Ancient Ayurvedic wisdom suggests, ‘What you see, you become.’ It is a doctrine that suggests what we experience in the physical world will naturally impact our physical and emotional state of being. This state of being in turn goes on to inform what we experience.

There is some support for this idea in the modern scientific field of Epigenetics. In an article entitled ‘The Epigenetic Connection’, Dr. Theresa Dale explains that Epigenetic research reveals the following:

• Genetics are controlled by the perception of our environment not genes
• Genes do not control who you are, nor your biological expression
• Genes adapt to your beliefs and identities
• Genes cannot turn themselves on or off; the organism changes to adapt to the environment

And so, if we can accept that the expression of our genes plays a big part in who we are at any given point in time, and this gene expression is governed by our perception of the environment, then those who are able to control our perception of the environment are essentially able to control—us.

The Role Of Media

Cue in our mainstream media: our news broadcasters, along with our popular movies, TV shows, songs, video games and the like. If indeed it is accepted that we become what we see, that the words and images our senses are bombarded with (more now than in any other time in history) give us the basis for our perception of reality and impacts who we are, then you would THINK that those who decide what words and images we will see and hear—and the way they are strung together to evoke meaning—would be doing their darndest to paint a flattering picture of humanity.

You would THINK that those powerful people who know about the impact of media on our individual lives and our society would be highlighting the noble, the beautiful, the creative endeavors of our better angels; that the raison-d’être of their selection process would be to promote peace, health, well-being and a collective confidence in our capacities as human beings to all live in freedom and prosperity.

Alas. This is clearly not the case. In fact the opposite is true. The evidence is as close at hand as your TV remote.

Tools of Enslavement

The powerful group of people behind the decisions as to what words and images come into our field of perception do not want us to grow in confidence, autonomy, and cooperation. They want us to be fearful, dependant, and divided. Their modus operandi involves persistently presenting our world to us through a lens of chaos, fear, and violence. In doing so, they feel they can perpetuate our continued perception of the world as such, and actuate our own participation as scared and confused people seeking order and protection—slaves to their authority, essentially.

The extent to which this powerful group perpetrates much of the large-scale violence and carnage in our world today through wars of aggression, clandestine coups and other false-flag operations is not the matter under consideration here; what is being spotlighted is the extent to which they devote a disproportionately large amount of air time to violence, not only in news reporting but in the other forms of popular culture as well.

Those who continue to consume a steady diet of mainstream media cannot help but be convinced that the streets  are not safe, peace is a pipe dream, and this planet is literally going to hell-in-a-handbasket. If questioned directly, the majority would likely say that the world is surely more violent than it used to be.

But that’s simply not true.

Violence Is Going Down

In fact, based on compelling and comprehensive data compiled by Steven Pinker in his 2011 book ‘Better Angels of Our Nature’, we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence. In an interview with Julia Beliuz of Vox, Pinker states:

News is a misleading way to understand the world. It’s always about events that happened and not about things that didn’t happen. So when there’s a police officer that has not been shot up or city that has not had a violent demonstration, they don’t make the news. As long as violent events don’t fall to zero, there will be always be headlines to click on. The data show—since the Better Angels of Our Nature was published—rates of violence continue to go down.

But how is this so, if ‘we become what we see,’ and we are actually seeing more violence coming through the media channels than ever before?

Consciousness Evolution

The answer is that we are changing. We are evolving, bit by bit. There is a shift in consciousness taking place. And we are starting to realize that while there is a lot of truth to the ancient Ayurvedic saying, we are slowly moving beyond its grasp.

Indeed, the world will continue to manifest the way we ‘see’ it; this is an immutable precept of natural law. It’s just that as we evolve to higher states of consciousness, the way we ‘see’ the world is less and less determined simply by what is noticed through our senses. As individuals and as a collective, we are gaining a greater and greater capacity to imagine, envision and intend a future world that is much more peaceful, harmonious and prosperous than the one that is presented to us through our media. Sidestepping the ‘fear porn’ and honing and focusing more on our positive vision of the world we want to inhabit is the work of the Collective Evolution community and others like it.

Every day, more and more individuals are awakening to the power of positive vision. And if we keep working together on this, well—that vision will become a reality sooner than we might think.