There is a woman I know who is quite wealthy. I'm guessing that she has pretty much everything she needs and/or wants and when she passes from this world, she'll probably have trouble getting rid of it. So, one day, as this lovely woman was passing through Grand Central, she saw a drawing to win a Maserati. Like the car. A car which, at minimum, costs $120,000 American dollars. So, she puts her name in the box, thinking to herself, ooohhhh!!! How fun!, and BOOM. Wins the Maserati. Now let's create someone fictitious, say someone who walks by that same drawing and thinks to themselves, "I have to have that car. If I win that car I can sell it and pay all my bills." They put their name in the box, too, but they don't win. It all seems really unfair, right, that the woman who doesn't need it is the one who wins it? She doesn't NEED the money. She has no attachment to the outcome. She just thinks, "wouldn't it be fun to win a Maserati?" And she does.
This is the Law of Attraction at work.
I'm sure I've got some eye-rollers already, saying, but Erin, think about how many people put their name in that box and the mathematical possibilities in winning, etc. This is no Secret (that repugnant Rhonda Byrne book that posited, you know, like, if you're in a parking lot and you can't find a good spot, just think about it and you'll get a good parking space). The Law of Attraction is a metaphysical belief that "like attracts like,” that positive and negative thinking bring about positive and negative physical results, respectively. According to the Law of Attraction, the phrase "I need more money" allows the subject to continue to "need more money". If the subject wants to change this they would focus their thoughts on the goal (having more money) rather than the problem (needing more money). This might take the form of phrases such as "I will make more money" or "I will find a job that pays very well".
And it takes work. After listening to an MP3 on the Sedona Method, the founder, whose name I can't remember, said something like this (totally paraphrasing, by the way): Say your feelings are like a barrel of apples, and in the bottom of that barrel are bad apples. So, one day you have a good day and you put good apples in on top of the bad ones, but it doesn't matter, because unless you get rid of the bad apples it will spoil the rest of the barrel. Okay. Simple enough. Or is it?
I'm not rich. I get by. But sometimes I get behind. And that is when a bad apple gets thrown in that barrel. I think to myself, "Oh my gosh, I forgot to pay that bill." Bad apple. "It's way past due!" Bigger bad apple. "DAMMIT, THERE GOES THAT GOOD CREDIT SCORE I'VE BEEN BUSTING MY BALLS FOR!!" Biggest baddest wormiest apple. Say we took that same information and looked at it like this: "Oops, I forgot to pay that bill." Bad apple. "I will pay as much as I can right now." Take out the bad apple. "Next month I'll be sure to pay it on time." Put in a good apple.
In order to attract the things that we want, we have to be vigilant about eliminating these "bad apples" (and when you think about those apples, they could be both literal, as in people, or figurative, as in emotions).
Dr. Wayne Dyer said this: "Change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change."
In Ask and it is Given, the book on the Law of Attraction by Esther and Jerry Hicks, they list an emotional guidance scale (#1 being joy/knowledge/empowerment/freedom/love/appreciation and the last, #22 being fear/grief/depression/despair/powerlessness) and give you some simple exercises that correspond with those emotions. One of my favorite exercises is so simple and can be done anywhere: "The Rampage of Appreciation", which is where you can be in line at the grocery store or post office and just appreciate what's around you. This very act helps you to be present (I mean, it's hard to worry about the future or dwell on the past while judging a woman for wearing a bad pair of mom jeans). And while I don't claim to know that much about the philosophy behind why being present is so very important, I can only say what we all intuitively understand: the past can't be changed and the future is not yet here, so we must take this moment, the present, to look people in the eye, and be grateful for the company of others and ourselves.
