The Law of Attraction has been gaining in popularity since the movie "the Secret" came out in 2006. The notion that we can attract to us what we truly desire and make all our dreams effortless come true has been made to look so easy in the film. We should be able to dream it, feel it and instantly attract it to us. In other words, visualize the future you want, feel the elevated emotions that would accompany this reality and wait for the Universe to magically bring it to you.
But if it was that easy, why then do most of us have so much trouble creating the life we want? If we can all do it, why then have the principles of the Law of Attraction been adopted by so many self-help gurus and coaches as a tool to help you realize your best life and finally find happiness?
The main problem with the above approach is that we fail to address the different levels of consciousness. The Law of Attraction works at the level of the conscious mind. On this level, we are aware of the body and of our environment and are capable of thinking and making decisions. We make use of the conscious mind when we decide what we want in our lives and what our future life should look like. We can use our conscious imagination to create the perfect scenario in our mind and consciously bring our awareness to the emotions of joy, happiness and gratitude we feel in the body when we think of this future.
But what about the subconscious mind?
The subconscious mind refers to the part of the mind that operates below the level of conscious awareness. It is responsible for storing and processing information that is not currently in our conscious awareness. Every memory, experience, feeling, thought, skill and forgotten / subliminal piece of information is stored in our subconscious mind.
Survival of the organism is the main job of the subconsious mind. During our childhood we experienced situations and energies and these experiences taught us what worked and what didn't work to keep us safe and survive in life. Those decisions are stored in our subconscious as belief systems and automatic programs and tendencies. These programs, tendencies and beliefs run in the background and cause us to automatically act and react in a given situation, often caused by a trigger.
Most people don't even know what drives their decisions and their actions on a subconscious level. They say things, do things, choose things, like and dislike things, mostly without really knowing the reasons why and yet they think this is who they are. Scientific estimates are, however, that some 95% of brain activity is unconscious, which means that 95% of who we think we are is nothing more than a set of unconscious processes, attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and emotional reaction patterns stored in our subconscious mind.
This means that when we consciously try to manifest a certain outcome in our lives, such as a loving relationship, but at the same time there is a program or belief system running in the subconscious background that believes we don't deserve happiness, we can apply the law of attraction until we are blue in the face, yet nothing will happen. Until we dive into what is subconsciously driving the bus, all conscious efforts to manifest may be no more then an act of the ego, or said differently, our egoic wants, needs and desires as well as an attempt to be in control.
Eckhart Tolle said in one of his workshops: "The secret - or the power - to manifest is in experiencing the fullness of the present moment, ie. the undifferentiated fullness of life. [If] you cannot feel the fullness of life on your bicycle and tremendously enjoy that moment of being on your bicycle, you will not feel the fullness of life when you are sitting in your Rolce Royce or your Bentley or Ferrari."
"Manifesting is of course something that you can use and it works if it is done right. The fallacy [however] is the belief that whatever you are going to manifest is going to make you happy. [Therefor seeking] the fullness of life through what you are manifesting - through things - doesn’t really work."
So if we are manifesting from a subconscious, wounded place, it is like trying to create a perfect life to make up for the unconscious pain we are feeling, without being aware of it. For example, if we didn't feel love as a child, we may think that manifesting abundance is going to make up for it, or if we have not been heard by our mother in our formative years, we may now desire status and power so people finally have to listen to us, or if our parents were not emotionally available, we may feel that marriage and children are finally going to fill us up.
These wounded parts need to be healed first. First, we need to become aware of what our wounded parts are and accept them. We then need to learn how to be kind to ourselves (see previous blog) and learn to love ourselves unconditionally. For only unconditional love for self can heal the false perceptions of ourselves (the decisions we have made up about ourselves and the world in order to survive). First we need to find our way back to the undifferentiated fullness of life.
What is the undifferentiated fullness of life?
It is the experience of pure love, joy and happiness in our heart and our whole being; it is the experience of feeling interconnected (ie. to self and all of life); it is the experience of vitality in every cell of our body. Once we experience that, then no future moment can possibly be better. Anything that happens in the future is only an adding-on to that which we already experience right here, right now.
At higher levels of consciousness, the whole idea of manifesting becomes increasingly irrelevant!