“Forget your problems and they will go away.”

[inavalan]

     (9:20.) The flaws of religion in its organized form are often far more hidden than those of government. They are here brought into the light—flashed into millions of living rooms. Your sciences, religions, and your culture, has brought you into a peculiar position: "Forget your problems and they will go away." This is considered the most intellectually asinine (amused) , Pollyanna-like statement. At best a misleading phrase, encouraging laziness, and at its worst it is considered a cruel misstatement of fact.
     How do you solve the problems? Your culture says that you concentrate upon them. Look for evidence of them everywhere. Contrast man's position with an ideal state. Curse your ignorance, and search for evidence of man's sinful nature. And many who do not believe in religion per se certainly believe in man's sinful nature—though perhaps giving it a more scientific name. So your culture believes that by publicizing crimes of whatever nature, you will somehow eradicate them.
     Now to some extent, because of beliefs, because of the public's new knowledge through television of new nefarious acts, some governments do refrain from the more spectacular crimes. Overall, however, the concentration upon any problem, upon its negative aspects, automatically increases the problem.
     (Heartily:) To concentrate upon probable solutions is something else again.
     I say the same thing to you so often because in one way or another I hope to get through the opposite accumulation of seeming evidence to the contrary, for you are everywhere surrounded by it. Forget your problems and they will go away. That almost sounds like the babbling of a child or an idiot.
     It certainly sounds un intellectual, like wishful thinking of the most sentimental variety.
     Mothers tell children to forget their troubles. The children, not realizing how dumb their poor mothers really are, often do just that—and discover that their problems do indeed disappear. If you worry about the world, you can somehow perhaps save it—or so many people think. If you don't worry about the world, you are considered unfeeling, and it certainly seems ridiculous to imagine that the world can somehow take care of itself, and even remedy whatever damage it seems man has done to it.
     But no: it seems that worrying will get you someplace. It provides impetus, and so it does—by promoting further problems.
     You are used to thinking, however, that worry is an acceptable method of showing concern for private or public affairs. The best thing you can do for yourself, or your loved ones, or the world, is to stop worrying, and hence release all of the negative thoughts therein generated.
     (With much amused irony:) The foolhardy, the brave, the utterly courageous, might even take a step further, and imagine that whatever problem is involved no longer exists, or to pretend that "it will go away," for in any case "it is not as bad as I thought."
     Some other more courageous souls might decide to balance their input, and if the news is bad to turn their attention to the joys of the day, which are indeed immediately present.
     (9:42.) Now: I can't—nor would I want to—turn you into children again, but you have a natural optimism, both of you—a creature optimism, with which all are innately equipped. That natural optimism is a power in the individual and in the world. It believes in triumph, in pleasant, unpredictable surprises, in unexpected solutions, joyful occurrences. It is like the child's anticipation of Christmas Eve, and it is biologically ingrained.
     I have said, again, much of this before—but this is an update. Neither of you do yourselves service by worrying about Ruburt's condition, worrying that it might worsen in the future, or in your old ages, or by stressing its negative aspects.
     You might each secretly believe that such worrying will frighten Ruburt enough "to make him do something," and that is hardly the case—for worrying always increases stress. Whenever possible, minimize the impediments in your minds. Now Ruburt has started doing that. At least keep in mind what I have said, for it is true. To the extent that you forget the problem, it will vanish. Physically, Ruburt is improving, as you can see—but he used a stimulus of fear —the fear that otherwise he might be bedridden.
     Whenever he remembers Framework 2 there are sudden, significant improvements. I want him to imagine a box. And each day simply to imagine he puts into it a sheet of paper that says "Of course I walk normally." Do it as a joke, or whatever.

—TPS5 Deleted Session November 29, 1978