The Secret, Hardboiled

When I first saw The Secret, I had some concerns. The Law of Attraction was presented, and much of the message was what I refer to as a sunny-side-up version of it. The ideas that what you think, believe or “will” can manifest your desires seemed overly simplified, and I think that life’s spatula has flipped the egg over, on our collective face.

In my years of research as a psychologist, I know that many a researcher has found that they can find plenty of evidence to support their hypotheses when they are the author of the study, but what about when others are doing the same research? I saw it as a product that breached the mainstream and had a great marketing upside, but as we have seen, what goes up, must come down.

In the years since The Secret came out, we have seen our world turn upside down. Scarcity and fear are surrounding many of us, and many may have had to use the pages of their copy of The Secret to warm their homes this winter. There are likely a number of people out there who have turned on the ideas in The Secret like bad shellfish, and possibly just as many who were waiting to see the tenets in the book come crashing down around the blinded believers.

I will tell you now. I do believe in the Laws of Attraction and believe that the Universe is abundant. I have seen it work in my own life to both my like and dislike. Life and its laws are not always as we would like them to be. We may be able to manipulate the laws created by man, but we cannot manipulate the laws created by the Universe. Here are some other perspectives on the Law of Attraction and how we can see it in action now.

Abundance Comes In Many Forms

There are many ways to measure abundance, if we are looking for whether or not the Law of Attraction is working in our life. In our world, we often measure abundance through material means, friends, money, possessions… We often use these as indicators of our value, worth, recognition, reward… We feel that if we have the things that we want, then we have abundance . Right now, we may have received the things that we need because we attracted it to us for the purposes of abundance – abundance of learning , growth, emotional experiences. It is important that we not focus on our wants, i.e., the wealth, the riches, the job, the number of friends or the external factors that would supposedly indicate our successful mastery of the Law of Attraction.

Just as there is day, there is night, and we need both for the earth to hold life. Abundance has to do with quantity and supply, not good or bad. Certainly at this time, we have an abundance of opportunities to do great things with what life if presenting. Realize that we may have attracted this abundance to us. Years ago, I wrote a poem about Pain that contained the following lines: I come from the light, but have been sentenced to darkness. Many a many a man has not realized my value to him in the midst of my rule…I believe that we need to keep this in mind as we go through our challenges.

Just Because It Feels Bad Doesn’t Make It Bad

We have broken life down into dichotomies: Good/Bad, Right/Wrong, Strong/Weak, Win/Lose. These dichotomies are supposed to help us make sense out of life, therefore making it easier, but in the big picture, they complicate things because they result in inaccurate judgments. Right now, people feel that we are in bad times. Painful? Yes, Bad? No. What is the purpose of the lessons we are being offered at this time? I see them as emotional lessons and life lessons .

Arrogance is a very dangerous emotion, when it is used out of balance. If one looks at history, they would notice that the downfall of almost every empire can be traced back to arrogance. Arrogance provides a shield of false pride that protects us from our perceived inadequacies, and often blinds us from reality until it is too late. When we live with it too long, the shield breaks because it does not have integrity. The rewards of living aren’t just about inviting good things into your life, they are about seeing that abundance is already there.

Energy Does Not Discriminate

It doesn’t matter who you are, energy does not care. Many of us look at the things that happen to people and wonder why. It is not that good things happen to good people, or only the good die young… Things are going to happen, and we won’t always know why. It may be because there is some form of energy that is in the Universe that is acting on an object. I feel that if we look deep enough within ourselves, we can understand more about some of the things that happen in our life, but it is still a guessing game. After working with people through using hypnosis for almost two decades, I have seen that at an unconscious level we often understand so much more than we realize.

What we attract to us does not consider our wealth, gender, age, race…, and if you consider that abundance is behind what we attract, i.e., there are lessons to learn from almost every experience, we never have to feel that we are without. There are laws of physics that apply in this universe, and no matter how much we want to be able to walk on water or have our debt vaporize, certain laws of physics have to be followed. The Law of Attraction is not immune to these laws either, just because we want it to be.

Conscious And Unconscious Intention Are Not the Same Thing

When I work with people, I teach some how a pendulum works. I teach them about how it helps them to get in touch with their unconscious, and in that way, begin to teach them that sometimes our unconscious is not in line with our conscious mind. I also help people to see that our unconscious is much stronger in manifesting than our conscious mind. Why I believe this is, is because our conscious mind has limited focus in terms of what we can pay attention to, whereas the unconscious mind is always on. It even is working in our dreams , often letting us know what we are really feeling at a deeper level. The unconscious also can have many intentions, attitudes and beliefs, (another story for another day) and none of them have to agree with the conscious. From my work in hypnosis , I know that we cannot overrule our unconscious, it more than likely happens the other way around. Because of that, we are more likely to attract what our unconscious is seeking rather than what our conscious mind wants or commands. To stay blind to this is to chase our tails.

Focusing Only On What You Want Does Not Resolve What You Have Yet To Learn

So many times I have worked with people who only wanted to focus on getting the relationship, the job, the house, and/or the car – some form of advancement in life, and they almost refused to recognize the behavior , actions and/or thoughts were that resulted in their current situation. Many times there are obvious issues that need to be addressed in their lives, whether it be managing money better, getting proper training for a career, looking at behavior patterns, and there are still more times that the issues run deeper and the patterns take some time and effort to resolve. People are often aware that “unconscious patterns” exist, but they just don’t want to look at them and are looking at shortcuts to get around the hard work. Just because we want to attract positive things to us, doesn’t mean we can bring the things to us that we want if there are other factors that we have to learn from.

