Expansion through Attitude and Good Will

Friend

We enter a new Mystery together today. It’s such a pleasure for me to travel these great distances with you. Isn’t it amazing how far we’ve already gone? Just think. We met only recently. Yet, we feel like we’ve been traveling companions for years and years. I’m so glad you’re bearing up well; this journey is rigorous and challenging at times. I’m delighted you’re laughing and enjoying the Mysteries.

Now, the next Mystery is coming into view.

What is your attitude toward others? This is a very important heart question. Fear or anger make the heart contract. Love and caring expand the heart. Love takes the contractions and ego stings from a hurting, limited heart and makes the heart healthy and noble. As love fills your heart, you experience infusions of joy and confidence. You begin to notice and respond to your fellow beings with friendship and vigorous compassion. In time, you happily set aside the frightened “I, me, mine” lifestyle. You’ve found much more satisfying ways to live and enjoy life.

And, as your heart expands, you blossom mystically. The heart and Spirit are so closely connected you will often find that a further heart expansion is the key to your realization of a higher level of awareness.

Attitude Can Make or Break You
Just as your attitude can make or break you in your career, or in maintaining a relationship, attitude plays a crucial role on the mystical path as well. Your attitude toward others is a major fact mystically. Look at your own attitudes and you will learn a great deal about yourself:

• Do I feel near or far away from the people I know?
• Am I lovable, or unlovable?
• Are they lovable, or unlovable?
• Am I better than they are?
• Am I more worthy and able than they are?

It gets interesting. Your attitude is like a flag flying from your ego, and it shows your inner colors to one and all. Thus it’s wise to note what your attitude is saying about your inner views of life, yourself, and other people.

Mystics devotedly observe their own attitudes to learn more about the state of their hearts. They seek a joyous heart, full of love and compassion, and they recognize that their attitudes — especially regarding other people — are clear indicators both of how much they have grown and how much they have yet to grow.

Attitude
Attitude is defined as “one’s disposition, opinion, mental set…one’s manner of acting, feeling, or thinking that shows one’s disposition, opinion …”

A new student of the Mysteries finds himself/herself asking: “How much of my heart has really expanded if I still feel so intensely separated from (and so much better, or worse than) all these people?”

Or, further, the beginning mystic soberly reflects at times, “If I’m so busy trying to make a go of my life that I consider my colleagues — and even my family members — obstacles or strangers, what is my true heart state? If my words of love and care have no discernible feeling in them, isn’t my heart dying — or already dead?

“What can be done?” a neophyte mystic worries.

Most mystics begin the spiritual path with bound, contracted hearts and flawed dispositions. Less than loving attitudes and viewpoints have occupied their self-awareness due to past hurts and complaints, real or imagined traumas. Some beginners are downright cantankerous; some are even filled with prejudice.

Good Will
But, the heart will not expand nor reveal Spirit until good will prevails in the core of one’s being. This factor of good will stands at the gate of mystical truth and spiritual experience like an almighty angel with a sword on his shoulder. You cannot enter without an attitude of good will.

Mystics practice good will every day until it becomes an attitude. They continue to practice good will until their hearts expand. They practice good will until it’s part of their very nature.

Good will, in a nutshell, is truly wanting and wishing the very best in life for everyone you meet. Good will is caring — and so living — that people near and far will find happiness, love, health, and success.

A practicing mystic thinks — or at least tries to think — of herself/himself as a true friend of each person comprising humanity. An awakened mystic sincerely cares about others and their well being. A true mystic strives to live as a benevolent, loving human being.

Note the dictionary definition of good will:

1. a friendly or kindly attitude (note the word attitude!); benevolence;
2. cheerful consent; willingness; readiness…

It’s the contracted heart, with its sense of separateness, which causes the attitudes of conflict, anger, and fear. This ill will comes from our anxieties and our frustrations, not our essence.

But What About Bad People?
The question naturally arises: “What about bad people?” Must a person feel good will for scoundrels and murderers too? How does a mystic feel about child-beaters and rapists?

“How can I have good will for those who killed my cousins? Or for those who maimed me?” we ask.

These questions are as endless as human suffering. A mystic explores the possibility that all these horrible, cruel, and painful deeds have come from fellow human beings with contracted hearts. These outrages come from people whose self-awareness is that of being totally separate from others — especially from their victims and from their own spiritual natures.

Mystics don’t blind themselves from the slaughter and abuse. But they refuse to contract their own hearts and disconnect from their fellow man and woman.

First, a mystic cares intensely about the plight of victims and practices good will and support for all who are hurting, that they find safety, protection, food, healing, comfort, compassionate assistance, and total well being. Good will motivates the mystic to pray for, serve, and assist the victims of the monstrous.

Then, regarding the people who behave as monsters, mystics ask the Infinite Spirit to move and express Itself in the lives, attitudes, and actions of those heart-contracted, deluded people. The mystic learns that all cruelty returns to those who initiate mayhem — that there is spiritual justice, despite man’s injustice — that a meanness, or a pettiness for that matter, will surely come back to its sender. Causes bring their inevitable effects and the cruel of the world will themselves, in time, experience in their own lives — or their afterlives — what they have done to others.

The mystic recognizes the pain and sorrow being generated by the hardhearted. One cruel person so torments another that the hurt person may in time become hardhearted and, in anger, do a savage act. The pain and retaliation can go on and on — for generations.

So, a mystic approaches these tragic situations with good will — seeking that the cycles of pain and hard hearts dissolve in loving, conscious transformation.

