Let's take a second look at the process of getting upset feelings when something difficult happens - when shit happens. The common misconception is, as we have discussed, that events outside of you cause you to be upset on the inside. That false notion looks like this:
And here's a diagram of what really happens:
It is the thinking patterns which shape and contort emotional energies into the disturbing feelings: depression, despair, shame and such. Consider this: Some of the time, all of us have a bad or irritating thing happen which does not bother us at all - water off a duck's back. At other times, the least little nuisance thing will send us off into anger, despair, tantrums or mega-pouting. Get it? It is not the external event that determines our emotional states. It is the habituated, entrenched thinking patterns - many of which are virtually saturated with mental pollution.
The difference is not in the events, but in the kind of thought patterns that are happening in that precise moment. We don't have to wait until the next life to get the consequences of our mental pollution delivered into our experience. It's instant karma, folks. No waiting on this kind of thing.
Figure it out. If a bad event happens, we not only have to deal with it as best we can, but we also get additionally punished by any active mental pollution (thinking errors and faulty beliefs) that are happening that day - the double whammy - both barrels at once - two miseries for the price of one. Since thinking errors and faulty beliefs tend to be repetitive, we end up in self-persecution, self-sabotage and self-damning, in addition to the misfortune of the difficult event. Let's pretend that you lost a hundred dollars. In that instance, you have to cope with the problem of losing a sizeable amount of cash and all the things you wanted to spend it on. If you also get yourself depressed or immobilized with anger, then you are experiencing the infamous double whammy.
Being sexually victimized is a traumatic, invasive, undeserved misfortune. The double whammy occurs because of the thinking which happens in response to this experience. When these patterns are habituated, they recreate the same emotional state every time they occur. The past does not do this to the present. Habituated thoughts in the present do this. The good news, once again, is that we don't have to be at the mercy of things that happen or that have happened. Learning how to do that is what we are after.
