How Do Bad Things Happen?

What about the bad things that happen to us?  Are we calling them forward to?  And if so, how?  If so, why?  Well, the short answer is, we don’t mean to.  But yes - we are doing it, individually as well as collectively. 

I know that may sound crazy to so me of you.  After all, what kind of idiot would cause bad things to happen to themselves?  I’ll tell you what kind of idiot – an innocent one.  We don’t mean to. Hardly anyone deliberately wishes bad things to happen to them.  So how does it happen?  How do we have car wrecks, how do we develop illnesses, how do we lose our jobs, how do all these bad things happen to us? 

It depends, and the variations are endless.  Someone has a car wreck.  Did they want to?  Probably not.  What they might have actually wanted is out of their job, but they are trapped there by family obligations and see no graceful way out.  The Universe only sees their unspoken longing to escape from their job in an indirect way, a way no one could blame them for, and sets about to manifest the desire.   And an auto accident that excuses them from having to keep their job might be the most direct way to fulfill that unspoken desire.  The possibilities of how it actually comes to be are truly limitless. 

I could sit here with you and outline possible scenario after scenario, but if you see what I am saying above in this one example, you don’t need me to do that.  You’re right, people don’t usually wish bad things into their lives - bad things usually happen as a result of a fear fulfilled, or indirectly as result of an unrecognized and undirected desire.   But how your secret desire or fear will manifest is as unique as you are - it’s impossible to address them all.

 What I want you to see is how we did indeed ask for it, just not directly, or just not consciously.   As an indirect manifestation, you may not have wanted it, but it’s how your desire was fulfilled.  We need to look, and we need to specify.  What if you went into a restaurant and just said “I’m hungry.  Bring me something to stop my hunger.”  You might get things you don’t prefer to eat if you made no distinctions, you may get a plate of brussel sprouts and pile of sawdust.  That would stop your hunger, too, technically, but isn’t what you had in mind.  How do we avoid this?  Be more specific with what you want.  Your accuracy might not be dead-on in the beginning, but it will fine-tune the more you use it.  At least you gave it some general direction

This is why it is so important for each of us to spend time each day, looking into our subconscious, looking on our bottom shelf, digging around and finding what is there and discarding anything we don’t want, and replacing it with what we want to see.  We have to be brave enough to look, and direct enough to ask for what we want. 

Now, that is how bad things happen to us individually, as well as how to prevent or at least minimize them.  But what about collectively?  We create not only our little worlds, but we also create collectively.  Did you know that?  We do.  You could think of yourself as a cell in the human body, living and interacting in your little cell world, making it happen. And your little cell world, along with everyone else’s little cell world, compose a greater entity that we call the human body.  It is the cooperation and association of all these little individual cell worlds that create how this body appears, what it looks like, whether it’s healthy or diseased. 

And we are doing the same thing as we live our lives, making it happen, interacting with others we meet,  - as we are doing this, we are forming the collective body, not to mention the collective subconscious or collective unconscious.  In the human body you can see certain unified collections – we call them organs and systems.  They have a common goal, they have associated themselves with each other. And in the collective body, it shows up as as ethnic groups, nationalities, religions…the list is endless, depending upon how closely you look.

And our agreement, our recognition of association with these ethnic groups, nationalities, and religions, gives permission for the unified group you associate with to add things to your bottom shelf, because of your permission, your agreed-to association.  You might not have asked for it directly, but you did when you gave your agreement, your association with that unified group.  You said, “Yes, I am a part of this”.  And as a result, you will share in the collective experiences, whether that be poverty or wealth, persecution or respect, plenty or lack, fear or love.

Now, don’t get angry.  I am not trying to place any blame whatsoever.  I’m not saying people “deserve what they get”.  Not at all.  No one ever deserves anything less than perfection, than paradise, here and now.  No one.  And no – no one ever deliberately asks for any of these things, but they come, and here is how they come, and how we can prevent it, not only in our own lives, but in a larger sense.  They come by our unconscious desires and fears individually, and they can come collectively when we associate ourselves with a unified group.

But when you remove and redirect these thoughts, this wrong thinking from your world, like a once-diseased cell who now throws off the wrong thought of disease, the whole body prospers for it.  Because of you.  And the more that do this, not only do you regain your natural state of wholeness, the entire collective entity moves closer to wholeness. 

Or, the reverse is true.  If you look carefully, you will see that many of the most awful events in history came into being because a collection of people believed they weren’t part of the One.  They fell away from the truth, from the innate oneness, and believed “No. I am different from you”.  That one wrong belief alone has caused unimaginable suffering.  It is like the hand trying to remove itself from the body.  Not only would it not prosper long in it’s state of differentiation, the entire body would feel the effects.

 So, see the bigger picture, recognize your oneness, and you are making your way into the Garden of Eden, into paradise. Saying 113 of the gospel of Thomas goes:  Jesus’ disciples said to Him, "When will the Kingdom come?"  <Jesus said,> "It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'Here it is' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."

So, I hope this video makes it a little more clear on how bad things show up in your life, and what you can do right now to begin to remove them.  And when you do this, you not only bring yourself closer to your natural state of wholeness and holiness, you bring us all a little closer.  I’ve said it before, and will undoubtedly say it again:  When one rises, we ALL rise.  I hope you are now beginning to understand how this is true.

As Buddha said  Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.

 We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world.