Thoughts 12: When Bad Things Happen

The scariest thing happened to me the other night.  I ran out of gas on a busy highway!  On the one day I forgot my driver's license at home.  The traffic was going too fast to pull off to the right, so there I was at a dead stop in the middle lane of I-5.  Vehicles were honking and swerving around me to avoid a collision.  I couldn't bear to look into my rear-view mirror, as cars were missing me by mere inches.  This was it - this was how I would die!  It was traumatic to say the least, involving hot tears, a panicked 911 call, and utter humiliation as the police pushed my MINI to the shoulder and gave me a lecture about negligent driving.

Something very beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor.

― Marianne Williamson

That night, after a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream to soothe my nerves, I got to thinking about why it happened, when it happened.  If you believe that your thoughts create your reality, as I do, I couldn't help but question my role in this dreadful experience.  Did I attract it into my life?  Just before it happened, I was in the greatest mood - engrossed in a fascinating audio segment on Dr. David R. Hawkins' Scale of Consciousness.  He discovered that each of us vibrate, and can choose to vibrate, at a certain level on a scale from 1 to 1000:

Enlightenment 700-1000

Peace 600

Love 500

Acceptance 350

Neutrality 250

Anger 150

Fear 100

Guilt 30

 

We want to strive for Love or above.  I was in such high spirits, I would have guessed I was up there around 575.  It made no logical sense to me at the time - how something so bad could happen when I was feeling so good.  Does anyone else think this way, or am I just cray?  Marie Forleo suggests it could be an upper limit problem, when we unconsciously self-sabotage ourselves at our happiest moments.

In hindsight, I believe was looking at it all wrong.  There will always be events and circumstances in your life in which you have little control.  You can’t prevent bad things from happening to you, no matter how positive your thoughts.  But you can choose how you react to these situations - with higher vibrating love/peace or lower vibrating fear/guilt.  Unfortunately, that night, I made the wrong choice!

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

- Voltaire

If you're like me, on a perpetual path of self-discovery, maybe you'll understand my thinking.  I wonder if these unforeseen and seemingly random catastrophes show up in our lives as an opportunity to practice our new skills in this higher vibration of consciousness.  Bad things can happen for good reason.  They're growth givers.  And if you choose to look at them as opportunities, they can no longer be called bad.

Whatever you have attracted in your life at this moment, is precisely what you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution.

- Deepak Chopra

I'm curious as to what you think about all this.  Have you ever been blindsided by a daunting experience in the midst of an otherwise excellent day?  How did you handle it?  And has anyone ran out of gas on a busy highway completely oblivious to the empty fuel gauge?  Please tell me I'm not the only one!