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 :-)
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.
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.
