sunday life: I test the whole “Law of Attraction” hoopla
Are you seeing what you attract? (Before it smashes you in the face?)
This week I gravitate to the “Law of Attraction”…to see if it makes life better.
I’m what you might call a Third-Way Cherry-Picker. People tend to say, particularly when it comes to the new-agey stuff I discuss in this column, there are two types of people. Sceptics. And Folk Who Buy Into the Whole Package – the books, lecture series and the gift-boxed destiny cards.
But some of us tread a third way. We take on board the message, but do so with a grain (or barrow-load) of salt, cherry-picking the bits that make intuitive sense. We have a foot in both camps, smart enough to know no one can really manifest a Ferrari. And find it kind of gross anyone would try to.
I issue this preface because I’m about to describe how I’ve just attended a Law of Attraction workshop with Esther and Jerry Hicks. Haven’t seen The Secret? Well, the Hicks appear in it prominently, demonstrating how to attract what you want by simply thinking it. Like attracts like; nice thoughts attract nice things. And (just to fire up the sceptics) they do it by channelling a spirit collective known as Abraham. Weird. But then so are gated communities. And sleeve tattoos.
Now, as a salt-tossing, cherry-picking consumer of information geared at making life better, I don’t buy the entire manifesting manifesto (especially those vision boards that women my age took to making when The Secret first came out). But I’ve found the following morsel of Hicks-Abraham insight hit a sweet spot this week.
OK, so change of gear. Recently I’d been feeling things weren’t right, that I was off kilter with myself. When this happens we tend to try to run from this irksome, hollow feeling by doing stuff and ricocheting into frenzied action (or by getting wasted). But you might’ve noticed – the more we run from ourselves, the more things go to the dogs. Plans unravel, mobile phones die and we get stuck in slow traffic lanes.
On this occasion I ran from myself by fleeing to the Solomon Islands to dive with sharks (well, haven’t you?!). The trip was a struggle to organise, but I forced it to happen, convinced the extreme experience was just the ticket to jerk me from my ill-at-ease rut.
It was a dramatic and metaphorical escape. So was the slapdown. All three planes in the region ran to ground, leaving me stranded in rain for four days on a grim island the size of a Domayne bedding department. I went spare. My return flight was delayed and I came home to find my car stolen. And, hey, my comprehensive insurance had expired. If I was reading it right, the universe was telling me to stop moving, stay close to home so I could face up to myself. Or else.
Back to the Law of Attraction. The Hicks say this all happened because I wasn’t in alignment with myself. They explained that all problems – and illness – are indicators alerting us to when our “physical reality” selves have drifted from our “vibrational energy” selves. This vibrational self drives our dreams, calling us forward to our potential. As the French and German existentialists wrote, this self “always already” exists. In a previous column I described it as our “inside people”… a silent, all-knowing sense of being that feels bigger and truer than our physical reality selves. We know it when we sit calmly with it and don’t flee from it. It feels like home.
The Hicks say when we align with our vibration, life flows better. We’re not in a state of resistance with ourselves, and so the Law of Attraction kicks in. We randomly meet the perfect person to help get that project off the ground. Dark, handsome men appear. Old people smile at us at bus stops. How do we align our two selves? Meditate. Or I use this technique: I imagine sitting with my (vibrational) self on a little ledge near my heart space. I don’t think too much. I just hang out and feel my way back to myself.
Tonight I’m meant to go out for a rich, bustley dinner. But my phone has just died and I have a roaring stomach ache. Normally I’d get angry, force myself to go and feel ill-at-ease (as well as sick), but instead I’m seeing these “problems” as lovely indicators of my need to align. If I’m reading the signs right I’m meant to stay home and hang on a ledge with myself.
Fantastic article as usual – love it!
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Our Sun Herald didn’t make it in time for delivery this morning so great to read your column now.
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The law of attraction is about feelings more than anything else. The issue lies in the fact that most aren’t aware of their feelings. Even if they are aware, they don’t listen to them.
LOA is so far beyond thinking, or *trying* to be positive. Deep meditation and a continual awareness that its *YOU* that chooses to feel a certain way are the only ways I’ve used the LOA in my favor.
It takes real effort to get good at this stuff but living the life of your dreams is worth it.
All the best Sarah.
RB
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It IS about not thinking too much and not forcing things to happen the way we want them to. We often behave like flies caught inside the kitchen, repeatedly bumping up against the window glass, wondering why they cannot escape and be where they need to be. If the flies were to pause for a while and feel where the breezeway was flowing, they’d slip effortlessly out the back door!
