The Law of Attraction Hoax
By Chris Cade on May 28, 2011 in Spiritual Development
http://www.chriscade.com/2011/05/the-law-of-attraction-hoax/
For a while, I’ve been wanting to “get this out of my system.” As such, this article may sound a bit like a “rant” and may jar a few peoples’ nerves. On one hand, my intention is not to cause any discontent; on the other hand, if it causes discontent then I’m grateful I’ve given you something deeper to consider.
Actually, almost three years now I would occasionally be reminded about the seeming inconsistency of calling the Law of Attraction a “Law.” If it’s a law like gravity, why does it seem to work for some people and not others?
Some teachers have attempted to reconcile this by saying it has to do with what you believe, both consciously and subconsciously. They suggest that if you were to align both your conscious beliefs and subconscious beliefs with what you want to attract, then you will attract it like magic.
Sounds good doesn’t it?
My intention is not to criticize other approaches to manifestation, but rather, to call into question the inconsistencies. Why is it that the Law of Gravity doesn’t require us to change our subconscious beliefs, but the Law of Attraction does?
Other “Spiritual Laws” don’t even require changes of subconscious beliefs to easily see the cause and effect relationship: Law of Choices, Law of Action, Law of Balance, Law of Integrity, Law of Compassion… to name a few.
None of them require changing your subconscious beliefs to see results. They only require being aware that they exist and paying attention to how they manifest (interesting word, huh?) in your life when you take action in alignment with them. So why must we change our beliefs for the “Law of Attraction” to work?
Today, I will attempt to answer that question. First though, I want to say that I willingly use the term “Law of Attraction” because it’s an easy way to communicate a simple idea that has gone mainstream, and that idea is this:
When we live in conscious awareness, we can experience life the way we want to.
In other words we can manifest what we want. The difference though between my approach on the “Law of Attraction” than others though is I’m not concerned so much about manifesting “things.” I focus on manifesting experiences –and more specifically– inner experiences of our True Nature.
Popular Law of Attraction teachers say that to attract the things you want, whether it be a car, house, relationship, more money, etc, that you must first raise your vibration to be in alignment with that. More aware teachers go so far as to say that you must use affirmations to reprogram your subconscious to ensure that your conscious desires do not conflict with your subconscious desires. Even more aware teachers will suggest that you don’t focus on the stuff you “want” and instead focus on how the stuff would make you feel.
For example, if you want the car then what is it about the car you really want? Is it the adrenaline rush? Is it the feeling of success, or is it to feel abundant? What are the feelings inherent in a meaningful relationship that you desire? Connection, intimacy, playfulness, commitment, joy?
In other words, they say to get what you want you must first feel as though you have it already. Some people say you have to truly believe you “deserve” it and “believe it will happen” even when the odds seem slim.
I don’t know about you, but I prefer the Law of Gravity. Drop something. See it fall. Yup, the law works! Why can’t the “Law of Attraction” be that simple?
My experience is that it can be. In fact, it is… we just don’t recognize it as such. Too many teachers have focused on the “getting stuff” aspect of manifestation –because that’s what sells products, books, and seminars– that they’ve overlooked what manifestation really is.
Experiencing your True Nature.
Why point to the “things” when we can point to ourselves?
My belief is that all of us only want to manifest one basic thing: Being completely and totally okay with our lives. Most of us project into the world what we think we need to make that happen. We say “If I only had more money, a bigger house, a better relationship, then I’ll be able to relax.” But what if we just learned how to be happy now without all that stuff? If that were true, then all the “stuff in the world” would become icing on the metaphorical cake. Then it wouldn’t be about “changing our vibration to get what we want” but instead “becoming what we want because we’ve changed our vibration.”
Later this year, I’m actually going to be creating my own program on manifestation. The catch is that the only way to join that program will be to have completed my introductory program, “Liberate Your Life.” The reason for this is simple:
The way to manifest the inner experiences that we want is to realize we already had them to begin with. We want joy, abundance, peace, happiness? We had those True Nature qualities as babies yet somewhere in our lives we lost touch with those experiences. My Liberate Your Life program takes that basic predisposition and walks people through re-discovering they already have specific qualities like strength, courage, and willpower.
Those are the foundational qualities that we need to “manifest” stuff in our lives. Without the strength, we won’t initiate action. Without the courage, we will stay locked in fear. Without willpower, we won’t be able to remain steadfast to our dreams… especially when life gets difficult.
Manifestation isn’t rocket science. Nor is it as simple as “Conceive, Believe, and Take Action” either. Yet it is that simple and it can simultaneously feel like rocket science. All we have to do is uncover the subconscious barriers that each of us have to experiencing our True Nature – which is inherently abundant regardless of any “stuff” you might want to attract into your life.
