be different. The beautiful thing is that when we are able to be in touch with this place and engage in living from this place we find that many of the things we experience as difficult are experienced differently – or at least we perceive and understand them differently. We are able to hold them differently and feel them differently. We are able to live and breathe with them rather than needing to be free from them.

All our pain needs is to be attended to from this place; to be held in love and in being held to be healed. To be healed means to be whole. We cannot be healed if we are ignoring or pushing away even the smallest part of our life’s experiences.