8 CommentsNovember 14, 2008 Posted under:
Misc by Caroline Middlebrook
Over the last few months I have found an increasing number of references to the practice of meditation; it seems everything I see or read is telling me to meditate. I have tried it a few times but so far my results have not been pleasing. Most of the advice seems to be to try to quieten your mind and this is where I have a problem - my mind never shuts up, or if it does, it is only for very brief moments.
I concluded that I needed help with this meditation thing so I have booked myself onto a weekend course at a Buddhist centre for the end of the month which I am really looking forward to. But that’s not the purpose of the post…
This morning I read the book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra. It was a totally engaging read and I read it in one sitting though I can see that I will need to read it again and again. It resonated with me with every chapter on every level and there was a specific idea in the first chapter that really hit me. As well as the practice of meditation, Chopra also encourages the practice of silence.
What is silence? Mainly not speaking out loud but also silencing the other external noises such as the TV. It occurred to me that it is no wonder that I find it hard to quiet my mind when I can’t even quiet my body! I am not a particularly loud person - I work alone, I don’t watch much television and yet I often find that I need conversation of some form. I use a tabbed web browser and keep my email tab open at all times. I am often praised for my quick replies :-) I use Twitter and tweet on a fairly regular basis throughout the day. I even (I can’t believe I’m admitting this in public!) talk out loud to myself! Yes there I am in my office all alone, chatting away to myself!
So, whilst I wait for my meditation weekend I am going to practice some silence daily. These will be the rules:
- No Internet - I’ll shut down my browser
- No TV, radio or any kind of music
- No chatting!… to myself or anyone else :-)
I will however continue to work so it is not the same as complete stillness but it is a start. I’ll begin with perhaps 15 minutes today and then increase by 5 minutes a day and I will simply see where it takes me. I am going to leave myself completely open to the results and not expect anything, not plan any time scale other than the starting time period.
What if I get interrupted? I do not live alone and I am frequently interrupted by people bursting into my office to speak to me. I could ask not to be disturbed but this is something I want to keep private (err, with the exception of blogging about it!) I don’t expect my family to understand and wouldn’t particularly want them to. If I get disturbed I shall simply start over. If this happens a lot it will be an excellent exercise in patience :-)
As a side note, you may have noticed an unusual gap between this post and the last. Something simply - stopped. I had nothing to say. I started this blog because I felt as if I had so much to talk about, so many questions to ask and then somewhere along the way I tried to become a ‘proper’ blogger and set out schedules for myself. That’s fine for a commercial-style blog where you’re trying to build an audience or an income but that has never been my goal with this one so I simply let go, stopped writing and decided to simply do nothing and see what happened. Today I had something to say, so I wrote this post. I have no idea when the next one will be :-)
I’ve been studying this Law of Attraction stuff for over a year now and whilst I have managed to attract some of things that I want there are some things that elude me. Can your beliefs block you from attracting what you want? Yes they certainly can.
How Do You Manifest?
According to Esther Hicks, there are two primary factors that come into play with the manifestation of anything and they often conflict each other:
- The strength of your desire
- Your belief that you will manifest your desire
Most of us do not have a problem with the desiring part. Let’s take an example of money - many people want more money in their lives and for some people that desire is extremely strong but the problem is that they simply do not believe that they will be able to manifest what they want.
Beliefs About Luck
In the UK we have a game show called “Deal or No Deal” where players can win money. They have a box with an unknown sum of money that can vary from just one penny to £250,000 and they don’t know how much their box contains. As they play the game the banker will offer to buy their box for a sum of money. Last week a woman was playing and she said that all week long she had seen herself winning £75,000 and so she wrote herself a cheque for that sum and looked at it every night in the hotel. When it was her turn to play, guess how much she won? £75,000.
When I saw that I said, “oh my gosh, that is Law of Attraction in action!” but could I reproduce that? Not a hope in hell! I don’t believe in games of chance, I don’t play the lottery and so no matter how much I wanted something like that there is simply no way that I could make myself believe that I would win and so it is for most people when it comes to luck. Not many people believe that they have the power to make the lottery balls fall on their numbers for example.
Beliefs That Out Cancel Desires
People block themselves in this way in more regular circumstances all the time. Have you ever gone for a job interview and thought to yourself, “well I’m not going to get it”, before you’ve even had the interview? If your belief that you wont get the job is stronger than your desire then you’re not going to get that job! Whether this is Law of Attraction or just low self esteem at play - the results seem to be the same. Those people who are down on themselves all the time and have learned to believe that they are unworthy will tend to manifest that very belief.
Thankfully, our beliefs can also help us avoiding some of the ‘bad’ stuff in life. Most of us have strong desires about things that we don’t want and get what we focus on whether it is wanted or not so this can go against us. However the belief part of the equation works here as well. For example, most of us would not want to break a leg whilst watching television for example! But of course, as adults it would actually be extremely difficult to do that accidentally so most of us have a very strong belief that we would NOT break a leg whilst watching television. Our desire not to break a leg is very strong but our belief that it would never happen whilst watching television is so strong that it cancels out the desire so we never attract it, and in this case, that’s a good thing!
