Life Principle #9 – The Neutral Universe

There is a scene in Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' where he meets his old friends Rosencrantz and Guildernstern.

As part of the opening banter, Hamlet refers to the country of Denmark as being a prison...

GUILDENSTERN: Prison, my lord?

HAMLET: Denmark’s a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ: Then I guess the whole world is one.

HAMLET: Yes, quite a large one, with many cells and dungeons, Denmark being one of the worst.

ROSENCRANTZ: We don’t think so, my lord.

HAMLET: Well, then it isn’t one to you, since nothing is really good or bad in itself

- it’s all what a person thinks about it. And to me, Denmark is a prison.

What Hamlet is saying is that if you believe the world (and in this case, Denmark) to be a prison, it is so for you.

In sum, he is echoing the Law of Attraction, in that 'what you think about comes about.'

...But Nothing Is Either Good Or Bad

As he says, in reality nothing is either good or bad. We just assign the meanings 'good' or 'bad' to it.

The evidence for this is that 2 people can have a totally different interpretations of an event.

This leads to an important principle about living a happy and peaceful life, and that is that 'The Universe is Neutral'.  

We assign meanings to things about the Universe and it is those meanings that make our life 'hell' or 'bliss'. But in reality, the Universe is neither.

It may be fun to 'watch' or 'play' Hamlet but it doesn't serve you to 'be' Hamlet (unless you love living in a prison!)

The Answer?

So the answer then is not to assign 'good' or 'bad' to things, but to accept things as they are.

And this of course circles back to the first of the Nine Principles - 'Let Everything Be OK'

Of course, you will have preferred and non-preferred outcomes. That's fine, in that the emotional impact of the words 'preferred' and 'not preferred' is less.

But it is still assigning a value in either a positive or negative way.

We can still want things, but if things our outside of our control to get them we must accept it as such.

So next time you find yourself thinking that 'life is hell,' stop for a moment and think about 'what if life was heaven?'

You'll probably find yourself moving back to the middle!