Optimistic? Pessimistic? or Fatalistic

[Steppingfeet]

There's an old Buddhist parable about a wise man walking on a road between towns.  A stranger rides past him, and asks him about the sort of people in the town up ahead.  The wise man asks the stranger what sort of people were in the town behind them.  The stranger says, "Nothing but a bunch of lazy ne'er-do-wells who won't lift a finger to help themselves."  The wise man says, "You will find more of the same up ahead."

The stranger rides on, and the wise man keeps walking.  A few minutes later, another rider approaches, and asks the same question.  When the wise man asks him about the town behind them, the rider's response is:  "Oh, they're a wonderful people, very giving and hard-working, totally salt-of-the-earth."  

And the wise man assured him he'd easily find such people in the next town.

Being optimistic or pessimistic has far more to do with the individual than any objective evaluation.  We almost always find what we seek, no matter the circumstances we find ourselves in.  The cynic will find reasons to justify their cynicism, and the optimist will find reasons to justify their optimism.  Such assumptions will inevitably lead them down very different paths to very different destinations, even if they're sharing the same road.

The real question, as I see it, is simply: Which destination do you wish to reach?

Reminds me of:

95.24 Questioner: From that statement I interpret the following meaning: That if the Experience of the Mind has sufficiently chosen the right-hand path, as total purity is approached in choosing of the right-hand path, then total imperviousness from the effect of the left-hand catalyst is also approached. Is this correct?

Ra: I am Ra. This is exquisitely perceptive. The seeker which has purely chosen the service-to-others path shall certainly not have a variant apparent incarnational experience. There is no outward shelter in your illusion from the gusts, flurries, and blizzards of quick and cruel catalyst.

However, to the pure, all that is encountered speaks of the love and the light of the One Infinite Creator. The cruelest blow is seen with an ambiance of challenges offered and opportunities to come. Thusly, the great pitch of light is held high above such an one so that all interpretation may be seen to be protected by light.


I agree with you that the world generally mirrors our own pre-existing biases, and can thus be used to further justify and substantiate those biases, offering each the opportunity for self-fulfilling prophecies and confirmations. Reality seems not only very amenable to perception, but is more so a creation of perception.

At the same time, I think there is a spectrum of attitude that moves from distorting reality to disclosing reality. The more we fine tune that attitude, and furnish it with distilled experience, the less we superimpose a picture of how we think the world is onto the face of reality, and the more that the face reveals itself. Or rather, we become better able to translate the nature of reality through attitudes of faith, praise and thanksgiving, surrender, truth-seeing optimism, etc.

I think the pure seeker in Ra's scenario above is not simply confirming pre-existing bias, and thereby morphing a nuetral reality to their positive expectations, but is genuinely understanding reality on a deeper level.