Skiing however, is another story… I went snowboarding last week and I asked a friend of mine if she’s like to come with me. She said, “oh no, I’d probably fall over and break something!” I tried to assure her that the beginners class is pretty safe but then I stopped myself realising that if she had a strong belief that she would break something then she probably would!
Beliefs & Health
What about something like cancer? Beliefs around that subject vary greatly. If several members of your family all died of cancer then you might believe that you will get it also. On the other hand if you have read Louise Hay’s book You Can Heal Your Life, you might believe that cancer is caused by deep emotional resentment and thus believe that having got all that out of your system that it would be impossible for you to get cancer.
Since reading Louise’s book, I don’t suffer from colds & flu. Even if I manage to catch one from a friend, it will bounce off me within 24 hours. I haven’t had a significant cold in over a year and there is no other reason than that I no longer attract them. My health is no better than it was a year ago. I simply believe that colds are attracted and that belief has grown so strong that they just don’t affect me. Last week I went to stay with a friend who had been suffering with a cold for over a week and she had caught it from her baby. She warned me of the cold before visiting and I said “oh don’t worry, I don’t catch colds” and she thought I was odd but did I catch her cold? Nope :-)
Beliefs About How Things Work
When we want to manifest something, it is said that it is best to concentrate only on what it is that we want and not to concern ourselves with how or when it might happen but I think a lot of us have difficulty with this. For example, returning to the subject of money again, many of us want more money but if we cannot think of way in which it could come to us, we don’t believe that it will. A person who is in a low paying job who feels as though they do not have the skills to get a higher paying one and cannot think how money could come any other way will not believe that he can come into more money.
I feel fairly fortunate here as being self employed I believe that there is no limit to my potential earnings - but I am still not earning a living yet. Why not? Well, I’ve been looking at my thought patterns recently and looking at where I might be going wrong and I found several beliefs lurking beneath the surface that have blocked me. For example, I don’t just want money - I want a regular income and from my current position in my business I could not see how to generate one quickly. I have blocked myself just like somebody in regular paid employment.
I have since had a revenue idea but I know that my beliefs are probably holding it at arms length because all I have all these thoughts about how it should work, and how much there is to do to put the idea into place. If I could just let go of my beliefs about how it is supposed to work and just focus on the end result that I want then I might be able to get myself out of the way and manifest it a little quicker!
Any Others?
I’m sure there are many other ways in which we block ourselves from attracting what we want. Have you had any similar experiences?
This post is part of a series of insights about the Law of Attraction.
Many people believe that the Law of Attraction determines every detail of our reality, both in our physical existence here on Earth and our non-physical reality, whatever that may be and that we can literally attract anything that we desire, even if that conflicts with other accepted laws of the Universe. Let’s investigate that idea…
What Other Laws Are There?
In our physical world there are many laws that are scienficially based such as the law of gravity, the laws around life and death (everything that lives must also die), water seeking its own level, hundreds of mathematical laws and so on. Can your power of attraction defy these laws?
Can We Defy These Laws?
I was listening to quite an old Abraham Hicks recording recently and somebody asked about the ageing process and human mortality. Abraham said that anyone could live for 500 years (or any number) if they had a desire for it and an equal belief that it would happen. Remembering that the Law of Attraction has two component parts - the strength of your desire, and the belief that you can have what you desire, many of us have strong desires but fall short on the belief part.
Abraham suggested in this recording that no human being had ever lived for 500 years because nobody had yet managed to develop a belief that it would happen that was strong enough. However I challenge that idea. Let’s take another law - the law of gravity. If you stand at the top of the building and jump off then you’re going to hit the ground - unless you believe you can fly! This is something else I have heard discussed. If we can have everything we want then why can’t we fly? By fly, I mean naturally like birds and not artificially in an aeroplane.
I have always wanted to fly (don’t laugh!) and I often have extremely vivid dreams where I am flying just like something out of Heroes! So Abraham claims that no human being has ever developed a strong enough belief that he could fly so as to be able to manifest it but that simply is not true. There may not be anybody of sound mind who has that belief but what of those who are under the influence of some kind of drug or are mentally disturbed in some way? There are many cases of people who have died whilst drunk or on drugs because they thought they could fly or swim underwater or something to that effect. In that moment they truly believed they had that ability but obviously they did not and their paid the price with their lives.
Can the Law of Attraction Bend the Rules a Little?
Okay so I would like to see somebody challenge this and learn to fly using their power of attraction. I doubt its going to happen in the lifetime of this blog so if we can’t defy the laws of the Universe are there circumstances in which we can bend them a little? Take a few examples:
- A 95lb woman who lifts up a car to free her son trapped underneath it
- Somebody who cures themselves of cancer in 3 months without western medicine
- The woman who lived to 122 years old!