Getting into our subconscious is surprisingly difficult though. Many teachers will lead you astray by saying that “affirmations is enough.” For a few of them, this is actually true… I have great appreciation for Marc Allen (best-selling author and founder of the New World Library book publisher) because he’s transformed his life using little more than affirmations and scholarly reading.
For most people though, affirmations are a long-road to transforming their lives. That’s because for our entire lives our subconscious was reprogrammed in inefficient and ineffective ways, often without our consent. It took a lifetime to believe ourselves as having limited potential… so once we become aware our unlimited potential it can feel like a long road ahead to transformation.
That’s also part of where I feel the “hoax” is when it comes to the Law of Attraction. Too much emphasis is placed on affirming positivity and raising vibration positively, and not enough energy is invested in actually transforming your subconscious. Some teachers would even have you believe that if you have negative thoughts or feelings you are sabotaging your ability to manifest what you want.
And that’s where it gets upside-down.
See, the only way to actually live in a positive high vibration is to transform your negative self-sabotaging unconscious beliefs and feelings. Overriding them will only work for a little while, until your subconscious brings them back again and causes you to sabotage even your best efforts. The negative thoughts and feelings are far more effective pointers to manifesting than the “stuff is.” That’s because the negativity tells you which aspects of your subconscious still need to be transformed, and then with the right tools you can permanently transform those subconscious negative beliefs into experiences of your abundant True Nature.
Now here’s where it gets tricky…
Your subconscious, and more specifically the “Inner Critic” aspect of your subconscious wants to keep you both comfortable and small. It doesn’t want you to experience abundance, and it doesn’t want you to manifest your dreams. To your Inner Critic manifestation is hogwash that will make you uncomfortable and expansive. Your Inner Critic will always have something discouraging to say about your ability to manifest until you transform the Inner Critic itself.
That’s no easy task though because few bodies of work out there focus on this aspect of our subconscious. Byron Katie doesn’t really talk about the “Law of Attraction,” but she helps people manifest the lives they truly want to live. She uses another word for “Law of Attraction” which is “The Work.”
That’s what it really is. The Law of Attraction is working on your subconscious, bringing it to light, so that you can experience both your subconscious and conscious in alignment with your True Nature. So yes, the teachers who say you must bring your subconscious and conscious into alignment are right.
Not only that, but I sort of took you in a boomerang direction earlier when I said that the other spiritual laws don’t require you to transform your subconscious. While they don’t ‘require’ you to transform your subconscious to see the cause-and-effect results in your life, you do have to change your subconscious if you want those results to stick permanently.
For example, if you lack the ability to take action (as per the “Law of Action”), it’s not because your conscious mind has taken you astray… it’s because your Inner Critic has subconsciously caused you to believe that you’ll be more comfortable if you don’t take action. And even if you’re the best action-taker in the world, if your Inner Critic is quietly sabotaging your willpower then you’ll rarely finish what you start.
The beauty of spiritual laws is that as long as you are taking actions in alignment with the law, you will see the expected outputs. If you act in alignment with the Law of Action, you’ll see results in your life. Over time, your subconscious is naturally transformed by the consistent habit of taking action, and in this way you are using the “input equals output” formula to transform your life and your subconscious.
That’s a long slow road though that requires a lot of faith and trial and error, though. It also has a caveat: if you’re not taking action in the ways that also expand your other True Nature qualities, then even your best efforts (such as taking action) will be sabotaged by your lack of will to “stick with it.” In other words, just focusing on affirmations and taking action is actually the slowest road to transforming your life.
That’s why–in my experience–the quickest path to manifesting is to focus on discovering and developing very specific qualities of my True Nature. Qualities like strength, courage, and willpower enable me to move forward in life. Then I can focus on qualities like abundance, joy, and gratitude to “raise my vibration” permanently and manifest the inner experiences that are truly fulfilling to me. That’s the cake I truly want and then all the extra stuff is just “icing.”
Don’t get me wrong… I definitely the icing on cake (especially chocolate cake!), and just like you would love to experience more financial abundance and even more fulfilling relationships. The difference is that I don’t mistake the icing for the cake. What I want is to experience my True Nature fully, and then I can bring that with me no matter what I do in life. Stuff will come and go, but my True Nature is here to stay.
Which brings me back full circle… what is the real “Law of Attraction Hoax?”
