I was talking to my brother last night. We were talking about how life is often a series of ups and downs, and how sometimes in looking at our reality, we can find ourselves falling into states of despair.

I'm often pretty bleak regarding the future of humanity. I honestly feel we're headed towards a dangerous precipice and nowhere is there a slowing down to avoid the fall. This is my day to day reality. This is what I truly believe.

Yet in talking to my brother, I tell him the world is a beautiful place, the world is filled with love, the world is magical, it's simply a matter of faith and perspective. And somehow, this too, is what I believe.

A few years ago, I went and saw the Dalai Lama speak in Toronto. After speaking, the floor opened to questions from the audience. Once man asked, "Your Holiness, in a world filled with death, destruction, torture, pain, and a tremendous amount of suffering everywhere around us, how do you maintain hope?" The Dalai Lama responded, "The world isn't filled with death and destruction. The world is filled with love. There is more love than anything in the world, and as evidence we see people having children and our global population increasing. Love is abundant and everywhere around us." I often consider this in light of a media and a reality where we repeatedly reinforce awareness and ideas of violence, brutality and negativity, versus an awareness of love, beauty and truth.

I've been a lot of places on this journey thus far, and everywhere I go, without exception, I'm surrounded by amazing and loving people. Sure, like everywhere there are moments of tension, moments of disturbance, moments of violence, but overall I find people are openhanded, giving, nurturing, loving, and caring when it comes to the place and people around them. It seems to me, that the words of the Dalai Lama ring true.

This isn't to say that we're not in VERY serious trouble!

I think it's all a question of perception, a question of focus or a question of gaze. I've said before, that with our language we create the world; we bring the world into being with verbal vibrations. I would also say, we bring the world into being through our gaze, through our perceptions and through what we choose to look at.

But what do we see in a world where we're force-fed our reality through news programs, television shows, and a constant barrage of mainstream media manipulation. Most of this mainstream media builds a gaze of sadness, of death and destruction, and a violent reality. And as I upload videos onto YouTube, I think, does any of this matter? I'm one miniature media machine in a world already filled to the brim with media madness, so even if I was creating videos of optimism, videos of change, would they really make a difference?

I also feel we create in ourselves that which we see around us. We are mirrors for the world and the world in turn mirrors us. If you peer into the mirror you see a world plagued by sickness, a world in which we are destroying ourselves as we destroy our environment, a world of disconnection and a world of confusion. In a world of confusion and chaos, it becomes much easier to just follow the herd. But, if we were to shift our gaze to a new perspective of hope, faith, joy and love I also have to think the world around us would respond accordingly.

I think to shift ourselves to a hopeful viewpoint takes an extreme amount of discipline and I think in our world of comfort, lavish luxury and media sedation a shift is highly unlikely. But this is not to say I'm not hopeful, since I think regardless of the outcome, love will endure.

I think humanity is subject to the ebb and flow of nature, and I think that on some deeper level, destruction might be part and parcel to a loving plan for the future. A good friend of mine always says that true faith is to struggle with doubt, true faith is a process of doubt and questioning, faith is a process of grappling with both the light and the darkness, and yet still believing deep down that there is a larger design at work.

I have faith, but feel the road ahead will be bumpy as hell.

peace,
d