Beyond The Secret

Have you been over to the Conscious Me blog lately? Carlos has been talking about the Law ofAttraction (you can see his series here: Creation, Action, and Connection), he and I have also been having an independent conversation about the topic which is why he suggested I might share my thoughts publicly with all of you.

This isn’t the first time I’ve begun this post (although, I’m planning on it being the last), but I just haven’t been there; you know, in the place where my feelings, words, and fire all come together into a cognitive whole… So, I was putting it off.

And then last week I followed an internal link on Blisschick’s blog and read an old article she had written on the topic (The #1 Reason The Secret and the Law of Attraction Won’t Work for You). This gave me a lot to think about because I both am, and am not, in agreement with Bliss.

Then yesterday, out of the blue and for no apparent reason, while I was pulling out of my parking spot the feelings and the fire came to me all at once with one simple thought:

The problem is, it’s not about the red Ferraris.

The Secret has always been a little controversial – people love it, people hate it – and I imagine even more decisions are being made about its philosophies now that enough time has passed since its blaze of glory for people to have both failed and succeeded in its wake. The problem, as far as I can see it, is that The Secret is so very materialistic (and as Blisschick points out, simplistic – but that might have been done on purpose).

Its not that I disagree with the nay-sayers’ points, it’s just that the thing is: The Secret changed my life. So, I find myself more willing to give it some grace, or even the benefit of the doubt. I’m not sure it’s fair to blame the problems inherent in our culture on one simplistic video – all the people trying to “manifest” Ferraris now would have been lusting over them and believing they were the point to life even without The Secret.

I’m also not justifying the flaws in the current wave of Law of Attraction teaching. To me, The Secret offered an opportunity; it prodded a door open that I didn’t even know existed. I found it to be a giant wrapped box that you unwrapped over and over again only to find a tiny, invaluable, treasure at its core. (In fact, I’m of the opinion that most teaching in the world is a whole lot of crap bundled around a few golden nuggets and it’s our job to digest and separate it all until we get to the good stuff.)

While I’m sure that the Law of Attraction can help you get a new car, your ideal home, a couch (and it has done those exact things for me), that’s not its actual purpose, and not even close to the extent of its value. It may work for attracting – or manifesting – things, but that’s like using your car as a good place to take a nap and never actually driving it anywhere. If you never move beyond the materialistic possibilities then you are missing the boat (and the dock, and possibly the ocean).

If You Just Used our System You’d Instantly Have All The… You Could Ever Want

The basic problem with what we understand of the Law of Attraction right now is that we think of it as a system. Follow Step A. Then plug thingy B into slot C. Presto chango, your ultimate wish has materialized. (Something like ordering food on the Starship Enterprise: Tea, Earl grey. Ta Da – Tea appears.)

The Law of Attraction was something that I had to internalize, something I had to learn to live. What really made an Aha! moment for me was when Ester Hicks (I don’t know what the current cut does for this, we had the original when she was still in it) talked about emotions being a barometer or guide for our choices and how we were being. Bad feelings mean: not in line with your core. Good feelings mean: this is the path, walk on it. For me, this was the golden nugget of truth. I examined it, turned and twisted it; I experimented with it, applied it, and I took it apart. From here I learned everything else I needed to know, or was led in the next right direction.

I learned that the Law of Attraction wasn’t about steps I needed to follow and that The Secret had had an immensely limited scope in only talking about it’s material potential. I learned new phrases that better summed up the truth behind the mask – terms like Lifestyle Design (Carlos’ preference) and Conscious Creation (mine). I learned it had very little to do with what I did, thought, or felt for ten minutes a day here or there (though, that is an immensely powerful beginning) and had everything to do with who I was being on a more regular basis.

Live a Life worth Attracting

For me the Law of Attraction is really a state of being, a way of living, that is as much about choosing how you are going to see and react to the things that are already in your life as it is about getting the life you want (or maybe more so).

It is, in truth, a spiritual practice and can be found at the core of pretty much every authentic tradition out there. Its reality is so much deeper and broader than many people believe it to be, and yes, the real student of it needs to be prepared to sit in the face of it and do the work that it demands. But, the rewards are unmeasurable.

Life is never going to stop being life. There are always going to be hardships, lessons to learn, challenges to face and overcome. After all, I will always have depression – or rather the potential for it – even when I’m not in the throughs of it. That doesn’t mean that these things need to always rule our lives. The true Law of Attraction is about living a life where we can see through those things – or even embrace them – and still discover all the things we really dreamed about are with us in that place, too.

The Law of Attraction asks us: What is your world like? What is your worldview? And then it demands that we examine whether or not that is the world we want to live in, and whether that is the life that we want.

If our current vision is also our ideal, then it teaches us how to gently foster it into creation each and every day. If it’s not then the Law of Attraction asks us to envision the world we do want and to begin living as if we already lived in that world. It says, “What do you want to see?” and then promptly follows it with, “What are you doing to create it?”

Yes, it will work for cars, and bills, and things, but there’s only so long you’ll indulge a teenager before you tell him that he’s not six anymore and it is, after all, time to grow up. The real Law of Attraction is all about growing up (and in and over too), we just need to know how to look at it.