You’ve got to get where nothing from the outside can affect you. There may be a disruption, an interloper, those that wish to infringe or circulate in your environment. You pay them no heed. Yes, you can do your work but what ever games they are playing or whatever negativity they are dealing with is NOT yours, it’s theirs. You’ve GOT TO realize that they are dreaming their own dream. It’s NOT YOUR DREAM. And more and more, as this planet gets into more and more war and destruction and negativity and hate, you are going to have to almost be like the castle surrounded by the moat, where you are in your own castle and you raise up the draw bridge and there’s the moat that they are not going to get past.

It’s a difficult task because of the conditions on this planet, where it use to be there was a more rural environment, there were less buildings [steel], magnetics, infrared rays, radio waves, microwaves interrupting and intercepting the normal flow of energy. Even Jesus had to go 40 days into the desert to get away from what was present at that time in order to be able to build his centeredness, to build that armor around himself, where all of this other didn’t infringe on him. And it is even more important today, that’s why we’ve the book For the Monks of the 21st Century* so that you get some of the tools to implement [and] the protective devices that will help you to withstand these…they’re assaults, let’s face it. They’re assaults on your beingness. I don’t know how to put it any plainer or any more powerfully than that.

You’ve got to realize what you are living in and take it into account each day that your energies are being played upon by these outside energies! And to keep your armor of light around you and most of all NOT to buy into their dreams! There’s fear, there’s sadness, there’s hate, there’s vindictiveness, there’s every kind of negative emotion out there. There are very, very few people that are happy or even half way happy or even feeling any kind of peace. Very few. It’s all this disruptive emotions, disruptive feelings. And FEELINGS is what creates reality, along with the thought. And look at the reality that is being created!! You use to be able to see a milk man walking along the street, he was whistling, you knew he was enjoying his work. OK, everything wasn’t ideal but at least he was happy. You don’t see that any more. You see people walking with their head down like they have all the weight of the world on them and nothing to look forward to, even the young people. And this is creating more and more negativity, more and more turmoil, more and more despair.

People are dwelling in this [negative energy] that has happened so surreptitiously, so insidiously, almost like a thing coming during the night. And all of a sudden you’re in it and you don’t even realize it happened. Yet nobody can put their finger on it, when it started, how long it has been going on. But each day it is becoming exponentially worse and [because of the growing negativity] some people are living a living nightmare.

You need some of that joy and you need some of that happiness to be able to sustain the physical. Really, the older people seem to have carried the positive spirit more easily than even the younger people. You have younger people committing suicide, doing drugs, [abusing] alcohol, trying to escape because they’re not happy. They don’t have any joy, they don’t have any creativity. The creativity has been all spent on these computer games and the television and they don’t read or day dream. They’re just caught in this hodge-podge of negativity. Children use to sit under a tree and dream of being a princess or a sea captain or something they would envision as being romantic and intriguing and adventurous. They don’t do that anymore. Their spare moments are spent either on the computer or playing the games or watching some horror story on television. The only station showing children’s programs any more is the public television (and even the government has taken away their funding) where they have some kind of positive input into children’s lives. Very important! Very important! That’s where your poets came from. That’s where your musicians, your great musicians came from; your dramatist, your creative minds, your geniuses. It’s leaving a huge gap. The things that made the planet bearable in light of pain, illness and death were these other qualities of imagination, creativity, artistic outlets such as painting. And it’s going to be a pretty laborious, pessimistic, negative existence without some of these things present. Watch out for what your children are taking in! This is very, very important! Even though the life span on the planet isn’t that much longer, still the quality of life has fallen so quickly and so dramatically that it is very difficult to even watch or perceive. It is sad. At least the parents could limit this to some degree, hopefully, by having their children go outside, sit under a tree and draw, you know, draw a bird or a butterfly, or a flower.

There’s no discipline in the schools. They’re not learning anything. The budgets are cut and cut and cut. Teachers don’t have the control that they use to have. The parents don’t have the control they use to have. It’s a very, very precarious situation. Become aware of this and how much harm the negative influences are doing. That’s why there are so many children committing suicide. There’s no hope, there’re no dreams, there’s no optimism. Everything is terror, fright, fear. More or less like… what’s the sense of it. What is the sense to all of it?

No matter how old you are or how young you are, you can still dream beautiful dreams, you can still imagine beautiful places to live, beautiful environments that you would like to inhabit. Notice nature. Notice a butterfly flying down the street. Do you realize the magic in that? Is there any magic in seeing a porpoise leap out of the water or a hawk circling or … beautiful things that make life beautiful, meaningful?

Where is their positive outlook going to come from? It’s as though doomsday is already here. How do you rise out of an illness, a seemingly tragic loss, a financial setback, an emotional upheaval without a degree of knowing things can get better? Things will get better. You will be dragged under just like an undertow it you don’t have hope, if you don’t have vision, if you don’t have daydreams. Where are you? Where are you? How do you overcome? How do you overcome setbacks?

Please, pay attention. This world isn’t just about sex, killing one another, having money. This world lived properly could still be a good place, a good experience, a valuable experience to add to the soul, not to take away from it. It’s got to be a campaign!!!!! It’s got to be where enough people…GET IT… that they make it so. They take their children to a park, the beach…..NOT to an amusement park where they have all the scary rides. That isn’t an amusement. That isn’t what builds day dreams. That isn’t WONDERMENT. There’s an ecstasy and a wonder in spending a day in nature or at peace.

* The book For the Monks of the 21st Century can be obtained via the Book Shelf web page.

Reported March, 2006.