What the Thought Creates

I once had a friend who told me they took responsibility for drawing a horrifically abusive person into their life, apparently with their own thoughts.  This person believed we create the whole of our existence out of our thoughts, including random negative things (I guess up to random things like a tree falling on one's house).  Further, this person believed, and told me, I had drawn all the abusive people and events into my life with my thoughts (discounting how many abusive people I have gotten away from and the amazing things which have happened to me in my life).  My thoughts don't create the abusive people; my naivete allows the door to stay open and I tend to believe the best about these people until they reveal what they really are.  I mean, here I am thinking the best thoughts possible about most people and three or four times in my life, I've had people unmask themselves to me as very unsavory individuals.  Maybe that's an odd result of thinking this way...their darkness cannot resist a certain light and the mask is revealed. 

I do like the idea of affirmation and positive thinking as a form of prayer and loving support.  A friend wrote a sort of affirmational treatment for me a few times and it really helped me move my way forward.  It was a good support for the journey and not a bludgeon.  I'm sorry that the line of thinking was also used as a way to tear my self-esteem down (I don't think he consciously meant it, but there was definitely a drive to do that which I did not recognize at the time). At least there was some positive use of this energy from time to time.  I mean, if this sort of thing really helps YOU as a person, wonderful: but don't bludgeon people over the head with it, creating an atmosphere where they can feel as bad as possible about themselves.

 I know of one guy who discouraged his wife from having breast cancer treatment or surgery, resorting instead to affirmations and vitamins, and she died about two months later.  There is real harm to be had with some of these people; it is not at all a benign group.  Many are nice and not out of their minds, but these communities attract also some unstable individuals.

I do have to say that there are times in my life where things have been very unsafe and I visualized what a safe place would look like for me, and it helped me find it. Mostly though, I simply talk to God and ask this being to simply show me my life path and give me the courage to follow it.  Everything seems to fall into place when I do that.  Keeping a positive outlook and refusing to give into fear are important, even crucial, but being told you drew something negative into your life with your thoughts is, to me, magical thinking. I pray for what I want and need, and more often than not these days, I simply say, "Thy will be done."  God does not have a lousy life in store for me, and I already know that.

I'm very glad I don't feel ashamed of myself anymore, which is what the above line of thinking is probably meant to induce: if something bad happens to you, you created it, so take responsibility for it...and then what?  Atone for it?  The person who told me this would never really have helped me, anyways, with the material things I needed to help me change my life: what I find in these circles is an immense validation for being selfish, which sort of undoes the idea of a positive community with positive thoughts.  It has taken me a long time to shed the deep shame that contact with this community created in me.  I ended up thinking I was a bad person with bad thoughts: the very same thing that I battled when I was within the Catholic Church as a child and young adult. 

Asha did not "draw" Michael McClish to her. He was a predator who took advantage of her, the same as someone did with me, though I did not die for it: she left her handprint at the sati gate, as I have said, and not me.  What trick of fate made me stand here to be the one who tells her story?  I think there are deeper and more mysterious forces in this world than we know.  But I will never believe anyone draws such a fate to themselves, for any reason: McClish was allowed to remain in a position where he could victimize, and no one at his place of employment did a darn thing.  Asha may have stopped this man from becoming a serial killer, but I will never, ever say that is the reason she died: she died because ultimately, society does not believe women, and because no one believed the women who worked at the market regarding McClish's abuse, she was put in a vulnerable position.

At any rate, it is bedtime for me.  Sleep comes easier, but sad dreams abound: I dream M's mother and father are ghosts in his childhood home; I see them as shadows, going about their lives, call to them, but they do not answer, and they do not leave.