***The Trouble with The Law of Attraction

There are so many books out now proclaiming that we can use the Law of Attraction to create abundance, love, wealth, happiness, etc. etc. The trouble with these belief systems is that it is all mental illusion. It fosters the belief that if you follow their secret recipe, you will get what you want. These “attraction gurus” want you believe that if you are not getting what you want, you must be doing something wrong. If you would just do it right, then you would be happy.

The underlying illusion that these gurus perpetuate is that we are in control. They would have us think that we are the “doer”, that we can make a difference by thinking a certain way, that we can manifest by sheer will power. THIS IS AN ILLUSION. It creates multiple layers of illusion that are held together by the desire to get something that you want. All of this creates and perpetuates suffering.

The first layer of illusion is the illusion of like and dislike. These are judgments that are based upon the illusion that something is good or bad. Everything in this world simply is. Look at animals. They do not worry or are anxious. They simply are. They live their lives based upon sheer instinct. They do not waste their time regretting their past or fantasizing about their future. They do not spend their day dreaming about what their life would be like if it were different.

We are given the gift of analytical thinking simply to focus our thoughts on gratitude and love. We are also gifted with this analytical thinking to change what we can change to love each other more. That is why we came to this planet, to experience life and to learn how to love more. We were not given the gift of analytical thinking to convince ourselves how wretched we are, how big of a victim we are, or how unfair the world is. The world is not unfair, the world simply is. No amount of fantasizing or mental analysis will change that.

This first layer of illusion is simply that we choose to be unhappy with our lives. That is useless poverty consciousness. Poverty consciousness has at its core the belief that there is not enough and we will never be enough. From this core springs eternal the belief that we are victims and are not as good as someone else. That is true poverty and suffering. If you believe that you are a victim, that your life is not good enough, and you buy into the belief that you can change your life by wishing for something hard enough, nothing will change. You could win the lottery and you would still be miserable. This is born out time and time again in news accounts of the suffering lottery winners experience after the money comes in.

The second layer of illusion is that we can do something to alter the circumstances of our lives by visualization, prayer, or some other mental activity. This simply does not happen. We are here to experience life. Life comes in all forms and experiences. When we place our judgment of like or dislike upon the experiences, we alter our perception of these events. When we alter our perception of these events, we lose the lesson they are intended to teach us. This is the reason we suffer the same traumas over and over again, we simply have not learned the lesson the “traumas” are created to teach. Even by calling them traumas, we create an illusion about the event. They are not traumas, they are simply events.

Let us look at child incest and sexual abuse. If you have experienced these events, how do you perceive them? Do you wish that they had never happened? Do you perceive yourself to be a victim of these events? If so, you will continue to suffer. You will continue to be the victim of events you perceive as traumas. They are not. They are simply events. We choose to carry around the energy of victim hood, which creates a perspective in our heads that everything that happens to us is a trauma. As long as we carry around this energy, the Law of Attraction is irrelevant. Nothing that we “do” will change anything. This is because our perception has not changed. As long as we are living in this illusion of misperception, we will continue to suffer no matter what.

The last illusion is that we are the “doer.” We are fostering this belief that we are co-creators of our reality, which implies that we control our reality. This is an illusion. We are not the “doer.” We are an instrument of God (however we perceive her) on this planet, and we are here to experience our experiences and to learn to love each other more. We fall into a trap of suffering when we attempt to change our reality through wishing for something else. We can’t change our reality this way. It is an illusion. When we go through this great mental exercise of visualization, etc. etc, we are reaching for the fruits of our labor. This is another aspect of suffering. Whenever we do something expecting a reward or a particular result, one of two things happen. If we get what we want, we start to believe that we can have anything we want, which is an illusion. Eventually we will not get what we want, and then we will suffer. The second thing that may happen is that we don’t get what we want. Then we feel even more victimized and the wheel of despair rolls on.

There is only one way out of this trap of illusion. It is to learn to love ourselves and our lives without condition. If we were to love everything and be grateful for everything, we would not want anything else. As life is constantly changing, we would continually be getting more and more experiences and enjoying each and everyone of them, whether it is winning the lottery or bouncing a check. One is no better than the other in the big picture, they are only events in life. When we love ourselves, we do not permit ourselves to be abused by others, no more than we would let someone abuse our children.

We have to stop perpetuating this myth that we can manifest a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. What we can do is be filled with gratitude for the rainbow, and appreciate our lives as being a child of god. When we are grateful for the rainbow, and do not suffer because we couldn’t find the pot of gold, then we are truly blessed. It is all about us, it is all about our attitude, it is all about quitting reaching for the fruits of our actions. When we look for God in every event, in every face, in every hurtful or helpful word we hear, we then truly become the co-creators of paradise. When we stay in this zone, we are far more likely to enjoy our life than focusing on some formula for miracles that only perpetuates illusion.