BAD LUCK ISN’T BAD KARMA

“IF I DIDN’T HAVE BAD LUCK, I WOULDN’T HAVE NO LUCK AT ALL”

By Paul Schroeder

 

(Author’s note:  the title is  from a Rodney Dangerfield routine..)

*******
You have certainly heard it said, that in our lives’ destinies, “All IS WRITTEN”? 

According to  reputable and gifted psychics, our lives are carefully planned by our spirits, beforehand, that we assemble spirit helpers and spirit guides, in Heaven,  to accompany us, long  before we jump into another womb’s prenatal body,  for yet another lifetime.

Life,  they assure us, is a series of pre-programmed events staged with proscribed boons and travails, specifically designed to grow us spiritually closer towards God, a God who gives us myriad  incarnations, to hone and perfect us.

Earth is our ‘school’.

Even a ‘deja vu’, a moment haunting in its odd feeling, that we’ve ‘ been ‘there’, before’,   psychics say, is precisely such a specially pre-inserted moment, in our blueprint,  a small  odd- feeling- ‘bump’, in time, designed to remind us, unconsciously, that we are assessed perfectly aligned, with our  pre-planned spiritual lessons, in that moment.

How, then, is one to understand spates of bad luck, that stubbornly seem to follow one throughout?

For some of us, and that includes me, day after day, week after week, awful little and large things happen in  doses that nag at us, and seem to resist  greater meaning.

The title’s male comedian, once complained:

“I have the worst luck all of the time; I have no luck at all.

If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all!”:
I miss buses and oversleep appointments lose my wallet and keys, stub my toes,  step in dog poo and bang my head underneath cabinets.

“Just yesterday, I woke up, got dressed, and a button fell off; I  reached for a closet door and the knob came off!

I grabbed my suitcase, and the handle came off;…

I was afraid,… to go to the bathroom!…”

 

If  it’s true, that “all is written”, how does one explain annoying and troubling
‘nothing is going right’ periods, that persist?

Many gifted psychics, privately affirm that since  ,’all IS written’, awful bad luck events happen, by no  accidents; aligned with spirit, bad luck, in a continuous line, is commonly backstage- orchestrated.

Large and small bad luck occurrences will happen everywhere, all at once, in one’s life, as a spiritual “sign”, an alert that one is sadly far from one’s prearranged spiritual path.

When one has strayed too far away from one’s Heavenly, towards God,  pre-planned ‘blueprint’, self delineated in intricate fashion,  bad luck will stubbornly continue to manifest.

Then, It’s no coincidence that you lost your wallet, spilled the coffee on the computer keyboard, stepped on the cat, had a bathroom pipe leak down onto the kitchen ceiling, got a flat tire and missed the train and that was only Tuesday!

“Nothing is going right!”, life malfunctions, reveal that something else LARGER at stake, down a long hallway, and somewhere else behind our ‘curtains’, is ALSO not right.

Bad luck in series, is the tyrannical effort of Heaven, specifically,
our spirit guides and spirit helpers, who are more than  just trying to get our attention.

I can actually, at this point hear the known cynics and pernicious doubters yet again exclaim,”Your thesis, to me, personally, is just nonsense!”

What about those people who have one good luck event, after another good luck event follow them?

When one is on one’s correct preplanned blueprint’s spiritual path, ‘everything just seems to go right’?

Yes.

If we are progressing correctly, according to “plan”, then all of the little confluences and connections in our life begin to seem to work, and series of fortuitous coincidences occur like perfect magic:

We catch the bus, right on time, we meet that person we were hoping to see, we gain hope and guidance automatically, from kind strangers,  we find that misplaced thing we searched for, garner the needed finances that we sought ;

wonderful coincidences gather like flies at our mustaches.

Only when one is much too far from one’s self-set goals, does all Hell seem to break loose, everywhere and all at once, repeatedly.

Chronic and persistent ‘bad luck’ isn’t the ‘disease’ itself, but is instead an emergent ‘symptom’, of a disease.

But, can it be all that simple?

After learning this, minor constant misfortunes that never seem to end, rather than blindly depress you, will enlighten and cheer you, because it confirms that our path, is indeed a pre-planned path, and that, “Yes, Virginia, there really IS a Santa Claus,”

on ‘stage’, and ‘behind our curtains’.

Consistent negative synchronicities, are messages and bad luck events, now alert us that we are NOT up on our spiritual ‘toes’.

