Words, Thoughts and Emotions – Evil or Good?

What you think about expands. Your thoughts, your words, what you watch, and what you listen to, all feed your spirit in one way or another. If you feed your spirit negative, low energy thoughts, you are weakening yourself and your vital energy. If you feed your spirit positive, high energy thoughts, you are strengthening your spirit, mind and body.

A good analogy of this universal truth is found in the body itself. If you feed your body junk food, lots of sugar, overindulge in alcohol, do drugs, smoke, etc., then your body will get weaker, develop disease, and eventually stop working properly.

On the other hand, if you feed your body a diet of good, healthy, nutritious food, your body will function properly, you will have good health, and your energy level will be good. The choice is up to you. Will you develop healthy habits for your body or will you just roll the dice and give it no thought?

Here you may be thinking, “Yeah, but I know Jack, and he is 90 years old, has been drinking and smoking since he was a kid, eats terrible, doesn’t exercise, and doesn’t care.” Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but in general, your body responds to the fuel that you provide it.

Again, you may argue, “Well, I have been eating fast foods, drinking, smoking, and not exercising, and it hasn’t hurt me.” Here you would be wrong. Just because you haven’t seen the affects of your actions yet, doesn’t mean that your actions are not affecting you. Your thoughts, words and emotions work in the same fashion.

You do not instantly see the effects of your thoughts and words, just as you  do not instantly have a heart attack the second you eat some very fatty, artery-clogging food. The effects of your thoughts, words and emotions are accumulative. But have no doubt, they are having an affect on your life. You are feeding your spirit throughout the day, and it is either growing stronger or weaker, depending on what quality thoughts and words you are feeding it, and what emotions you allow to dominate your mind.

Thoughts such as anger, guilt, resentment, revenge, envy, etc., are all low energy thoughts and weaken you. Whereas, thoughts such as love, kindness, peace, joy, hope, compassion, generosity, etc. are high energy thoughts which strengthen and nourish your mind, body and spirit. They will bring happiness to your life, where low energy thoughts will bring you stress and keep you unhappy.

It is actually just as important, if not more so, to feed your spirit good “food” as it is to feed your body good food. Monitor your thoughts and your speech. Don’t leave this part of your life to chance anymore than you leave the health of your body to chance. Both are have their consequences, even if you don’t immediately see them.

Bohdi Sanders
The Wisdom Warrior



Are you a good person? When you get right down to it, this is the most important question in life. If you are not a good person, it does not matter how many degrees you have, it does not matter how great your martial arts skills are, it does not matter how much money you make. In the end, the bottom line is, are you a good person.

What is a good person? A good person is someone who helps others, who goes out of his way to do nice things for others, who shares both his life and resources with those around him. A good person tries his best to protect those who he can protect. He tries to be positive and encourage others who are having a hard time. Without helping others, it really is impossible to be a completely good person.

You may argue that a monk who isolates himself in the wilderness is a really good person. He doesn’t wrong others, focuses on strengthening his spirit, prays, and in general, does harm to none. But is this really being a good person? Sure the isolated monk is not harming anyone, is focused on improving himself spiritually, and is devoted to developing a relationship with the Creator, but is this enough to be considered a really good person? If you look at the monk’s action from another point of view, he could be considered very selfish and narcissistic.

None of the sages, prophets, or great teachers live a life of isolation. Oh, they may have spent periods of time in isolation, as should we all, but their main focus was on helping and enlightening others, not simply improving themselves. This is an important consideration for the true warrior. While it is true that the true warrior is focused on self-improvement and making his life a life of excellence, it should not be focused on merely selfish ends.

If the warrior is not truly a good person inside, he is merely another narcissistic, ego driven person who is doing all that he is doing simply to make himself feel better about who he is. Without service to others, he is not a true warrior. Being a good person is truly the cornerstone of being a true warrior. If you aren’t a good person, nothing else really matters when you get right down to it; you are simply another self-centered person who has martial arts as a hobby instead of knitting or woodworking.

Don’t get so caught up in your work, your training, your meditation, or anything else, that you neglect to do what you can to make other people’s lives better. You may think that you can’t really do anything to help others because you are barely scraping by yourself. After all, how can you help anyone else if you can’t even help yourself? While it is true that you can’t share what you don’t have, it is also true that we all have enough to make someone else’s life a little better.

It cost nothing to give someone a compliment or give someone a warm smile. It cost nothing to help an elderly lady with her bags. It cost nothing to listen to someone who needs someone to vent to or a shoulder to cry on. I go for early morning walks, and one of my neighbors is in her 90′s. During my walk, I take just a few seconds to take her newspaper from the street and put it at her doorstep. Mind you, this is a small act, but it does enable her to get her newspaper without having to walk down 5-6 steps and out to the street. She has no idea of who is doing this, and that doesn’t matter. It is just a simple thing that is nice to do.

You may think that this is really not “helping” her or that it is just me trying to make myself feel good, and that there is really no good coming from this act, but you never know. This simple act may prevent her from falling one morning. The smallest acts of kindness can have ripples that you could never imagine. You simply don’t know what all of the consequences of your actions may be, both the bad actions and the good actions. Don’t be concerned with the consequences or getting recognition; just do your best to help make others’ lives better as you go through your day.