“May hard hearts and cruel deeds yield to insight and the better things of life,” a mystic prays and affirms.

A mystic seeks to become an instrument of peace and good will, striving to release the cycles of hardheartedness and cruelty. Through directing good will and spiritual energy toward the suffering, while working to dissolve the madness which perpetuates the misery, the mystic includes the tyrants and the hardhearted in his/her prayers, hopes, and acts of service. He wants the hardhearted to find love, insight, compassion toward others, and be changed — inside and out. He wants for them, too, the glory of life — love, security, health, an open heart, a new life free of hatred and pain.

As you study and develop in mysticism, you will find there are many ways you can be a friend of humanity. You can serve the suffering while bringing light into dark hearts and minds. Even now, you can bring comfort and upliftment into many lives with the conscious practice of good will.

Is Good Will Enough?
Do mystics really think the world’s problems can be solved with good will alone?

No, of course not. But, good will is the starting point, enabling a hard, contracted heart to change and revealing new ways for people to live together happily. We’ll communicate more deeply and solve problems more successfully when we have good will for one another. To put it another way, are ill will, suspicion, and conflict the best environment for us — or for our children — to live in?

Some people fear that the practice of good will renders one a deluded, impractical weakling. No! Just try it! You will connect with people, the world, and your own inner Self as never before. You will see positive and real change.

The Good Will Practice
When you practice good will, you are cultivating the heart’s truest, deepest feeling: love. Deep within ourselves we want other people to do well and be happy, don’t we? We don’t want to see people fail, suffer pain, or live sad lives. As you consciously direct your thoughts and feelings toward an attitude of good will, you will begin to discover the great reservoir of love which is already within you, ready to pour out in a glorious expansion.

Practice these good will techniques until one grand morning you discover that your dominant emotional state, your attitude, has become one of natural, spontaneous good will for others and for yourself. When good will becomes your attitude, you will have experienced a major heart expansion. Your heart’s true feeling is revealing itself.

Techniques for Practicing Good Will

1 — Simply begin, and conclude, each day wishing everyone who comes to mind “the very best of life.” But your wish must be sincere, enthusiastic, and intense.

Please note that a puny “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” kind of wish will not work. Use active good will with energy! Practice good will with attention, feeling, and the intention that you are an instrument of good will. For example, “I wish you love and the very best of life!” Feel every word. Say it clearly and deliberately, with concentration and all the love you can muster.

Feel free to add specific well-wishes like health, love, courage, and other aspects of well being for the chosen person.

2 — In our previous meeting, the practice was to “put yourself in the shoes” of another and sense how you would experience life through that person’s body, personality, and circumstances. Remember?

With the insights gained from projecting your sense of self (your heart) to that particular person, now practice directing your good will to him or her. Wish him or her well in everything regarding his/her life. For example:

• Well being or renewed strength in a weak body part.

“I wish you full and satisfying use of your ______ (right arm, left foot, shoulders ….)”

• A reconciliation or happy resolution in some area which you know was troubling her(him).

“I wish you a breakthrough, a new level of loving understanding, with (name of person).”

• A successful conclusion to the project he or she has been doing.

“I wish you delight and the appreciation of others in your completion of the ________ (remodeling, invention, symphony ….)”

3 — Another way to develop good will to the level of mystical awareness is: Go for a walk with your heart full of good will. Whenever you pass a person, silently say, and emotionally wish him or her, “Love and the very best of life!”

You can, of course (if it’s appropriate in your part of the world), greet them with “Hello” or “Good day,” but inwardly, and with feeling, say as you pass — or just after you pass — “Friend, I wish you love and the very best of life!” Call them “Friend” whether you know them or not.

You will delight in making these walks as your heart expands.

4 — Also, you might enjoy sitting in a favorite place each day — on a park bench or in your den, perhaps — to practice good will. If you choose a park, you can practice on those who pass your park bench or anyone you see in the park. (Since some parks are not always safe places, use common sense and appropriate caution in determining the best place for you to initiate your good will practice.)

5 — Or, wherever you happen to be, you can close your eyes and mentally think of people near and far, wishing them — one at a time — “Friend, I wish you love and the very best of life!”

Daily practice of good will is its own reward. You will love to think and feel this way more and more of your day. It takes time and reflection to practice good will with problem people and occasional challenges. But your expanding self-awareness will show you how to enjoy the wonders of good will without misunderstanding or misuse. Remembering that your own life and concerns are part of your good will focus will protect you from those who are not yet practicing good will toward you.

Change of Heart
Also, please bear in mind these good will practices are a boon to mystical study — and can be enjoyed at length, or in spare moments, every day for the rest of your life. However, the goal of good will practice is the change of the heart. When the heart naturally and spontaneously radiates forth a palpable good will — especially during trying circumstances — then you have experienced a fundamental expansion. You are a changed person.

I wish you love and the very best of life!

How goes your personal journey through the Mysteries? Isn’t it a great satisfaction to expand the heart? We were made to live this way. We’re like jet planes or race cars which only taxi and never fly. Good will is a tremendous power for expansion and a better world.

Shall we make our review of this month’s Mystery?

Sit before a mirror.

Practice an attitude of sincere good will for that person you see in the glass: “Friend, I wish you love and the very best of life.”

Similarly proceed, sitting before the pictures of loved ones — one at a time.

I’ll come by soon and guide you to the next expansion, the next Mystery.