Ask oneself:

Am I being helpful to others or self-consumed and impish?

Am I forgiving, or nurturing grudges?

Am I consoling someone who needs consoling or am I, not wanting to ‘engage’,  avoiding them?

Am I offering charity to someone in need, or cautiously sidestepping involvement?

Am I being supportive or judgmental?

Am I being loving or impatient?

The cessation of bad luck troubles, relies and depends on one’s spiritual shift- of -perspective, a recognition that will appeal to your spirit helpers and spirit guides.

Be calm.

Listen to something emotionally releasing, like taped wholesome standup comedy; laughing can reset brain chemical imbalances from angst and is a wholesome therapy, instrumental in stopping deepening fugue, about persistent bad luck events..

Large doses of laughter can jump start and stir the cheer of one’s lagging soul .

Essentially, one must recognize those backstage  spiritual influences; a prayer for guidance and enlightenment is now tantamount.

Pray, IN THANKS to your spirit helpers and angels, who do a mostly thankless job, most often, and then, ask them for spiritual assistance.

Prayer, to be put back on the ‘right path’  will suffice, and  then all at once, as though in answer, the confluent series of ‘ bad luck’ events will suddenly abate.

Then, be sure to react with love to the situations that next present themselves, to you.

“Why me?!” is always the wrong question.

“Why NOW?” is more apt.

Bad luck in a series of repeated events means that
we have missed the inner signposts of mercy and patience and forgiveness and are indeed far from our set spiritual goals at that moment in time.

Series of bad luck incidents in our lives are NO accidents .

In school, we get the lesson, and then the test ; in spiritual life, we get the test, and then, the lesson..

The ‘spiritual tests’, come in many forms and are daily, weekly and monthly ‘pop-quizzes’ , life-involved, around key moments that internally/spiritually test for one’s :

charity, honesty, modesty, rescue, compassion, or.. sharing;

I usually recognize them, only in retrospect and then also decide that I likely, ‘failed’….

 

“Bad karma”,  emanates from spite, jealousy, anger, revenge, theft, greed and manifests in ‘unfinished spiritual lessons’ scenarios around those themes, throughout future incarnations.

THAT , is ‘bad karma’…

“All is written” may sound facile and glib, but one’s spirit helpers can and will reach from behind the curtains of Heaven and appear almost tyrannical, as they attempt to fast turn one into another direction, like adjusting a human skillet frying pan by grabbing one roughly, by the handle…..

For we are not humans having spiritual experiences, but spirits, having human experiences.

Prayer, with feelings only of gratitude, strongly helps to bring a message for the cessation of travails, until one’s head is re-screwed on, properly, to extend love, in all endeavors, to others..

“I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm”

*******

GRANDMA’S RUSSIAN ADVICE

Grandma’s Advice

by Paul Schroeder

Just before my grandmother on my mother’s side died at the age of 95, I whispered a kiss in her ear and thanked her for her wisdom.​

One odd piece of advice, that she had taught me when I was a child, I had carried close to my inner ear, all of my life.

It had been an Independence Day warning, borne of a distant Russian wisdom, one that

she had whispered to me four decades ago, when I was nine or ten years old,

impressionable and the apple of her eye.

The imprecation that I got from her, the warning whispered in my small rapt ear when I

was nine or ten years old had been an odd warning that had ruled and had guided my life, and through raw angst, had come to define a larger part, of what I called my soul.

Her ‘Russian optimism’ for the world, was childhood overwhelming for me.

For her, life was always a cup of optimism, half filled ….. but, with something, that could  likely kill you.

Now, she at ninety-five was far from that woman who in giving advice could be ironic and poetical.

She had used lipstick as a rouge to color her cheeks and then decided that her whole face was of a pallor that also needed color, rubbed lipstick all over her face.

She was quite a shock when I got onto the seventh floor of the retirement home and

turned the corner and saw her sitting in a wheelchair, as though apparently waiting for me.

 

She still had her sense of humor.

She earnestly asked with a childlike innocence if I could bring her some new makeup

and some big diamond jewelry for her to wear to dress herself up, when I visited her next?

Cautiously, I had asked her, skeptically dubious ;”What type of diamond jewelry?” She had said;

“Expensive, fancy jewelry.”

She labored under the delusion that she was in a hotel in Miami, one that slouched in basic standards;

“The meals at this hotel are terrible, but what is a person to do?”

