Working With the Laws of Attraction

“The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, an Australian television producer, has become a runaway best seller along with the DVD by the same name. You know something is making a splash when it manifests in a five-page article in Newsweek magazine.

If you have not come across this book or DVD, it is about the laws of attraction and manifestation, which the article correctly points out is not new and no secret, having been written about many times before by various authors.

Nevertheless this information is breaking into the mainstream and that is what is significant about the phenomenon. In addition to the success of the book and DVD, the Hicks’ books based on the channeling of Abraham have been hugely successful of late as well. In the original version of the film I saw, Esther Hicks appeared in the DVD, but was then edited out for some political reason that I am unaware of.

“The Secret” DVD has been criticized for being overly materialistic and I have to say that having seen it I was turned off by this aspect as well. The creators of the DVD say that was to attract the mainstream and they may be right about the young soul crowd, but it seems like an opportunity lost to stress manifesting mansions and jewelry over such timeless treasures as well being, peace, and living in a sustainable way on our beautiful planet. While the Newsweek article was predictably critical and demonstrated much ignorance, it did give the spread of this information a lot of press. No doubt with time the information will raise much controversy and even be deemed dangerous because of its emphasis on thoughts creating health over medical treatments and so on. This of course is predictable as well because younger souls just can’t grasp the information without distorting it, misunderstanding it, and finding it threatening. This of course is not their fault.

I do not find the information in “The Secret” to be inaccurate but simply incomplete and therefore misinforming and even a disservice in some regards. Let us here look at what is missing. First of all the material makes no mention of three very important considerations: 1. The chi, or energy, behind the thoughts that initiate the law of attraction. 2. Agreements, karma, and deeper essence lessons that take precedence over the thoughts and desires of false personality (ego). 3. Soul age and how it affects the law of attraction.
Now let us examine these one by one.

1. The reason that many people become frustrated with the law of attraction and continue to fail to manifest their hopes is that they simply don’t have the chi or energy to boost their thoughts into manifestation. When a person is ill, down, discouraged, or depressed they are usually also suffering from low chi or low energy. Low energy, like a low battery, doesn’t have the juice to light up the light bulb, so darkness prevails. In order to make the law of attraction work for you, you must have enough chi. Chi is lost through negativity, bad habits, addictions, worry, bad food, unclean water and air, a sedentary lifestyle, and too much time spent indoors. This state of low chi then acts as a vortex for other low chi experiences based on the law of attraction. Conversely chi is built up by being in nature, hanging around with high chi people and being in high chi places, constructive activity, chi gong, yoga, prayer, chanting, meditation, feeling and expressing love, laughter, play, being grateful, and many other positively oriented experiences. When the chi is stored in the reservoirs of the head, heart, and gut, and builds back up to a critical threshold, there is then enough chi to drive the positive thoughts and intentions into manifestation. Although this is alluded to indirectly in the Hicks’ books and “The Secret” they never actually come out and say it as far as I have been able to tell, so people don’t get that there is critical work to do in raising the chi. The Abraham material gives a very good system for moving gradually to more positive emotions and this indirectly accomplishes raising chi, but there are other very good ways to do so as well.

When people have life changing experiences that allow them to manifest more in their lives you will always find that they found some way to raise their chi and begin storing it for more effective use. When people are ignorant of this important notion, they can easily fall into the trap of being impatient with people who have depleted their chi and are not able to manifest positively. They may also fall into the trap of blaming poor people or people who are struggling with their experiences. This is a complete misuse of the information about the law of attraction, which leads us to our next point

2. There is no consideration given in these books and films to agreements, karma, keeping monads, and essence lessons. It assumes that anyone can manifest anything they want with the right thoughts and feelings. The only problem is that the ego or false personality is not the only one in charge of life. Ultimately essence runs the show and there are many reasons for life conditions that appear to be negative by the ego’s standards. For example many illnesses have been chosen by essence to teach certain powerful lessons like compassion, understanding, patience, and so on. The personality might not like these conditions and may try to change them, but until the lesson is learned according to the standards of essence the condition will not go away no matter how many thoughts are put into substituting health for illness.