There are so many stories of people who beat the odds, the do the ‘impossible’, who find superhuman powers within themselves and so on. We like these stories, we make TV shows about them, they inspire us to better ourselves but how does the Law of Attraction fit into this? Did the woman who lifted the car to free her son believe she could lift it? I doubt she even thought about it - belief or non belief probably was not even a factor. She most likely simply did what felt right at the time.
With health in particular there are now more and more cases of patients defying their doctors. We could argue that this is all down to belief. After all, Eastern medicines and philosophies have been around for thousands of years and many of those people who defy doctors and doing so because they are abandoning western beliefs and adopting Eastern ones - they are not necessarily defying the laws of the Universe. The laws state we will all die at some point but they are no laws about how quickly our bodies can heal, or how much strength we have, or how long we live so all of these things are flexible.
Does This Even Matter?
I see a lot of people using topics such as this one to dismiss the Law of Attraction. They say that if you can’t learn to fly using LoA then it obviously doesn’t work. Nobody will ever really know. This is not something that can be scientifically proven but does it matter anyway? Does it matter whether or not we can fly or we can live forever? If we can use something like LoA to enhance our lives whilst we are here and within the constraints that our world provides for us we can still live pretty darn good lives!
That is the way that I see it - just one law that operates within the context of all of the others in this Universe. Can it attract prosperity, health, loving relationships, fun & adventure? I hope so! Can it attract an ability to fly? Only in my dreams :-)
In a recent post I explained how other people’s opinion of you has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with them and how they are feeling, what they believe, their values and so on. In this post I want to turn that around and look at how your opinions affect your world.
Opions Are Formed on Everything
Opinions about people are just one way in which we view the world. We also hold opions about everything in life - our jobs, events in our lives, our neighbour’s cat, worldwide events and absolutely everything else. The point I was trying to get across in my previous post about opinions is that those opinions or viewpoints are formed internally and this applies to everything else in life too. As a result, how you see the world - your world, the world of your friends and family and the world at large, has very little to do with the actual physical circumstances of the world and everything to do with YOU and how you feel, what you believe, what you choose to think and so on.
Let me give you a practical example… Last month I had the great pleasure of seeing Madonna in concert at Wembley Arena in the UK. I have wanted to see her live since the early nineties when I saw a video of her latest tour. For me the concert was an absolute blast - it was everything I expected it to be and more. I had goosebumps all night long, I loved it and it was absolutely the highlight of my month.
However, not everybody felt the same way. There were sound problems and some people were so disgusted by it that they got up and left half way through. Apparently the next day there were complaints all over the Internet. While I was queuing up for the toilets after the concert there was a woman behind me on the phone to a friend about the experience. She complained about some of the songs and the way the set was arranged, the accompanying videos and so on. The very things that I thought were great were a turn off to this woman.
Did Madonna put on a brilliant show or did she let down her fans? Neither. The fact is that Madonna performed a concert and yet it is not logical or even possible to attach any labels to it such as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because that is something that can only be placed by the individual and that label will be different for everybody even though the physical experience was the same. To me, she put on a brilliant show and to other people, it sucked. All of those viewpoints are accurate to those individual people and has very little to do with Madonna!
The Story of Two Villages
I don’t remember where I read about this story but I’ll paraphrase it here. There are two villages separated by a river and there is a man who conducts crossings from one village to the next. Very often when he takes somebody across the river they will ask him, “what are the people like in the other village?” and he responds by asking them, “well, what are the people like in your village?”. If they respond that in their village people are generally friendly and helpful he will tell them that in the other village they are much the same. If they tell him that the people in his village are unfriendly and just out for themselves the river man will tell his passenger that the people in the other village are much the same.
You see the river man understands the way the world works - he knows that his passenger is going to see in the other village pretty much the same thing he saw in his current village because what he sees and his opinion of the people in the other village come from within himself, and have nothing to do with the village or the people in it.
You Can’t Make Somebody Else See What You See
I have a friend who is a police officer working in London and she has seen a lot of bad stuff in her time and has also suffered several personal injuries through her work. I remember a couple of years ago having a long debate with her about people and the world in general. She believes that people are inherenly bad, and that the world is a bad place. I believe that people are inherently good and that the world is a good place.
Back then, I didn’t know the things that I am talking about today and I remember fiercely defending my viewpoint and our debate became quite heated! She still holds the same opinion now, and so do I but what has now changed is that I understand that the world is simply what it is, and that it is not good or bad as those labels exist only in our own judgements. I see the world as a good place because that is how I choose to see it but I understand why other people would see it as a bad place and now I can simply accept that we each see it differently, and that those experiences are different for everybody and there is no need to try and make another person see the world (or anything) as you do. You wouldn’t be able to - it’s impossible because you are not them.
