Abuse, Trauma and the Law of Attraction: A wake-up call to spiritual practitioners
We live in a vibrational universe.
You create your own reality.
That which is like unto itself is drawn.
As those working in and walking on a spiritual path, these are phrases we have heard and likely wielded (or currently wield) more than once and in multiple contexts. They exist and are accepted by many on the spiritual path as fundamental spiritual truths. The Law of Attraction is a universal law, like gravity. To consciously engage with this law and work with these teachings in one’s life can be profound and life-changing.
These are also concepts that can be horribly manipulated, misunderstood and wreak havoc on a person’s life and psyche. In many places, these sacred concepts and teachings have been taken by the colonized mind and reduced to memes and sound bites, often causing more harm than good.
This is personal.
As someone who was raped by a spiritual teacher as a young adult, coming to the realization of how I created and drew that situation into my life was one of the most empowering and liberating things that ever happened to me. “You create your own reality” healed me on a deep and profound level. I went deep into the study of trauma and vibrational reality. I went deep into my psyche and my body to discover the things I am about to share with you here. So this is not to say that I don’t believe in these laws and philosophies – for I do, with all of my being. And because of this, I feel protective of them. I wish for them to be shared and understood deeply and appropriately, with respect and reverence for what is possible through them and also an awareness of the harm that can be created through a lack of understanding and incomplete transmission.
While, as I mentioned above, the philosophy of “you create your own reality” can be incredibly healing and empowering, there is also a flip side. To tell someone who has been physically or sexually abused that they create their own reality can, in and of itself, become a form of abuse, depending on the context of the conversation – even though in its essence this statement is a fundamental spiritual truth. Why is this?
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Understanding the nature of abuse
Most people who are abused – especially when they are abused as children – form a belief that the abuse was somehow and in some way their fault. Many abusers feed this belief in those whom they abuse as a way to maintain power and control. But here is the thing – to abuse someone else is not ok. To physically, emotionally or spiritually assault or violate another human being is not acceptable behavior. Period.
Tell someone who already thinks the abuse was their fault that they create their own reality – without also acknowledging that abuse is never ok – and you have just reinforced their limiting belief that it is their fault they were abused. Only now, you’ve given them spiritual reinforcement for that belief. No wonder the spiritual community becomes so discredited in the mainstream! It is time to stop placing all of the weight of responsibility on the one who suffered the abuse. The abusive behavior needs to be corrected. The abusers need to take some ownership and responsibility and STOP DOING IT. The call to evolve cannot just be made of those who have been abused simply because they have more buy-in.
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The vibrational reality
Let’s look at this from a vibrational perspective. Our cells are constantly emitting frequencies. These frequencies have different densities. Thoughts have different frequencies and densities. And while it would be pretty unlikely that someone would be walking around thinking “I want someone to rape me right now” (especially a child) it is very possible that in utero, during birth, immediately after birth or at some point in an infant’s life something occurred to create fear or trauma in that child. This fear may also have been carried forward epigenetically, as researchers have discovered that trauma can be passed on and encoded in cellular memory throughout generations.
Fear and trauma have a certain frequency and density attached to them. And there are layers and levels to both fear and trauma.
Different people will respond differently to the same situation. For one person, an experience that would be completely traumatizing to most people processes through their system in a different way. This happens most often when the person in that traumatic situation is able to move the trauma through their physical body so that it doesn’t get trapped and stuck in their cells. So even though this person goes through similar events (or even the same event) as others, they aren’t holding onto the same density of frequency on a cellular level.
This is why it can sometimes be hard to track and pinpoint a source and a cause for certain traumas – not everybody responds to the same stimuli in the same way (e.g. siblings growing up in the same abusive household yet all turning out very differently). We are not machines. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula. There are different intensities of fear. There is a range from mild alertness and alarm all the way to abject terror. There are different strategies to cope with and handle fear and trauma. And these all – the levels of fear and the coping strategies – carry different densities of frequency. These frequencies precede thought. That’s why “change your thoughts, change your life” doesn’t work for everybody. That’s why affirmations don’t work for everybody. You have to believe it. You have to address the change at the frequency level
The animal reality
When we say like-attracts-like in the spiritual dimensions, we are saying that those frequencies that are similar to each other in density…(continue reading)
