The Law Is Unbiased
The Law of Attraction does not judge the value or worth of your thoughts. It cares not whether they are harmful or well intentioned, nor does it value whether your thoughts arise from a particular belief system. You may eschew religion and be an atheist or agnostic or you may be deeply religious. Knowledge and practice of a spiritual tradition (or lack of belief) doesn’t concern the working of the law. What matters is how you feel about what you are thinking.
Gratitude plays a role because of how it makes you feel. For example, when you are grateful for having something, you feel good and the thoughts of possession and the positive feelings of possession bring more of the same. The law always responds to what you focus on in your thoughts and the emotion you generate in response to those thoughts; feeling strengthens the attracting power of thought.
At the beginning of this chapter, you read about the young mother who wanted a cast-iron skillet. If she had felt an abiding desperation that she was doomed to always be poor and never have the basic necessities, her fears would have manifested that lack. Her thoughts of poverty would have brought more lack in her life rather than the skillet she desired.
Biblical Figures
Consider the biblical figure of Job, a successful man with a large household that included his ten children, wife, and servants. Well-respected by his neighbors, Job owned many acres of land and herds of sheep, donkeys, and camels numbering in the thousands. Then one day, the good things in Job’s life began to go away. A wind blew down the house and killed his children. Thieves took away his herds. Even his health failed him. Boils appeared upon his body and erupted into weeping sores that he cleaned in the shade of a tree with a piece of broken pottery. With his possessions, relationships, and health gone, Job cried out, “The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.” (Job 3:25) God gave Job a mind, perhaps the most powerful creative tool in the universe, but Job quite possibly did not understand that his positive thoughts had brought him good fortune and his fear and dread had taken them away.
Many Christians believe that Job’s suffering was a lesson about the importance of having unwavering faith in God. Job never cursed God or wavered in his allegiance, no matter how much was taken from him. God rewarded Job for being faithful by restoring his riches and giving him more children.
Solomon, the wise son of ancient Israel’s King David, surely understood what Job did not, for he wrote: “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he ….” (Proverbs 23:7) In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul exhorted the Christians at Ephesus to do good, “Knowing that whatever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive ….” (Ephesians 6:8) Thinking good thoughts instead of dark or evil ones is a way of doing good. When you silently bless others, that is a good thing and good is attracted back into your life. You’ve no doubt heard the phrase “What goes around comes around.”
It comes back to magnetic attraction. When you pray and do good deeds — acts of kindness such as putting money in a stranger’s expired parking meter — your thoughts and actions bear the fruit of goodness. Consider for a moment what kinds of thoughts and feelings, mental images, words, and deeds you are sending out. What is in your life that you don’t like? What would you change? What do you desire?
Deliberate Intention Takes Focus
Think of how something looks under a magnifying glass or a microscope. The subject being studied comes into crisp focus and is magnified many times. This is what you do when you work with the Law of Attraction. With deliberate intention, your thoughts necessarily become not only highly focused but more concentrated and energized. You must have the intent of receiving what you wish for and not waver in your belief that the manifestation is already in the works. Dream what may have been impossible for you before you knew about the Law of Attraction. Now you understand that anything you desire will be possible to achieve or obtain. The Law of Attraction is continually responding to whatever you are thinking and feeling.
The Law of Attraction is unbiased. Whatever you think about is manifested. Careless thinking about negative events can just as easily draw similar negative experiences into your life. Most likely you’ll protest and declare that you would never want those things to happen; you would never have deliberately drawn them to you. But when you begin to correlate your thinking with events that have happened or that are occurring in your life, you will begin to see how your thoughts influence your life experiences. If you think you are doing everything correctly to manifest your desires but they haven’t come to you as yet, perhaps you need to clear some clutter and make a space for it — in other words, create a vacuum.
The most powerful tool you have for creating is your brain, or more precisely, a particular area of your brain. According to Science Daily, the brain’s “default network” enables you to do introspective tasks. Because of this you can construct a self-narrative of your life story — crucial for imagining your life story — and mentalize or analyze another’s mental state so you can appropriately adjust your own — important for developing relationships.