The same is true for agreements. If you, on an essence level, have agreed to take care of a severely disabled child or difficult elderly parents, then you will find yourself in the situation until the agreement has been satisfied according to the wishes of essence and not ego. If you have agreed to be of service to a community that is very poor and downtrodden, then you may not manifest your mansion or riches until your agreement is taken care of. The keeping of monads is no different in this regard. If you have agreed on an essence level to learn through a victim victimizer monad, jailer-jailed, or serving an evil master, then you will probably find yourself going through the rough experience despite your personalities’ desire to avoid them. Of course you have free will and if you really want to you can postpone these agreements, but you are unlikely to by-pass them altogether because essence learns from human experiences.

Karma, often linked to agreements, is another compelling reason why everyone is not living a life of extreme wealth, influence, and egoic power. Some people lose loved ones, have accidents, innocently go to jail, get sent to war, go to difficult places, and lose their fortunes not because they have been thinking negatively, but because their karma, or as Jesus said, their sums, are being balanced. Certainly Gandhi did not go to jail because he was thinking negative thoughts, nor did Anwar Saddat, Nelson Mandela, and a host of older souls who have often experienced very difficult things on their way to greatness.

Now this is not to say that all suffering is worthwhile, nor is it to say that we should not use the law of attraction to try to manifest the most fulfilling, outstanding lives we are able. It simply means that we are not in a position to judge others for their experiences and that we need not feel like failures and blame ourselves when we have experiences that are more painful than what our personalities would want.

3. Now let us consider soul age in light of the law of attraction. This law applies to everyone alike because it is a universal law, but soul age does make a difference because of values and because of the nature of being in different stages of evolution.

Infant souls often have a great deal of chi or energy because they tend to live outdoors in less polluted environments like the jungle. However they are also extremely fearful and survival oriented and thus their experiences are mostly related to these themes, kill or be killed, seek food and shelter, and live according to superstition. However they are aware that they can influence such things as weather and other events through their beliefs no matter how irrational. Their biggest problem is that they are so afraid of everything and thus they often experience horrible things because their fear brings about their worst fears. To some degree this is part of their evolution. Small children do fall down and skin their knees as part of their experience learned to use their bodies.

Baby souls, rule oriented people, think that someone else is in charge of their lives, usually a patriarchal god figure whom they must placate or suffer terrible consequences. Since they are unable to “be good” for the duration of their lives, needing to break rules to find out what happens, they also suffer the terrible consequences that they imagine will happen to them. However they are quite averse to accepting that their thoughts and consequent feelings create their reality because that is too terrifying for a toddler to deal with. They are more prone to identify themselves as victims of others. Paradoxically they are the most interested in trying to control everything and everyone so that no one has too much freedom or is too unique. Everyone must conform, everyone must believe the same thing, everyone must behave according to the rules. Since this is ultimately impossible they are doomed to fail and that is the most terrifying thing of all. Their failure actually propels their evolution to more mature ways of being as they discover individuality won’t go away. This was the excellent theme of the film Pleasantville.

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Young Success oriented souls are caught between a rock and hard place. More than any other type they are aware that thoughts and desires can influence their reality but they totally identify with ego or false personality so they think that it is their personality that decides everything and of course this is not so. They too have an essence that is helping to direct their reality. Nevertheless young soul essences usually allow their personalities the indulgence of many of their desires for lessons sake and they often become famous, wealthy, attractive, or influential. They just don’t understand what is happening when they lose everything to the ravages of life, get sick, and get old, and yes, die like everyone else. What a surprise. Ego is not in charge of everything.

Mature relationship oriented souls are also often confused about the nature of the law of attraction. From an early age they often have the experience that they know things they are not supposed to know or they can predict events, or even influence reality with their thoughts and feelings. Yet they also feel like victims of such experiences as unsuccessful relationships, heartbreak, betrayal, and other difficult scenarios they don’t feel they are in control of. This is because mature souls are the ones so often trying to repay karma, keep hard agreements and monads, and learn challenging lessons. These experiences are generated by essence and not by personality. Therefore they can’t quite figure out what they control and what they don’t control and are often in perpetual confusion until they are in the late levels approaching being an old soul. But because they glimpse the real connection between thoughts, feelings, and their reality, they are quite interested in such methods as the power of positive thinking, prayer, and inspiration.

