With Oprah featuring The Secret on her show this week, I've been thinking about how my own view and approach to the law of attraction has evolved in the months since I was first introduced to it.
I'm coming from a different perspective than most people I read who talk about the law of attraction. While they appeal to quantum physics and brain scan studies to support LoA, they still teach it according to the practice of traditionalistic faith. The three requirements of this approach is ask, believe and receive. The rest is in the hands of...God, the universe, energy fields, or whatever you choose to name. I don't have any problem with what they are teaching. In fact, I think it's necessary to have this type of teaching available in order to teach Attraction to people who are coming from a faith-based perception of the world. From that perspective, this really is what Jesus was teaching when he said, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."
If you want some ideas about why a mustard seed, you can Google for thousands of Biblical interpretations. I think this is pretty simple, and most of what I've read overcomplicates the matter. (Why a mustard seed and not an olive pit?) You plant a seed knowing that it will grow. You water it if necessary, maybe even fertilize. You pull weeds if they crop up. And you harvest when it bears fruit. That's it. You don't stress about it, you don't worry, "What if my tree doesn't grow?" You know it will, you take right (ie necessary but not compulsive) action, and you let it unfold.
This is pretty much what all the LoA teachers are saying. In fact, it's what James Ray called, "going three-for-three," on Oprah this week. You ask, you believe, and you act.
Great, so why is this a problem? Well, it's not a problem per se. A large -- possibly majority -- portion of the world's population interprets from a traditionalistic framework. So if we want this message to reach most of the world, this is the way to teach it. But like any field of research, there is the practical side and the theoretical side. The practical side is the state of the reliable art. By that, I mean it consists of the best known methods that are reliable enough for widespread adoption. The theoretical side is there to advance the state of the art to more effective, more reliable, more adoptable level. That's what I'm interested in. If we want to elevate consciousness, we have to raise the bar on our ideas and our practices.
The peak of conscious development right now is well beyond traditionalism. It has been 600 years since the rational age dawned with the Renaissance, 400 since its methods were refined in the Age of Reason. While spirituality is still dominated by the traditional modalities that have been canonized in the world's major religions, our material life is dominated by a formalized rational forms such as the scientific method. But logical empiricism doesn't account for the spiritual, and most people have spiritual inclinations. So they really have no alternative but to compartmentalize these two aspects of their integral being. If you've been reading my blog, you are aware that I am concerned with the advancement of integrated modalities and methods that allow interior and exterior truths to co-exist.
So what does this have to do with The Secret? Well, I think it would have been better named "The Invitation," because what it really does is invite you to explore how you can harmonize your life with a principle. It is not The Secret of sure-fire success, no matter how well they sell it. If you were paying attention, this came out a little but on Oprah. Every law of attraction teacher has their own individual stories -- their own techniques, metaphors and conceptual frameworks -- that they teach. They all spring from the same source, the same underlying principle and the same faith-based approach. But the application is somewhat different for each one of them. That is because each of them has evolved a practice and a pedagogy based on their own experiences, and the experiences of those they've talked to about it. Which is exactly the same source of the sacred texts that form the foundation of traditional religion.
But we know from the other half of our life that the approach of taking a small number of accounts and extrapolating a conclusion from that is completely invalid. That doesn't mean it can't result in accurate results; it means that it won't adequately describe which factors were causative or contributory, and which were resultant or unrelated. Traditionalistic thinking does not distinguish between cause and effect; that is why there is no empiricism in religion. You might find yourself seeking the means through the end, but how would you even know?
Unfortunately, we don't yet have formalized methods that can be applied to pursuits that involve the interior consciousness. But does that imply that we should rely on the methods that were last revised about 2000 years ago? Not at all. Because we don't need universally-accepted methods to put attraction to work for us individually. The fallacy of universal truth is that there is some benefit to doing something the same way. Unless you're rowing a boat, it just doesn't matter.
But that's not how we're trained to respond to ideas. We are trained to reject or to embrace as absolute truth or falsehood. So rather than try to find the personal truth, the personal application, we start following a plan laid out by someone else. And when it doesn't work, we start scrutinizing our efforts to figure out what we did wrong.
And immediately by so doing, we have ceased to be exercising intentional attraction. We are attracting what we don't want by focusing our thoughts and our emotion on what we are doing to keep from attracting what we really want. One example of this is wordsmithing intentions. I've seen people on forums agonizing over the words they're using in their intentions. Which means all that time, they are holding thought and emotion that are focused on what will not work. It's the wrong end of the telescope again. To say nothing of the fact that it's regressing from a failed practice of traditionalistic faith to an even less reliable practice of primitive magic: trying to find the proper incantation to bring the desired result. I think the law of attraction is at the cusp of new methods and frames for human consciousness, both spiritual and material; we need to practice it with a forward-looking mind.
What we need to do is become aware of our practice of intention. We need to pay attention to what works and what doesn't work. In The Secret, Jack Canfield says size doesn't matter to the law of attraction; you can just as easily attract a million dollars as one. But your beliefs are more likely to get in the way of the million dollars than the one. That doesn't mean you won't be successful if you go straight for the million dollars. But it means it's going to be hit or miss, and you're not really going to know why it worked or why it didn't. The benefit of starting small is that you can observe the process and see what works. You can actually develop your ability to manifest reliably and on a large scale. Learn to fish, rather than just finding a fish you can eat for the rest of your life.
I suggest developing a personal practice around manifesting your intentions, and track it to see what works. Journaling is a good way to start, but also create some structure to how you practice it. Decide, for example, that you will start by visualizing your desire every morning. Do that for a week and journal what happens -- your changes in attitude, any synchronicity that indicates the universe is responding, any resistance you feel. The next week, add a nightly practice of conscious joy with the same journaling routine. The next week, add something else. If you find that a particular practice seems to strengthen attraction, then stick with it and try to enhance it. If another practice increases resistance, then drop it--it's not working for you.
If you were to do this for a year, how much would you improve your ability to manifest your desires? Do you want a fish, or do you want to get really good at fishing?
The Secret is not a secret like a philosopher's stone that's going to transmute your lead into gold. It is an invitation to transmute your desires into reality. It is an invitation to discover how you can bring yourself into harmony with the joy and abundance that the universe is ready to manifest.
