The law of attraction…
David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. “Power vs Force” , pg 309
“Here, it is best to heed the traditional wisdom that tells us not to fear evil or fight it, but merely to avoid it; yet in order to avoid it, one has to have the capacity to recognize it. Socrates said, in effect, that without such capacity, youth (including the youth that continues to reside within every adult) is corrupted by low-energy attractor fields. Although Socrates was put to death for teaching this discernment, his teaching remains: obscurity is dispelled by augmenting the light of discernment, not by attacking the darkness…”
For the past 7 years I have struggled with how to deal with some very evil actions that I have had done to me by members of the Church, including many priests and a few bishops. I was once a very active and loyal member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, however over the years the things that were done gradually pushed me further and further away from the Church. My friends repeatedly tried to tell me that it was not the teachings of the Church that I had an issue with, but the members. Eventually my dislike of the Church changed into an almost outright hatred. The whole time I was working on peeling the onion, I had a new, even thicker layer of the onion forming. This hatred grew to the point where it even began to seriously affect my relationship with God and my artistic well being. I couldn’t separate in my mind iconography from the Church and thus have wanted little to do with icons over the past year or so. Yeah, it was that bad.
The quote from Hawkins is at the very end of the book “Power vs Force.” Very simply put, “Power vs Force” is a book which talks about the ability of the body to tell a truthful statement from a false one based upon the energy each statement gives off. If the statement gives off a negative energy, it is false. If it gives off a positive energy, it is true. The book then goes on to describe in great detail the differing levels of energy fields and how each one effects the world. Sin is explained not in moralistic terms that might turn some people off, but rather as man’s constantly choosing to diminish his spiritual awareness and conduct. As Hawkins points out on pg 312 “Hell is the final outcome of constantly choosing the negative and thus isolating onseself from love and truth.” God, of course, is the source of all love and truth.
And so we come to the realization that I had upon reading the first quote of this essay. Upon reading this quote I sent the following text to Nick. Nick is a fellow artist and iconographer who has been through many of the same things that I have in life. We have been great friends for most of the last 20 years and I often confide in him things that I sometimes am not even willing to discuss with anyone else. “The answer to dealing with the evil that I’ve witnessed over the past couple years is to avoid that evil in the first place and simply focus on Christ.” Yes, this is the very answer that many people have tried to give me over the past years as I have struggled with what to do when watching Eastern Orthodox Bishops work to ensure my marriage would end in divorce, or when I have watched priests attempt to cheat me out of payments for icons that I painted for them. Yes, this answer seems so easy to arrive at, and yet, to me it is deeply profound and one that I had to personally arrive at. Christ himself teaches it in the Gospel when he gives the parable of the sower. My friend Duey is constantly reminding me of it every time he tells me about “the power of positive thinking.” If you focus on negativity, negative things will come your way. If you focus on the positive, positive things will come your way. Like attracts like.
I had to get to the point of peeling back the onion where my heart was ready to accept this truth. And so I chose to focus on Christ, the author of life itself, and let the past be the past. I chose to focus on Christ and not on those around me who have sought to harm me. I can’t tell you how liberating it felt to come to that realization this afternoon. It is as if I let go of one million pounds that I had been dragging around with me every where I went. Now maybe I can get back to focusing on what is truly important to me, the creation of art.
NB: The photo was taken at sunrise on July 11, 2014 at Mitcheville Beach, Hilton Head Island, SC, the day my life changed forever.