Old philosophically oriented souls generally discover before too long that their thoughts and feelings have a direct relationship upon their reality and this gives them a big advantage in life over others. Since what their personality wants is often in alignment with what their essence has in mind they can become very powerful manifestors. However, they are just not motivated by big mansions and jewelry for show so they don’t often impress younger souls as knowing anything worthwhile. Meanwhile they often use their power to manifest big life tasks such as influencing a peace process, ending slavery, or supporting poor people to find a way out of their hopelessness. More than any other type of people, old souls understand the law of attraction and put it to good use but they also understand that the law of attraction also applies to what essence magnetizes and that the personality must bow to these events and experiences. The more they surrender the more powerful they become. Now that is indeed a most interesting secret.

There are other considerations regarding the law of attraction as well. Sometimes human beings rehearse various possibilities in their minds to see where the possibilities may lead. This is a creative process and in no way means that the person intends to manifest each possibility. They fall into the what-if categories and can be classified as problem solving musings, kind of like sketching different plans for a building that will be built only one way. The danger of the way “The Secret” and the Hicks’ books present the information is that it can lead people to be afraid of their thoughts and suppress the creative wanderings and sketchings of consciousness. We sometimes need to examine all angles before deciding on a course of action. Therefore just thoughts don’t lead to the laws of attraction, it is thoughts and intention that make the difference. To be fair the Abraham material does speak of the importance of intent.

So when reading or watching this material keep these things in mind and it will help to keep the material in perspective. In all fairness to the authors of these works it is very difficult to address a book or a film to all soul ages and there is bound to be distortion or misunderstanding. Whenever an author tries to dumb down material for younger soul ages to digest there tends to be problems with application of the information and then there is resulting controversy and attempts to discredit the information. This is what we face more and more in the coming ages as the world shifts from a young success oriented perspective to a mature relationship oriented one. For this main reason you can understand the polarization that increasingly characterizes the country and the planet itself. The baby souls will fight desperately to resist any information about the law of attraction because it makes them feel terrified that everyone will go off and do whatever they want and there will be no order whatsoever. Given their understanding of life and need for control you can then understand why they are so afraid. The young souls of course will translate everything through their ego oriented position, refusing to acknowledge essence and this will give them justification for at times behaving selfishly and using horrible judgment. Relationship oriented souls will be a little naïve about what can and cannot be accomplished through the law of attraction and old souls will try to clarify, teach, and lead by example throwing much more weight behind essence driven choices and the need to override at times the endless desires of the false personality.

A happy person has the simple desire to please essence and surrender to what essence wants. A deeply fulfilled human being manifests a quieter mind and a quiet mind can listen to essence much more than a monkey mind. Sometimes the ego needs to be placated by allowing it to have some of its endless desires such as a new car, a nicer house, or more money. Being a slave to the rampant desires of ego is not really the way to go because it always leads to complication and complication leads us away from the truth, not toward it.

To make it simple the ego, false personality hijacks the intellectual center regularly and that is how it dictates its endless desires and resistances. Essence communicates via the heart and uses the brain in service of the heart so to manifest anything worth having, go deep into your heart. At times the heart may feel inaccessible, dead, or like a lump of lead but that is not a reason to avoid it. This is just another way for the false personality to say, “You see, its no use, why bother, it’ll never open.” You must persist and the easiest way is to focus on breathing. Since the lungs wrap around the heart your breath gently massages it and if you focus on this the heart will eventually soften and produce a most pleasing sensation. Then you can get to know its enormous power and it will produce for you essence oriented manifestations that will truly satisfy you, unlike mansions and jewelry that if they come will eventually go.

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José Stevens

José Luis Stevens, PhD is the president and co-founder (with wife Lena) of Power Path Seminars, an international school and consulting firm dedicated to the study and application of shamanism and indigenous wisdom to business and everyday life. José completed a ten-year apprenticeship with a Huichol (Wixarika) Maracame (Huichol shaman) in the Sierras of Central Mexico. In addition, he is studying with Shipibo shamans in the Peruvian Amazon and with Paqos (shamans) in the Andes in Peru. In 1983 he completed his doctoral dissertation at the California Institute of Integral Studies focusing on the interface between shamanism and western psychological counseling. Since then, he has studied cross-cultural shamanism around the world to distill the core elements of shamanic healing and practice. He is the author of twenty books and numerous articles including Encounters With Power, Awaken The Inner Shaman, The Power Path, Secrets of Shamanism, Transforming Your Dragons and How To Pray The Shaman’s Way.