The road to ruin and the road to success are the same ones. We can not have good without bad, it’s how life will play out. Ups and downs.
The thing is, it is all played out inside us, so we choose what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’. We can choose, of course, that nothing is either ‘good’ or ‘bad’…it just ‘is’. So ruin is subjective, the same as success. Whatever occurs on our journey there is a purpose to it. There are no good or bad people and no good or bad situations…just teachers and teaching. It is all a choice of how we want to see the world.
Once we label something ‘bad’ it is and once we label something ‘good’ it is. The mind is a giant labelling machine and it subconsciously labels everything according to our story and our conditioning. We then view the exterior world through that lens and we create our interior mood too. This affects how we react. If we accept what is, then even in bad situations, we can react from a place of peace. We may not be happy about ruin, but accepting it will enable us to react from a positive position not one of misery.
The path will be the path and whatever happens along the path, we can remove suffering by choosing not to label and always accepting what is.
Switch off the labelling machine, accept, and we can live a peaceful life no matter what.
Philip Dodson 