How do we deal with negativity coming from reading bad news?

Answer Podcast:

Transcript

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So, how do we deal with negativity that comes from, say, reading news about disasters, about death, about destruction and things like that. So, firstly, we have to know what is in our control and what is not in our control. And it is one thing to cry at the darkness, to scream at the darkness.
It’s quite another thing to light a candle. So, yes, there is a lot of distress, lot of negativity in today’s world. You know, I regularly write articles.
So, in India there is a paper called Times of India, which has a spiritual column called Speaking Tree. So, I write in Speaking Tree regularly. So, when I started writing originally, I wrote to the editor, Times of India and I asked her, how did you get the idea of a spiritual column? Times of India was the first paper.
After that, other papers started. So, then she said something very interesting that news is essentially about death, deceit and destruction. And in general, the news agitates readers’ minds.
So, they said, we wanted to have some column in our newspaper which will pacify people’s minds. And that is why we started this book. So, the point I am making, the nature of the world is that many ordinary good things that happen in life, they don’t make news.
Whereas, the destructive things, they make easy news. There is good in the world, there is bad in the world. Overall, there is a lot of distress and suffering in the world.
But the focus, newsworthiness is often determined by sensational things. And negative things often tend to be more easily sensational than positive. So, if we see such negative things and we can focus on, is there something I can do about it? Okay, I cannot do anything about that.
But is there something positive which I can do in my vicinity? If we dwell on things which are not in our control, then that simply makes us feel powerless. If we dwell on things which are in our control, then that not only gives a positive purpose to what we are doing, but also as we take one step, two steps, our influence also increases. We can become a bigger part of the solution.
one thing which we can always do is have a source, again a source of positivity. Otherwise if we just look at the negative things, then we will go more and more negative. And regarding God, where is God, say, when some natural disasters happen, we need to recognize that the two have a connection that is not simply causal.
Sometimes we think that is God the cause of this? Why could God not have stopped this? Yes, that’s a valid question. But God has given each one of us free will. And different people can use free will in different ways.
So, if someone uses free will in a negative way, that can have harmful consequences. Once there was a person, a devotee of God, he went to a doctor. And this doctor said, do you believe in God? Of course.
But can’t you see there is so much suffering in this world? There is this problem, there is this disaster. How can you believe in God? So, this devotee remained silent and then he left the clinic. And after a few minutes, he came back into the clinic, rushed back in.
And he said, there is no doctor in the city. He said, what do you mean? I am a doctor. He said, no, there is no doctor in the city.
What do you mean? He says, come out. They took him out of his clinic. He is outside this footpath.
And on the footpath there was a beggar. The beggar was coughing, coughing piteously. And he said, the very fact that he is sick proves that there are no doctors in the city.
He said, are you crazy? He is sick because he is not coming to me. He is sick because he is not following what I am telling. So, the devotee said, exactly.
People are suffering because they are not going to God. People are suffering because they are not harmonizing with God. To the extent we harmonize with God, to that extent our suffering decreases and ultimately we transcend suffering.
So, it is not that God is the cause of our suffering. God is the source of relief from suffering. If we are going to, if we think that say, where was God when some natural disaster happened or some man-made disaster happened.
No, we are not looking at the intermediate factors which are also important. God is the ultimate cause of everything. God is not the immediate cause of everything.
Just like the rains causes vegetation on the earth. All vegetation grows because of the earth. Sorry, all vegetation grows because of the rains.
But that does not mean that the rain is the cause of say, mangoes at one place and thorny bushes at another place. That variation is because of what was sown over there. So, we can’t blame the ultimate cause for every specific result.
So, God is the ultimate cause of everything in the sense that God sanctions but God does not intend, God does not want bad things to happen. It is people who by their wrong choices often end up making things, do things which cause problems, which bring reactions. Just like the seeds at a particular place are the cause of the kind of vegetation that grows there.
Similarly, the problems that happen in this world are because people are spiritually uninformed and people make wrong choices. Choices which are not in harmony with our spiritual nature, not in harmony with what is our God, what is the way we should live for our growth. So, to the extent we understand this properly, that we have free will and the results that come by our use of free will, they cannot be blamed on God.
But if we learn to use our free will properly, then we can avoid the next problems that, we can minimize the problems that come in this world. Does it address your question? Yes.