One of three presentations I will be giving at this year’s National Guild of Hypnotists Convention taking place in August in Marlborough, Massachusetts is “What I Learned From One Year Of Hell – Undoing the Trauma Caused By Those With Narcissistic Personality Disorder”. Consequently, I am reposting a revision of an earlier blog “Why Shit Happens – Part 2” that provides some background and food for thought.
Now, I have been writing about THE WHY behind problems and suffering for a long time, such as this blog post, “When Manifestation Doesn’t Work: https://unlimitedpotentialhealingcenter.com/ 2016/03/17/why-shit-happens-or-doesnt/ . (See many more relevant blog posts listed in the links at the end.)
Yet, here I was forced to revisit this topic once more because during most of 2021 – 2022, not only was I (like all of us) dealing with the stress of covid, but I had to deal with a potentially dangerous, personal situation that went on with tenants living on my farm.
Initially, I thought that this couple was an answer to my prayers for tenants that would be “better than the best I could possibly imagine” . I was praying to manifest renters that would have a variety of useful skills to help me on the farm, and a desire to support each other if needed in these highly unstable times.
Yet, instead of a dream come true, it turned into nightmare as their facade, their voiced intentions, their background turned out to be a total sham. While I suspect that they may have been conducting some criminal enterprise on my property, they acted crazy, and seemed emotionally unstable, unpredictable, and as I said, potentially dangerous.
Very quickly this couple tried to usurp my authority as landlord, violating multiple terms of the lease and pre-established policies. Through continuous harassment, they tried to prevent myself, workmen or other tenants from walking or driving down my own farm road that bordered on their rental space. They tried to insist upon a buffer zone that would allow them privacy from even eyesight of their cabin. They wanted to control when and why I could use my rear access road – a road that was already specified in their lease was not part of their rental space but in fact was shared in part with other property owners.
Reason, logic, and respectful dialog with them was impossible, and I was completely baffled by their behavior. They refused to accept my wishes or attempts to explain the lease and policies. I was confused, frustrated about being unable to get through to them, and they were causing chaos, increasing tension and division on the farm.
Things came to a head when only six months in, they built a wooden ‘glass blowing’ shed onto the 1880’s log cabin they were renting – a shed in which they would be using an open flame torch. This was an insurance risk, fire code violation, and in direct opposition to my instructions. A month later, they started erecting a two-story addition onto the home – without permission, permit, and in violation of building codes and insurance. They incessantly lied that I had given them permission to erect both buildings.
When I objected to what they had done, myself and my workmen were subjected to intense intimidation and threats that required the intervention of the Sheriff. When I served them with an eviction notice, they countersued me in court for thousands of dollars based completely on lies. That is when I discovered that both of them had a police record.
Things got increasingly ugly to where the Sheriff had to be called again because another workman and myself were threatened with physical violence. This very tense situation went on for about 18 months, 8? court appearances, and 1 full year after serving them the eviction order. They are finally gone, and it is over, but not before the man threatened to sue me for defamation of character for writing the earlier edition of this very blog post. My lawyer, however, says that freedom of speech is still part of the Constitution, and that truth is the best defense.
So how or why did this happen and most importantly,
WHAT CAN I LEARN FROM THIS?
What made my manifestation efforts go so horribly wrong?
- Was I too gullible?
- Was I too confident in my own instincts to know a good person from one who is not?
- Was I still carrying left over baggage from previous tenants that had not worked out?
- Was my mind so focused on other bad experiences and what I didn’t want that I attracted more negative?
- Was I so smitten because they said everything I wanted to hear, that I did not take sufficient time to find out who they actually were?
- Was my ability to see the good in everyone (something that helps me to help my therapy clients) working against me in the arena of their landlord and employer?
- Was I vulnerable because I had never met malicious narcissists before and did not recognize the signs?
- Was I too much in a hurry to re-rent the place and get much needed income?
- Was my lease current and hole proof?
- Was this part of a soul contract to hold them accountable?
- Was this part of a soul lesson for me as a way to grow?
- Was it scripted into my life plan as an opportunity to heal from something unresolved ?
- Did I have bad karma?
- Did I have a karmic past life relationship with one or both of these people?
- Did I fail to do due diligence by not getting a background check?
- And why did not dowsing not work to protect me?
While there is some merit to the Law of Attraction and “you create your own reality”, to reduce all causation to what you were or were not thinking or feeling is not only blaming, but massively simplistic. It misses the bigger picture. And all the positive thoughts in the world do not eliminate many other factors a few of which include your inexperience, ignorance or naiveté, your ability to accurately discern the will, agenda and true character of others, the free will of others, the higher intention of Divine Spirit, and the problem of evil.
Spiritual leader Panache Desai and author of YOU ARE ENOUGH says that
“everything you’ve gone through you’ve gone through to help another human being, to be of service to the world ….it is not personal.”
While I don’t believe that service to others is the reason why shit happens,
deliberately turning your personal misfortune into helping someone else either avoid a similar problem, or to help him deal with it in an easier, faster way is a powerful way of healing your own pain.
Turn the trauma of drama into a blessing for someone else, and it will bless you as well.
Wring some good out of it. My skill as a hypnotherapist and dowser specializing in mental/emotional healing is a direct result of what I have learned of value from my own painful or stressful experiences.
In a scene from the movie, Gone With The Wind, Scarlett O’Hara frantically goes out to the garden to find something, anything to eat. She finds a carrot and rips it out of the ground, and then shakes her fist at Heaven to declare that she will never be hungry again. She uses her hunger to declare what she wants to experience and fuels it with forceful energy, thus fulfilling the basics of manifestation:
clear thought + strong emotion.
