Ever since the movie ‘The Secret’ came out in 2006, a whole new sector in the global self-help industry has blossomed. Suddenly, people were finding the message that we can create our own reality an empowering alternative to what they had put up with previously: being stuck, sick, poor and unhappy. Six years later, after countless of books, audios, videos, programmes and systems being produced to cater to a mass of people hungry for more info, more details, more secrets to master this ‘secret’ – I see two things in terms of where this has taken us in our conscious development.
On one hand, we have seen people deepening into the awareness that there’s more than just visualising getting the money, job, relationship, house, car, vacation. We’re seeing people moving on from what started as quite a shallow level of approaching the concept of our spiritual powers, to understanding that we cannot force our external reality to change without doing the work to change our internal selves.
For example, by adding the dimension of our emotional states to check where we are internally and doing the work to bring our vibration closer to that which we want to manifest. By working on the blocks that get in the way of us feeling a certain way internally, we have to examine our stories of injustice, hurt, betrayal and abandonment and heal those issues inside us in order to be able to change our internal state – and then as our external state morphs to mirror it, we’re said to have succeeded in manifesting what we want.
This can be good thing. As our awareness deepens and we’re able to appreciate beyond face value, our consciousness as a whole can continue to expand further away from the level of struggles in which so many of us are trapped – so that we can finally reclaim our true spiritual powers.
But I also see this whole LOA business as a terrible thing for our growth. I am all for people wanting to exercise their personal power and take control of how their lives turn out to be. People are, however, getting it wrong with the law of attraction and unless they wake up to the truth, they will continue to be side-tracked to a false path of empowerment.
I’m going to take a risk and say something bold here. Practising law of attraction keeps us stunted in our growth. The way it is generally being practised is limiting. It keeps us stuck in a limited perception of who we are and the extent of goodness the Universe is capable of showing us. It prevents us from fully expressing ourselves as the true, magnificent beings we are.
The reason for this is, in the practice of LOA there’s usually an over-emphasis on manifesting a specific outcome. People are taught to put all their energy into making one specific thing come true. The problem with this is, the idea of this specific thing which we believe we want, is usually borne out of our limited, egoic selves. What I mean by that is it comes from a part of us that doesn’t know any better.
This desire which we have – and which drives us to go in search of techniques and tools to manifest it into form – is not a higher desire, or a spiritually inspired desire. The reason I say this is, a higher, spiritually-inspired desire would not put us in a state of desperation, neediness and obsessiveness – like the one that drives us to go looking for more secrets to ‘The Secret’. We would be relaxed about it, since we’d have a sense of knowingness that it will come to manifest, and we’re not obsessed about ensuring that it will manifest. We would recognise it as a divine calling and know that we will be supported to have it. Actually “to have it” is not quite accurate, because it denotes the same “I must possesss it” energy behind most LOA practices; rather, it’s more accurate to say that “we will be bestowed this thing at the right time”.
LOA is usually practised in such a way that it’s a dynamic of opposing energies. It’s like we’re trying to force something into being. We’re taught to summon our will to make it happen, to max-up the intensity of our desire, to keep seeing in our minds the thing we want with all the details of exactly how we want it. I don’t know how some people can claim to enjoy practising the law of attraction! Sounds like such hard work and so much of working against what feels natural.
Don’t get me wrong. I practise manifestation from time to time since I’m very human and have my own fears and desperations. I’ve even ‘perfected’ my own manifestation ritual incorporating breathwork, movements, energetic alchemy and ceremony, which works very powerfully. I am merely pointing out the gap that’s found in what seems to be excessive and off-track in the way we’re practising it.
The thing that bothers me most about the LOA practice is how we’re encouraged to want something so badly that we’re not willing to accept not having it. This is one of the supposed ‘secrets’. Sure, we’re also taught to add in the phrase “or something better” after stating what we want. But people don’t mean it! Their focus is still on the desire; the “something better” is a token addition just in case something goes wrong with your manifestation so you’d better spread your net a little bit wider. It is still borne out of fear of not getting that thing you want.
Sure, we’re taught to practise “letting go” of the desire to want it after we’ve performed the manifestation ritual. Again, this almost counters the intense desiring, intending, forcing that happens when we’re “putting it out there”. Why pretend to let go when in truth we’re obsessed about getting it? The two opposing steps do not make sense to me.