The World is How You Choose it to be
You will experience the world - people, jobs, events, experiences however you choose to. Of course, when you have lived your entire life a certain way and hold certain beliefs that have been a lifetime in the making then it is unlikely that you will have any radical shift overnight. What I am hoping to do in this post is open your eyes to the possibility that something you are perceiving in a negative way might not necessarily have to be as bad as you think it is. Does everybody else feel the same way or do others see things differently? Are other people enjoying something you loathe? Is it possible for you to feel better about something by changing the way you think about it?
How do you see the world?
Many of us go through life worrying about what other people’s opinion of us is. We want to be liked, to be loved, admired, popular, looked up to or all manner of similar emotions. The trouble is, what somebody else thinks of you actually has nothing to do with you at all!
An Example
As some of you know, my other blog is about Internet Marketing. Now in the IM world there is a man called John Chow who is somewhat ‘famous’ in this niche because his IM blog now rakes in over $30,000 a month and every month he publishes a post stating his earnings just like I do on my IM blog. Now John Chow is a guy who has attracted a large amount of attention due to his financial success and a lot of it is highly negative.
Now what I find interesting is this… setting aside those people who have met John Chow in the flesh, the rest of us know him only from his blog and online presence which means that anyone who reads his blog is exposed to exactly the same information about him, and yet opinions about him differ hugely. One of my recent posts managed to get into a discussion about him, and one of my commenters, Billy Loi had this to say about John:
John Chow for example is incredibly arrogant. Although I do have a lot of respect for him as a highly successful Wordpress blogger who have carved out a niche for himself, he just turns me off by his arrogance. I don’t mind people being arrogant if they show some respect for the little guy like me who is started out as a blogger.
His blogs are so negative about the little guy starting out as a blogger. I get incredibly depressed when I read his blogs.
He looks down on the little guy who is started out. Like for example, do not contact me until you have 100 thousand visitors a day on your blog!!
So even though John Chow has a lot of subscribers, they are all in the same league as him. Just imagine, if John were to invite people to a blogging convention, I would feel uncomfortable going there because I would feel like I don’t fit in.
I know that Billy is not alone in this sentiment and yet I don’t feel that way at all. I have never considered John to be somebody who brags or is arrogant in any way - he simply states his income and I do the same. If my income were to grow to the point where I earned that much and I continued to post my income statement every month, would that be seen as bragging by some people? My suspicion is yes. Why is that?
Because the opinion that you hold of somebody else, has very little to do with them and everything to do with yourself. Billy feels that John is arrogant but I have never got that sense from him. What I see is a family man who uses his financial success to make sure that he has a great time in life and gets to spend quality time with his family. Those are traits that I desire for myself and so when I read John’s blog I admire him and think, yeah I want that too.
My opinion of John has nothing to do with John, and everything to do with me! Because his lifestyle resonates with me, I see the good stuff, I pick out what I like and as a result my opinion of him is completely different to somebody else who feels that the lifestyle projected in the blog is a turn off. However John is who he is and he does what he does and nobody else’s opinion makes any difference to that - it doesn’t change anything.
Remember that neither myself or Billy have ever met John so the only way we have formed our own opinions of him is through his blog. We have both been exposed to exactly the same material and yet have gone on to form completely different opinions which are rooted in our own values, beliefs and ideals, and have very little to do with what we were actually reading!
Other People’s Opinions Of You Don’t Matter
Can you imagine the turmoil that John would be in if he listened to everybody else’s opinion of him? Being such a prominent figure in his niche means that he gets hundreds of comments to his blog and tons of emails too. Imagine if he read the comment that Billy left on my blog about him and thought to himself, “Hmm, I’m coming across as arrogant, I’ll have to try and change that in future posts”. Billy’s opinion of him may change as a result but then what would I think of him? Who knows but my opinion would probably change too.
What this boils down to is that old saying, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. It might be a cliche but it is so true! When you realise that what other people think of you comes from what they are feeling about themselves, what their own values and beliefs are, and let’s not forget - what kind of mood they are in at the time at which they encountered you, then you can see that trying to please others and get their approval is a completely futile waste of time and energy.
Have you ever had an experience where you have blown something ‘out of proportion’ or you overreacted to something and then when you looked at it again when you felt differently, the very same thing that you looked at before now seems different? Has the situation changed? No, YOU have! And this is how opinions are formed! Somebody could be having a really bad day and then encounter somebody who rubs them the wrong way and then forms a very low opinion of that person but the next day they feel better and the person whom they had the low opinion of now doesn’t seem so bad even though nothing has changed!
What other people think of you has everything to do with them, and what they are feeling and thinking and going through. They will see what they want to see and nothing you do, or say will make any difference. I have my own share of online ‘enemies’ too. Every now and then somebody will stop by my blog (the IM one) and tell me that I suck or something but it really is irrelevant because what they think of me really has nothing to do with me at all, and is just about what they are going through at the time.
So, stop worrying about what other people think of you - whatever it is, it’s their opinion and they are entitled to it, and nothing you do is going to change it anyway.
This post is part of a series of insights about the Law of Attraction.
