A Letter to Neale

Dear Neale:

How does one stay in touch with current events without losing one’s center, one’s place of peace? So much news is excitable hype aimed at titillating the viewer and improving the network ratings. Naturally, death and violence top the list of what is deemed to be “news the people want.” I feel like I have to meditate before and after the news. I’m sure it’s an inner thing, a filter of sorts to detach from getting caught up in manipulative tactics. Your comments on this?

John, Enfield, NH.

Neale Responds

Dear John,

Being “in the world, but not of it” has always been the challenge. Your idea of meditation is an excellent one. Meditate, meditate, meditate. Every morning and every evening, and every afternoon, too, if you can. Meditation exposes you to the inside of you, which is the truth about you, experienced. This will, just as you suggest, balance that to which you are exposed outside of you, which is the lie about you. Remember that always. That which is outside of you is the lie about you. Everything outside of your innermost experience is an illusion. Something which is being made up. It is being created by mass consciousness, and you can affect it, but it is not Who You Are.

In my world, I work to control everything that I put into my system. Not only food, but thoughts and images as well. Perhaps these even more importantly. Therefore, I do not watch movies which I do not believe will enrich me. And if I am in the middle of a movie and I experience that it is not enriching me, I leave. I get up and walk out of the room. I put a book down for the same reason. I let go of certain thoughts for the same reason.

I don’t pick up the newspaper anymore on days when I’m feeling particularly “open.” I can feel that. It is a felt sense of openness. It is an emotional-psychological-spiritual nakedness. It is not a bad feeling. It is a good feeling, like being physically naked. I nearly always feel good whenever I am physically naked. It is extremely rare; in fact, I cannot remember the last time that I was physically naked that I did not feel very good and very comfortable.

Many people are not comfortable with their own nakedness, but I am. I just happen to be. And that is how I feel emotionally and psychologically sometimes, too. It is a good feeling, a free feeling, but it is also a level of vulnerability that requires me to be keenly aware of what is coming into my space. So when I’m feeling that kind of openness, I do not even go near a newspaper. I find a good book instead. (Usually, I read my own!) Or I listen to some particularly wonderful music. Or better yet, I choose that moment to let something flow from me, rather than to me. I sit down and write – maybe a letter to a friend or msaybe my blog.

So, John, my advice to you is, stop reading the newspapers, stop watching the news on television, stop exposing yourself to this energy, or any negative material, until you have developed the ability to “zip up.” That is, close up, on your mental command, your psychic field, your aura. Sometimes we have to do this in order to “be in this world, but not of it.” It is a skill, an ability, we develop. Actually, most of us develop it rather early. It is unzipping, opening up to the higher realms and the softer energies and the wispier nuances of life, that is the greatest challenge for many people.

Be grateful, therefore, my friend John, that for you the challenge is the opposite.

With Love,