Positive and negative polarities

In case you had not noticed, the world is a very polarized place today (duh?). This polarization is fed to us, and enforced, by our “leaders” and the news media; everywhere we turn it seems someone is trying to drive a wedge between us. It reminds me of playing a game of dodge ball in high school gym class.

A prime example is the case of those “for” and “against” the war. Being against the war is not coming from the positive polarity, it is still a negative. When Mother Theresa was asked if she would ever attend an anti-war rally, she said no, but she would attend a pro-peace rally.

One of the things stressed in my shamanic studies is for us all to work at staying in the positive polarity, because when we do not, we cannot do what we came here to do. When you are in the negative polarity, that is what you will attract in your life, and when you are in the positive polarity, you attract positive experiences.

In the book Spirit Medicine, Hank Wesselman and Jill Kuykendall wrote of a meeting they had with the Kahuna Hale Makua on the rim of Kilauea volcano, where he gave them the gift of a simple bowl made of kamani wood and explained,

This is your bowl of light. This light is the essence that you brought into this life, a gift from your aumakua [oversoul], which divided itself. As we pass through life, things happen. Sometimes we take things that don’t belong to us, sometimes we injure others through our words, our thoughts, or our actions; sometimes we achieve success at the expense of the failure of others. Whenever such things happen, we step into the negative polarity, and some of our light goes out. Each time we do this, it is like we put a stone into our bowl. Eventually, our bowl fills up with stones, and no light is forthcoming anymore.

Luckily, and humorously, Makua added that if our bowl should become full, we simply turn it over and empty it out. The goal though should be to not let our bowls become full of stones.

I had for a while turned into an internet news junkie, checking my favorite sites several times a day, and the more I checked, the more irritated I got. Although I knew this was happening – slipping into the negative – I simply was ignoring it. After a friend kindly pointed it out to me, I started to view the news less and less over the coming weeks, and after a journey where I affirmed my goal of staying in the positive polarity, I virtually quit altogether. This happened almost automatically. I have now been news-free for three weeks. For me, this hiatus is allowing me to become firmly planted in the positive polarity again. Once there and unpacked, I can again start to keep up with the news, if I so desire. In the meantime, I would hope one of my friends would let me know if the world ends, although I may pick up on that all by myself. For one thing, there would be no lines at the grocery store. 🙂

We need to be aware of what is going on in the world, but we do not want to reinforce any of the negatives. The choice I made to stop cold-turkey was the right one for me at the time.

My friend, Frank DeMarco writes the blog for Hampton Roads Publishing, and after watching the movie The Secret, wrote a series of posts about staying in the positive polarity in this polarized, “you are either with us or against us” world. The articles were posted in February (the titles all begin with “The Secret”) and can be found in the Frank’s Insights Category on this page.