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Abraham Hicks have also said that infants murdered in the holocaust somehow had that vibration within them, ie. they manifested their fate. While I am definately an advocate of positive thinking and making the most of your lot in life, I think Abraham Hicks advocate a potentially dangerous way of thinking that can only really be applied to the lives of those living in affluent western societies free from famine, warfare & the daily fight for survival.
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Well, I certainly know what you mean about cherry picking. But on the vibrations front I’m not so sure. Although lately I have been hating the ‘obligation’ I have created for myself re blogging, and today one of the first things I randomly encountered in the unreal world was a link to “blogging without obligation” (http://www.tartx.com/blog/?page_id=233), does that count as a vibin’ message or what?!
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January 31st, 2010 at 12:08 pm
i reckon it does. A very good point… I wrote something simliar in this post post
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I found the hoopla surrounding the secret interesting and when I flicked on the Oprah special downright scary. My view of the secret is that …the big secret is that you have to do something…doesn’t matter how many times you wish for something or look at your vision board without action nothing is going to happen! On Oprah I was watching a very full figured woman talk about her dream of getting fit and losing weight and as I do said to the TV “unless you put down that chocolate, put on your sandshoes and get moving nothing is going to happen”
But action and doing can also get you into strife as you have discovered.
I have found in my work and personally that when something isn’t working often the solution we go for is do something different and when that doesn’t work do something else…instead of checking in with our inside people or getting in tune with our vibrations
There is interesting writing around in the area of occupational science particularly by Ann Wilcox who looks at the choices we make and the relationship with health and well-being. She talks of the balance that is required between the doing (what we do), being (encapsulating nature and essence, about being true to ourselves) & becoming (the notions of transformation and self actualization)
So it is important when what we are doing isn’t working for us those times when we are feeling out of kilter that we slow down on the activity and b and get in touch with who and what we want to become.
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January 31st, 2010 at 12:04 pm
oh, yes, reading the signs and slowing down. then shifting direction. slowly….I get that!!!
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Sarah,
Great article and some great responses. Like you I tend to sit back and take it all in then at 1st. I then go back and pick it apart, try and disprove, prove and everything in between until something makes sense. Maybe it’s the Mechanical engineer in me that has never left!
Anyways what I have found after digging deeper- you’re free to pick this apart as well
in fact i’d only expect you to.
1. “Like” does Not attract “Like” as stated in the LOA (look at a Magnet)
2. Emotions however do tend to run our life we tend to seek that which feels good (supports our values) and run from that which doesn’t feel good (challenges our values) as you did going on the shark dive
3. our emotions are simply a feedback system but they are judgements based on lopsided perceptions
4. whenever we judge something as “bad” we’re under the assumption that things would be better some other way. we’re not seeing how it served our highest values and mission
5. when we hold these judgements we will continue to attract people, places, things, events to allow us to see the other side. (our emotions are “charges”. did you ever date a guy you thought was perfect? you probably put him up on a pedestal a bit, well in time what happened? did you start to see his flaws? they were always there you were just blinded by emotions. The euphoria felt good so you ignored the other side of him until it hit you in the face. did you then maybe start to resent him? (same thing happened with your escape trip, you were under the illusion that things would be better if you ran away, then things kept going wrong)
6. we repeat these patterns until we stop judging and just love what is as it is. (ever feel like you date the same guy in a different body?)
So
whatever is bothering you now, until you learn to love it, you will continue to repeat patterns
To get all hippy dippy everything that exists is just a different expression of love. gratitude (honoring “what is”, as it is, is the key to evolving past patterns. Meditation is just a temporary vacation but when you return to the real world all the problems you left are still there. If you want to break the patterns you have to see the big picture and learn to love even your greatest challenges and the things that don’t feel so good. it’s usually those challenges that lead to our greatest growth. Look at your past and some of the chalenges you faced years ago. How have they served to make you the person you are today (even though they may not have felt so good at the time) Life is a ride… it all serves so enjoy the ups and downs. (maybe thats the surfer in me lol)
Call it vibrations or whatever you want. I have found that emotions pretty much rule our lives. The balance between complimentary opposite emotions is Love and that is where true inspiration lies.
and no just thinking about money or a man or a car will not make it real, you have to take action, you have to set realistic goals that are in allignment with your own highest values. we’re all paid according to own own unique value system. Bill Gates has lots of money because he values money. it’s not good or bad, it just is. We all “attract”, “manifest” according to our own highest values. doesn’t mean things just appear. but we become aware of signs. like when i walk into a mall I may see a surf shop and you may see a dive shop that i walked right past as if it didn’t exist. I just didn’t notice it because it has no significance according to what serves my own highest values.
ok that’s a lot… It’s late and i guess i was in the mood to write lol.
cheers
d
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January 31st, 2010 at 12:02 pm
agree with the idea of attraction being mostly about being aware of signs that we want to see. so true.
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