Forty-four minutes past midnight on February 7, 1951, I came into the world at the now-nonexistent Woman's Hospital, 39 blocks north of where I live in Manhattan.
When I was very young, my mother told me I was a mistake, quickly followed by the explanation that they'd have had me eventually, just not when I made my appearance. Even then I knew that "at another time" would not have been me. But oddly, I was not hurt by this. It was information that is even more important to me now than it was then.
Abortion, which I firmly support, was not an option and even though my sudden presence caused problems ("Good Trouble?"), I'm glad I made it through. And I'm absolutely positive that by the end of her life, my mother, who became my best friend for her last 10 years, felt the same.
Today I am 74. Way older than my father when he exited; six years older than my mother when she lifted off; and way way older than I thought I'd ever be.* And I'm grateful to be here, doing this life, trying my best to finish what I started so many lifetimes ago.
I may fail. As I said, my timing has never been great. But I'll go down acting and meditating … for the well-being and transformation of me, my ancestors, and for all who populate this precious world we all share.
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* Because it is my birthday, I'm giving you a present if you are a person (like I was and sometimes still am) who is afraid of your own thoughts because of the edict that "Thoughts create reality."
If my thoughts created reality, I would be dead.
Thoughts create your experience of reality, but it is thoughts married to actions + fate/luck/karma that create what happens in this land of karma and matter.**
If you merely think and never act, you will have a passive existence. You can be born into wealth and experience life as drudgery. You can meditate your behind off, but not affect the karmic chaos in which we are all, by default, participants.
If you think you are hopeless and unworthy of life, and you eat/drink/drug/etc. yourself to death, you have acted on your thoughts and it is your actions that have proven the validity of your thoughts. This is called "confirmation bias."
If you have lousy thoughts like I had growing up and still do, but you DO NOT ACT on them—e.g., you don't kill yourself but instead live as healthily as you can; you do not seek revenge due to spiraling hurt and rage after somebody does you wrong, but instead you just feel and process those feelings; and if, no matter how ineffective you believe you are, when you see a destructive raging fire, you attempt to extinguish it—you essentially starve into transformation the beliefs behind the thoughts.
What's key is discernment which requires knowing WHAT you think and then choosing to act or not act on it. In fact, the whole business of condemning and being ashamed of our own thoughts lies wholly in the ego.
Lift up! Expand! Send your roots deep down to the core of Mother Earth. BE here. Discernment is only possible from a whole and therefore higher Self. And when the Self identifies an ego problem, then the ego gets embarrassed, and transformation happens. And as you transform, you have the potential for great joy and, eventually, amusement at your own lousy thoughts. So quit being afraid of your thoughts!
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**Many of us have heard stories about enlightened beings manifesting stuff—food for the hungry, etc. By definition, enlightened beings live at One with everything (as opposed to split and in their ego), which means their steady vibration is quite different from that of most people. Their vibration is One with the Creator/the act of Creation/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Hence, their actions are those of the Creator. Hence, manifestation.
Unless you are an enlightened being, to worry about manifesting stuff by merely thinking about it, or to believe you can magically heal the world by doing nothing is, to put it bluntly, the magical thinking of a young ego.
Whatever your tradition is, think of a Great Being whose counsel you believe in. All Great Beings encouraged action.