Insight Number Two
The
energy of your life will be consumed by the forces of chaos and order. The
choices that you make will determine which force dominates your life.
Evelyn Ashmole was born in Brewster, Nebraska; population
29. Brewster was a small town by any standard, and Evelyn's primary hope
throughout her entire childhood was to grow up, leave Brewster, go to college,
and live in the big city. She wanted to get a job with a large company, just
like the ones that she saw on television. In Brewster, everyone farmed, and
those who did not work, did not eat. Evelyn loved her little town, her four
brothers, two sisters, and her mother and father. She loved the white-tile
Baptist church that they went to each Sunday, and the loving elderly pastor who
had taught there for more than 40 years. As she saw it, her childhood was as
close to perfect as she could imagine.
Evelyn grew up and performed well enough in high school to
earn a scholarship to the University of Nebraska. She earned a degree in library
science and, after college, took a job in Phoenix as a clerk at the Arizona
State University library. She had continued to attend church every Sunday,
talked to her parents faithfully every week, and managed to make some happy and
constructive friendships which helped to quell some of the loneliness that she
felt when she thought about home. Evelyn's life was not quite perfect, however.
Over the past three years, Evelyn had attracted a string
of relationships with men that had nearly killed her. Bill, one of her
boyfriends, a junior architect at a local firm, had tried to throw her out of
his car when she refused to have sex with him. The car was moving at 50 miles
per hour at the time. Prior to that, he had threatened to hit her on several
occasions, and was frequently verbally abusive.
David, her first boyfriend, had stalked her after she
decided that she no longer wanted to see him. Several times, she found him
lurking behind the bushes at her home late at night as she prepared for bed.
She reported him to the police, but he always managed to escape before they
came to investigate. With no witnesses and no proof, they had nothing to go on.
Eventually, he moved to Los Angeles and sent her a scathing letter stating that
she had ruined his life, and that he never wanted to see her again.
The incident that drove her to see me, however, was quite
a bit more serious than the scenes outlined above. One night, as she walked to
her car, Evelyn noticed that someone was following her. She worked the late
shift at the library, and she often asked one of the security guards to escort
her to the parking deck. On this night, however, she was in a hurry to get home
to talk to her oldest sister Ann about her upcoming wedding. Ann was the first
of the three girls to get married in the family. In her haste, she had
forgotten to call for an escort.
Evelyn looked over her shoulder and saw a tall, thin young
man quickly approaching her. She did not recognize him and instinctively
clutched her purse tightly and slipped her hand into the outer compartment.
Just before the young man could overtake her, she grabbed the container of mace
that she had secreted away in her palm, sprayed him in the face, and ran to her
car. The young man covered his face and grimaced in pain. Her quick thinking
slowed him down just enough so that she could get to her car, lock the door,
and speed away without further incident. She began having nightmares, panic
attacks, and problems sleeping. A couple of weeks later, she called my office
for an appointment.
Evelyn was almost certain that something was wrong with
her. She wanted to know why she had such bad luck with men. She was afraid that
she was going crazy. We talked for a couple of sessions and, except for recent
events, Evelyn Ashmole was as healthy and well-adjusted as any young woman I
had ever met. One day at the beginning of our session, Evelyn noticed a
textbook of forensic psychiatry on my shelf.
“I didn't know you were into this stuff, Doctor Gibson.”
“Oh you mean forensics. Why yes, I trained in forensic
psychiatry during my residency, and I consult for the police, banks, and the
court system from time to time on forensic cases. Why do you ask?”
“I just love reading about true crime, novels mostly.”
“How many books of that type would you say that you have
read, Evelyn?”
“Oh hundreds and hundreds. I started reading them when I
was in college, just a little bit now and then. But as luck would have it, the
section that I work in at ASU is full of them. When things are slow, I get to read
as many as I like.”
Evelyn went on to describe her hobby in more detail. She
not only read true crime novels, she had developed an insatiable appetite for
them. Her favorites were based on serial killers, gangsters, sex crimes, and
rape. Her favorite movies were of the same genre, and each night before she
went to sleep, she rewarded herself with a movie from her vast collection of
horror, true crime, and mystery.
“So, Evelyn, what effect do you think these books and
movies have on your life?”
“They are just that — books and movies. They don't affect me. I am a
good person and I don't think of myself that way. Why do you ask?”
“I find it very curious that the troubling events in your
otherwise very placid life are quite similar to the energy that you pour into
your mind through your books and movies.”
