How Far Can You Take The Law of Attraction?

You Can’t Just Sit Around Visualizing and Expect Things To Happen … Or Can You?

"Your action has nothing to do with your abundance! Your abundance is a response to your vibration. Of course, your belief is part of your vibration. So, if you believe that action is part of what brings your abundance, then you've got to unravel that."  –Abraham-Hicks

What you mean I have to get off my couch and take action if I want a financial independence? A total fantasy! I don’t believe it.

I love the Law of Attraction – and have for years. There are many slants to the Law Attraction but all the permeations are grounded in the same principle – that we human beings have the capacity to create the life we want.

When I was younger, I had an inherent knowledge that I created the life I want. I didn’t have to work at believing it – I just knew it.

And in my youth, I had lots of energy. I am an Aries, I have fire signs all over my astrological chart, my Mayan chart is all about energy, etc. The point is I had an abundance of natural energy – and I still have lots of natural energy – and taking action has always been easy and natural for me and I love to do things.

I became obsessed with action and taking actions – the right actions at the right time became my mantra.

In manifesting my life, I used lots of energy (translate to “actions”) to do it. I am a big fan of action. I even wrote a 26 week e-course about how to get yourself to take appropriate and inspired actions – after all, you can’t just sit around visualizing something if you want it to really happen – or can you?

A strange phenomenon happened to me about 5 years ago - totally out of the blue. (I’m sure I had nothing to do with it. ) I went through a monumental “worldview” paradigm shift.

I was now in my 50s and I could see that there were about a million actions that I had not taken to get prepared for this stage of my life. That was when I had this shocking realization - that all my actions carried such a paltry bit of energy compared to the inertia of this gigantic world. Even my “inspired actions” didn’t seem significant next to the immensity of all that was happening in this universe. 

It was time for a new worldview - my old one wasn’t working that well for me anymore. This stuff is OK when you are younger and have lots of time in front of you but when you are older and have so many things you have to do before it’s “too late” this stuff doesn’t really fit the real world. What was I thinking all these years?

After many muddled confrontations with more mundane worldviews (e.g. Soon I’m going to get too old to work so I need a gigantic retirement fund; the mainstream does things a certain way for a reason - because it works - so I’d best get in line with mainstream), I ended up back in the Law of Attraction - but with what seemed to me to be an upgraded perception.

Do you ever notice that we always end up where we started but at a more conscious and aware level?

An aside about paradigms and THE TRUTH

A paradigm is a way of organizing an aspect of the world by applying certain logical principles to explain certain observations (think allopathic medicine vs. spiritual healing).

You can’t say that one paradigm is truer than another. For instance, Christianity vs. Goddess religion – which one is the representation of The Truth of reality?  But we often mistake the prevailing (or our favorite) paradigm as a representation of The Truth of reality.

There are no true paradigms.  A paradigm is just a viewpoint. No paradigm can lay claim to being “The Truth” while others are misguided - although proponents of particular paradigms try to do it all the time.

Do we really know what is The Truth?  Not really - it is more a matter of belief and faith than of Truth but we often mistake our belief and faith as The Truth.  Or we say that one paradigm is The Truth because it fits the facts better.  But we all know facts are changing day by day (remember, the world used to be flat and Pluto was a planet).

So, if it is not The Truth that makes a paradigm “worthy” of your attention what is it that makes a paradigm useful?

What makes a paradigm useful is the strength and integrity of its own internal logic system. Does its internal logic stand up under scrutiny – is its logic pure and consistent with its main conceptual principles?

Any paradigm is only as good as the integrity and consistency of its own internal logic.

In the end, the matter of useful (as opposed to truthful) comes down to: Does the paradigm answer my key questions in a way that seems more satisfying to me than other paradigms? 

Does this paradigm make more sense to me than other paradigms?

Does it jive more with what I think I know now?

Does it fit the facts that I think are true?

Does it have practical applications to my life as I want to live it?

