MEDIA DIET

I met a young man several years ago at a meeting where the holisitic physicist, author and philosopher David Peat was speaking.  After the talk, this young man and I spoke about a project he was doing involving raising irises, and using emotional energy as an aid in their growth.  He was actually expanding on experiments which have been done with plants, probing the idea that their growth was enhanced by their emotional surroundings – soft music, being spoken to, etc.

He asked me if I would help him, by focusing my energy across the country (he lived in Vermont, or New Hampshire, if I remember correctly.)  At any rate, we exchanged e-mail addresses, and at first he wrote mostly about the project, but then he started to send me e-mails in which he spoke personally about himself and his feelings of anger and hatred toward people, especially his father.  He sent me pages and pages of a journal filled with angry, hostile thoughts.

After about three of these e-mails, I decided to put a halt to the communication.  I wrote and told him that I could not continue to communicate, because the things he sent me were rather poisonous, and I did not want to have that kind of communication around me.

He wrote back and said that, yes, he had sent a lot of very emotionally volatile stuff.

I wrote and said:

You are right – you sent a lot of negative and rather hate-filled energy to me.  I have been thinking about what you wrote the other day, and I have some comments about it.

First is a story.  And old Indian man tells his little grandson that he has two wolves inside him.  One is hate, and the other is love.  They fight each other constantly for control, until eventually one will die.  The little boy asks, “Who will win?”  The grandfather responds, “The one you feed.”

Because I met you at        I made the assumption that you are aware that we are all energy, and that every particle in the universe affects the rest of the universe.   So every thought, word and deed each human creates and sends out affects the rest of the world.  It is up to us to decide – to make the active decision – as to what we feed ourselves, and what we feed the universe.  I feed flowers love, water, nutrition – they respond.  You obviously believe this can occur – but you are walking around with so much anger that there is no question that the iris will respond to that, no matter what I do at a distance.

When you started telling me about yourself, you sent me a message telling me what you hate.  I indirectly said that hate was pretty strong, and you asked, “Well, love is strong too.  Should I not say love?”  And you received my answer: ‘If I write with love, I can write forever and not harm anyone or anything on the planet.  But if I write with hate, just the words are like poison which can scar and burn.  The same is true of all actions with regard to love and hate.  Everything is energy – it’s what we do with it that makes the difference.

I believe we are all capable of love, appreciation and of seeing beauty everywhere, especially in nature.  But you seem to have made the choice for hate in so many instances.  “What feeds you – what you listen to, what you learn about from a variety of sources, are your choices – but they do not lead to happiness for anyone, especially not yourself.  If you listen to ideas that  fill you with fear, anger and distrust, then you will reflect that diet in your own beliefs.

I cannot do anything about that, but I can do something about what is sent my way.  Your communication to me has reached the point where I have decided that I cannot continue.  I wish you great joy and I hope you decide to continue helping people, to continue loving nature, and to let your hatreds go.  They serve no purpose but to feed all the things that damage this planet, and yourself.  The supposed big people don’t count in the long run – what counts is what each of us chooses to do every day with our energy.”

So that was the letter I sent.  And, having recently come across it in my files, I thought about all the hate-filled messages that are sent out over the air waves – on television, on the radio.  What’s worse is that so much of it is half-truths, insinuation, and anger.  Yet there are people who feed on this kind of thing, and begin to reflect it in various ways, and end up being angry themselves.  I am always amazed that people think that what they are hearing is true.  The fact is, we actually don’t know much at all about most political or social issues, yet many listen to speculation and opinionated rhetoric as if it were gospel.

The sad  thing is that once people are hooked on these angry,  violent messages, they continue to feed on them, and pass them on, and act as carriers of the message.  This is a sad state of affairs.  For young people who may not listen to the news, we have angry rap music for them to get their dose of anger and violent thinking.  Hatred of women, hatred of this race, or that race.

I’m not sure where this all started, or who has a vested interest in seeing people angry and upset and feeling helpless all the time.  But it certainly is a good control mechanism.  Just something to think about.

The next time you watch a television talk show, or hear angry accusations, commentary or the like on the radio, stop, and ask yourself whether you want to carry this message.  Whether it’s a good, honest message, an emotional and intellectual message you yourself would be proud to pass on.  Ask yourself who will benefit if you pass it on.   You might come to the conclusion that you’d rather change the channel.  After all, the emotional content we feed ourselves with does get reflected in our lives.

And, just as an added thought, the next time you hear yourself making negative, unkind comments to yourself, (“God, you are so stupid!”) consider whether it’s something you would “feed” to a friend, or want a friend to feed to you.  Feed yourself kindness and love – it’s a good diet!

As the grandfather in the story at the beginning of my letter said, hate and love  fight each other constantly for control.  The one who survives is the one you feed.  I know what I want my diet to be.