There may in fact be no consequences to the example that I gave you about my neighbor’s newspapers besides making it easier for her to get her morning paper, but that is enough. But then again, who knows; the law of karma is always at work. Maybe when I am an old man, my daily newspapers may mysteriously appear at my front door step instead of under my car, in the middle of my flowers, or out in the street (the usual places for me to pick up my papers). The bottom line is, you should do acts such as this simply because it is the nice thing to do.

A warrior who only thinks of himself is not a true warrior, I don’t care how skilled he may be in the martial arts. Being a truly good person is the basis for being a true warrior. I will not let another day go by that I don’t do something nice for as many people as I can. Life is too short and too hard; do what you can to make the lives of those who cross your path just a little better, even if all you can do is give them a smile and treat them with respect.

Are you a good person?

What have you done for someone else today?

Good & Evil

There are always two forces
warring against each other within us.
Paramahansa Yogananda

What does it mean to be a good person? What does it mean to be an evil person? We hear these terms thrown around often, “He is a good guy.” or “That man is evil.” But what do these things really mean? Are we even in a position to judge whether someone is good or evil? These are questions which seem simple to answer, that is until you start to truly examine them closer.

Moral philosophy is nothing else
but the science of good and evil.
Thomas Hobbes

While it is pretty obvious when someone is truly evil down to his core, it is a little trickier to know whether or not someone is really a good person. We know that some people are purely evil. People such as serial killers, ruthless dictators who kill thousands of innocent people, and politicians (I had to throw that in there!).  hahaha  The evil man is fairly obvious to recognize after his actions have been brought to light, but what about the good man?

How do you recognize a good man? Is it by his words? Is it the fact that he doesn’t kill or rob other people? Does his actions prove that he is a good man? What are the characteristics of a good man? People say all sorts of things, and have been known to lie… Many people refrain from breaking the law out of fear of punishment, not because they are good people… A man’s actions can be only for show…

Things do not pass for what they are,
but for what they seem…
Things are judged by how they look,
even though most things are far
different from what they appear.
Baltasar Gracian

Are you starting to get the point? It is much harder to truly know if someone is honestly a good person. The reason for this is that in order to know if someone is truly a good person, you have to have some insight into their spirit, their heart, and their mind. The truly good person is good on the inside. It has to get right on the inside before it can ever be right on the outside. This is where is gets tricky.

Good means not merely not to do wrong,
but rather not to desire to do wrong.
Democritus

How can you really know what is inside someone’s mind. What are his intentions. When you get down to it, it is a person’s underlying intentions which make him a good person or a bad person. Things are never as black and white as they seem on the surface. John Wayne said, “There’s right and there’s wrong.” This is true. Right and wrong are black and white, but being able to distinguish between the two is not so clean-cut. This is why you should be very careful about judging others.

A door must either be open or shut.
French Proverb

To every man there opens a high way and a low way,
every man decides the way his soul will go.
John Oxenham

We have to be careful about judging others simply because we don’t have access to all the information that we need to make a clear judgment. We can’t see what is in someone’s mind. We don’t know their intentions. Many people act in a certain way simply to maintain their cleverly constructed reputation, but this may or may not be who they truly are. It takes time and close association to really know someone.

The most exhausting thing in life,
I have discovered, is being insincere.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The good man is good inside and out. His actions mirror his thoughts. His intentions are pure, although many times the results of his actions may not go as he had planned. His heart is cleansed of malice. Whether or not someone is a good person depends on much more than whether he obeys the law or goes to church. Too many people judge people on these external traits without considering what is on the inside.

With sincerity, there is virtue.
Shinto Maxim

The first duty is to behave with purity of intention.
Sheikh Muzaffer

Don’t be too quick to judge someone or to label them as either a good person or a bad person. Just like every other decision, it is foolish to jump to a conclusion without knowing all the facts. Next time you are tempted to make a judgment or take someone’s word concerning someone’s character, ask yourself if you have all of the information that you need to make an intelligent decision about this person. Good and evil are black and white, but your ability to discern each is a giant gray area.

Appear as you are; be as you appear.
Rumi

Bohdi
Warrior Wisdom

The Ten Commandments of the Code of Chivalry
by Leon Gautier

Thou shalt believe all that the Church teaches, and shalt observe all its directions.
Thou shalt defend the Church.
Thou shalt respect all weaknesses, and shalt constitute thyself the defender of them.
Thou shalt love the country in the which thou wast born.
Thou shalt not recoil before thine enemy.
Thou shalt make war against the Infidel without cessation, and without mercy.
Thou shalt perform scrupulously thy feudal duties, if they be not contrary to the laws of God.
Thou shalt never lie, and shall remain faithful to thy pledged word.
Thou shalt be generous, and give largess to everyone.
Thou shalt be everywhere and always the champion of the Right and the Good against Injustice and Evil.

Bohdi Sanders
The Wisdom Warrior