(written 19 Aug 2012; edited & published 20 Aug 2012)

Law of Attraction says what we focus on grows. Thoughts are energy. Energy affects our reality. Reality is whatever we focus on at the moment. Energetically speaking, does that mean if we focus on world peace, love, justice, and compassion, all this negativity in the news will disappear? Or, will such negativity simply be silently swept out of sight?

I’ve just taken a dose of current events, something I’ve avoided for what may actually be years, perhaps decades. It’s easy to do while a student of higher education. Although, I’m not sure I’ve been interested in current events since before my son was born. But, I digress.

Having just read about WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and the media, I am stunned. I’d like to believe in and live by doing what is right rather than coersion and manipulation, and in goodness and rights and freedoms, and in a government by the people, of the people and for the people, which on the surface appear to make the United States so well loved by the majority of citizens of the same — I dare not refer to myself and my countrypeople as “Americans” as I understand well enough the elitism involved in so doing.

I watched a video of Assange’s speech presented at the Ecuadorian Embassy via this link: What had I missed?! The articles on that site are almost always extreme in perspective, so I went searching for the same news from a different perspective. I generally like to glimpse major issues from the perspective of different cultures, this story being no exception. I started with my favorite overview site, wikipedia.org where I caught up on the WikiLeaks news of the last 6 years. How isolated I had allowed myself to be, or, as my mentor Jorge Bueno says, we are “being sheeple”. Ignorance is bliss because the bad news doesn’t affect us.

Going next to The Guardian, and then Huffington Post, I read similar account of the issue . Then, I found the scarier stuff on Electronic Frontier Foundation.…

Wait a minute. I just remembered why I avoid current events. Back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s I was – heck, we all were -concerned about nuclear war and the possibility of World War III. I became a news junkie, having cable television and a channel box (the corded predecessor to a remote control), I could sit and watch news for hours at a time. It was, as it is still, depressing, disheartening, and disenchanting. It was and still is so much easier to be blissfully ignorant by playing video games, watching non-sense television, and other means of escape.

After hours of bad-news-watching in 1982, I watched a movie about a nuclear mishap. It seemed so real to me, having just seen “real” news that could sensibly precede the events of the movie. Horrific and very, very distressing and disturbing to my spirit. I then made a conscious decision and rule for myself that I would not watch or participate in any bad news if I could not personally affect a positive change. I would no longer make my sensitive self sick from worrying about all the bad news in the world. I’ve lived by that rule, for the most part. Have I denied myself of anything important? Have I been neglectful of my civic duties? Worse, have I neglected persons or cultures affected by events I chose to ignore? Or, is reality only what we focus on?

Today’s event with Julian Assange’s speech and the history behind it highlight the ill-will (I rarely use the word evil) in our world including our own backyard here in the USA. Can we do anything about the cause behind this story? Are we really losing our rights and becoming a police state of sheeple? If we ignore the root issue and focus on peace, love, and understanding, will the positive energy prevail, or will we simply perpetuate our blissful ignorance?