The Law Works When There Is a Vacuum
If someone wants to manifest something in his work or life experience, he may first have to create the space for it. In other words, he must tear down, remove, and otherwise clean and clear a space to make it ready to receive the object or create the right climate for getting a new job, raise in pay, loving companion, or group of friends. The ancient Chinese tradition of feng shui emphasizes the clearing of space and the art of placement to attract the things you desire in your life. Clutter impedes or blocks energy flow. When you are trying to bring something good into your life, you certainly don’t want to block its arrival. You can use the principles of feng shui to enhance your intentional work with the Law of Attraction, especially if you are seeking harmony, peace, and prosperity in all areas of your life. One of the major maxims of feng shui states “Less is more.”
Seeing Blockages
A woman whose freelance writing career seemed stalled decided to consult a feng shui expert who clearly understood the Law of Attraction. A cursory examination of the writer’s home office revealed multiple problems with the space. Her plants were dying. Dust-covered books filled bookcases, some in precarious stacks that threatened to topple off if they were bumped. The partially open drawers of the file cabinet revealed the need for a vigorous pruning of outdated files. Multiple calendars, a photocopied page of editing marks, and other pieces of paper with notes that had been tacked above the desk overpowered the framed art on the walls. The room was cluttered and unwelcoming. The writer complained of lack of money and writing jobs. Her life, she said, like her office, seemed to be spiraling out of control. She wanted to attract better assignments for more money.
The consultant first asked the writer to clarify what she wanted. She also asked the writer to be clear about what she didn’t want in her business life. Then she had the writer clear and clean the space. She suggested to the writer that she throw out the dead plants and box up some of the books for storage. The rest fit in neat rows on the shelves. She recommended bringing in a thriving money plant, a beautiful orchid, and a small desktop fountain to shift the energies in the office.
The writer was encouraged to become more organized. Her organization efforts meant she became more productive and had more time to pursue new project ideas. The newly cleaned and well-organized space inspired the writer to be more creative. She began to spend a few minutes each day visualizing the kinds of projects she wanted and the amount of money she desired for each. When new writing assignments started flowing in, the writer saw for herself why creating a vacuum for the work she desired had been necessary.
When you open the space in your life to manifest something, the substance of the universe will fill it, according to Catherine Ponder, author of The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity. Test the Law of Attraction for yourself. If you are experiencing lack when you seek abundance, look first to your thoughts. Are they positive? Have you unwittingly created any blockages? If so, remove them. Create a vacuum for what you want. Riches, expensive jewelry, a new house, a hot car, a super-healthy body, a new boyfriend, spiritual insights, weight loss, or even a business of your own — you can have whatever you want. That’s the promise of the law when you work deliberately with it.
Using The Law of Attraction
To deliberately utilize the Law of Attraction, it’s important to understand how the mind works and then train it as your tool. If you have practiced meditation, you’ve experienced the mind’s restless
nature. Thoughts keep jumping around because of word associations, direct linkage, or internal and external stimuli. Learn to train your mind to stay on topic. Contemplate all things related to the object or circumstance that you seek to manifest. Wrap your thoughts around your desire, sharpen your focus, and feel expectant to draw the desired object to you.
The Building Block of the Universe
Many practitioners of the Law of Attraction have noted that the interrelationship between thoughts and things is dependent on the psychic energy generated by creative thought. Such energized thought sets up the attraction. Just as the mind can use the power of creative and positive thought to attract things, such as healing in the body, it can also attract objects and situations it desires through thought energy.
Psychic energy was a concept first developed by a German named Ernst von Brücke, whose ideas influenced Dr. Sigmund Freud and later Freud’s student, the noted psychologist Carl Jung. Their work and writings put forth the idea that humans emanated a mental or psychic energy that could be detected and that was utilized in certain psychological activities.