When You Throw a Rock in the Water, You Can’t Stop the Ripples

How many times have we done something in our life that we regret? No matter what we do, we are setting energy into action, similar to throwing a stone in the water. As the ripples move out from the center, they continue to move along the water until they reach the shore. Even if we ignore the ripples, they are still there, and even if we can’t see them, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t influencing the water at a more minute level. For us to truly understand the Law of Attraction in our life, we have to consider the ripples we have created in the waters around us. Remember that energy does not discriminate, and we each have to be willing to put the energy into resolving what we have put into action before we can truly realize our potential. What we have to remember is that an object placed in motion will remain in motion until acted on by an equal and opposite force.

Some of you may be thinking, “There are so many people who make the Law of Attraction look so easy. They got what they wanted, and surely they have issues too.” Yes we all have issues, but we also have to recognize that what they attracted may have been what they needed. Perhaps they put the energy into action at a conscious and an unconscious level.

Illusions Are Just That… Illusions

We live in a very narcissistic period in our culture. There are millions of people who believe that they should win American Idol, be best-selling authors, or be millionaires on eBay… all over night. Many of these wishes and thoughts are illusions. I am not saying not to dream and dream big. That is what I do, but one has to have an accurate appraisal of their abilities to have a realistic chance of success. Luck is often made, and just because someone envisions themselves with millions of dollars doesn’t necessarily increase the chances that it will appear. Even the person who wins the lottery has to play it, but look what happens to so many who have won. Be careful what you ask for. For most people who succeed in life, there was a lot of hard work that went into their success that likely put the energy and ripples into action.

Finding people in our lives who can really be honest with us is one of the most blessed relationships we can ask for. There are plenty of people in the world who will tell us what we want to hear, but the means to really make a difference in reaching our dreams often comes from having honest feedback so we can chart our progress. Feeding a narcissist more illusions only makes their fall harder.

Just Because You See Yourself On a Certain Rung of the Spiritual Ladder Does Not Mean That You Are Actually On It

Speaking of falls, so many people that have come to me for spiritual growth see themselves in their ideal state, i.e., much higher on the spiritual ladder than they actually are. They want to see themselves as more evolved, intuitive, connected to the people around them, but when we take a deeper look at their life, I help them to see that they wanted to see themselves as further along so that they could excuse themselves from their pain. They wanted to focus on the spiritual side of their growth, expanding their abilities, working on hypnotic regression… The illusions of their own spiritual development often have distracted them from being more present in their life and achieving more of the peace they were seeking.

When Life’s Mirror Breaks, the Glass Can Cut You

So what happens when the proverbial bottom falls out? You have practiced The Secret, written the check to the Universe that your bank wouldn’t cash, made the vision board that you can’t bare to look at one more time, have recited your intentions into delirium, and nothing has happened. The problem is that you neglected other areas of your life. You didn’t save for the rainy day, you didn’t apply yourself at work, the person you were interested in the relationship has moved on… Life feels like it has passed you by. You may be feeling betrayed, angry and want a refund from the Universe. When we have to step back and look at the reality we have created, it can feel painful and cut us to the core.

Life happens for us, not to us. The difference between “for” and “to” is huge. When life happens for us, we are looking for the lessons and opportunities. We see abundance. When we feel that life happens to us, we often feel like victims and blame others for our situation. We live in scarcity. We often don’t learn much and repeat the same patterns again and again. Count on life mirroring things to you that you need to see. If you find yourself looking in your own mirror too long, you may find yourself bumping into things.

Wherever You Go, There You Are

So where do you stand? After taking a look that these postulates, are you seeing the Law of Attraction in your life? In our culture? In the Universe? Did we attract our current situations to us? What is not in balance must be restored, and structures that are not built in integrity will eventually come tumbling down. I choose to see that these are some of the greatest times we are experiencing, because it is in challenges that people truly find out who they are. I have told many people through the years that it is easy to be spiritual when life is “good,” and people find religion when life is “bad.” Hold on to your spirit, no matter how you seek your connection to the Universe.

Rather than seeing that we are in this situation now because of the actions of others, try to see what role you may have played in this time or even choose to be a part of the solution. Put positive energy out there and understand that you have your own “stuff” to resolve. The way that I see it, I am responsible for cleaning up my corner of the Universe, and if I do that, then I am making it a better place to live. If I am looking to reap the rewards of my hard work around every corner (and sometimes I do), then I am giving back with strings attached, which is only about me. I have to have faith in myself, the Universe and the Laws that govern it. See that we have been given an opportunity to change the world and the Universe forever. Don’t just change for the moment, use this time to heal your soul. Step beyond our Collective Arrogance and see what is outside and inside yourself. Realize that in every person or situation you have, an abundance of opportunity abounds. Realize that you may have attracted it to you as a gift.

May you attract abundance.

About the author: Erik Fisher, PhD, aka Dr. E…, is a licensed psychologist and author of two books whose work has been featured on CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX and CNN. Visit him at www.ErikFisher.com .