photo by Doug Wheller
Do you believe you create your own reality?
What does that mean…to create your own reality? To some it means choosing how you experience your reality, giving it its ultimate meaning, shaping it or making an impact within your reality.
For others creating your reality goes beyond shaping or giving meaning or having impact. It speaks to manifesting reality as an extension or expression of your thoughts. What you think, and most importantly what you focus upon, will create the physical and experiential reality before and around you.
Creating your reality in this metaphysical sense attributes causality on a whole different level. It goes from asserting influence or having impact to creating and/or allowing every experience and circumstance on a thought level regardless of how it may appear.
This is meant to be empowering. Presumably, if you made the mess, you can fix it, rather than continue to be a victim of whatever circumstances are despairing you.
The idea of creating your own reality to mean being able to create great wealth, the perfect partner, body and health makes it a very popular idea. There are no lack of resources, through print and other media eager to teach you just how to do this.
I feel compelled to address the belief of you create your own reality as it relates to covert abuse, because it’s not only popular with sincere people hoping to create a better reality, but for abusers who use it as a way to hide their abuse or absolve themselves of responsibility for it.
I’m not arguing either for or against the validity of manifesting reality through the power of your attention or focus. The results or lack thereof, whatever the case may be, speak for themselves, and is not the focus of this article. I would, however, like to address this idea of creating your own reality as it applies to the opportunity for emotional, physical and psychological abuse.
Because I’ve seen it happen.
A central idea behind you create your own reality is that the reality we see is a manifestation of energy that becomes physical through the power of our attention, thoughts and feelings. Therefore, this belief teaches us that we should not focus on what we don’t want, but on what we do want. Various techniques are taught to help us do this through affirmations and use of positive imagery.
It’s this “therefore we should not focus on what we don’t want” that can set people up to get hurt. Refusing to acknowledge bad behavior under the belief that addressing it only makes it more real is misguided. And for the covert abuser opportunistic. Instead of addressing the problem or communicating our concern, we give our words to affirmations and our attention to images we prefer. They are only too happy to let us do this.
Not thinking negative thoughts translates into always giving someone the benefit of the doubt, even when it’s not merited. Not feeling negative feelings becomes lying to ourselves when we do, depriving us of important information. And if you can’t deny the negative impact of abusive behavior on you? Well, you’re responsible for that, too, because you created them doing that.
Seriously. And the first time I heard that line was straight out of an abuser’s mouth justifying his treatment of his wife to me.
No, the intent of you create your own reality is not to enable or encourage that kind of misuse. It is a misuse, just as other spiritual principles can be misused. But that’s my point. It’s something to be aware of.
People can be tempted to use you create your own reality to avoid the pain they suffer as well as deny the pain they inflict. Because it’s all so negative, you know. It’s so tempting and too convenient to abandon the sometimes messy work of healing to the more pleasant task of attending to positive things. Embracing affirmations is a much warmer experience than facing a cold truth.
This divorce from our true selves — not “True Selves”, as in what we’re spiritually supposed to be, according to different spiritual practices and self-help teachings, but our basic humanity as people, our authentic glorious and faulted selves — is tantamount to hanging a No One Home and the Door’s Unlocked sign on our house, an easy break-in for would be thieves and vandals.
Covert abuse comes at you at you sideways, from behind your back and out of dark corners. If an abuser elicits others, assaults can come from network of collaborators, friends, acquaintances and strangers in the form of relational aggression.
It may take you a while to figure out what’s happening, to get reorientated. You need to think. You need to listen to your feelings. You need to be mindful of your body signals and assess what your eyes and ears are telling you. In other words, you need to discern.
Yes, sometimes the eyes and ears deceive, and you can’t always believe everything your senses tell you, but that doesn’t mean you can never believe them. We’d be extinct as a species, if that had been the practice of our ancestors. And we’re in big trouble if that’s our practice today.
Our senses — emotional, mental and physical — are often the first things to warn us something is wrong. When you respond to your attacks and warning system with denial, it’s a predator’s dream come true.
For me, I’d be wary of any belief system — and any individual’s interpretation of such — that leads or instructs you to give up your ability to discern…for any reason.
Enlightenment does not ask you to lie, to others or to yourself.
~Demian Yumei
If you find these posts meaningful, please, share them with others. I’d be grateful and delighted if you could use the buttons below to spread the word. And if you use any portion of this post, please link back to this blog. Thank you!
You Create Your Own Reality Series:
You Create Your Own Reality Part 1: Use and Misuse
You Create Your Own Reality Part 2: Impact
You Create Your Own Reality Part 3: Focus
You Create Your Own Reality Part 4: Illusion
Wow, Demian,
This post is RIGHT ON!! You are so correct in pointing this out within the context of abuse because it is a subtlety and/or ‘turn of phrase’ that many people believe to be the truth. By telling someone they are creating their own reality (or able to) when that person is being abused is literally jumping in the camp of the abuser and becoming an asset to the abuser. Many people don’t realize this. Another thing I have noticed within power of attraction thinking is that some people blame the victim for ‘attracting’ an abuser into her life and then tell her to do a spiritual inventory to see where she is sending out the negative energy to attract the abuser in the first place. Sorry! But it just isn’t as complicated as that. Abusers approach those who are naive, gentle, kind, and willing to see fault in themselves. In fact, a person sending out positive energy and who is naive is really a prime target for an abusive type. That is the perfect combination in a victim because she will be so busy un-thinking whatever abuse she is experiencing from the abuser. So, to tell this type of victim she attracted the abuse to her is not only ‘double abuse’, it is also a soul-shattering experience. Any of us who are well-versed in power-of-intention thinking or even traditional religious thinking should be aware that MANY abusers use new age thinking or the scripture to justify their abuse– and many religious people are all too willing to ‘turn the other cheek’ and forgive. This is dangerous thinking indeed because many spiritual belief systems naively create a safe haven for abusive types rather than a place of respite for the victims.
@Sarah72 Hi Sarah! For some reason I never saw this post. I usually get a notification but it slipped by me this time. I apologize for not responding sooner, but I have to say I appreciate your comment.
You write: “Abusers approach those who are naive, gentle, kind, and willing to see fault in themselves. In fact, a person sending out positive energy and who is naive is really a prime target for an abusive type. That is the perfect combination in a victim because she will be so busy un-thinking whatever abuse she is experiencing from the abuser.”
These are powerful words that hit the matter right on. Positive energy, life energy of another person can be to the emotional predator as the scent of blood in the water is to the shark. And un-thinking is precisely what this school of thought can be used to encourage people to do. In fact, thinking is sometimes outright taught as a tool of the ego. I find it interesting when you stop thinking for yourself, someone *always* is more than happy to step in.
I do believe it’s important to be aware of these dynamics, because as you so beautifully put it, “many spiritual belief systems create a safe haven for abusive types rather than a place of respite for victims”.
The bottom line is if someone tells you to give up your ability to discern for any reason see that as a HUGE red flag and run.