The Plague Infected Doctor

The Plague Infected Doctor

Over the last few weeks I have meditated upon my life.  Within the mind-scapes I sometimes saw images of individuals had I disliked and I discovered they now have no effect on my emotions.  As the situations of the encounters were reviewed in the cinema of my mind, I watched myself and saw a fault to my persona.

All humans at some time or another have enter into conversations aimed at breaking a reputation of a foe. I used to be a devil for it.  It’s a fact I relished the opportunity to ‘level’ any of my enemies.  I realised this negative attitude was a reason that sometimes my life became restricted, or even collapsed in failure.  I’m not joking, what must people have thought of me?

It’s a difficult, even painful realisation, that conversations where elements of disparagement, spite, vindictiveness, hate, or any negative thought is the essence of the dialogue, it’s the conversationalists who are the victims not the subject. What fool was I not to have listened to myself more carefully? Not doubting the damage caused I wonder just how much the effect this negative trait has had to my happiness.

My self reflection came at a time when I was non too well.  Recovering after a second operation and having to undergo another in the future makes one think about ones whole life. I do not care who you are, what you think you know or how much money you have. The most important possession is the body and if it is ailing the perspectives of life change. As I repair, I look around my environment and realise (with certainty) every single interaction will have an effect upon our very being.  And being able to exorcise (or do I mean expose)? Ones inner values is an incredibly powerful exercise which helps with recovery.

Today if someone said to me ‘Hey! Ian Mrs X is a fraud’  I’d answer ‘Are we not all to some degree frauds?’  Fraud is a deception and who has not deceived themselves and others at one or more stages of their life? This realisation takes my mind into differing tributary’s of the initial meditation.

Surly the moment we enter into a conversation with a human we do not like, trust, or even hate, we have entered into a lie or deception?  When working in the corporate world I saw there were many who smiled at the leader and hated his shadow.  Have you followed a man or woman you disliked? Or could not agree with their policies? What real effect did this self betrayal have upon your well-being, confidence, happiness?  Would your inner being thank you if you say to yourself ‘No more self deception’?  Try it, see what happens within your mind.  When you stand in front of someone you do not like and say within your mind ‘You do not frighten me’. Because that’s the answer isn’t it?  Fear.  Fear of disagreeing because one is worried about the effects the truth may have.  Fear of the human you are denouncing, as the moment one enters into criticism of a man you are showing your fear of him? Perhaps, although this aspect is worth real consideration.

What happens when you meditate upon truth?  For example, using mantras like ‘I do not really care about the situation, his divorce, her excess, wayward daughter, son who is a thief, addicted child’?  And go on to make the meditation even deeper by asking – ‘I am my most important person and why should I feel guilty for who I am’? Will my inner-being answer ‘I do not like this truth’?

So must I be truthful to myself or do I make exceptions? Do I play a game of snakes and ladders?  Climbing when I’m in control of my life and descending when another negatively influences me against my nature?  There can be no compromise.  Its black or white.  Truth or lie.  Right or wrong.  Be who I am or fail at being something else.

A girl in the street asks ‘Have you got one minute of your time’?  I answer ‘No, my time is running out and I give what I can afford to a charity of my personal choice‘  And then I wonder to myself.  I ask myself… lets see how this works… And say – ‘Tell me about your charity’ I listen.  The commitment, requirement, kindness (her words) will give a feeling of happiness and you will feel great about yourself for helping someone not as fortunate as yourself (this must be scripted) – The hammer hits the anvil and the commitment is…

…A twenty pounds a month standing order! It is a two hundred and forty pounds a year commitment, a weeks wages after tax!  This is what the charity agent asked me for!  She wanted me to make that commitment, after a five minute conversation in the middle of the street. This worlds’s a crazy place! And people MUST be falling for the sales pitch. This is my truth – I am happy to live within my means, beliefs and happiness. Knowledge is the power to happiness, comfort and peace. Oneness, selfness, self respect, inner comfort are the wisdoms within this knowledge. No man owes me anything, no man is my charity.

Why should I add to the difficulties of others?  I ask the reader to meditate carefully upon this question and perhaps there will be a realisation of the most profound dimension. A Big Issue seller asks ‘Big Issue Sir’?  With a cigarette hanging from his mouth.  The beggar ‘Have you the price for a coffee’? He stinks of drink, dope and no-hope. Why? Why should I have to contribute and place myself in material difficulty and inner conflict? Because of the weakness of an addict, who ruins his life, requires support, stands on the street and demands to be supported.  His life is not an easy, how can it be? Why should I feel sorry or fell obliged to help? The beggars and charity fishers take me further.

Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, give him a net and he’ll feed himself forever.  What happens if he does not like to fish and sells the net?  I look around the City’s beggars, issue and charity seller’s and in ten years nothing changed.  Cynical?  Bet your life on it. I am not charitable!  Nor can I be compassionate towards those who are able and will not help themselves. If the body is fit and the mind healthy then in the western world at least no man should have to freeload from another. I will not be subject to charities emotional blackmail, I cannot give that which I do not have.  And I am not writing about money.

