Did you ever see something go wrong around you and suddenly burst out, "How on Earth did I create that?"
Really, how can bad things happen, even to the sweetest, kindest, most spiritual people on the planet? Where's the fairness in that?
The root of the question lies partly in the fact that we live in a state of polarity consciousness. This is a point of view where life is seen as a contrast between opposing forces, and that events are either good or bad. Good or bad is a judgment issue. Judgment belongs in third-density, physical consciousness. Yes, in physical consciousness, bad things do exist, and they appear that way because they're designed to.
Life is like a stage, or a movie set where scripts are acted out for the experience that they will bring. The 'props' upon the stage of life consist of good ones and bad ones because we are here to experience duality consciousness. But, when you rise above judgment to a higher vista of consciousness, you begin to view the arrival of an unpleasant occurrence in your life as the challenge that it was intended to be.
Challenges are designed, at a soul level, to give rise to change. Change then opens the door to the opportunity for transformation, and transformation is our main purpose in life.
Your soul thinks very much in terms of service to others, so your purpose in life is to transform, not only yourself, but all of humanity to a higher level of consciousness. As a member of the group mind of humanity on Earth, everything that you do is reflected within the whole. Many challenges are undertaken, more for the transformation that they will bring to others, than for the change they will bring to you.
Transformation itself - the natural progress of the spirit - can be effortless. But when a blockage to that transformation exists, pain may be the price necessary to dissolve that blockage. People often take on pain in their lives, not because they need to transform themselves, but because their souls see that society needs to work through certain major issues and they volunteer to be a part of that transformation.
In some people's lives, challenges come thick and fast. In others, they do not, at least for that lifetime. When a person completes a particularly challenging lifetime, they may follow it up with a quiet, pleasant and restful incarnation, one where nothing outstanding happens at all.
Challenges are the tools of transformation
Without that tension in life, nothing moves, nothing progresses. Huge issues are worked through by millions of people at a time. Take any issue - equality of the sexes, equality of race, control issues, abuse, violence, equal access for the handicapped - and there are millions of people working through each issue at any one time in history.
Sometimes people make obvious progress in helping shift the paradigm. Sometimes they pass away before their time, a seeming victim of the old reality, having made no apparent progress. However, whatever they do in their lives, the experience of just being alive in their situation is added to the massive paradigm shift in consciousness which is occurring at that time. No effort is wasted. No one fails. Everyone contributes to the experiences which follow each challenge.
What about the December 2004 Indonesian tsunami, the largest natural disaster in recorded history? What exactly did more than 170,000 souls join together to achieve? Did they soften the psyche of a world fixated upon terrorism and war? At a conscious level, we don't know exactly why they agreed to such a monumental sacrifice. At their all-knowing soul level, however, they did plan to be a part of this massive event, because that is how life works.
Souls do not experience accidents, they create realities
When you reach the deepest level of sleep at night, you move into your fully-aware, soul consciousness. When you reach this level of consciousness you may then join with your extended soul family and with all of the other soul families on this planet to plan, quite literally, what tomorrow will bring. Even if the focus of your attention does not reach this inner level on a particular night, your soul level of consciousness is still fully aware and functional in its own right. You then, as part of the whole of humanity, create that tomorrow. To your conscious mind the next day, some of these plans may even appear as surprises and wake-up calls as they unfold before your daily, waking consciousness.
It is not by chance that, when your time comes to leave your physical body and pass on to the spirit world, your guides will be there to meet you. Your guides, along with friends and relatives who have passed on before you, will meet you at the exact moment of your passing. They will be there because, as the event draws near, they know exactly when to expect you. This is because souls do not experience accidents, they create realities.
Not all challenges in life are a part of massive societal shifts. A challenge may just as easily be personal. Something that is, perhaps, chosen as a tool to break up a long-standing blockage within a person's psyche. It is almost surreal to hear a cancer survivor reflect on their new-found health and say, "Cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me." What they mean is that the challenge transformed them by releasing old blockages which were cheating them of a fuller life.
We may never know all of the reasons why bad events happen. What we do know is that, in a world which habitually contrasts light and dark, the events which appear bad can often be the greatest opportunities for transformation within ourselves, for those around us and for humanity as a whole.
Who is to say that, at a soul level, we didn't volunteer to carry a heavy load purely for the love of others? Certainly the most spiritual people can, and do, carry the heaviest loads, and they do so in such a way that their service fills the world with the light of their love.
Owen Waters is an international spiritual teacher who has presented his insights into the New Awareness to hundreds of thousands of seekers. In 1963, he encountered his first spiritual awakening and began a lifelong search for spiritual answers. Over 40 years of study and research followed, along with the development of his spiritual vision. Today, as Editor and cofounder of Infinite Being, he promotes a philosophy of spiritual empowerment through inner connection to a conscious univererse.