The Healthy Management of Reality - Stanford University

we will have progressed in terms of how we treat ourselves and each other andhow we treat life in this planet and beyond. As we think back one and twothousand years ago, we can see that, for all of our current imperfections, we haveprogressed in substantial ways. Similarly, I hope that as our individual livesunfold, ten years from now we will have progressed in terms of how we treatourselves, our loved ones, and people in general. I believe that progress couldbenefit from an explicit dedication to the pursuit of goodness in our day-to-daylives. And that pursuit could itself be aided by attending to the reality of goodness,that is by the practice of the presence of good.In the finite time we each have on earth, it is unlikely that we will reachinfinite perfection. However, it is quite possible for us to set our direction so thatwe steer ever more unerringly toward our guiding star. As we practice thepresence of good, the presence of this guiding star will become more real to us. Itwill become second nature to ask ourselves how to make this day, this task, thisencounter with another lead to greater good. As the healthy management of realitybecomes integrated with this voyage toward the good, it becomes more useful andmore powerful. The search for the good begins to encompass both our internalreality and our external reality. We observe our own thoughts, our internaldialogue, our beliefs, and our philosophy of life, and ask ourselves whether eachleads toward greater goodness. We observe our lifestyle, the way we treat others,the way we spend our time, the way we spend our resources, and ask ourselveswhether we are helping to add goodness to external reality.HMOR.July2005.Muñoz.doc 102