Each of us has a group of cells in our brain called the reticular activating system. Part of the reticular activating system’s job is to filter out all of the information that comes to us that we do not see as something valuable or as a threat. Imagine what it would be like living day to day having to take in all of the information that is presented to us every moment – every sight, every sound, every touch, every taste, every smell. We are inundated with information all day long. And the reticular activating system’s job is to keep us from wandering through life like a deer in the headlights.

So what does the reticular activating system have to do with finding a jewel in the rubbish? By training our minds to find the benefits in what others perceive as negative situations, we can use those jewels to enrich our mind, body and spirit. That’s what this podcast is about. Taking situations that for the most part might be seen as negative, and finding something positive in them that we can then use to fortify our faith in the future of humanity. Or, at the very least, help us to create more health and happiness in our own lives.

I’d like to start looking for these jewels at the macro level, and then work down to the micro level, more personalized. We can start with the history of the United States, for example. Howard Zinn wrote a very powerful book called A People’s History of the United States. For those of you unfamiliar with this book, it starts out with the Native Americans swimming out to greet Columbus, and the most recent edition ends with the current Iraq war. When I finished reading A People’s History, I put the book down and felt very optimistic about the future. There is degradation, and slavery, and genocide and imperialism, but also there are numerous examples of people getting along, people helping each other out. People do care about one another. We like to see our friends and neighbors succeed and be successful. And in situations where we can, we’d like to help. American history is ripe with examples of people helping their neighbor. It’s not until somebody comes along and points a finger at “those” people over there – be afraid of “them” that we start to become conservative in our compassion.

Another example from A People’s History of the United States that I found just glorious in its celebration of a people’s will to be free is the chapter on the Vietnam War. By the end of the Vietnam War, the United States government had dropped nearly 500 pounds worth of bombs for every man, woman and child in Vietnam. And yet we could not bomb those people’s will to be free into submission. The mightiest military in the world cannot suppress a people’s will to be free.

The third and final example from A People’s History that I would like to share with you also has the benefit of being scientifically sound. Energy doesn’t dissipate. Just as ice becomes water, and water becomes steam, all of the energy that went into the various people’s movements – the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the gay and lesbian liberation movement, the labor movement – all of the various movements – that energy didn’t just go away. We don’t see it in the corporate media, but that energy is out there now. It just splintered into thousands of little cells all over the world.

So there you have it – three examples from A People’s History of the United States. People get along; you cannot bomb a people into submission, and there are thousands of smaller cells of activism throughout the world today. People fighting, sacrificing, for your freedom and mine. I’m not saying that we ignore the atrocities; what I’m suggesting is that by searching for the jewel in the rubbish, we will reinforce our healthiest attitudes – the benefits of which are a healthier and happier mind, body and spirit.

Up until several years ago, I was very anti-corporation. And then I heard a Buckminster Fuller lecture entitled Integrity Is All That Will Matter. (correction: The Buckminster Fuller lecture is actually entitled “Only Integrity is Going to Count“) Bucky said the same corporate infrastructure that allows a Coca-Cola to be purchased in every corner of the world is the same infrastructure that will be necessary for fresh water, medicine, education, food to reach every corner of the world. So while world trade organizations, at least at this stage in their development, appear to be sociopathic in their behavior, they are laying the groundwork – they are laying the foundation – for altruism, peace and prosperity to reach every corner of the globe.

The last large-scale example I’d like to share with you is the 9-11 World Trade Center bombings. And for some people, that may be too fresh to find anything good that may have come out of that. It was an atrocious, horrible event. But, if you search hard enough, it’s there. Nothing is entirely good, or bad. I’m of the belief that empathy is a very valuable skill. And I’m also of the belief that practice makes progress, and in order to get better at something, we must practice. The 9-11 bombings allowed the American populace to practice that empathy. To be aware of what people in the Middle East live like on a daily basis. To be aware of what people in Belfast, Ireland lived like. We now have a greater understanding of the fear that people around the world live with every day. And that greater understanding, that greater capacity for empathy, can only serve us well.

Those are very large scale examples of finding something good in what can easily be seen as a very negative situation. I’d like to bring it to a more personal, micro level now. When I was teaching, I used to do an exercise – I called it the “Hindsight is 20/20” exercise. All of us probably have numerous examples in our lives of how this works. There are situations that we find ourselves in that while we’re in them appear to be horrible, terrible, just devastating events. But with the benefit of having lived through them; sometimes a lot of time, sometimes a little bit of time later, we are able to identify where we have grown personally by living through what we perceived at the time to be negative situations.

The Dalai Lama said in his book The Art of Happiness that, “My enemies give me my best opportunity to practice patience and tolerance.” I am not aware of any enemies that I have, but I have ample opportunity to practice patience and tolerance with the relationships in my life. As I’ve mentioned in previous podcasts, I use affirmations quite frequently. What I’m about to share with you, I use whenever I allow somebody else to upset me. I have found this to be the most liberating thing in my life, and in a future podcast, I will share with you a meditation technique that you can use to delve even further into this process. Those people that I allow to upset me are doing me a favor by pointing our part of my personality that I need to investigate further. What this way of thinking does is turn everyone in my life into a gift to me. Those people who support me, those people who love me – those people are clearly gifts. But those people I allow to upset me are also gifts, because they bring attention to an aspect of my personality that needs some healing.

I’ve come to believe that mistakes are only mistakes when I don’t learn from them. And even if I don’t learn from them, they’re truly not mistakes, because as William Blake said, “A fool who persists in his folly will become wise.” All of our choices can be enlightening ones. I don’t think we make mistakes. We create learning opportunities.

I’d like to recommend another book, called Pronoia from Rob Brezsny. I read one passage in this book and instantly became a more patient person. He said that those people that we perceive to be slowing us down, impeding our progress – what they may be doing is ensuring that we get there on time. Because getting there too fast sometimes can be just as detrimental as getting there too slow. In the book he uses a premature birth as an example of arriving before you’re supposed to can be detrimental to your health.

Again, I am no Pollyana. I choose to see peace and compassion because it helps me to be a more peaceful and compassionate person. But being human, I get stressed out, and sometimes my reticular activating system constricts to the point that all I see is the fight or flight mentality. Even after nearly 25 years of practice, I can actually allow myself to get so stressed out that I forget to look for the silver lining. One of the measures I use to gauge my success is how quickly do I get back to being centered, how quickly do I get back to being peaceful. Sometimes it takes months, sometimes it takes minutes, but I always get back because I want to. I know how, and I take every opportunity to practice.

Hopefully during this podcast you have seen that those opportunities to practice are literally everywhere around us at all times. While working on this podcast, I remembered the reported words of Timothy Leary on his deathbed. His body was wracked with cancer, he was in a great deal of pain. He was asked by one of his friends how he could remain so positive and optimistic in the face of such agony. His response was, “What choice do I have?”