bookofmirrors | Shields Up! Caveat Lector! (Reply)

A while back, via

technomom's LJ, I ended up on

shadesong's LJ. Let me say for the record that I don't know

shadesong, wouldn't know her if she came up and slapped me in the face, and have no personal opinions about her one way or the other. I've heard through other people that she's got major issues. On the other hand, her LJ appears to be pretty widely-read. So, take that for what you will.

One of the entries I happened upon while exploring that day was her account of being raped. Not the nicest of stories, of course, as those things tend not to be, but a couple of things stuck in my head.

She had felt compelled to take a walk that night, for no reason that she could describe.

He had felt compelled to take a drive that night, for no reason that he could describe.

Neither of them had left the house with any desire for what occurred to happen. (Obviously, on her part.)

This kept going around in my head. It was almost like it was MEANT to happen. Like Fate (or what have you) had very clearly set them both on this path. On one hand, this seemed cruel and absurd to me. Why would that happen? What kind of sick joke was the Universe playing here?

Something else poked at my mind. I once heard a woman say that she'd had a dream. She had dreamed about her mother, who had apparently been pretty damn abusive while she was growing up. In the dream, she saw her mother as a Divine Being. Her mother told her that she had incarnated as her mother, and had done all those terrible things to her so that she (the daughter) could learn the lessons she'd set out to learn in this lifetime.

I remember reading in Conversations With God, Book 3 (at least I think it was Book 3) that there was a soul back in the day who wanted to experience the act of forgiving someone. But, seeing as how it was kinda early in creation, there really wasn't anything around in need of forgiving. So, another little soul spoke up and said that it would incarnate and give the first soul something to forgive it for.

All these things kinda meshed in my head. Keep in mind that I believe that we DO plan our lives to some extent prior to incarnating here. I don't mean we plan out every detail, but I do think we have a general list of Things To Be Accomplished/Learned/Experienced While Here. I don't think we always follow our own lists - that's what Free Will, or whatever you wanna call it, is for. But, I think we set ourselves up to have certain lessons taught to us while we're here. And, I think some people (souls, whatever) volunteer to help teach us these lessons.

We don't always get the lessons, I don't think. We each choose to react differently to the events in our lives. Sometimes we learn the lessons we planned on, sometimes we don't. Sometimes our volunteer teachers bow out - they have Free Will, too, you know. It's certainly, no doubt, hard as HELL to see some events in our lives as having a Divine Purpose, as being valuable lessons that actually help us along our paths. I read in a book somewhere where a workaholic-type got cancer, and beat it, but it made her slow down and appreciate life more, and change her priorities. She even said that, while she wouldn't recommend getting cancer to everyone, it had certianly had a positive effect on her life when it was all said and done.

Which is the point I'm getting to, really. And the point that I have a feeling is going to piss a lot of people off.

Bad shit happens. To good people. With no apparent reason. We/They/You/I certainly didn't DESERVE it. But, I think, on a cosmic level, before we were born, we ASKED for it. Not in the sense of blaming the victim. That's NOT AT ALL what I'm meaning here. But somewhere along the line we agreed to be taught certain lessons in certain ways, and not all of them pleasant.

And, sure to be even more controversial... this makes all these horrible things that happen to us GIFTS. The hardest lessons of all. The ones we wished we hadn't decided to learn, most of the time. The things we wished like hell we'd never gone through. The things that (usually) affect our lives the most.

Think about it from another perspective. We're all hanging out in Limbo, or Heaven, or the Summerlands, or what have you, talking about what we plan to do next time around. And someone says that they want to learn lesson X while on Earth (or wherever). It's a really hard lesson, almost impossible to learn without experiencing major trauma. It's scary on some level, or at least it will be to the Human Self. And another someone pipes up and says they can help them to learn that lesson. And in order to teach you that lesson, they have to do some pretty fucking horrible things to you while you're on Earth. If one subscribes to the thought that, at our deepest Essence, we're all beings of Love (which I do, by the way), think how fucking difficult it must be for someone to volunteer to do such a hateful act (or acts) to help you learn whatever lesson it is you said you wanted to learn. To volunteer to be the bad guy. Knowing how much what you're going to do is going to hurt someone, make them hate you, whatnot. Think how hard that must be.

Now granted, this theory is full of holes on many levels. For instance, if we're all up there being all Divine and shit, everyone would be fully aware of the in-the-end beneficial give and take going on, and there really wouldn't be much of a sacrifice being made. Even if it were, there's the sense of it being temporary, and once you get back to Limbo (or what have you), everything's cool again. And, it's extremely doubtful that the villians in these scenarios have any sense whatsoever of being benevolent in their actions while they're incarnated. In fact, I'd probably be one of the first to get REALLY pissed (well, you know, such as I get pissed at all...) if a rapist or what not claimed to be doing it for anyone's own good. I don't think you can actually go through with something like that if you have that kind of awareness while you're here. Maybe you can. Who knows.

So, yeah, there's a lot that doesn't quite add up, and I get that. But, I tend to work off intuition rather than logic, and all this just FEELS right to me. It feels profound, and scary as fuck at the same time.

What, you may ask, was the gift I received as a result of being raped? Honestly, I haven't the foggiest fucking idea. I can't attribute having an STD 100% to being raped, so I can't even say it made me more careful. Besides, I think I could have just as easily learned such a lesson from consensual sex. So, I don't know how this theory has affected my own life. And, although it was a story about rape that actually brought these thoughts about, this idea certainly isn't limited to that act. Anything "bad" that happens to anyone falls in this category. So does anything good, for that matter, as far as lesson-learning goes. And I've certainly learned many valuable lessons in my life, from events both "good" and "bad".

Anyway, those are my thoughts, disjointed as they may be.

I'm scared to death about the reactions I'm gonna get from this.... but....

*hitting the Update Journal button*