At this point (if you’re still with me) you may be reacting with the thought, “But I only want this thing!” I understand that you do not and cannot know anything else that might make you feel more fulfilled and happier. This is what you’ve got right now and you only have this to go with. Right? Not really. I invite you to consider the possibility that if you can move past this stage of only accepting having this thing which you want, you stand a chance of liberating yourself from what is yet another disempowering paradigm and really stake your claim on your true powers.
A Much More Empowering Paradigm – The True Path to Freedom, Abundance, Joy
The way that most people practice LOA limits their true potential for joy and happiness. Even if we’re tapping into our spiritual powers to create something into reality, it is still a shallow level of exercising our powers. We are capable of far more than that, and we deserve to stop limiting ourselves to only such limited options and dive into real joy and happiness.
We are aiming for more of this-and-that when we should be just letting go of it all and dropping into what we already are – which far surpasses what we can gain from manifesting this thing we think we want. Our true purpose or destination should be to enter into what I call the Realm of Miracles, where true beauty, joy and abundance is found.
The place where we truly want to go, but which we normally don’t realise, is to return to and to live in Wonderment. I truly believe that this is our final destination. Bearing witness to the contrast of how things were and how things turn out to be – which fills us with a sense of ecstatic joy, inspired awe, complete marvel at the sheer ingenuity of how a certain situation has turned out to be, or the deeply-moving beauty of a sight before you. To be surprised, to see now what we didn’t see before, to be presented with a creative solution we never could imagine before. To feel joyful and happy for no apparent reason, just from being alive, freed from all agendas to gain something or other…. This is the joy we’re really meant to experience on a daily basis.
To get there, we need to transform our default template from one of negativity, harshness, scarcity, sadness, depression to one of joy, beauty, abundance, inspiration. Where every day of your life – whether you get the things your mind thinks it wants or you don’t – you are fully awake at every moment and able to sense the life in everything around you. This is the work we ought to be focusing on, not the limited work of aiming to manifest one specific thing outside of us.
You might at this point say, “Well, if you had to go through the financial stresses I have, you wouldn’t be sitting on your high horse and telling me to aim higher for the Realm of Miracles. Right now, the only miracle I need is some hard cash to pay my bills!” That is, of course, understandable; our fears make our perception so narrow that we can’t see outside of the problem and it’s natural that we respond in fear/limitation.
But let me tell you. When I didn’t get the money I was fervently trying to manifest, I’d experienced more joy and happiness. Not from having a lack of money, but I found a source of joy and happiness somewhere other than money. This was a real gift to me. That door to more joy and happiness than I could ever imagine, regardless of whether I have or don’t have money, was closed until I found it and opened it. I was able to find it by looking somewhere apart from where my mind told me to look. I don’t mean looking towards something dysfunctional to distract myself. I actually looked into a place inside of me – the last place one would think to look. Had I manifested the money, I would’ve gone on with my life without having any reason to look in this place.
I’ve had many such experiences. When my relationship didn’t happen the way I wanted it to, I learned to connect deeply with myself and healed my deep insecurity. When a job I wanted didn’t materialise, I reconnected to my original passion when I started doing this type of work and discovered how beautiful my powers are. So don’t judge yourself as having failed if your LOA ‘fails’ – you have not failed in your spiritual growth. If I had gotten the money I wanted, the relationship I wanted, and the job I wanted, I might not have had the chance to experience all these unexpected and highly-creative outcomes.
How many times have we heard somebody saying they wouldn’t trade their difficult experience for anything because of what they now know. They might be talking about having gone through a huge financial crisis that saw their whole world crumble overnight, a terminal disease, five years of imprisonment, a painful breakup…. things the mind could not have fathomed any other way of resolving except to manifest that specific thing directly related to the situation. Yet they may report afterwards about some great unexpected gain which totally took them by surprise and healed them into more wholeness than ever.
The bonus is that when this happens, your reality will change anyway. That thing which you want, will come at the right time and maybe not in the way you wanted. From this viewpoint, I’d say that effortless LOA works, because you’ll always get what you deeply want. But you may not get what your egoic self wants if it’s not aligned with your deeper desires. Trying to do techniques to try to make it come true isn’t going to work and if it does it’s not a lot of fun.
Practising ‘deliberate creation’ (another LOA term), the way it is usually being practised, keeps us stuck on a limited perspective of who we are because it reinforces our sense of lack. I believe the real work we need to do right now, as a collective, is in healing our inner insecurity – to fill up the emptiness, void, lack-of inside us with our spiritual essence so that we’re strongly connected to the divine, and it triggers memory of who we really are and how powerful we are.
