Please subscribe to our YouTube page to receive notices on all new podcasts as well helping us grow our audience.
https://www.youtube.com/c/NewClevelandRadio
If you would like to be a podcast host or guest please contact Karen at newclevelandradio@gmail.com

https://newclevelandradio.net/listening-links/thoughts-theories-and-queries-steve-valdez/https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSdL23sBfggk2XRT4TiCAvuRmRbxUSkvG

Theory #51
The Beneficial Presence

My Father-in-Law has always been one to constantly look for ways to better himself, to edify his mind and spirit. He reads insatiably, takes courses when the topic seems interesting enough, and is always willing to share his findings with this family. He has studied everything from ancient Vedic languages to the Higgs Boson in Modern Physics. At one point he took a course entitled Existential Meta psychiatry. It was a scientific method of teaching and healing based on the understanding that each of us is made in the image and likeness of God, as well as dealing with what Reality really is.
I, myself, was fortunate enough to sit in on a few sessions. One of the lessons is to this day one of my favorite sayings. “Truth without compassion is cruelty”. (See Theory#15). Another gem I got from these teachings was the concept of striving to be a Beneficial Presence. Not to be confused with a beneficent person, who is one who does things outright to help others, a beneficial presence is someone who, just by being there, makes their surroundings better. Someone who approaches all situations peacefully and calmly and lives with a sense of gratitude.
It kinda reminds me of the Desiderata, that poem/life lesson that starts out, “Go placidly among the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence”. I think we’ve all known people like that at one time or another. People that can walk into a hectic situation and somehow things seem to fall into place. There is something about the concept of ‘good things happen when you’re around’ that really appeals to me.

In Quantum Physics, the physics of the very, very small, scientists hope that they will discover how everything in the universe is connected to everything else through dimensions that our senses cannot comprehend. A Beneficial Presence could somehow work at this level. But not everyone buys into this idea. Some people have a hard time seeing how one thing can influence another without direct involvement.
But even in our reality, we do see examples of this, oddly enough, in hockey. The NHL keeps track of a stat called the Plus/Minus. Every time a goal is scored by your team when you’re on the ice you a +1 and every time a goal is scored by the other team when you’re on the ice you get -1. At the end of the game these are all added up and you are given an overall positive or negative number. A +3, for example, means that your team scored 3 more goals than the other team when you were out there, whether you yourself scored a goal or had an assist or not. To me, that’s a Beneficial Presence.

So, Quantum Physics, Existential Meta psychiatry, hockey…All different ways of referencing just being a good person. Being a team player. I remember in high school, in one class the teacher somehow got on the subject of love, and he asked us all what we thought love was. “Love is a great feeling”, “Love is intense happiness”. These were some of the responses. Not sure why but I raised my hand and said, “I think love is being more concerned with another person’s ‘feeling great’ and ‘intense happiness’ than your own”. In short, be nice. Everybody will benefit from it. Or as Bill and Ted say, “Be excellent to each other”!