Make a decision that a blessing or gift is going to come out of your problem.
IT IS A DECISION! IT IS NOT HOPE or WISH or WOULD BE NICE IF….
You then will be looking for it or deliberately create one. Or as the saying goes,
“when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”
Painful experiences push us to seek help, to learn and to grow.
Universe may provide them to us as an answer to a prayer for wisdom, or for discernment. They can be meant to be a GIFT from God, not a punishment. Never think of yourself as a victim as it drains your personal power and ability to respond effectively.
So if your problems are the result of inexperience, ignorance or sheer stupidity, accept it and learn. Now you know. And if it was painful, it will help you to remember that lesson. But problems are not always that. They may be precisely what you need to change course in life – to stop what you are doing, or to start what you are not doing (get off the couch).
The 12-Step Programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous, say that is in ‘hitting bottom’ that the road out of addiction begins. And it precisely those who struggled with addiction and became clean and sober that can be the most help to others wanting to do the same.
Pain is a powerful motivator to heal.
But the personal growth that occurs as a result goes way beyond the resolution of a particular problem, but spills over into many other areas as well.
Recently, I was listening to a sermon by Dean Wolfe, Rector of St. Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan on the topic of suffering. Rev. Wolfe quotes St. Paul as saying that
“suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”
According to St. Paul, God does not test us, or allow us to be tested beyond our endurance, but provides a way out for us. St. Peter even says that
“persecution is a kind of testing to develop a deeper belief in Christ, to strengthen character, and to deepen commitment to God.”
My opinion is that hardship will destroy you, or to survive it, you will be required to dig deep into your core and grow stronger.
Over one two week period in my own saga, I was so stressed out that I felt that I was at my breaking point. I have NEVER been brought so low. Besides being threatened again by my tenants, they initiated an emergency hearing for a Court Injunction based totally on lies in an effort to ban me off my own road, and extract significant financial damages from me. But out of it, I dug down much deeper within myself to anchor firmly on the truth of who I am (“a powerful, spiritual Being endowed with dignity, direction and purpose”). This is along the lines of the hymn ‘My Hope is Built on Nothing Less’, (https:// my.hymnary.org/song/dynamic/36/my_hope_is_built_on_nothing_less?toolkit=veroviostatic :
“On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.”
This saying is not just for Christians, but for all people to find the rock, the truths, the things of substance upon which they can rely and which support them to weather severe emotional storms. As Canadian psychologist, author, and media commentator, Jordan Peterson asks “where do you derive your values?” Peterson also says:
The predator is calling the prey to be a better version of itself. What must you become?
He says that you should and can be more than you are.
In my own case, I was called to reclaim my power, establish clear and firm boundaries, assert my authority as landlord, and forcefully to declare ownership of what was rightfully mine. I was also being called to be a prayer warrior. In the process, I dug deep into my own past life history, as well as possible ancestral wounds or common traumas shared by all of humanity that were being triggered and acerbating the stress.
Courtney Brown, Director of the Farsight Institute in their Farsight Intelligence Briefing March 2022: How to REALLY Create Your Own Reality TRAILER ( https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=8IUTzRS2eNk ) points out yet another value to shit happening. He says that is is only by clearly seeing the negative that you can know what you want to create instead.
“You have to know what you don’t want to know what you do want.”
He claims that just ignoring the negative and thinking only positive thoughts keeps you a slave to those who are doing bad things. You can only navigate through life when you clearly see reality – the good and the bad. It is the contrast between them that is essential to creating the reality you want.
Indeed, it is the awareness of things that could go wrong that leads engineers to design better, safer, more reliable products, that has parents teaching their children to look both ways before they cross the street, and that requires training for people wanting to drive a vehicle or fly a plane. And it was precisely because of experiencing the abuses of power that our Founding Fathers built certain protections and limitations on government when they constructed our own Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Awareness of problems that have happened in the past and the potential for where and how they might happen again is not being negative but a vital part of wisdom and experience for which we pay people big bucks. When joined with alertness and prudent care and action, it is good common sense and protective.
Wisdom is what you learn through experience.
While we each may wish to avoid problems and just have a pleasant life with everything ‘coming of roses’, such a life will never push us to reach our full potential, develop our character, and grow in wisdom and strength, or to be a beacon of hope and a role model for our children.
So should we be grateful for our problems?
Well…. in the beginning it is hard to see how some good can come out of it. But once we earnestly work to resolve the matter, we may notice how much we were being called to grow, heal old wounds, get rid of our inner demons, deal with an addiction or other self-sabotaging behavior, destructive relationship, life sucking job, or dead end situation of any kind. Many people in reflecting back have found that such event did indeed turn out to be precisely what they needed to get their life on track, make peace with the past, reconnect to those that love them or make new meaningful relationships.
Regardless of knowing in advance how things will turn out and if they will be in the way you want, resolve to grow stronger and wiser as a result. Let your war cry be:
TURN IT INTO A BLESSING!
See these other related blog articles also:
https://unlimitedpotentialhealingcenter.com/2018/06/07/blessings-in-disguise/ https://unlimitedpotentialhealingcenter.com/2019/06/16/on-grief-and-suffering/ https://unlimitedpotentialhealingcenter.com/2015/10/02/the-good-the-bad-the-confusing/
Cartoon citation: beartoons.com
This information was taken from 
Unlimited Potential Healing Center 
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