My first introduction to the Law of Attraction was via the movie, The Secret and after watching that I felt very uplifted and it seemed as though this mysterious law was the answer to absolutely all of life’s problems. All you had to do was think about exactly what you wanted in all areas of life and you’d never need to feel pain ever again…
Those people who seem to have mastered the Law of Attraction certainly do appear to lead wonderful lives in many areas but when I looked at things more deeply I realised that this idea that the Law of Attraction could prevent you from feeling any pain was a myth. Much of the emotional pain that we endure in life comes from some kind of loss - loss of a loved one, loss of a relationship, a job, some social standing and so on. The first one - loss of a loved one, in terms of death is something that the Law of Attraction can do absolutely nothing to prevent.
My mother is almost 80 years old and it suddenly occurred to me one day that if I succeed in attracting the kind of life that I envision for myself, that I will live for a great many years after my mother dies which also implies that she will die whilst I am alive, and thus - I feel the pain of loss. Every transient being will die one day and when we love that being, it hurts when they die.
There are many spiritual teachers who say that there is no real death and that we simply transition into our non-physical form and that the essence that makes us what we really are never actually dies. Whether that is true or not does not change the fact that when somebody close to us dies (or leaves us in some other way) that it leaves a hole, it changes our life. In short, we lose something and we feel pain due to this loss.
The Law of Attraction cannot do anything about this kind of loss. Even by focusing on what we want doesn’t really help because when we are in the midst of that loss, all we want is that person (or animal or whatever) back in our lives. Over the longer term we might be able to concentrate on the qualities of that relationship that brought us joy, focus on that and then go on to find it again in new relationships but most people would find themselves unable to do that for some time after the loss first occurred. For example, if you lose your life partner you are unlikely to go looking for a new one the very next day and so it is natural to go through a period of emotional pain whilst you adjust to the change.
So, this was the first of my Law of Attraction insights - even if we manage to attract everything that we want into our lives, it is quite possible and even likely that we will go on to lose some of those things we attracted and that whilst we are attached to those things, people, jobs etc we will feel pain if we lose them. This really is just a realisation of the knowledge that everything changes all of the time. Learning to deal with the fear of change can be a starting point for being able to handle the challenges that life throws at us in this way.
This post is part of a series of insights about the Law of Attraction.
I’ve mentioned the Law of Attraction quite a lot over the last few months but I’ve not really covered it in any great detail. I’ve found that the more I learn about it the more little insights I get about what it is, and more often, what it isn’t.
In this post I’ll give my own thoughts about what my understanding of the Law of Attraction is and in further posts I’ll add some insights that will hopefully clarify some points, and perhaps myths, a little more.
What is the Law of Attraction?
In a nutshell it is a universal law which states that “that which is like, shall be drawn unto itself”. That quote by itself doesn’t mean very much but the essence of it in our everyday world is that we tend to attract what we focus on, whether we believe in the Law of Attraction or not. It often works rather like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Have you ever noticed how some people manage to attract the same circumstances over and over - one abusive husband after another, one patronising boss after another, one illness after another and so on. On the more positive side, there are some people that just appear ‘lucky’ - they attract all the good stuff into their lives and everything just seems to work out well for them.
Teachers of the Law of Attraction tell us that it is a universal law, which means that it operates without our having to believe in it - rather like gravity. They say that it is based upon a power that is beyond each of us individually but that we each have the power to create our own reality of life by the choice of the thoughts that we focus upon.
How Does the Law of Attraction Work?
That’s the tricky bit! If you read some of the more technical texts you will hear theories about how it is rooted in metaphysics. Personally, I find that this stuff goes way beyond my understanding but the basis of it seems to be rooted in energy. Everything in the universe is energy in some form or another. Even a basic study of the sciences teaches us that energy can never be created or destroyed and that it merely changes form. We are humans and yet we are also forms of energy, and so is the computer you are using right now, and the clothes you are wearing, and the buildings you occupy, and the food you eat and so on.
The theory is that energy vibrates and that the thoughts we think vibrate on different frequencies and so thoughts of anger are vibrationally different to thoughts of compassion. I’m sure you’ve all had the feeling of meeting somebody new and taking an instant shine to them, or perhaps the opposite where you dislike somebody but you don’t know why - they just give you ‘bad vibes’.
And of course, I’m sure we’ve all had experiences where we can pick up on the mood of another person without them having to say or do anything. We can just sense if somebody we know is in a particularly bad mood for instance. How do we do this? Some kind of intuition probably. But the theory is that we pick up on these vibrations that other people emmanate.
Like Attracts Like
The theory of the Law of Attraction is that whatever we are predominantly vibrating tends to attract other similar vibrations which means that we attract people who have similar thoughts as us, we attract circumstances and events that match what we are thinking etc.
Of course, much of this can occur naturally. For example, somebody might be looking for a job and see one he wants to go for but he holds the belief, “I’m not good enough for that job” and so he goes to the interview with a sense of unworthyness and he does not exude confidence. The interviewers can probably detect the attitude of this candidate and they want somebody who is confident and so they don’t offer him the job which enforces his belief even more.
