Continued from Part 1.
You can do this, even if you don't join any religion, because it is the Greatest Being Who hears you, and helps. That Great Being doesn't care what religious name you carry. It helps any of us who turn our hearts with hope and trust. It doesn't matter what you call It, as long as you know you are calling on the Highest Good, the All-Knowing, but Unknowable One.
I will share what Baha'u'llah said about the help of the Great Being,which has helped me and my family:
"Armed with the power of Thy Name nothing can ever hurt me, and with Thy love in my heart all the world's forces can in no wise alarm me."
This has been very helpful to all of us in many kinds of situations.I must tell you a funny story about it in another post! :-)
This problem with superstition is found everywhere in the world. Certainly not just in China. It is here, too. I remember my mother telling me about a young neighbour who went to a fortune-teller. She was told her husband would die soon, and she fully believed it. That woman and her husband were two old people together, still married, when they came, very many years later to my mother's funeral and I sawthem. My mother had told me about the prediction.
We have free will. Very much free will. The choices we make help to determine our futures. No witch, or anybody else can guess in advance how all our choices will affect the flow of our lives. A certain number of things are not free-will. For instance it was not free will that I would be born in Canada and you in China and another person somewhere else. It was not free will who would be our parents. It is not free will what talents we have, or what illnesses are in our genes, or usually when and how we will die.
But we have many choices to make every day using our free will. As long as we make our choices, trying to be wise, good and just, things will generally go much better. This doesn't mean they will make us rich, or powerful, but they will make us have better and more meaningful lives and we will become nobler people, and can even become examples, so that our civilization will improve little by little, all the time.
You are a dear girl, who can think clearly and well. I have seen that in your posts. You did well to try to stay away from this superstitious stuff. The people who do it may be tricksters who play upon people's fears, or they may even believe they can do it, and that what they say is true. Usually they have some kind of forceful personality so that others believe and obey them. They can dominate, as the woman did to you and your mother. That doesn't mean they are right. It just means they are forceful. Which means nothing.
Your mother was trying to change bad circumstances. That is not the way to change your circumstances, though. There were no marks on your face that could show your future, or your father's in this way. You are innocent, and have nothing to do with you father's future death. In Germany when Uncle Ben was a young boy it was said that eyebrows that joined over the nose were the sign of a murderer! Poor young Ben, whose nice eyebrows slightly joined over his nose was told that by his grandmother. What a stupid superstition to put into a pure young boy's heart to burden him. So, dear girl, it is everywhere, this ignorance. We all need to turn our backs on this darkness.
Some day, not too long from now, you will be a grown woman and can finally, firmly make your own choices about these things. Then you can say to such "witches", --"No thanks. I don't want it. Go away from me." Of course, when you are independent. you will not even let them come near you, I expect. And I think you will work, like me, to shed superstitions whenever you find them in yourself. I see that you care about your mother and family, but that you are able to think for yourself. That is very good.
No wonder you had trouble in school that time with that teacher,with all these hard things pressing on your heart and also making you look as though you were ignorant. You *are smart*. You are capable and intelligent. Study well so that you will make something of yourself, and become independent. Then you will be more free of this superstitious stuff put upon you by others, and can rule your own life, and some day influence your own family for the best.
Loving greetings and a big ((((((HUG)))))),
Always your friend, Mary
