No image reflected in a mirror can be any better or worse than the nature of whatever it is that stands before that mirror. The world that we see “outside” of us — with all of its poverty, sickness, and violence, is the accurate reflection of (the present level) of our collective consciousness. This is an inescapable fact; in fact, the real problem (and the reason our planet remains “pained” as it does) is we don’t want to see our complicity. It should be obvious — as glimpsed from our individual lives — that what we believe often causes others to suffer for those same beliefs; religious intolerance, maniacal self-righteousness, just the insistence that someone else except our opinion as being valid “or else” face the consequences… all of these are instances in which what we believe can make bitter the lives of even those we say we love. Now multiply this insight by 6 billion people and it is not hard to see why billions cry as they do. The real inner work is not wondering why the world is the way it is, but in discovering what it is within us that makes it that way . . . and then doing whatever is necessary to transform our sleeping nature that sows the seeds of suffering that it does. This (path) is the only way the world can become caring and whole for all who live there.