Is this Law of Attraction or just a self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps a little bit of both. But where the Law of Attraction is more appealing is when we are taught that we can use it to attract specific things to us - such as the perfect soulmate. The idea is that if we focus on what we want and get specific in our thinking, that eventually it must be attracted to us - it is law.
Why Then, Are We Not All Happy?
Surely if all we need to do is just focus on what we want and we get it then why are we not all living every day of our lives in pure bliss and abunance? With every desire, there is also its opposite - the lack of it. If you want money, the opposite is the lack of money. If you want health the opposite is sickness, disease and injury. If you want love the opposite is lonliness and so it is with everything.
The problem is that humans have a tendency to think about what they don’t want, they think about all the things that are going wrong in their lives, and what might go wrong in the future. They tell their friends all their woes and thus keep their attention firmly on the things that they don’t want. Globally, this is perpetuated even further with the doom & gloom media. The average newscast on TV tends to spout primarily a message of disaster, despair, crises, crime, terrorism, injustice, the list goes on and on but it is rarely good news.
Of course, it’s just plain hard to focus on the good things sometimes. If you’re in debt, it’s difficult to feel and think abundantly. If you’re sick or injured it doesn’t feel natural to think healthy thoughts. When everything around you is negative it takes tremendous willpower to keep your thoughts positive and just on the good stuff - the stuff that you want.
This is the reason that most of us just keep on attracting the same old things - we see what is happening all around us right now and so that is where our attention is, and that is what we vibrate so we just attract more of the same. When things go wrong, everything seems to go wrong at once. The worse it gets, the worse it gets. On the other hand, when we’re on an upward spiral it feels as though we’re being given a helping hand as the better it gets, the better it gets.
The trick, is to focus on only what we want, even when surrounded by the opposite.
Thoughts v Feelings
Most of the teachings that I have studied say that it is not really the thoughts that we think, or the words that we use, but in fact the emotions that we are feeling that really matter. This leads to another problem because often we can say words that are positive but still feel wretched inside and often we find it difficult to shake off those feelings of despair, guilt, loneliness, sadness or whatever it may be, no matter what we say to ourselves.
We know how our emotions feel. We have a ton of different emotions that we feel but we can generally classify them into two broad groups - those that feel good and those that do not. Where do these emotions come from? LoA teachers tell us that these emotions are our internal guidance system and that when we feel good, it is telling us that whatever we are focused on right now is in harmony with our desires - in other words, we’re on the right track so we should continue doing that.
On the other hand, if we are feeling bad, that is an indication that what we are focused upon is not in harmony with our desires so we should stop doing that. Take a simple example - imagine your home going up in flames and losing everybody and everything in it. How does that feel? I’ll assume that all of you would agree that it feels bad. Nobody wants that so our guidance system says “hey, that’s not what you want, why would you think such a thing?”.
I wont try to use a positive example because we all want different things so what feels good to me might not feel good to you but I’m sure you can come up with something that feels good to you.
Law of Attraction Resources
There are now many people who are teaching Law of Attraction techniques but here are a few of the more prominent ones, and those that have been most influential to me.
Esther & Jerry Hicks (Abraham)
Esther Hicks is what is known as a channeller. She talks about the Law of Attraction but her teachings do not come from herself, but from a non-physical entity known only as Abraham. I personally find it difficult to comprehend the whole idea of non-physical spiritual beings but I tend to ignore that and just listen to the message. Jerry Hicks is Esther’s husband and for many years he asked questions of Abraham through his wife, Esther and together they conduct many workshops and have written several books.
I have read all of their Law of Attraction books and I find them extremely practical because they have a great many examples of common situations that we find ourselves in, and how to turn around our thinking to be in better alignment to what we want. They also teach many specific processes such as the daily workshop which is rather like a meditation where for around 15-20 minutes a day you get comfortable, shut your eyes and simply visualise and think about everything that you want for yourself.
http://www.abraham-hicks.com/lawofattractionsource/index.php
Wayne Dyer
Wayne Dyer is a motivational speaker who has been writing books and speaking for over 30 years. Not all of his books are about Law of Attraction, I have started reading some of his very early books and there is no mention of it there but perhaps his most prominent Law of Attraction work is his book, The Power of Intention.
http://www.drwaynedyer.com/
However, Wayne also does a weekly radio show with the online radio station Hay House Radio. This is a wonderful resource - 24 hour free online radio show with all sorts of great guest speakers, one of them being Wayne Dyer. What is especially cool is that if you become a member (costs $48 a year) you have access to all of the archives. There are currently 3 years worth of archives so its great value. There are also several other shows based around the Law of Attraction here.