The thing with paradigms is this: their logic is designed to work internally - within their own paradigm. You can ‘t take the logic from one paradigm and plop it down in another paradigm and expect to reach any logically consistent conclusions. (Applying the logic of the scientific paradigm to the paradigm of shamanic healing just doesn’t fit.) If you attempt to mix paradigm logic systems eventually it ends up as murky chaos or a blob of mediocrity.

Back to the Law of Attraction

After five years of paradigm busting and building, here I am with my upgraded understanding of the logic for the Law of Attraction and I keep bristling at these references to the necessity for taking action.

When you bring up the Law of Attraction, many people ready with a tirade about action being what it takes in this world to make things happen. If you want to be successful, you have to work your butt off and this whole Law of Attraction is a scam – or worse.

You may have noticed this in the fallout after The Secret was highlighted on the Oprah show.  There were all kinds of outraged rebuttals - some even going as far as saying how it was unethical to even suggest that visualizing something would make it happen. People were being misled and if they took the Law of Attraction seriously - they would all stop doing what really mattered – getting out there and taking those actions to make things work.

James Arthur Ray - spotlighted on Oprah as a Law of Attraction proponent - says if you just sit around on your couch all day visualizing being rich they will come and take your furniture away.

And awhile back, what I read from Aaron Potts (Today is the Day blog) is- “The belief that you can sit around visualizing millions of dollars, and then suddenly they will just show up for you is nothing less than a total fantasy.”

And Bill Harris over at the Blog that Ate Mind Chatter referred to (somewhere in his voluminous posts) the idea that you could make things happen in this world without taking action as bulls#!t. (paraphrased)

Something about all this need for action didn’t strike me as fully consistent with the Law of Attraction logic. I have to say that the whole idea of action being necessary within the paradigm of the Law of Attraction doesn’t make any sense to me.

I think it’s a case of trying to apply the logic of consensual reality to the logic of the Law of Attraction. 

“A total fantasy” – Maybe that’s going too far

The basic tenet of the Law of Attraction is simple – whatever you are in vibrational alignment with is what you see show up in your world. Your thoughts, feelings, body functioning, actions, beliefs, mental constructs, - and probably more - all contribute to your vibrational alignment.

This concept of vibrational alignment is the key. Vibrational alignment is beyond thinking positive, it is beyond feeling good, it is beyond taking actions/ inspired actions, it is beyond beliefs – it is a certain state of being wherein thoughts, feelings, actions, beliefs all become attuned to its resonant frequency or energetic coherence.

You probably shouldn’t want to go around taking actions that are in contradiction to what you truly want because this won’t be in tune with your vibrational alignment. But do you really have to take action to bring into your life what you do want?

What about shamanic healing?
What about long distance healing?
What about extra-sensory perceptions?
Telepathic experiences?

Just Sitting Home On Your Couch

If you are sitting home on your couch being in vibrational alignment with your desire for money to just come to your door there is nothing in the Law of Attraction’s basic paradigm logic that says that can’t happen.

There may be lots of things in other paradigms about how the world works that say that won’t happen.  But if you are in vibrational alignment (that is you believe it is possible, you believe you can do it, you feel good about doing it, you have not bought into any consensual reality beliefs that it’s a total fantasy to do it, etc.) with the desire to sit home on your couch and become rich  - the Law of Attraction says what you are in vibrational alignment with shows up in your life.

In our Western worldview, we have big energy concepts (e.g. beliefs, consensual agreement, morphogenetic fields) around going out there and working for what you want. Not to mention the Puritan Work Ethic - and there is a lot of agreement in the world for that.  And even in the arena of the Law of Attraction there are subgroups of people who are into the necessity for taking actions to create the life you want.

Why is it that there is such a lot of energy around the need for taking actions?

Scientists tell us that we seem to be programmed from birth to accept the idea of locality as reality. Loosely translated this means that if we want to make something happen we have to make direct contact with it. As humans, it seems that we find the ability to influence at a distance unnatural. “Research on babies has shown that they don’t accept action at a distance, believing that there needs to be contact between two objects to allow one to act on the other.”

