Dear Julia:

I was together with my ex for about three years, and we only recently broken up. He is a quiet, moody type, and carries a deep belief that he is unlucky. To my surprise, quite a few times I saw that he was. I have always thought of myself as a very lucky person, but I began to feel I was being deprived of my energy and my luck. I was starting to fail at things and feel depressed while good stuff started happening in his life. As soon as we broke up, I returned to being the luckiest person ever; one extraordinary good thing after another began happening to me. I don't really know what is happening - I am just grateful for it. I would like to know if good luck is a type of energy that can be transmitted or transferred. If so, will the next guy I go out with try to take my good luck too?

Elizabeth

Dear Elizabeth:

Every society throughout history and around the world has had cultural beliefs about luck as well as practices designed to influence one's own luck and the luck of other people, such as prayers, sacrifices, rituals and curses. For the sake of this article, let's call good luck the tendency for things to go in such a way that one seems to benefit, and bad luck the tendency for things to apparently go awry. (I'm defining these because often when we label an event bad or good luck, we are simply unable to see the big picture and how everything ultimately happens for a good reason.)

Regarding whether or not a person can steal another person's luck, there are a couple of key factors to take into consideration. The first is that the quality of our relationships affects our vibration, and our vibration determines the quality of our experiences across the board. So if we are in happy, healthy, harmonious relationships that bring us joy, we will tend to have a high vibration and enjoy better fortune in every area of our lives.

Further, the higher our vibration, the keener our intuition, and intuition is perhaps the most powerful tool at our disposable for aligning with what we want. If we are ignoring our intuition for some reason (perhaps in order to stay in an unhealthy or mismatched relationship - which is something people do all the time), then it's easy to see how being in the wrong relationship could lead us to apparently grow more unlucky, for in silencing our intuition about the relationship, we more or less disconnect from our inner voice altogether.

This is more common and powerful a factor than it may appear at first glance: if we block our intuition because we don't like what it's telling us about one thing, we set ourselves up for all sorts of problems. Thus people who stay in the wrong relationship can start to experience apparent bad luck across the board. Once they begin to honor the truth in their hearts again, they can hear their intuition guiding them toward wiser choices, greater opportunities and the answers to their prayers.

Of course, if we believe ourselves to be lucky, we will tend to be lucky for all sorts of different reasons. The first is that we create our own realities, so what we expect to happen tends to happen. Beyond metaphysics, however, there are practical reasons why believing that we are lucky tends to prove true. When we believe we are lucky, we believe that we can succeed, which leads us to go for what we want and make things happen. Also, when we believe we are lucky, we tend to be upbeat and positive, which naturally attracts other people to us, and with them come support and opportunities. Similarly, believing that you are unlucky will make you like Eeyore: people will begin to avoid you and that gloomy cloud you're carrying over your head. (This is actually what the aura of a pessimist looks like to a clairvoyant - it's full of grey clouds!) So the fact that beliefs tend to be self-fulfilling explains why your ex believed himself unlucky and manifested evidence of that, while you had much better luck given your positive expectations.

When we mix people together in intimate relationships, nothing remains simple for long, however. Buttons are constantly being pushed, issues ignited, and dynamics endlessly shifting. How relationships affect our quality of experience largely depends on how conscious we can remain in terms of setting our own tone/vibration while all of this is going on. The more conscious we are, the less outside forces will tend to influence us.

Many years ago, I was walking through a large department store with my husband, who was carrying my infant daughter. In order to keep her happy, he was bouncing up and down as he went down each aisle. I was walking behind them when I passed a mirror and suddenly noticed that I was bouncing too. I was anxious for her to remain happy while we shopped, and was so keyed into this that I entrained to what they were doing without consciously choosing to do so. So though I wasn't carrying a baby, I was bouncing with every step!

We all do this "unconscious bouncing" to greater or lesser extents all the time. Even when we're not personally "carrying a baby" - when we have no personal reason to entrain to other people's vibrations - if we're not paying conscious attention and setting our own tone, we can easily end up on their wavelength.

This is epecially true when others are emitting a strong frequency or when we care a great deal and empathize with them; we tend to entrain to their vibration while at the same time giving them some of our energy. While this may make them feel better, it tends to have the opposite affect on us. In balanced relationships, there is balanced give and take in terms of energy, but balanced relationships are hard to come by. Normally, there is some disparity that leads one partner to do most of the energetic giving. While relationships may start out balanced, it also happens that people grow apart in vibration over time.

When one person's vibration is much higher the other's, that imbalance tends to lead to problems. The high vibe person will get caught up in their partner's lower vibration and give them energy, while the low vibe person will get a vibrational and energetic boost from the positive person, and eventually, they can end up switching places. This could explain why you started to feel worse with your ex - at least until you broke away from him.

It is exhausting to consciously align with what we want all the time, so we are wise to surround ourselves with people who feel good to us and have a high vibration. It's further helpful if these people have openly positive attitudes: if they focus on the bright side and demonstrate empowering beliefs, for this makes maintaining a high vibration so much easier.

Karma can also play a role here, of course, and is often to blame when things just don't make sense on the surface. The emotional energies, issues, vows and lessons we carry forward from past lives can certainly influence how lucky we seem to be, and past life exploration is often helpful in understanding the confusing patterns of experience we get caught up in.

So when one thing after another goes wrong, we may wonder what we've done to deserve it, but in all likelihood, it's what we haven't done that is the problem. Since our relationships can and do affect the quality of our "luck," we are wise to choose them carefully and to consciously set our own tone.


Julia