DON’T REACT, DON’T GIVE IT ANY ENERGY, DON’T BE ATTACHED

This old saw passed on by many Eastern spiritual lineages has become a bedrock of so-called Wisdom Teaching. It has even embedded itself into Western psychology. The idea that you draw unwanted things and situations to yourself by creating resistance to them has become a guiding principle for many. The suggestion is that you attract the very thing you don’t want in your life by directly opposing it in thought or action. It’s kind of the reverse of “like attracts like.”

What is suggested is the principle of magnetic attraction, where objects attract or repel each other through a magnetic field. It is the substance makeup of objects that determines whether the magnetic field between them attracts or repels them. And therein lies the heart of the matter of whether something that could affect one's life negatively should be given no energy or not. In other words, putting things into Eastern spiritual parlance, what do the Yin-Yang of a particular time, space, and human condition demand? 

History teaches us, when it comes to tyrants, despots, autocrats, and power-mongers, that no manner of appeasement or inaction works. It’s not a matter of no energy but of the right energy that is required. We must push back on actions and proposals that will infringe on our democratic process. We must call out lies and corruption in our politics. We must participate in dialogue that exposes criminal behavior. We must correct lies and distortions about our nation's history. We must educate our descendants in the personal history we have lived through. And we must participate in our self-governing process. We must vote and preserve our democracy against those who threaten to end it. We must react with facts, counter rumors with truth, and expose suggested privilege for malfeasance.

— Carl