This is Part II of this article. You can read Part I here.
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   One more common way we may appear to invite bad things into our life is by stating who we want to become while having no idea what kind of a path we will have to travel to get there. Deep in our heart, we all want to grow and evolve - it is our nature as an incarnation of this ever-expanding Life. While we all may wish for our paths to be smooth and easy, there is no learning and hence no growing without challenges. Only in retrospect, looking at our journey, it becomes clear to us that each difficulty we resisted so much at the time was the perfect stepping stone that brought us where we were meant to be.
   And lastly, we unconsciously invite bad things by not choosing otherwise. Even before we were born, some things were set in motion for us by our karma and possibly choices made before this incarnation (according to some teachings), our ancestors, our genes, our environment, etc. Life is infinitely complex, and no one knows what kind of events had happened and what decisions have been made in the past that created a chain of reactions whose inertia continues to affect us today. All of these as well as the people and circumstances in our lives continue to influence us. And if we are not using our creative power consciously and deliberately, we may become victims of these "forces" by default.  But again, we have the power to choose our thoughts, our feelings, and actions NOW and by doing so, we are laying a new path for ourselves, one conscious step at a time. This may or may not protect us from every adverse event, and some things that were “meant to happen” will still happen but living consciously certainly will allow us to create the best possible life we can have. I like to call it "living to the extent of our free will."   
   The purpose of life is not just seeking the pleasant and avoiding the unpleasant experiences but growing and evolving into more and more of who we are by going through these experiences, both good and bad. 
   All our desires, conscious or unconscious is the Universal desire to express more life. Yet we have the “free will” to use our individual creative power in a distorted and limited way with adverse consequences and suffer or thrive by expressing our full potential as the one-of-a-kind manifestation of this Magnificent Dance of Life.  When we connect to the Universal Omniscience that speaks to us through our intuition and take conscious, inspired actions, we inevitably become the Masterpiece we were meant to be.

   Perhaps one of the most common and difficult questions metaphysical teachers are asked is: If God is love then why do bad things happen to good people? Does God care, or even, is there God? This is certainly one of the main subjects of metaphysical studies, but to attempt to answer these questions, we will have to look deep into the nature of God, Creation, and Existence. While it is a worthwhile exploration, and I’d love to share more about it in one of my upcoming articles, here I would like to explain some of the ways we attract these “bad things” into our lives, and what we can do to change it.
   Ernest Holmes, the founder of the New Thought philosophy, calls it “unconsciously inviting” accidents, illness, and all kinds of adverse experiences.
   One of the ways we do it is by repeatedly imagining a situation unfolding in a way we don’t want it to in order to be prepared for it. So, in efforts to save ourselves from an undesirable experience, we allow this scenario to play on our mental screen, evoking strong negative feelings. This, of course, is happening unintentionally and unconsciously, but as a result, we often end up creating exactly what we were trying to avoid! Although it can be useful to be prepared for things not going the way we want them to, we also need to remember that we are powerful creative beings and the images we play in our mind with strong emotions associated with them tend to manifest into reality. The reason for it is that our subconscious mind does not discriminate between good and bad thoughts. It is a creative medium through which our desires, intentions, and deep-seated beliefs come to life.
   In Metaphysical literature, this medium is often described by using the analogy of the soil. Just like the soil does not refuse any seeds and will grow whatever we plant, so will our subconscious mind materialize any thoughts we allow to take root in it. It will bring into life happy as well as unhappy events just as the soil will bring into life a delicious rose or a poison oak equally. So, it is our responsibility to be conscious of the atmosphere of our innermost world. The emotions evoked by habitual thoughts and images that flow through our being determine the default frequency of our energy, which will attract experiences of the same frequency. This is known as the Law of Attraction.
  Another way we unconsciously invite bad things into our life is by unconsciously trying to avoid something that deep in our mind we may consider threatening to our survival. On the conscious level, this threat may not make sense or even seem absurd, but our subconscious mind or our old brain processes things differently when it comes to performing its most important job - maintaining our survival.
   For example, if we are to give a public presentation, something we may find terrifying, even if in the case of failure, the only thing that will be in danger is our self-esteem and certainly not our life, our subconscious mind can be interpreting it as a threat to our survival and make us sick or get into an accident in order to prevent us from the possibility of being publicly humiliated. In this case, we want to be aware of all the underlying fears and take care of them, either by releasing or embracing them before we take the actions, so we don't inadvertently cause ourselves unnecessary suffering.​

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