The Secret Movie
The Law of Attraction has been around for many years though I’m not entirely sure when it was given that name. However in 2006, the movie The Secret by Rhonda Byrne really catapaulted the idea into the mainstream. Personally I love the movie and I have watched it many times as it always makes me feel good but it has a downside too - it has launched the career of many a LoA ‘guru’ and spawned an entire industry around LoA. Just about everybody is teaching it now and of course, like with everything, there is a lot of hype and empty promises out there.
Watching the movie you’ll also find many other motivational speakers featured including Bob Proctor, Jack Canfield, Joe Vitalie, Bob Doyle, John Demartini so from there you can find lots more avenues to explore.
http://www.thesecret.tv/
I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, I have a lot more to say on the subject to stay tuned for the rest of this series. Also, if you have any questions about Law of Attraction then please feel free to ask in the comments and if its something I’ve got an opinion on, I’ll try and include it in the series.
Fear of the unknown - it’s one of our biggest fears as humans, probably even more fearful than the fear of change but if you really stop to think about it, it’s a rather silly fear because there no unknown, it’s a myth and doesn’t exist.
Where is the Unknown?
Think about it, when you talk about the unknown, where does it reside? Or perhaps a better question is when? For the purposes of this question I am talking about your own life experience, not those of others which you may never know.
Is it in the past? No, you already know everything that has gone before. You may have forgotten parts of it but everything you remember is known. Is it right now in the present moment? Again, no because right now as you exist in this moment you know what is. So what does that leave? The future. The unknown only occurs in the future and what do we know about the future? It’s another myth that doesn’t exist because as we know, tomorrow never comes. All we ever have is right now, this present moment!
But, But…
When I first had this thought that the unknown doesn’t exist my immediate reaction was to dismiss it as absurd. Of course the unknown is real, I can never know what’s going to happen in the future. I don’t know where I might be living, or what I might be doing, or who I might be with, and on and on. But all of these are in the future and they are only unknown when we think about a future event from the perspective of the present moment.
Here’s a real world example: I am in the process of house hunting and right now I don’t yet know where I am going to live. So right now, it appears to be an unknown but right now I know exactly where I live and once I buy my new house I will know exactly where I live and here’s the key - with every moment between now and then, I will also know exactly where I live! There will never, ever, be a moment in time where I do not know exactly where I live! Well, unless I’ve been hitting the wine paricularly hard :-)
What Time Period Do You Live In?
The problem for most people is that they don’t live in the present moment. They either obsess over the past, lamenting what once was, beating themselves up and feeling guilty about something that is now over, or they live in the future, worrying endlessly about what might be, what might happen and so on.
When we live in the present moment, many of our troubles disappear. I used to have silly thoughts, along the lines of “what will I do if X happens at Y point in the future?”. Nowadays I can see the futility of worry so I don’t tend to have those but I noticed that if instead of thinking in the future I just bring myself back to the present moment and ask myself, how I am doing right now with things just as they are? I usually find that they are just fine for now. When you take things a day at a time, or even an hour at a time, things can seem much easier than worrying about what might happen in the future and it takes away that fear of the unknown because in the present moment the unknown is gone.
Your thoughts?
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Byron Katie as part of Jenny Mannion’s Heroes of Healing group writing project. In the last couple of weeks the project has really taken on a life of its own and has grown tremendously. The project has a new URL, a whole new layout and a load more heroes! Here are some excerpts of some of my favourite ones:
Eckhart Tolle
I discovered Eckhart Tolle from his webcast series with Oprah about his book A New Earth. This was unlike anything I had ever read before and it really changed me profoundly in many ways and allowed me to learn to accept life with a sense of inner peace. Excerpt:
Eckhart’s essence is one of peace as he explains consciousness in accessible terms so everyone can understand. He has caused many people to “awaken” and to think about their life totally differently. His work and talks on the pain body and the roles we play in the relationships in our lives is something I feel most of us can greatly relate to and learn from.
Esther & Jerry Hicks
Esther Hicks is somebody who channels an entity of non-physical beings known only as ‘Abraham’. I don’t know much about channelling but the message that they give has affected me greatly over the last year. Their teachings are based on the Law of Attraction and they have been teaching this stuff for over 20 years, long before the movie The Secret came along. Excerpt:
Abraham teaches that ‘life is supposed to be fun!’ and that we can create our lives however we wish with effortless ease. They impart their wisdom, straight from Source Energy, in a way that is easy to understand and funny all at once. It is this sense of humor that seems to help people digest their teachings without the heaviness of the more ‘serious’ religious tenets.
Louise Hay
Louise Hay wrote a book You Can Heal Your Life many years ago and it has been a best seller ever since. I actually watched the movie before reading the book and I was instantly captivated by Louise’s charm. In her 80’s she is full of life, has an obvious love of life and just exudes confidence. Her teaching are also based around the Law of Attraction but the emphasis is on the mind-body connection. Louise healed herself on cancer in a very short time using her own teachings and many others have gone on to do the same. Excerpt:
As soon as I read Louise ’s story, it was like the sun came out and all of a sudden I could see that every day didn’t have to be cloudy. There was blue sky out there. I realized I had to change myself before I could ever hope to have the life I dreamed of. I desperately wanted to be happy, but the world I lived in was full of pain, criticism and trying to be perfect, and hating myself because I was not.