She did not ever surmise herself to be in a nursing home near the beach in Coney Island, Brooklyn.

 

A person’s senior mind can lend a type of psychic anesthesia that acts in many ways to

protect it from uncompromising and painful truths. .

Now I was an odd adult.

I wanted her to know that I loved her, how her whisper had returned years later as my gratitude.

I had loved to cherish ideas; a rare few philosophers had touched my early soul .

Dr. Seuss had barely competed with grandma.

But, he  wrote :

 

“Be who you are and say what you think, because those who matter don’t

mind, and those who mind, don’t matter!”

 

But grandma didn’t recall her similar advice or the small pleasures and agonies of our past.

 

My other odd philosopher was sitting here in her wheelchair, armed and propped with a

pillow/ alarm that would audibly alert nurses in the retirement home if she pitched

forward and left her chair’s upright fixed position.

She was different the next time I saw her, the way she used to be ;

” Hello, Paul; sharp as a matzoh and twice as crummy!”

“How come you don’t call your grandma more often? Humph!!”

“Humph;You going to wait until I’m in the cemetery and THEN you’ll visit me?”

“I’m sorry, that you’ll be sorry, but THEN it’ll be too late!”

This was the same verbatim greeting that I had gotten from her over the years over the

telephone .  I presumed that I was calloused to it all.

 

It always deeply riddled me with guilt but I never let her know, but instead I saw it

 

rather as a good sign that she was still feeling feisty.

When she successfully aimed ring-toss-Velcro-guilt in my direction, I rationalized, she

 

must be feeling much better.

I quickly tried to change the subject to refocus her mind.

” Grandma, I remember that boardwalk, we can see

 

here in Brighton Beach from a time when you were fifty years old and I was about nine

years old, on the Fourth of July fireworks and I still remember the good advice that you

 

gave me, back then.”

“What advice did I give you?”

I told her.

It had stayed with me for many years as a token of her wisdom.

 

“You brought me to you on a bench on that boardwalk, in Coney Island, on a hot 4th of

 

July afternoon, when the whole family was there suddenly hugging and kissing each other,

 

happy for once, to be all together and happy seeing the fireworks, and then you whispered it in my ear:

“Don’t get too close to people; you’ll catch their dreams,” You told me.

“What?”, she said, so I told her again;

“Don’t get too close to people; you’ll catch their dreams.”

 

“OH!”, she said,”I am VERY sorry, if I ever told you that!.”

 

“I AM very sorry.”

I reminded her, however, what an impact she’d had on me then.

“That whisper, as a recommended life philosophy, was both poetry and  true and that,

your advice, really stayed deeply with me.”

 

Taken to heart, it had allowed me to remain aloof and separate from everyone, as a type

 

of self protection,  to preserve my OWN dream.

 

She looked at me as though I were some stranger in a dream.

I said it, again;

“Don’t get too close to people, you’ll catch their dreams.”

She was thoughtful and then looked worried.

 

She looked into my eyes., her eyes now clear and sharp.

“I never told you THAT.” …

 

“You shouldn’t get too close, because…”

“Germs”, she said.

” I said that you’ll catch their GERMS.”

“I told you and your sister MANY times;

“Don’t get too close to people, ’cause you’ll catch their GERMS.” she said, again.

 

“And YOU’RE supposed to be the SMART one?!”

“Oh,” she groaned in pain.

“Take me over to the dining room; it’s still too early for the lunch, but I want to get there

anyway, early.”

That wrong belief had overshadowed every relationship in my life with an ambivalence

and a craving to just be left alone.

If one was alone, one was safe from the awful things that loving people could do to you, I

had always reasoned.

 

But, I had been running away from my own shadow.

One marriage and a dozen influenza later, I had realized her truth, too late.

 

POSTSCRIPT:

 

In school, first the lesson, then the test;

in life, first the test, then the lesson…

 

GRANDMA’S ADVICE

Grandma’s Advice

Paul Schroeder

Just before my grandmother on my mother’s side died at the age of 95, I whispered a kiss in her ear and thanked her for her wisdom.​

One odd piece of advice, that she had taught me when I was a child, I had carried close to my inner ear, all of my life.

It had been an Independence Day warning, borne of a distant Russian wisdom, one that she had whispered to me four decades ago, when I was nine or ten years old, impressionable and the apple of her eye.

The imprecation that I got from her, the warning whispered in my small rapt ear when I was nine or ten years old had been an odd warning that ruled and guided my life, and through angst, had come to define a larger part of what I called my soul.