Atoms are the building blocks of matter, while energy has been called the workhorse of creation. From grade-school science, you may have learned that the energy of the universe can change from one form to another, seem to disappear, move about, or remain available as potential energy. You probably also learned about the two main categories of energy: kinetic, or energy in motion; and potential, or energy stored or in position to be released. Both energy types have relevance to the Law of Attraction. The following is a sampling of some of the different types of kinetic energy:
- Electrical energy is produced when tiny atoms move about, producing electrical charges. In nature, a thunderstorm produces lightning. In a dryer, static electricity in, say, a nylon jacket causes other garments to cling to it.
- Magnetic energy encompasses the earth as a magnetic field due to the planet’s rotation and a mostly liquid metallic core at the earth’s center. In your everyday life, you can find magnetic energy in, for example, kitchen magnets, stereo speakers, and compasses.
- Motion energy is characterized by moving molecules. The wind is an example of motion energy.
- Radiant energy is electromagnetic energy that moves in waves, such as radio waves, X-rays, light, and solar rays.
- Sound energy is produced when air is forced over or through a substance to create longitudinal waves. One example is the vibration of air molecules through a reed.
- Thermal or heat energy is produced when molecules move about within a substance. Hydropower, one type of thermal energy, is created by water from a river that runs through a dam’s turbine to an electric generator in order to produce electricity.
Energy is what enables the work of the entire universe to get done, whether the work is fueling the tasks of creation or simply digesting food or thinking thoughts. When you eat a meal, your body receives energy from the food it has digested. It stores excess calories to be accessed later. Energy of one type can change or be converted into a different type. For example, electric energy becomes magnetic when it is run through an electromagnet. But what kind of energy is associated with our thoughts? That’s a difficult question to answer, although some insight can be gained by shifting our lens from empirical science to esoteric and metaphysical ideas found in Eastern philosophy.
Thoughts Are Things
Some people believe that our lives express our interior worlds, or what we think about. You have undoubtedly heard the saying that “thoughts are things.” In fact, in Hinduism, nothing exists apart from the Divine because it permeates all things.
Although it is invisible to the naked eye, energy may be perceived and felt. It’s been said that you can’t fool kids or dogs because they have a natural ability to sense whether someone’s energy and intention toward them are good or bad. Kids and dogs may be able to detect more readily than others the feelings or mood someone is generating by thought. Certain psychics, mediums, and empathic people possess a heightened sensitivity to the electromagnetic energy that is retained in objects, haunted houses, sacred places, crime scenes, and the like. Psychic energy lives on in those objects and places.
Even as doctors work in integrative medicine, using both Western and Eastern medical knowledge, and high-performance sports experts counsel their athletes about an intrinsic mind/body connection, scientific research continues on the subject of thoughts as energy.
In Shri Ramcharitramanas, northern India’s popular version of the story of Lord Rama, Goswami Tulsidas wrote that Ramadasa (literally, the servant of Lord Rama) prayed to Lord Rama while he was imprisoned, “When all is your form, how can I be apart from you?”
While some skeptics doubt that consciousness and human thought has any measurable energy, others, including spiritual seekers, scientists, practitioners of Eastern religions, and philosophers, disagree. Indeed, some people believe human consciousness itself may be energy.
Shakti
In India, modern spiritual seekers make pilgrimages to the sacred places associated with holy people of the past because the shakti (divine energy or holy psychic energy) of those beings remains in the places where those saints prayed, meditated, and became enlightened. Many modern spiritual seekers further believe that the energy stored in the sacred places has a beneficial effect on their spiritual efforts to attain enlightenment. Contact with the shakti of enlightened beings, although those saints no longer live in human form, could awaken the Kundalini Shakti. This is the innate and essential divine energy that leads human consciousness to union with God (or Absolute divine consciousness) as the energy makes its ascent from the base of the spine to the energy center located on top of the head. The modern seekers’ thought, magnetized by their spiritual desire for enlightenment, could manifest their desire, making their thought become the thing they most ardently seek and desire.