Wayne Dyer
I have been listening to Wayne Dyer CD’s for quite a few years but it was only in this past year after learning about the Law of Attraction that I really understood his teachings. Nowadays he is one of my favourite people to listen to. I listen to archives of his radio show, The Power of Intention (free from Hay House Radio) almost daily. I can’t get enough of him - he speaks with such simplicity in a very down to earth way that is easy to understand. I prefer his approach to the more metaphysical teachers out there. Excerpt:
With many books, audios and televised events as well as speaking internationally — he has encouraged and helped millions of people find their inner strengths. Dr. Dyer’s books range from his powerful talks on “Intention” to one of his most recent where he gave up most of his belongings for a year and LIVED the Tao Te Ching. He has 7 children and STILL maintains a constant sense of presence and calmness.
At last I come to the final part of my story. At the end of part 11 which was just a few months ago, I was hurting once again from the breakdown of a relationship just six months after being devasted by the same thing.
Going through this twice in six months was harsh but I knew I had to learn and grow as a result of the experience. At first I decided that I wanted to try to protect myself from going through that kind of pain again. I had thoughts such as “I must get better at this LoA stuff so I only attract good things into my life”, and I figured I’d need to attract a relationship that would last my whole life time.
It didn’t take me long to figure out how absurd this idea was. What if I found the perfect person and then she got run over by a bus? It was at this point that I realised that LoA is just one law in this Universe of many and it exists within other laws and most importantly, it only creates our own experience and it doesn’t allow us to control other people. This pain I was going through was due to a relationship with another person and whenever you are involved with somebody whether that’s romantically, professionally, a family member or whatever, you can’t control them and you can’t create their reality for them so if you drift out of alignment then that relationship will suffer or breakdown and that is just life.
It was at this point when I realised that the most valuable thing I could do from this point on is to learn how to deal with the challenges that life throws at us. I had been holding LoA as some kind of saviour but it doesn’t work that way. You can attract great things into your life (and I still haven’t mastered that) but unless you cover every detail of life you will also attract by default on many subjects and that means that everynow and then the Universe will just clobber you around the head! I felt like I hadn’t learned my lessons the first time around so the Universe clobbered me again a second time and said “hey wake up! we’ve something to teach you here!”
Also, life is temporary, people die, companies shut down, friends move away - things change all the time and even if you manage to attract the perfect vision of life into your reality the chances are that it won’t stay that way for long. Therefore I decided that it was far better to learn how to be flexible, how to adapt to changed circumstances, how to deal with pain, how to move on from past hurt and so on.
The last 5 months have been a time of tremendous learning and growth. I read books, I read blogs, I listened to audios, I watched DVD’s and online videos - for several weeks I did virtually nothing but absorb good feeling material into my life. I have now put my life back together and I’m working again, socialising again, and so on but I have chosen to make learning, personal growth and spirituality a permanent part of my life and not a day goes by that I don’t read, watch or listen to something inspiring - usually for at least an hour a day.
I soaked up so much stuff in such a short space of time that I began to feel overwhelmed and felt as though I needed to talk about it. I had questions, I had aha moments and insights. I kept feeling a burning urge to write but I didn’t have a place to write so at first I just journalled but I had a feeling in the back of my mind that I didn’t just want to write for me I wanted to write publically, to invite others to comment, in other words - to blog!
I already had my Internet Marketing blog but that simply is not the place to discuss these kinds of topics so I knew I needed to start a new one but there was something that didn’t feel right, I couldn’t think of a name for a start. I decided to let the Universe guide me and I figured that when the time was right I would know it and I would also know the name.
So I stopped thinking about it for a while. Another thing I did during this time was go for lots of walks - it was summer time and in Essex in the UK where I live there are lots of country parks and coastal areas to explore. All the photos I use on this website are photos I have taken on my walks. I tend to choose remote locations where I can be alone with my thoughts and I would go over in my mind the stuff I had been reading about, listening to and so on.
One day I was in a country park mulling over life, the Universe and everything and feeling somewhat frustrated. Why was life always so hard, why was it always a struggle? I mean, surely life is supposed to FEEL GOOD isn’t it? I stopped dead in my tracks - the name of my blog hit me like a brick and it felt right.
This blog is born…
So that is the end of my story and the start of a new phase of life. I’ve got a lot to do, there are many things I want to change but I am now committed to changing inside as much as the outside. I will never again take things for granted, I will always be grateful for what I have. I will never stop learning and evolving and I will never again be so naieve as to think that ‘happiness’ lies anywhere but inside of me.
I’m not exactly sure where life wil take me but as I learn and grow I’ll be sure to share the journey here
I set out to actively lead a life that truly feels good in the Spring of 2008 after a series of setbacks in my personal life. My aim is to spread whatever I learn about feeling good to others through this blog.
