Pearls
Pearls
4 Debunking the curious superstition of pessimism
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We get so far down the rabbit hole, our pessimism turns into a belief on another level and now creates reality. Curiouser and curiouser.
We get so far down the rabbit hole, our pessimism turns into a belief on another level and now creates reality. Curiouser and curiouser.

We humans are a superstitious lot. There is one insidious form of superstition—pessimism—that is the hidden culprit behind many of our disappointments in life…

It all starts with an inner attitude that goes something like this: “If I believe that something good may happen, I will be disappointed because I will chase it away with my believing in it. Maybe it’s a safer bet to believe that nothing good will happen to me”. This is the game we play with ourselves…

At some point, this playful game starts to go sideways. And then the fun gets lost in its tragically painful effects…Because there is power in our thoughts, and there’s no playing with that power without getting hurt…

The nice thing about our old superstitious ways is that we just speak negative beliefs and they come true. No waiting…It’s tempting to lean on that instead of investing in a very uncertain waiting period…For the journey to having faith in a positive unfoldment takes a bit of time to ripen…

We need the patience of a gardener who understands that a gestation period is required. With experience, the gardener learns that after sowing seeds, one must wait for the plants to sprout. It would be hard to trust this process until we’ve seen it in action…

There is a pitfall to watch out for: it’s easy to confuse this courage of which we speak—a vigorous faith in good outcomes—with wishful thinking. But they’re not the same…How do we distinguish between the two? With wishful thinking, we spin fantastic dreams of fulfillment without having any price to pay…In our daydreams, happiness comes our way magically and gratuitously…We think we can game the system…Daydreams, then, are nothing more than the flipside of the superstition of pessimism…

Listen and learn more.

Pearls: A Mind-Opening Collection of 17 Fresh Spiritual Teachings

Read Pearls, Chapter 4: Debunking the Curious Superstition of Pessimism

Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #236 The Superstition of Pessimism