Hello Lovely!

Here’s a spiritually unpopular opinion that may actually help some feel a little better/safer in this world.

Not everything that happens in your life is about/because of you.

Not everything that happens in your life is a reflection of you.

Not everything that occurs in your life is because of your vibration.

Your alignment.

Your choices even.

In this life we live, you can be making the best choices for yourself that you possibly can be, be as aligned with reality as you’re capable of being, you can be dealing with your traumas and in a good place emotionally/mentally/spirituality, you can be taking responsibility for yourself and in a super grounded or happy place and STILL get yelled at by the guy behind you in the checkout line. 

You could have done all your prayers, reset your chakras, meditated on the light, made sure you were moving from true desire and positivity and still have the government tell you you can’t have a permit to do what you want.

You could have planned your tickets with all angel numbers, on the best astrological times and dates with only synchronicities all the way through the booking process, only to arrive at the airport and find your flight gets delayed 100 times, canceled, re-scheduled and you have to fully re-jigger your whole itinerary.

You can get mugged, turned down by a prospective lover, rejected for a job, get sick, get hit by a car or experience any number of ‘negative’ things without doing or being ANYTHING that ‘made’ those things happen.

Of Course We Want To Believe We Have Full Control:

Because we live in a complex, multifaceted, interconnected reality where other people are having experiences and making choices that affect us that we have NO agency within.

Now, before we move on - I know this is scary to think about. I know that at its CORE the teaching that EVERYTHING is a reflection of ourselves is the desire to be in total CONTROL of the outcomes of our lives. We WANT to believe that absolutely EVERYTHING in life is a response to us, is feedback on our ‘status’, a reflection of our inner state/alignment with the universe - because if this is true, this would mean that if we just perfect ourselves enough we can fully protect ourselves from any future pain. 

Of course we want to believe this.

Of course we want to believe that all bad things have a ‘reason’ that’s within our control, so that we can hope that one day, if we do enough spiritual work, we will be able to AVOID all suffering and negative experience and only have the positive, loving, safe, fun ones we want.

 

I know that in wealthier nations it’s really EASY to believe these kinds of teachings because in a way we DO have more agency, freedom, choice and control over our lives that *most* people do throughout the rest of the world where resources, access, education and human rights are much less available.

It’s totally TRUE that we do have some agency in our lives. It’s fully true that we can clear our perceptions when we do our trauma integration work, that we can be well thought out in our actions, we can be looking for the positive and flowing with the general direction of growth our life seems to want to carry us through - and in this we can see we get better and better results. We can use science and reason and information and intuition and feeling to help us make choices around our healthy, wealth, relationships and a whole host of other things that DO lead to positive results. We can work hard. We can be soft. We can be disciplined. We can work together and create community. We can fight for human rights and equal access. And in all of these things we WILL have less pain. More pleasure. We get to know ourselves, what we need, what works for us, and in the process of this we figure out how to get these things within the reality that exist around us.

We learn more and more about how to harmonize our being with our surroundings and in this we DO have more and more pleasurable times.

But There's More:

At the same time, there will ALWAYS be growth barriers we didn’t see coming.

There are always going to be times where the next thing we want, the next thing we need, the next phase for us is something totally out of our depth. There will be times when old traumas we didn’t even realize were a thing come to the surface and side swipe us. There are going to be times when we really THINK and FEEL aligned with something/someone - only to discover as we dive in that NOPE - that was actually a MASSIVE challenge. We are going to find that the next, fully right, fully aligned experience for us is one that frankly SUCKS. It’s hard. It’s no fun. It’s uncomfortable. It’s growth with all the pain that growth entails and then some. There are going to be things we were born into culturally, within our family structures, physically, and socio-politically that dictate the direction of our lives, over which we have absolutely no agency.

AND

We live in a world of governments, institutions and power structures all created by HUMANS who don’t necessarily have the best interest of the whole at heart.

