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.
Law of Attraction Is Not A ‘Get Out Of Pain Free Card’
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.
Stumble it!
Laura
October 16, 2008
Hi Caroline,
In the third paragraph I think you should replace the “if” with when I succeed attracting the kind of life… because you will succeed!
Laura