 

Her ‘Russian optimism’ for the world, was childhood overwhelming for me.

For her, life was always a cup, half full …..but, of something, that might  kill you.

Now, She at ninety-five was far from that woman who in giving advice could be ironic and poetical.

She had used lipstick as a rouge to color her cheeks and then decided that her whole face was of a pallor that also needed color, rubbed lipstick all over her face.

She was quite a shock when I got onto the seventh floor of the retirement home and turned the corner and saw her sitting in a wheelchair, as though apparently waiting for me.

She earnestly asked with a childlike innocence if I could bring her some new makeup and some big diamond jewelry for her to wear to dress herself up, when I visited her next?

Cautiously, I had asked her, skeptically dubious ;”What type of diamond jewelry?” She had said;

“Expensive, fancy jewelry.”

She labored under the delusion that she was in a hotel in Miami, one that slouched in basic standards;

“The meals at this hotel are terrible, but what is a person to do?”

She did not ever surmise herself to be in a nursing home near the beach in Coney Island, Brooklyn.

A person’s senior mind can lend a type of psychic anesthesia that acts in many ways to protect it from uncompromising and painful truths. .

Now I was an odd adult.

I wanted her to know that I loved her, how her whisper had returned years later as my gratitude.

I had loved to cherish ideas; a rare few philosophers had touched my early soul .

Dr. Seuss competed with grandma.

He once wrote ;”Be who you are and say what you think, because those who matter don’t mind, and those who mind, don’t matter!”

My other odd philosopher was sitting here in her wheelchair, armed and propped with a pillow/ alarm that would audibly alert nurses in the retirement home if she pitched forward and left her chair’s upright fixed position.

She was different the next time I saw her, the way she used to be ;

” Hello, Paul; sharp as a matzoh and twice as crummy!”

“How come you don’t call your grandma more often? Humph!!”

“Humph;You going to wait until I’m in the cemetery and THEN you’ll visit me?”

“I’m sorry, that you’ll be sorry, but THEN it’ll be too late!”

This was the same verbatim greeting that I had gotten from her over the years over the telephone .  I presumed that I was calloused to it all.

It always deeply riddled me with guilt but I never let her know, but instead I saw it rather as a good sign that she was still feeling feisty.

When she successfully aimed ring-toss-Velcro-guilt in my direction, I rationalized, she must be feeling much better.

I quickly tried to change the subject; ” Grandma I remember that boardwalk we can see here in Brighton Beach from a time when you were fifty years old and I was about nine years old; I still remember the good advice that you gave me back then.”

“What advice did I give you?”

I told her.

It had stayed with me for many years as a token of her wisdom.

“You brought me to you on a bench on that boardwalk, in Coney Island, on a hot 4th of July afternoon, when the whole family was there suddenly hugging and kissing each other, happy for once, to be all together and happy seeing the fireworks, and then you whispered it in my ear:

“Don’t get too close to people; you’ll catch their dreams,” You told me.

“What?”, she said, so I told her again;

“Don’t get too close to people; you’ll catch their dreams.”

“Oy!”, she said,”I am VERY sorry, if I ever told you that.”

“I am very sorry.”

I reminded her what an impact she’d had on me then.

“That whisper, as a recommended life philosophy, was both poetry and  true and that, your advice, really stayed deeply with me.”

Taken to heart, it had allowed me to remain aloof and separate from everyone, as a type of self protection,  to preserve my OWN dream.”She looked at me as though I were some stranger in a dream.I said it, again;”Don’t get too close to people, you’ll catch their dreams.”

She was thoughtful and then looked worried.

She looked into my eyes.

“I never told you that.” …

“You shouldn’t get too close, because…”

“Germs”, she said.

“Oy, I said that you’ll catch their GERMS.”

“I told you and your sister MANY times;

“Don’t get too close to people, ’cause you’ll catch their GERMS.” she said, again.

“That advice, I ALWAYS told you.”

“And YOU’RE supposed to be the smart one?!”

“Oy,” she groaned in pain.

” Take me over to the dining room; it’s still too early for the lunch, but I want to get there anyway, early.”

That wrong belief had overshadowed every relationship in my life with an ambivalence and a craving to just be left alone.

If one was alone, one was safe from what people could do to you, I had always reasoned.

But, I had been running from my own shadow..

Two marriages and a dozen influenzae later, I had realized her truth too late.