Why Bad Things Happen to Good People - Part II

 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.