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IN THE REMOTE JUNGLES of Southeast Asia
on the Malay Peninsula, aboriginal tribes were studied in the
1930s and ‘40s. Two of the tribes — the Negritos and
the Temiar — were very similar. They both paid a lot of
attention to their dreams.
The Negritos’ attitude was passive.
They felt they were the victims of evil forces. If they had a
bad dream about a tree, for example, from that point on they
would be afraid of the tree and its evil spirit.
But the Temiar taught their children that
aggression in dreams was good. The child should not turn away
from dream monsters, but attack them. They were taught that if
they run away, the monsters or evil spirits will plague them
until they turn and fight.
The two tribes were similar in many ways,
but this one difference made the Temiar psychologically healthy,
according to Kilton Stewart and Pat Noone, a psychologist and
an anthropologist who studied them, and it made the Negritos
psychologically unhealthy.
In any situation, you can have the attitude
of reaching, of trying to accomplish what you want, or by default
you will become a victim, the effect of circumstances and other
people’s goals. If you aren’t actively trying to cause
an effect you want, you will be forced by the aggression of others
to respond, to react, to be the effect of their initiations.
It isn’t the perfect design by my standards, but that is
the way it works out, whether we like it or not.
So make it a practice to think about what
you want, what you think would be good, and then try to make
that happen. You’ll run into resistance sometimes. That’s
okay. No need to resist the resistance. It’s just someone
else trying to make something happen too (or trying to prevent
themselves from being a victim). Don’t get caught up in
it. Keep in mind what you want and continue taking steps toward
it.
In other words, become less passive and
more aggressive in your attitude. Aggression can be a good thing.
If it’s aggression without anger or judgement, it can create
a lot of good in the world. In fact, it has already.
Think about what you want
and try to make it happen.
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