Law of Attraction: New Age Fantasy?

Have you heard about the Law of Attraction?

This law states that whatever your predominant thoughts are that is what you will attract. If you constantly think about all your aches and pains and how poor your health is then you will attract more of the same. On the other hand, if you concentrate on abundant health and imagine yourself healthy and full of energy then you will attract health into your life.

Some people would argue that the law of attraction is just wishful thinking and could actually be dangerous. They feel that people who believe in this so-called law might for example, just hope that a tumor would go away rather than getting proper medical treatment. Or they might wish that their bills would go away and end up in bankruptcy rather than upgrading their skills and finding a new job which would enable them to pay their debts.

Both the critics and proponents would be missing the larger picture if they believed in the above. Visualizing an ideal outcome is only the first step in the law of attraction. We live in a material world so inspired action is also usually required. Nevertheless, the visualizing stage will quite often reveal possibilities that were unknown or even seem to create synchronous events that seem almost magical.

Let’s look at a difficult situation such as that of a poor African country. One could feel that since there is no food in the environment it is impossible to attract it. Yes, I agree that wishing for some food will not make it magically appear. But, if an individual was able to stay positive in that very difficult environment they would have the best opportunity to become aware of and avail themselves of an air-drop of refugee supplies. Victor Frankl did pretty much the same thing in the German concentration camps. Yes, it was grim and he did not make the concentration camps disappear but by working with his consciousness he was able to change his internal condition. He was then in a much better position to help himself and others.

But how about actually attracting something? For example, you decide that you would like an extra five thousand dollars next month. You begin to visualize it and emotionally feel what it would be like to have that extra money. Then a week later you get a letter that a distant relative has passed a way and left you five thousand dollars in their will. This is not at all an unusual circumstance and most people probably could point to a few in their own lives. Is this just a coincidence a fluke, a bit of good luck? Or is something else going on?

This is where it gets interesting. Recent studies in such diverse fields as quantum physics, brain scan imaging, and distance healing, seem to be indicate that something is going on in terms of our ability to affect things at a distance. Larry Dossey, the well known physician who has done a great deal of work in studying distance healing through prayer, feels that medicine has progressed through three distinct stages.

Stage 1 is the traditional 19th century mechanistic view of the body. Stage 2 is the age of “psychosomatic medicine” which believes that the mind can influence the body. Stage 3, which we are just entering, proposes that consciousness is not confined to one’s individual body. In other words, an individual’s mind may affect not just his or her body, but the body of another person, event or object at a distance.

Perhaps it is in these new areas of research that we will begin to understand the Law of Attraction and whether or not it has true validity.

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About the Author

Douglas Reach writes on many subjects in the fields of music, self-development, spirituality and technology. If you would like to know the secret then visit http://www.the-secret-principles.com

For most – if not all – of us, our path in life requires continual adjustment. There are things we want but don’t have. There are things we have but don’t want. And there are things we have that would be fine with a little alteration. For some, this process of course correction is natural and flowing. But for many of us, we grow impatient and/or discouraged.

Compounding our discomfort, law of attraction says that we attract into our lives more of what we focus on. When we focus on something we want, we attract more of that thing or condition. If we focus on a condition or thing we don’t want – a problem – we attract more of THAT thing or condition.

Unwanted situations will always come up whether we like it or not. The good news is that those things and conditions which are not to our liking are the birth of all creation. How would we ever know what we do want without the contrast of what we do not?

THE 3-STEP PROCESS

As humans in an attraction-based universe, we live in an endless, looping, 3-part creative cycle. A thing or condition we want to be different gives birth to a preference, the new preference then exists in our consciousness where it did not before, and finally we receive the new thing or allow the new condition into our experience.

When we’ve identified what we don’t want which happens constantly (step one), step two begins. We become aware of what we do want. We begin to notice things. If in step one we had the thought, “I want or need more money,” we might now begin to notice other people with money or things that cost money. What we now desire exists as a concept in our consciousness, but we don’t have it yet in our experience. How we feel about this new desire is our most valuable clue about how we are doing with step three. The better and more optimistic we feel, the better we are doing.

Step three is where the artistry of law of attraction really comes into play. This is where we receive the manifestation of what we’ve so far only summoned into our consciousness with the first two steps. Doing this takes allowing. By allowing, I mean the releasing of resistance.

RELEASING RESISTANCE

Even though it may not feel like we are resisting what we want, we are. For even in resisting the circumstance that we want to change, that same resistance is at work preventing us from receiving the thing we do want. Resistance is energy. When we focus in a resistant way, that energy is present in all areas for us.

Learning to release resistance can at first be counter-intuitive. We cannot release resistance directly. Attention given to anything, whether our intention is to get rid of the thing or summon it, causes MORE of that thing in our experience. To truly release resistance to a circumstance is a function of allowing the circumstance to exist and putting our focus on how we want things to be instead. However, there is a difference between focusing on how we want something to be and focusing on that it is not that way yet. How we feel about something is our indicator of allowance or resistance. The better it feels, the less resistance (and more allowance) is present.

Albert Einstein suggested that a problem cannot be solved at the same level of thinking at which it was created. Here I equate “problem” with “circumstance”. After all, a circumstance we don’t want is indeed a problem. If Einstein is correct, we need to think on a new level to change our circumstance. We need to focus our attention on thoughts that cause allowing energy or, at the very least, that don’t cause resistance.

RECOGNIZING RESISTANCE

A thought that creates resistance is one in which we say something is one way and it should not be that way. When we reject something in its entirety as wrong or bad, we generally introduce resistance. “I’m having a terrible day,” is usually a resistant thought. “Nothing is going the way I want,” is another. With this kind of “problem” thinking, we leave ourselves very little room to affect change.

When we can summon the wherewithal to say, “My day isn’t all bad,” and think, write or talk about those aspects that ARE working, resistance is released. Perhaps what Einstein had in mind with his observation about the level of thinking it takes to solve a problem, is to think on that more subtle, component level. Focusing on those aspects of a circumstance that do work summons more workability.

The steps of noticing what we don’t want in our lives and having what we’d prefer show up in our consciousness happen with no effort on our part. Becoming effective within the law of attraction is a function of getting good at step three. The more we can notice resistant thoughts that come up for us, and practice choosing thoughts that release that resistance, the better our results – and our experience – will be.

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About the Author
Steve Freedman is a filmmaker and author of the best-selling guide to creating a happier life ” The Art of Manifesting What You Want”. His most recent film “Ghosts Never Sleep”, stars Faye Dunaway, Sean Young and Tony Goldwyn and is available on DVD.