If you can accept that your thinking is shaping your reality, can you also accept that it is similarly shaping planetary reality? Fear can be contagious. As fear is shared with more and more people, panic can result. Panic can immobilize people; it can cause them to be short with each other; it can encourage them to sell all their stocks, arm themselves, or commit murder. These actions affect increasingly larger circles of other people. A group mind" about an issue becomes an overwhelmingly powerful force. If folks believe that Communists are everywhere, they will find them everywhere, as happened in the early 1950s in the United States. If we believe that war is inevitable, poverty is unconquerable, cancer is incurable, we easily lose heart for attempting to do anything about them. Our inaction feeds our feelings of inadequacy and impotency. Can we recognize that we have contributed, by our inaction, to the spread of that which we feared?

Thinking, then, molds the reality we will experience - individually and collectively. What would happen if, tomorrow, millions of people across the globe chose hope or love instead of fear? What if people started thinking that hunger can be eliminated? What if millions chose to believe that peace is possible? What changes would we see in our schools - and in our children - if thousands of teachers across the country accepted the unique beauty and innate wisdom of each child? Skeptics among us may scoff at these possibilities as idealistic dreams - and immediately challenge "how?" And "how?" is a very important question. But it is misplaced when it is the first question. The "how?" questions flow from our belief - or lack of belief - in possibility. A better question is "what?" - that is, "What are my beliefs?" - because what you believe will play a primary role in determining your way of being and working in the world. If you do not believe peace is possible, it is highly unlikely that you will experience peace.

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