I reflect, meditate, my mind spins within the possibilities…  

1. Those in difficulty who take advise or listen to fools will do nothing other than perpetuate their troubles.
2. Many ‘advisors’ are not within the happiness they believe they can bring to others.  They seem to be like plague infected doctor treating a patient for tooth ache.  The patient does not wish to visit the dentist and the ‘doctor’ wishes to infect any she can with her disease.
3. If the healer is not of sound material, mental, emotional and spiritual mind surly they are not qualified to help? Do their own failures prove their inability?
4. Are the managers of charities plague infected doctors?
5. Is it in the charities interest to see an end to poverty?
6. Learn from a winner and success will be the outcome.
7. Listen to an illusionist and when the ‘trick’ is revealed one feels deceived.
8. And all of the people I ask tell me it is wrong to be selfish, mean, without compassion.  Why?  Why should I not investigate other aspects of my environment?  Are my personal realisations wrong?

What happens when one decides to relinquish guilt, non-sense, illusion, pipe dreams, even friends who harbour negative attitude?  Initially there is a vacuum or vacancy.  A feeling as if something is missing, as indeed there is.  Because what is known is this.  Being unhappy takes far more effort than being happy. I am learning so much from examining the infrastructure I live in and comparing it to my own life.  Is this why have written about, spite, charity, healers and selfness in this short essay?  I am now questioning all irrational thoughts and ideas. For some reason the word empirical is becoming important to me. No not for some reason, the need for certainty is becoming of paramount importance.

I have learned more about my life during illness than fifty years of health. I discovered my most terrible failing.  It was (and I mean WAS) the disparagement of others. Who could know the damage I have caused myself? I decide to let all men and women be within their own place.  I care not a fig for those who dislike or criticise my attitude, beliefs or thoughts, I write the sentiment ‘Each to their own’ as these four words form a fertile base to find inner peace and contentment.

We can either take the right path or we can form treacherous beliefs and become the plague infected doctor. Thoughts guide or deceive and riddles are solved in meditation and self reflection, how strange the mind is to play such tricks!  Within a deep appraisal of the world around me, my world, for this world is mine, in totality, I’m discovering answers.  And, I am at the centre of my world.  Everything I see, feel, hear, taste and touch makes my world.  That’s the key isn’t it?  We are either concentric, within our world and expand outward from the centre and the circular walls or circles of wisdom, understanding, love, intellect, reason, emotion expand outward from our mind to protect our well being or we are ex-centric and without or out of control of our being, the pressures and influences of society negatively effect our existence. If the World is yours there is control. If the World is someone else’s they control you.

Of cause there is the paradox that even though a man knows himself rich, intelligent or superior.  The truth is he owns nothing, as when the body enters the final sleep all becomes the property of another. And life is used (as indeed you use your life) in the pursuit of what?  Trinkets, homes and people?  Without a passing thought to the certainty that what senses this world, that which reads this essay, is the most valuable possession of all. And if one already possesses the most valuable of all riches, why is it damaged in the pursuit of items which can never be owned?

1. If I see poverty, I am not the man able to change it.
2. If I see greed, I’m unable to stop it.
3. If I see war, what can I do?

All I can be is the centre of my existence and know my opinion is of naught to another.

How can I…

1. Contribute to a negative opinion of another human again?
2. Play ‘Snakes and Ladders’ with my life?
3. Give materially, intellectually, emotionally or spiritually to anything I do not believe in?
4. Betray my beliefs to advantage my material life?
5. Become within any form of debt?
6. Have concern for those who will not show willing to help themselves?
7. Contribute to something I see no answer to?

In my original meditation the question was ‘Is Your World A Happy Environment?’  My answer is the environment which surrounds me is one which holds pains and unhappiness. In truth, the plights are perpetuated by those who need them. What would happen if men and women said ‘I’m no longer prepared to live a terrible life like this’?  And they decided to live a happy, contented and peaceful life? Well, that is exactly what would happen!  What if the terrorist said ‘I’m no longer going to murder innocent people’ That is what would happen.  All is choice, action perpetuates and cultivates the seed of idea behind it.

Realise a fault, accept it, change it and what happens? We adapt to the new beginnings. Realise the environment is fine. Its those within it who have polluted it, the polluters need to change, not the territory they destroy. For my mind the corporations who bleed the African Continent should be made to feed the starving, pay for the drugs, build homes for the native.  And the western government’s who start the wars within other countries and loan the dictators money for arms. Later a debt is owed for the weapons and this debt enables the suppliers to steal the resources of a country now ravaged by man’s most evil creation. Should I be critic of these evil men and women?  It is futile to ask… I can do nothing nor can you.

What if I write it is my intention to be happy, return to health and wealth and I only work toward these three goals? And to help me achieve these ends I will not contribute to anything other than my personal environment and one previous commitment.  What will be the outcome? In spite of the injustices which pollutes my environment. I will succeed.  That is the way of selfness.