A great deal of what has been said about the Law of Attraction is only half the story. Attraction is one of two forces contained within magnetism. The other is ‘repulsion.’ Magnetism does not operate without both poles. In other words, if you can accept that you are currently attracting the elements of your life, then you are also repelling energies as well, simultaneously. In fact, you are probably repelling a lot more than you are attracting. Your entire field of experience, everything you have attracted to you, is small in comparison to all that is being repelled, all that is possible.

There are good reasons to repel more than we attract. One reason, of course, is that if we attracted everything, it would be overwhelming. We must have a way of protecting our consciousness from overload. People who are not able to repel energies may have significant psychological difficulties. Our capacity to repel sensory stimuli and information is probably more important than our capacity to attract it. The brain is wired in such a way that is only lets in a certain amount of data. However, the criteria for that data can shift with our changing interests, values, wants and desires. For example, if you have no interest whatsoever in hybrid vehicles, you won’t notice them at all on the road; the brain will filter out that stimuli, it will be repelled from consciousness. But, if you take an interest in hybrid vehicles, then you start seeing them on the road, you start noticing articles in magazines , you start hearing other people talk about them. That information was out there all the time, but it was repelled, it was filtered out. With changing interest, your filter adjusts its criteria and you are now receptive, you are now attracting, that information.

There is another important reason we may repel something we tell ourselves we want. As an example, let’s say we desire to attract into our life more money. More money is a very common desirable goal. However, whatever we may want to attract into our life, money, health, loving relationships, etc., is, presumably, being repelled, filtered out. We only want what we currently do not have. And, although we could attract what we don’t have into our life, what might come along with it unbid? That is, if we want more money and at the same time have a subconscious belief that people with money are arrogant and prideful, and we don’t want to be arrogant and prideful, then there may be a conflict in attracting money because as money comes, so would the tangentials of arrogance and pride. Just about everything we might want to attract into our life that we are currently repelling would have some tangentials attached to it. These tangentials are the subconscious associations and meanings attached to whatever we think we want to attract into our life. For example, let’s say we want to attract a meaningful job. The word ‘job’ has many, many associations to it, many meanings. Those associations and meanings are the tangentials attached to whatever it is we think of when we say ‘job’ or ‘good job.’ If one of those tangentials happens to be long hours at work, or too much time away from family , or increased levels of stress, all of which could be subconscious beliefs based on childhood impressions of the word ‘job,’ then those could easily come along with ‘job’ or, maybe, and more likely, repelled, thus preventing the materialization of that which we want to attract.

The way around this predicament is to engage in ecological dialogue with one’s ‘objections.’ That is, rather than visualize what you want to attract, find out first if there are any elements within your consciousness that object to bringing in what you want to attract. This may require some imaginative visualization. And, it certainly requires an open mind. However, by tending to the parts of our consciousness that may have objections to materializing something in our life, we tend to the very cause of resistance and failure. There may be parts of our creative subconscious mind that is acutely aware of the tangentials and until those are addressed, the desired goal will not be obtained. For example, let’s say we want to attract into our life friends who are very fit. We start to attend a gym, to get ourself fit. We read fitness magazines. We attract into our life a variety of elements that have to do with fitness . And yet, we have not made friends. What is the obstacle? Perhaps, buried within the subconscious mind is a tangential which says something like people who are fit are obsessive and obsessive people are annoying. So, in effect, we are repelling annoying people at the same time we want to attract fit people, and they are one in the same, in the subconscious mind. By attending to the objection, the idea that fit people are obsessive, and obsessive people are annoying, the obstacle can be examined and, perhaps, adjusted or removed; we would then no longer repel fit people into our circle of friends, and we will have attracted into our life what we want, ecologically, having taken into account, and ideally, neutralized, underlying reasons for the repulsion.

The subconscious mind is not only very creative and tremendously powerful, it also has access to our intuition , which is holistic and ecological; our intuition knows, beyond rational cognition and inference, the bigger picture. It behooves us to align with it and consider that what we want to attract into our life that is not manifest now, may be currently repelled for a reason, a reason beyond the ego’s capacity to comprehend, but within the scope of our heart’s understanding.

Author's Bio: 

Ken Fields is a nationally certified licensed mental health counselor. With over 25 years in the mental health field, he has worked as as an individual and family therapist throughout school districts and within communities, a crisis intervention counselor, a clinical supervisor and an administrator in a human service agency. He has taught classes in meditation, visualization, goal setting, self-image psychology, anger and stress management, negotiation, mediation and communication, crisis intervention, and parenting. Mr. Fields specializes in Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Family Systems Therapy and Communication Coaching. As a practicing counseling psychologist, Mr. Fields brings decades of specialized training and applied skills to his work. He now provides quality online counseling and can be found at http://www.openmindcounseling.com