Maybe this feeling and belief about the necessity for action is just an outgrowth of our apparently inherent consensual agreement that we have to act on and make direct contact with something to make it happen.

My current favorite Law of Attraction paradigm is provided by Abraham – Ester and Jerry Hicks. The Abraham logic about action is one I really resonate with and for me it provides me with the most joy and freedom in my manifestation process - and provides me with the most intriguing options for possibilities.

Action is not discouraged but neither is it deemed necessary.

“You did not come into this environment to create through action. Instead, your action is meant to be a way in which you enjoy what you have created through thought. You are mostly physical-action Beings at this time because you do not yet understand the power of your thoughts. When you are better at applying your deliberate thought, there will not be so much action for you to tend to.” 

Just for a moment, allow it to be possible that we don’t have to take actions to create what we want. Just for a moment, imagine that you have managed to transcend the limiting belief in the need for locality. Just for a moment imagine that maybe actions are just for the thrill of it all – but not necessary.  The how is not important – but the allowing of the possibility is.

I once worked with a man who said that his fortune came to him through his fax machine. He had written a couple of books and mostly they sat on his bookshelf. Then one day some millionaire from Australia sent him a fax and said he wanted to buy the rights to his books. Somehow the books had gotten into the hands of this Australian millionaire and he was willing to pay a lot of money for the rights to them. Since then, I check my faxes carefully.

Sometimes what we think can’t be done is more a matter of having reached the limits of what we can imagine rather than a statement of truth. For instance, one of my current limiting imagination thoughts is that healing takes time and change is gradual. But I’m working on bringing a little bit of uncertainty to what I think I know so that it gives away to a wider field of possibilities.

Action fans are fond of saying - If you want to win the lottery, you have to buy a ticket. Do you?

Why couldn’t you sit home on your couch being in vibrational alignment with becoming rich without having to do anything and - have it happen?

What if you were sitting on your couch in your living room and between the pages of your favorite comic book you found a lottery ticket and it’s the winning ticket. Perhaps the wind blew there. Perhaps a bird picked it up and dropped it there. Perhaps an angel dropped it there … or whatever. You win the millions and you didn’t even have to leave the house. They will come and get your furniture  - when they bring you your new furniture.

Yes, I know you had to buy the comic, find the lottery ticket and check the winning numbers – and they are all actions. I’m not against action. For me action makes the whole process of manifestation more enjoyable. And I think taking action is a very helpful and easy way to shift your vibrational alignment – but is it really necessary for manifestation – for creating what you want in your life?

The point is this – let yourself imagine for a moment letting go of the need for action. Imagine stepping into a paradigm where it is your certain state of being - your vibrational alignment - that creates your life. Taking action is helpful and fun - but not necessary.

Push your mind to let go of the need for action and see what opens up – what possibilities appear. If you like the idea of action, it’s not prohibited – it is just a cool extra-added luxury item in the manifestation process. It’s an optional step. It just adds to your feelings of joy and bliss. If you are into action.

What is the harm of letting go of our attachment to action?

Don’t you think it’s better to embrace all the possibilities rather than be constrained by limits?

I believe that as humans we have the biological potential for allowing straight out thought manifestation.

Am I there yet?

No.

I find it paradoxical to hold this belief and still have to rely so much on action to bring about the results I want. For me at this point in my life I find that bringing about what I want to see in my life relies heavily on focused thought, creative positive emotions, and disciplined, inspired actions. I am still reaching for that pure thought manifestation.

If you can move yourself out of the predominant agreement that action is needed for manifestation to occur, if you can move yourself beyond the inherent human concept of locality, and you are happily sitting home on your couch attracting money to you – maybe I’ll come visit you and you can give me some tips. Then I will have more choices – sometimes I’ll sit on my couch too and sometimes I will get out and about in the world doing things.

"Everything you can imagine is real."   -Picasso