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*many years of thinks later*
I may owe some of you an apology. I need to do this before time slips away, if and when it ever does. I know a couple of people cheer that sort of thing on, demises and so forth, and I'm pretty sure at least one person somewhere out there has a little effigy of me stuck with pins, at the very least. You guys are the people I'm apologizing to.
I was raised under the belief that we must suffer in this life to win rewards in the next, or the afterlife, or whatever that is. Thanks to the parents who raised me, this belief was elevated to the art form of suffering for the sake of suffering without promise of any reward at all, although I'm sure they'd say that's not what they meant. My thinking became so efficient that I could even logically prove why this was a necessary ingredient in any kind of salvation of the soul, to go on against all the odds, to go on with no hope, because clinging to faith out of fear is the opposite of the love through thick and thin that we are supposed to be learning in this life. Begging the question of what love even actually is never came up in my family.
I learned by my thirties that the more I suffered in life, the more and faster I seemed to be learning things. Deep things. Things that floated over other people's heads. They could talk the talk, but they didn't live the life, as it were. As my eyes started to open I started seeing people all around me trapped in a duel existence, caught in an unending repetition of ups and downs, positives and negatives. Life is great, life sucks, I'm happy, I'm miserable, on and on without even realizing that they created the causes and effects of these ups and downs themselves.
Did I create my own sufferings? It was a tall order to grasp that I created much of my emotionally and physically crippling life. Not all of it was on me since children can't really override parents and get to better health care or make healthier emotional decisions a priority, but somewhere in all that flux, I became a powerful little person. I learned at a very young age how to manipulate my mom, how to outfox my dad, how to step up or step back when my siblings needed me, how to handle classmates. A few people who've known me nearly my entire life can testify I could be pretty mean in an ugly sarcastic kind of way that I mistook for being funny.
I'm not good at socially manipulating people, and I'm also not good at recognizing how I affect other people. Part of that is autism spectrum, but I'm not posing that as as excuse. I'm saying that I learned to use power because of it. My presence alone is powerful, and I know how to use it. I may bumble along, yes, and I may look like a ragamuffin without a clue, certainly, but I can go to each moment in my mind and find the pivots that changed every interaction, that forged every path. I can say someone had an impact on me, but I can also say I very definitely impacted other people. I seem to have a gift for noticing how causation works even if I don't have a clue how social skills really work. I can mimic those, but people who can use them naturally often don't seem to notice the ripples back and forth around them, and they are flummoxed.
There was a time when I knew of a few people who could do quite a lot of emotional and even physical damage to me if they knew where to find me. I could see no help for it, living blind and never knowing if pain and affliction could be around any corner. My child could be stolen, my house set on fire, my head torn apart with a bullet. These were very real fears in my life. I didn't know what to do about that until another person came into my life who presented the problem more metaphorically. I became a target in a weird popularity contest, I had to deal with fallout and consequences, and other people were afraid to give me enough information to make that stop. One person even told me they were afraid because that person could do hex spells or something. That made me stop and think on a whole different level.
I've spent a lifetime studying anything and everything relating to why we are here, what any of this means, and I concluded years ago that karmic justice, if there is such a thing, has to be about much more than an eye for an eye if it's to actually work. Karmic justice is about everything backfiring until we learn from our mistakes. It's not enough to learn to share what we feel or what we've learned- we must learn to share what we feel about what we've learned.
Karmic justice is very personal. If someone is targeting me, I cannot wish them harm back and beat the system or win the game. What we see on TV with all the shooting everyone up to get the bad guys isn't justice. Real justice is about the bad guys learning something. And basically, real karma is about embracing that we're all bad guys in the first place. We're all here on this planet to learn the same things in the end. There are some that create whirlwinds of havoc all around them while they walk in the calm eye of power, and then there are others who screw that power up just by walking into the room. Guess which person I wanna be.
If I have an enemy that wishes me harm and goes to the trouble to research where I am in order to hurt me, what I wish most for them is the loveliest distraction- a happy life. I hope their lives are so good that I'm not even a speck in their horizon. I wish them good food, loving family, loyal friends, great jobs, and all the awesome that goes with that. I realized along the way that when I pray for good for those who would do me wrong, I help my own life to be better. It took a long time, but I learned to stop wishing for death and woe on people I was afraid would do terrible things to me.
If I have an enemy that wishes me harm and goes to the trouble to spend hours haunting my web presence with their negativity and possibly even going to the trouble of uttering curses and doing mean things to inanimate objects in my name, what is it I wish for them? I had never thought of that before, and it kind of makes me laugh, but it's very real and I feel bad for them spending so much time, because basically my life has already sucked far worse than just about anything they could ever wish upon me. Of course, no one used to know this until I started publicly blogging. But seriously, what is it I wish? What do I pray for these people? After some reflection on myself as a presence, I decided I wish for them to learn all the wise things I have learned, and at the risk of being selfish, that would include suffering.
I grew up on the bible, and there are several bits in there about heaping coals of fire on other people's heads.
http://biblehub.com/proverbs/25-22.htm
http://biblehub.com/romans/12-20.htm
It's difficult to be pious without being arrogant when you look at it like that. Wishing other people good so God will find them in the wrong is what that boils down to. It would be more honest of me to simply be selfish and wish other people harm when they harm or intend to harm me, wouldn't it? Some would more eloquently point out that it means the cosmos gets the vengeance for us, just let go kind of thing. The honest would simply say we all get what's coming to us.
I have lived the sort of suffering that accelerates this learning curve, and if the meaning of life is about learning all this, then I suppose I should wish that enemies of my presence to also experience this accelerated learning. So, since God and the universe are much bigger than our tiny little specks of existence, I assume a prayer to That Presence to be far more powerful than another person making word combinations over a wrecked up doll, not because I have more power, but because That Presence does, and all I have to do is ask, given that it's within the parameters of what I am here to learn. Perhaps for anyone who could do me actual harm, as it were, since negativity is actual harm as much as anything, it would be pertinent for them to receive that same harm back to themselves so they can learn to understand why we are here in the first place. Like, perhaps I'll receive harm, but that should also be reflected back- what they create they also receive. They are, in effect, harming themselves. If I take damage, they take that damage as well. And so they may learn even faster, perhaps what they create to send out can be reflected back doubly.
I actually prayed for that protection. I prayed that to the most powerful being known to anything that's ever lived. I prayed that I keep learning and that my enemies learn as fast or faster than me.
I've never really shared this before. It seems a bit arrogant, as I'm writing it all down, but since it was between me and God, it was more a private pact. I must stand up to morality and positivity and confess it now if that is not to backfire upon myself, as well. I do not pray lightly. I have come much too far in this life to think I can get away with cheating.
So, in light of the #transparency I started on my last Pinky blog, in the event it really is my time to go (since I've had to abruptly face this week how close a shave this might still be), I feel like I owe some of you an apology. If you have wished me ill at any time, you have quite probably been through some challenges you didn't expect because of it. I do believe in One more powerful than us all, and I do believe this whole world experience is set up for karmic justice as part of a learning program (this goes back to my bluejacky days on xanga), and since I believe that, then I believe I must come clean and say that was my fault. If you felt your jaw clinch and your eyes burn reading that just now, then you know you also brought this upon yourself, and that if you try to wish more harm upon me, you'll be on the very edge of your own mortality. Because look where I am now, laughing on the side of a cliff, and you are holding my hand. I'm not saying you have the power to push me off a cliff (and I know that little thrill you just got thinking you could take me with you), but that maybe I'm the one holding you still on the cliff, because I prayed for you. Something to think about. Power goes both ways.
Thorns is an armor enchant that reflects damage back to the attacker.