“But how can there be any connection between the two? I
mean, it’s not like I advertise to the creeps out there what I read and look at
on TV. How would they know anything about the choices that I make in my mental
diet?”
At that moment, Evelyn's rather insightful comment struck
me like a ton of bricks. She was right. Her passion for true crime and horror
was her little secret. She didn't share it with her family, close friends, or
coworkers. As a matter of fact, Evelyn had decided to keep her indulgence in
crime all to herself, but she was not sure why. Her mental and emotional diet
was, for the most part, quite healthy, except for the plate of unhealthy
relationships that she had served herself.
Evelyn's comment about her mental diet had triggered a
chain of thoughts in my consciousness that led to the second insight in this
book.
Insight
Two
The
energy of your life will be consumed by the forces of chaos and order. The
choices that you make will determine which force dominates.
Our understanding of reality has changed drastically over
the last 40 years. At the start of the twentieth century, Newtonian physics and
the atomic model of reality dominated our schools and textbooks. The revolution
of relativity, quantum physics, and Albert Einstein changed all that forever.
We now know that reality as we perceive it is a creation of the mind, and that
everything that we see exists only while we are looking directly at it. That
means that the book you are now holding exists only while you are looking at
it. Your home, your car, your body, and everything that you see and perceive in
the world around you exists only because your consciousness creates the
perception of seeing it. Experiments in quantum physics have shown that the
fundamental particles that make up our reality are profoundly influenced by how
we perceive them. These experiments have shown that even at the subatomic level
of reality, particles of matter can be influenced by our perceptions and consciousness.
In our younger days, we were taught that a rock is a rock,
a tree is a tree, and a cloud is a cloud, no matter who looks at them. The
reality is, no two people perceive reality in exactly the same way. As a matter
of fact, each of us shapes reality around us according to our emotions,
perceptions, and choices. This brings us to Evelyn.
Evelyn's choices in life were, for the most part, very
healthy and constructive. However, she had planted within the sphere of her
consciousness, a menu of unhealthy energies, which ultimately led to the growth
of a series of negative changes in the world around her. In the books and
movies that she loved to read, women tended to be victimized by men in often
violent and deadly ways. Evelyn had grown up in a healthy and loving family,
and her appetite for true crime novels was far different than the energy that
had shaped her youth.
As she explored her independence in life, Evelyn naturally
desired to engage in relationships with men and find her true love. However,
she had not dated in high school, and she had had only one relationship in
college. She was still somewhat naive in matters relating to men and, much to
her surprise, a great deal of her “experience” with the energy of relationships
had been found in her books. Without realizing it, Evelyn had programmed her
subconscious mind to resonate with violent and unhealthy themes relating to
men. As a result, she had shaped her growing relationship consciousness
with energies that tended to resonate with the forces of chaos and crime when
she interacted with men.
“So by reading about crime, you think I attract it to
myself?”
“It is a theory. I would like to test it, Evelyn.”
“How can we test it?”
“I believe that the mind is very powerful; much more
powerful than we can imagine. I would like you to stop reading about true
crime, murder, and mystery novels. I want you to transfer from the department
you currently work in, and try something different. Tell them you are bored or
something like that.”
“But what will I read? What will I do with myself? How
will I get to sleep?”
“This sounds a little crazy. You really think my mind is
doing all that?”
“Let's look at it this way. We all get a certain amount of
energy in life that we can spend in any way that we choose. If you choose to
spend it on chaos and suffering, we will get more chaos at the end of the day.
If we choose to spend it on order and happiness, we will create events that
lead to happiness and order. The choice is yours.”
Evelyn took my advice and cleaned out her collection. She
transferred to the children's section at the library, and gradually fell into a
happy and uneventful routine. She began to sleep better, and her nightmares
vanished entirely. Over the next few months, she noticed that her mood
improved, her anxiety problems disappeared, and she felt better about herself.
She felt that a cloud was beginning to lift from her thinking.
From time to time, she would slip back and read a crime
novel or two, but she noticed that her sleep would inevitably become disturbed,
and the nightmares would return. She made the connection that the energy that
she placed within her mental diet would indeed manifest in her life.
Evelyn soon met a healthy young man, a professor in
sociology at ASU, and she is very happy. There has been no report of violence
or chaos in her relationship, and as far as she is concerned, reading true
crime, mystery novels, and looking at horror movies is strictly off limits.
Excerpt from Nine Insights For A Happy and Successful Life
