What the heck is 'The Law of Attraction'?
- Carly Morton
- May 18, 2019
- 4 min read
Admittedly, I am a relative newbie to the concept of The Law of Attraction. It had been popping up in my YouTube feed for a while from the likes of Sam Ozkural with mind boggling titles like "Manifest in five minutes". I literally had no idea what this concept was and honestly thought that to manifest was somehow linked to exorcisms. This led me to the conclusion that the whole Law of Attraction business was clearly hippy and weird and I wanted nothing to do with it. Go figure...
Turns out, it has absolutely nothing to do with exorcisms and if you think about it logically, is not even remotely a 'hippy' practice.
Introduced to the mainstream through the widely known book "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne, The Law of Attraction is actually a Buddhist concept developed hundreds of years ago along with the notion of Karma. The essence of Buddha's teaching is 'what you become is what you have thought' and throughout the recent years, this concept has been largely associated with New Thought philosophy. The Law of Attraction has also been discussed by some of the world's most prominent thinkers such as Plato and Einstein.
The premise of The Law of Attraction is that everything in the Universe contains energy. Just as things contain energy, so do our thoughts where like attracts like. Positive thoughts will attract positive experiences in your life and consequently, negative thoughts will attract negative experiences. Here also comes into play the idea of 'vibration', where 'increasing your vibration' or 'frequency' is to increase the positive energy you are putting out to the world.
I like how Emma Mildon puts it in her book 'The Soul Sercher's Handbook' when she says "What your soul desires most, what the mind thinks about most, what the body craves in nourishment, is what you will attract into your life in return" (p.151). Now sure, you could actually use your mind powers for evil rather than good but I think majority of people would rather attract positive things into their life like great relationships, a job you are passionate about, financial security and health rather than negative things.
Jen Sincero also talks about it in her book 'You are a badass' (definitely worth a read, if you have time, if not, check out my book club blog on it). One of her suggestions when attempting to manifest things into your life is to 'act as if'.
"If you want something badly, even if you don't have any evidence that it's possible for you to attain, believe it anyway. Fake it until you make it. Do it inspite of yourself. Act as if...Tell yourself it's happening. Act like it's happening. Put yourself in situations where you will meet people who will make it happen. Stay wide open to opportunities that lead to your goal. Live, eat, sleep and breathe your vision." (p.97 and 98)
In the chapter 'Your brain is your bitch' Sincero also suggests upgrading your environment, creating a vision board and surrounding yourself with people who think the way you want to think in order to practise the Law of Attraction in your life.
When I think about my own life and experiences, I have probably been unknowingly practising The Law of Attraction. However, not in the way it is intended.
Reflecting on experiences in my own life, I feel that often times the thoughts/energy/vibration I have been putting out there about my life and my experiences has been largely negative. I often found myself operating from a place of fear, negativity, judgement and self-criticism and as a result managed to have a pretty crappy 2018, not taking into consideration some of the other epic life fails I have experienced along the way.
Last year, for the first time ever, I tried writing out my goals for the year in my journal and writing them in such a way that I 'acted as if' they had already come to fruition.
While I think this is an excellent practise, and I would encourage everyone to give it a try. I merely wrote them out and perhaps casually glanced at them once or twice throughout the year and that was it. While some of these goals DID come to pass, many did not. I wonder if that would have been different if I had of made a daily commitment to look at, think about, reflect and work on those goals? I wonder if it would have been different if I had of made an active choice to increase my vibration and put out more positive energy?
Being that I am a practising Christian, I am going to re-word that statement to appeal to like-minded individuals...I wonder if I had of prayed more frequently about my goals and desires and had a sense of peace about them and faith that God was listening and working his magic whether they would have been more likely to come to fruition?
The Law of Attraction may have originally been Buddhist practise, but you don't need to be Buddhist to believe it.
The Law of Attraction may now be associated with New Age Thought, but you don't need to be 'hippy' or 'spiritual' to believe it.
So in 2019 my intention is to invest in the premises of The Law of Attraction more fully and anticipate the many awesome things I am about to manifest into my life. Why not give it a try with me?
Carly xx
Comments