Who aren’t omnipotent, who make rash choices, set up systems that don’t work for everyone, create cycles of poverty and exploitation to profit the few, who don’t have foresight and universal love in mind - that DO have power over you, power you can’t do anything about without risking your own life in some form or fashion. We were all born into conditions of human creation we didn’t choose, we were slotted into a category, and again I understand the desire to believe that was a ‘choice’ on behalf of our soul before coming to earth or a perfect placement for some divine purpose - but at the end of the day, it is what it is.

There are going to be times and places where HUGE parts of your life, what you can and can’t do, where you can and can’t go, what you can and can’t achieve - won’t be decided by you. They will be decided by a government official. A church leader. A boss. You can do everything in your power to try to get the best outcome for yourself - but ultimately, you don’t have control over the system.

Again I know this can be hard to wrap your mind around in freer nations where we’re used to having a lot of power and agency - but for those living under dictatorial regimes, strict religious rule, and much harsher systems - this is a reality they didn’t create. We all have to work within a system we didn’t choose that doesn’t know us, care about us, or bend to our will. Yes, we can work to change systems, to make power structures more even and equal, we can do what we can to try to shift things in a more equitable direction - and we should do those things - but at the same time we have to expect that life isn’t always going to go our way because it wasn’t created with us specifically in mind. The systems of the world weren’t created to serve you. All of us have to get on board with that at some point.

AND

We live in a reality that is in and of itself incredibly complex and not human centric.

Weather patterns, natural disasters, extinctions, infestations, mass spreading of contagion - these are all natural phenomena that occurred long before humans ever arrived on this planet and that will continue to occur long after we no longer exist. These things can again, have a massive impact on our lives and can occur without warning. We can have an important meeting canceled due to rain. A flood can wipe out an entire village. Drought can mean scarcity where there was plenty before. Fires. Hurricanes. Storms. We can do our best, predict the weather as accurately as possible, shore up, make plans, create technologies to lessen the impact of these things - and still. We will be vulnerable to the incredibly powerful force that is Mother Nature for as long as we live. Nature isn’t a simple reflection of man, doing what it does in order to teach us all individual lessons. We’re not that important.

We can take care of the planet, yes. We can learn to minimize our destructive impact so as to minimize the human created climate issues. And we should.

But no, not every natural event is a response to human action - especially not to each INDIVIDUAL human life.

AND

Other people are having their own experience that has nothing to do with you.

People are having their own lives - with long histories, complex psychologies, an imperceptible number of events which have led them to exactly where they are now - just like you - and if you interact with them briefly, this is what’s called a coincidence. Your path happened to intersect with theirs. You both needed apples, your incredibly long histories led you to both living in this particular neighborhood where this store was the closest one, and the time to buy apples for both of you was the same time. They were there, you were there. They had a really bad day, you got on their last nerve, they shoved you. It had nothing to do with you. They had a really good day, you crossed their path, they smiled and told you they liked your hat. It had nothing to do with you. It wasn’t your vibration. Your state. Your karma. It was their life and you intersected. Someone mugged you at an ATM - did you attract it? Or was it that muggers' only option after years of systemic poverty, drug addiction and lack of support all due to a society that wasn’t set up to support all people, leading this person to need money the moment you were there, and therefore you were the target? 

To put it another way, when you have a terrible day and yell at the cashier unnecessarily - do you think to yourself ‘man what did that clerk do to deserve my lashing out at them? They didn’t align their chakras today, good thing the universe sent ME to teach them a lesson.’

I hope not.

If you run someone over with your car, do you keep driving, assuming that that person ‘manifested’ you? That they simply needed to get run over to learn what their soul was needing to learn next? Do you assume you were just a Divine player in their life, helping them along their evolutionary path?

I genuinely hope that the answer is no to the above questions. I hope that from THIS perspective, you can see the possible flaw in this line of thinking/reasoning.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let's pause here and come back next week for a deepening of this.

<3