excerpted from Kaiulani Facciani’s book, Whatever Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Strong.
Positive energy attracts and begets positive energy and
negative energy attracts and begets negative energy. – me
We all know this to be true on some level. Quantum physicists talk about co-existing alternate realities. They cite the observer effect, which basically states that the presence of an observer affects which probability will become reality. Perhaps you can influence which potential becomes reality by thinking it…. greasing the wheels, so to speak… increasing the probability that potential will come to pass. In The Hidden Messages in Water, Dr. Emoto shows how positive and negative emotions directed at water can create different crystallization patterns in that water upon freezing…. Beautiful, lace-like patterns for thoughts of love and distorted, mutated shapes for hateful thoughts. True or not, we are more than 70% water. Let’s suppose words, thoughts, and emotions have vibrational frequencies that play a role in creating our realities. Even if you don’t believe this, I do… and that creates my reality.
I have learned to trust the universe to return the energy that I give. This concept plays such a huge role in my daily existence right now but I still forget. Coming off of 3 bad days, I am having a good day. No… I am having a GREAT day. Because I started out NOT feeling like shit, which was a big improvement. So, I allowed myself, unconsciously, bit by bit, to relax and breathe and eat. Each positive step grew exponentially, so that I felt better and put good energy out and got it back in spades, until the negative energy vortex I had been stuck in reversed itself and spiraled up.
I went out into the world to a new doctor on my team, blew him away with positive energy, and he hugged me and thanked me. Buoyed by that exchange, I had a rockin’ yoga class and was able to do twice as much as before. My teacher came over and commented on my energy which filled me with the strength I need to prepare myself for the chemo I am hooked up to as I write. Then, it’s off to acupuncture which always makes me feel great. I feel re-connected to my will to live and commitment to fight and belief that I will cure this cancer into not coming back, in spite of what the doctors say.
And I reflect on why I have been losing that feeling of late. And I imagine these energy vortices that feed on themselves and either spiral downwards or upwards. And it only takes one action to reverse it. But it’s so hard to reverse a negative spiral when you feel like crap and can’t leave the toilet, the bed, or the apartment. And it’s f&%#ing raining every single day!
It’s like this Sisyphean task to push this huge boulder uphill. But as soon as you get it started, it becomes easier and easier as the positive energy that comes back to you feeds into it until that boulder is sailing uphill by itself. I just have to remind myself to make that first effort and send out as much positive energy as I can, especially when I don’t feel like it.
I reflect about the smiles I’ve received today in return for mine and how they not only energized me but how they might have instigated a reverse towards the positive in the person I gave the smile to. So, perhaps the most valuable naturopathic protocol I can do is to make myself leave the apartment at least once a day and go and smile at someone. I can become the creepy neighborhood smiling lady! No, seriously, I’m surrounded by ethnic minorities that don’t speak English well (nor each others’ languages) and people undergoing chemo. And it rains EVERY day, did I mention that? These are my daily playmates and none of them smile much. But when I hit them with my smile gun, and their face crinkles in response, my hard-won trophy counts for more.
Look around you and find something beautiful and suck it into your being. Let it energize you to do one small but positive thing you couldn’t have thought you could do before that beauty filled you. That one positive thing will grow within you and the next day you will do a bigger positive thing and so on.
I have always been described as being a naive idealist… as though it’s a criticism? God, I love being a naive idealist… it feeds me! I don’t want to become a jaded realist! Jaded realists die, naive idealists live!
Don’t let others pull you into their storm,
pull them into your peace. – Kimberly Jones