Be careful what you wish for.....

Wishing while blowing out the candle on your birthday cake, wishing while tossing a coin in a fountain, wishing on a fallen eyelash, so many opportunities to make a wish. So many reminders to stop and contemplate something that you long for and want in your life. We assume that the wishes accompanying these rituals are good ones, initiating the creation of happy experiences and memorable events. So we consciously create a thought. And many of these come true.

What about those thoughts that remind us of our fears? Our inadequacies? Our potential losses? Those don't count as wishes; they are our terrors, things that we don't want to contemplate, things we wish would not happen. But so often we find that these have come true as well. How can that be possible? These are not "good thoughts" that require manifestation. Surely it is not me who has created them? Or is it?

I often think about many of my wishes that have come true. It is great to admit that I have created in my life, experiences and events that took shape in my head long before they assumed form in reality. I like to take the credit for making them come true. But quite often, these wishes have also brought other things into my life, logical consequences of making room for the wishes, that have given life to my fears as well. When my daughter was born, I continued to work. I enjoyed being a mother and a good employee. But life was hard. My child was in daycare, fell sick periodically and grew up while I was busy juggling all the priorities. I wished to be a financially-independent career woman, but my fear was that I would not enjoy time with my child. Both my wish (for meaningful work and motherhood) and fear (of child not getting enough of my attention)came into being simultaneously.

There are many such examples where people have had to face the fears that they avoided confronting. The woman who gave up working after marriage but worried about the family's financial security with one income. When her husband suddenly passed away, she had to face the very fear that she had shoved to the back of her mind while making a choice years ago. The man who worried about his child getting a serious infection and did his best to protect him from common causes but had to confront a life-threatening brain infection for his grown-up child due to unknown causes.

What makes fears come true? Is it an evil, malevolent energy, different from the benign positive energy that shrouds a wish? As the years go by, I am convinced that there is no difference in the energies that enable both our wishes and fears from coming into existence. When we put our attention on something, that "something" is bound to grow. If we work peacefully, good things happen. When we worry, we send immensely powerful energy to that very thing we are trying to avoid and that grows too. Fears and wishes are both products of our mind. A powerful tool for creation. The two are linked, sometimes we see one side of the coin, sometimes we the other. Sometimes we see the object and sometimes the reflection.

The fulfillment of every wish comes with its attendant changes. We want only the good and resist the consequences. Perhaps that's why Mother Theresa said "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones."

So should we wish at all? Good question.

I strongly feel one SHOULD wish, but as they say, Be careful what you wish for, it may just come true.