Here’s something that’s been rattling around in my brain lately:  the philosophy of manifestation, also known as the Law of Attraction. 

There have been a LOT of books put out about this concept over the past two decades.  A LOT.  The most widely known seems to be “The Secret”, which, I’ll admit, I haven’t read.  I have read a few others, (including one I found by Tim Allen, of all people) and this topic has been touched upon in quantum physics documentary-style TED lectures and movies like “What the Bleep do We Know?”

The concept is simple – like attracts like.  Where you put your thoughts and energy increases the possibility that it will happen.  In some ways it’s easy to see this at work.

But, focusing completely on this philosophy can create an imbalance, or at worse, a sense of guilt.  If someone is having money troubles, and spends a lot of time and energy keeping positively focused and taking every positive action to circumvent the foreclosure on their property, yet it happens anyway, does that mean this person didn’t believe completely enough? 

I’ve talked with people who don’t even want to LOOK at their financial situation because it would be “focusing on the negative”.  In this way, positive thinking can really be a tool of denial. 

And what if we try and find a place where the idea of our life charts intersects the idea of manifestation through positive-thinking – what if financial difficulty was something you decided you wanted to experience in this life?  Can you use positive thinking to override your chart?

Or could you possibly modify it?  Sylvia Browne contributes the idea that we can chart, say an illness, into our lives, but we have the ability to control how difficult that lesson has to be.  Maybe the illness doesn’t have to be pneumonia, maybe you can just scale it down into a cold. 

Then there is the idea Eckhart Tolle discusses about how it’s our RESISTANCE to a thing that makes the experience negative.  If thieves break into your home to steal your stereo, instead of getting upset, you can say, “They have come for the stereo.”  And you can see how the absence of the stereo in your life makes room for something new.

The idea behind a charted life is that everything major that happens to you, positive or negative, you “signed up for” before incarnating. 
The idea behind positive thinking is that you can manifest absolutely anything in your life, be it wealth, fame, anything.

Then I look at our own life, and how we see both elements at work.  We were able to make the move out West and start a business because the money came into our lives.  Prior to the money arriving, we’d spent two years investigating small towns, going to entrepreneurial workshops, and I’d even soft-started my own small business.

There were many times during our business start-up where it looked hopeless, problems seemed insurmountable, yet always, somehow, the help we needed came into our life.  We made some amazing friends, and the business helped us gain more secure footing in our rural town. 

I don’t know whether the business made it this far because of positive thinking, because we were charted to make this move and make the connections we’ve made, or both.  Since moving out here, we have felt incredibly well cared-for.

And now with the business winding down, Sweetie and I are left to sort through the rubble in the coming months.  What will come out of this?  Did the business fail because I harbored doubts?  Could I have done more positive thinking that may have made the difference?  Or was the business meant to carry us this far and then fall away?

It will be interesting to see where we are in two years.

Meanwhile, it seems that I was *meant* to work at the local hospital.  I had given up on the idea that I could find satisfying work through employment, and then this job fell into my lap.  Since I started working here, the questions I’ve asked and small changes I’ve made has snowballed into an all-out disaster plan, complete with committee, which has now been distributed throughout the coastal area.  Changes resulting from the plans being improved and distributed could save hundreds of lives if / when we experience a significant earth quake or tsunami. 

Things like, if the roads are washed out, how do we get staff to the hospital?  Meetings were had, plans implemented.  Turns out the coast guard can NOT provide this shuttle service of essential staffers, so instead we have on alert local fishermen and a small, privately owned aircraft who volunteered to be available.  Other towns have taken similar initiatives.

We’re purchasing a shipping container for rations and we’ve started planning for potable water, should the water pipes be compromised (and out here, a heavy rain compromises the drinking water.  I’m not kidding, I wish I was.  We live in a rain forest for heaven’s sake.)

The hospital itself has been assessed and found to be structurally vulnerable in a big shake – and so plans have been made in case we actually lose the building.  The district is on board, M.A.S.H. style tents have been purchased.  These tents could double as disaster shelters for displaced people, or overflow waiting rooms during a huge influx – our “code orange” scenario currently is for 16 people coming in all at once.  It seems like no one before asked the question, what if 50 people show up at once?  What if 100?  Or more?

Code Orange scenarios can be an exhausting thing to put your energy into – you get sucked into a maze of “what if” scenarios, that seems impossible to be completely prepared for, particularly since we have an extremely restricted budget, like all hospitals.

So, by preparing for, visualizing and thinking about various disaster scenarios, are we participating in the manifestation of a disaster?  I have talked to locals who refuse to set aside emergency supplies because thinking about a disaster contributes to its occurrence.

Yet I feel strongly compelled by my intuition to prepare for such an event.  I’m not the only one, and this sense of inevitability isn’t coming from a place of fear, it’s coming from the same, quiet place that images of my friend travelling in the fall, or by air in the spring comes from.

What if the business wasn’t the point, but our mere presence in this town was the point, and the business was a means to that end?  In that case, all the will-power and visualization of business success couldn’t counter that, right?