It’s the suggestion that any of us want to manifest anything other than our True Nature.
http://www.chriscade.com/2011/05/the-law-of-attraction-hoax/
By Chris Cade on May 28, 2011 in Spiritual Development
http://www.chriscade.com/2011/05/the-law-of-attraction-hoax/
For a while, I’ve been wanting to “get this out of my system.” As such, this article may sound a bit like a “rant” and may jar a few peoples’ nerves. On one hand, my intention is not to cause any discontent; on the other hand, if it causes discontent then I’m grateful I’ve given you something deeper to consider.
Actually, almost three years now I would occasionally be reminded about the seeming inconsistency of calling the Law of Attraction a “Law.” If it’s a law like gravity, why does it seem to work for some people and not others?
Some teachers have attempted to reconcile this by saying it has to do with what you believe, both consciously and subconsciously. They suggest that if you were to align both your conscious beliefs and subconscious beliefs with what you want to attract, then you will attract it like magic.
Sounds good doesn’t it?
My intention is not to criticize other approaches to manifestation, but rather, to call into question the inconsistencies. Why is it that the Law of Gravity doesn’t require us to change our subconscious beliefs, but the Law of Attraction does?
Other “Spiritual Laws” don’t even require changes of subconscious beliefs to easily see the cause and effect relationship: Law of Choices, Law of Action, Law of Balance, Law of Integrity, Law of Compassion… to name a few.
None of them require changing your subconscious beliefs to see results. They only require being aware that they exist and paying attention to how they manifest (interesting word, huh?) in your life when you take action in alignment with them. So why must we change our beliefs for the “Law of Attraction” to work?
Today, I will attempt to answer that question. First though, I want to say that I willingly use the term “Law of Attraction” because it’s an easy way to communicate a simple idea that has gone mainstream, and that idea is this:
When we live in conscious awareness, we can experience life the way we want to.
In other words we can manifest what we want. The difference though between my approach on the “Law of Attraction” than others though is I’m not concerned so much about manifesting “things.” I focus on manifesting experiences –and more specifically– inner experiences of our True Nature.
Popular Law of Attraction teachers say that to attract the things you want, whether it be a car, house, relationship, more money, etc, that you must first raise your vibration to be in alignment with that. More aware teachers go so far as to say that you must use affirmations to reprogram your subconscious to ensure that your conscious desires do not conflict with your subconscious desires. Even more aware teachers will suggest that you don’t focus on the stuff you “want” and instead focus on how the stuff would make you feel.
For example, if you want the car then what is it about the car you really want? Is it the adrenaline rush? Is it the feeling of success, or is it to feel abundant? What are the feelings inherent in a meaningful relationship that you desire? Connection, intimacy, playfulness, commitment, joy?
In other words, they say to get what you want you must first feel as though you have it already. Some people say you have to truly believe you “deserve” it and “believe it will happen” even when the odds seem slim.
I don’t know about you, but I prefer the Law of Gravity. Drop something. See it fall. Yup, the law works! Why can’t the “Law of Attraction” be that simple?
My experience is that it can be. In fact, it is… we just don’t recognize it as such. Too many teachers have focused on the “getting stuff” aspect of manifestation –because that’s what sells products, books, and seminars– that they’ve overlooked what manifestation really is.
Experiencing your True Nature.
Why point to the “things” when we can point to ourselves?
My belief is that all of us only want to manifest one basic thing: Being completely and totally okay with our lives. Most of us project into the world what we think we need to make that happen. We say “If I only had more money, a bigger house, a better relationship, then I’ll be able to relax.” But what if we just learned how to be happy now without all that stuff? If that were true, then all the “stuff in the world” would become icing on the metaphorical cake. Then it wouldn’t be about “changing our vibration to get what we want” but instead “becoming what we want because we’ve changed our vibration.”
Later this year, I’m actually going to be creating my own program on manifestation. The catch is that the only way to join that program will be to have completed my introductory program, “Liberate Your Life.” The reason for this is simple:
The way to manifest the inner experiences that we want is to realize we already had them to begin with. We want joy, abundance, peace, happiness? We had those True Nature qualities as babies yet somewhere in our lives we lost touch with those experiences. My Liberate Your Life program takes that basic predisposition and walks people through re-discovering they already have specific qualities like strength, courage, and willpower.
Those are the foundational qualities that we need to “manifest” stuff in our lives. Without the strength, we won’t initiate action. Without the courage, we will stay locked in fear. Without willpower, we won’t be able to remain steadfast to our dreams… especially when life gets difficult.
Manifestation isn’t rocket science. Nor is it as simple as “Conceive, Believe, and Take Action” either. Yet it is that simple and it can simultaneously feel like rocket science. All we have to do is uncover the subconscious barriers that each of us have to experiencing our True Nature – which is inherently abundant regardless of any “stuff” you might want to attract into your life.
