As a young girl I spent many hours on hands and knees in the grassy lawn of my parent’s farm, fascinated by the world of nature up close. One day someone told me that if I found a four-leaf clover it would bring me good luck.
A harmlessly charming belief to impart to an impressionable six-year-old, you might think. However, my fascination with examining nature’s details quickly turned into a motivated search for the elusive four-leaf clover.
When I couldn’t find one. I assumed it meant that I was unlucky. I decided that only some imaginary being more special than myself would be able to find such a lucky omen. With that, my self-worth took a nose dive.
Further, the implication in the belief about four-leaf clovers being lucky was that good luck was rare, a belief I also adopted.
One day I actually found a four-leaf clover, but the avalanche of mental questions and fears that arose around the lucky discovery tarnished the moment. “Does this mean I will always be lucky? How will I know the luck is coming true? Maybe the luck only lasts until the clover wilts. Maybe I should press the clover in a book to preserve the good luck. Maybe I should not have picked it at all!” And then the clincher, “Maybe this means I’ll be lucky someday when I grow up, and I’m ready for it. I certainly don’t feel lucky now.” On and on it went.
Once my mind became exhausted with contemplating the possibilities, I promptly forgot about finding the four-leaf clover. Because I had not defined my luck in terms of an expected result, I had nothing to gauge its effectiveness by. My resistance to creating a tangible expected outcome for fear it wouldn’t come true prevented me from knowing if my luck had actually manifested. I created vagueness, so I never had to be wrong. It worked, but it left me feeling unlucky—especially considering how rare those four-leaf clovers were.
Have you ever noticed that people view their luck differently?
Many years later I took The Avatar Course, and I realized I create my own luck. I came to know that luck is a subjective phenomenon. Good and bad luck are just different viewpoints of the same reality.
One person wins the lottery and feels unlucky because his family quarrels over how to spend the money, and they end up alienated from each other. Another person feels lucky because an accident that left her in a wheel chair caused her to open to her spiritual nature in a big way for the first time.
Today, even in my toughest moments, a deep part of me knows I have created an opportunity to grow. For that I believe, “I am lucky now.”
Moonstone White, Navarre, Florida
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