Getting into our subconscious is surprisingly difficult though. Many teachers will lead you astray by saying that “affirmations is enough.” For a few of them, this is actually true… I have great appreciation for Marc Allen (best-selling author and founder of the New World Library book publisher) because he’s transformed his life using little more than affirmations and scholarly reading.
For most people though, affirmations are a long-road to transforming their lives. That’s because for our entire lives our subconscious was reprogrammed in inefficient and ineffective ways, often without our consent. It took a lifetime to believe ourselves as having limited potential… so once we become aware our unlimited potential it can feel like a long road ahead to transformation.
That’s also part of where I feel the “hoax” is when it comes to the Law of Attraction. Too much emphasis is placed on affirming positivity and raising vibration positively, and not enough energy is invested in actually transforming your subconscious. Some teachers would even have you believe that if you have negative thoughts or feelings you are sabotaging your ability to manifest what you want.
And that’s where it gets upside-down.
See, the only way to actually live in a positive high vibration is to transform your negative self-sabotaging unconscious beliefs and feelings. Overriding them will only work for a little while, until your subconscious brings them back again and causes you to sabotage even your best efforts. The negative thoughts and feelings are far more effective pointers to manifesting than the “stuff is.” That’s because the negativity tells you which aspects of your subconscious still need to be transformed, and then with the right tools you can permanently transform those subconscious negative beliefs into experiences of your abundant True Nature.
Now here’s where it gets tricky…
Your subconscious, and more specifically the “Inner Critic” aspect of your subconscious wants to keep you both comfortable and small. It doesn’t want you to experience abundance, and it doesn’t want you to manifest your dreams. To your Inner Critic manifestation is hogwash that will make you uncomfortable and expansive. Your Inner Critic will always have something discouraging to say about your ability to manifest until you transform the Inner Critic itself.
That’s no easy task though because few bodies of work out there focus on this aspect of our subconscious. Byron Katie doesn’t really talk about the “Law of Attraction,” but she helps people manifest the lives they truly want to live. She uses another word for “Law of Attraction” which is “The Work.”
That’s what it really is. The Law of Attraction is working on your subconscious, bringing it to light, so that you can experience both your subconscious and conscious in alignment with your True Nature. So yes, the teachers who say you must bring your subconscious and conscious into alignment are right.
Not only that, but I sort of took you in a boomerang direction earlier when I said that the other spiritual laws don’t require you to transform your subconscious. While they don’t ‘require’ you to transform your subconscious to see the cause-and-effect results in your life, you do have to change your subconscious if you want those results to stick permanently.
For example, if you lack the ability to take action (as per the “Law of Action”), it’s not because your conscious mind has taken you astray… it’s because your Inner Critic has subconsciously caused you to believe that you’ll be more comfortable if you don’t take action. And even if you’re the best action-taker in the world, if your Inner Critic is quietly sabotaging your willpower then you’ll rarely finish what you start.
The beauty of spiritual laws is that as long as you are taking actions in alignment with the law, you will see the expected outputs. If you act in alignment with the Law of Action, you’ll see results in your life. Over time, your subconscious is naturally transformed by the consistent habit of taking action, and in this way you are using the “input equals output” formula to transform your life and your subconscious.
That’s a long slow road though that requires a lot of faith and trial and error, though. It also has a caveat: if you’re not taking action in the ways that also expand your other True Nature qualities, then even your best efforts (such as taking action) will be sabotaged by your lack of will to “stick with it.” In other words, just focusing on affirmations and taking action is actually the slowest road to transforming your life.
That’s why–in my experience–the quickest path to manifesting is to focus on discovering and developing very specific qualities of my True Nature. Qualities like strength, courage, and willpower enable me to move forward in life. Then I can focus on qualities like abundance, joy, and gratitude to “raise my vibration” permanently and manifest the inner experiences that are truly fulfilling to me. That’s the cake I truly want and then all the extra stuff is just “icing.”
Don’t get me wrong… I definitely the icing on cake (especially chocolate cake!), and just like you would love to experience more financial abundance and even more fulfilling relationships. The difference is that I don’t mistake the icing for the cake. What I want is to experience my True Nature fully, and then I can bring that with me no matter what I do in life. Stuff will come and go, but my True Nature is here to stay.
Which brings me back full circle… what is the real “Law of Attraction Hoax?”
It’s the suggestion that any of us want to manifest anything other than our True Nature.
http://www.chriscade.com/2011/05/the-law-of-attraction-hoax/
