As Carl Jung said, "What you resist, persists."
Which is exactly the thought that keeps praying on my mind this morning. In this blog, I've talked a lot about the Law of Attraction, which was recently made a popular concept by a book and movie called "The Secret." At the time, a lot of people watched the movie seeing only desire and avarice and they resisted its message. Other people watched with desire, if not avarice, and saw only a way to achieve their goals. Both missed grasping a very large point. In science, a law is defined as "a statement of fact, deduced from observation, to the effect that a particular natural or scientific phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions are present." When we talk about the Law of Attraction, we are not talking about that other kind of law, "the system of rules that a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members," we are speaking of a scientific law. A statement based on repeated experimental observations that describes some aspect of the universe. Why is this an important distinction? We may focus on attempting to attract the happiness and wealth we would like to see in our lifetimes, but the truth is, we are always attracting our life's outcomes to us whether we are attempting a desirable one or not.
Part of the beauty of the five step method of working with the Law of Attraction is that it encourages taking responsibility for the type of life you have attracted yourself into and gives you tools with which to try and improve your outcomes.
We humans tend to resist pain. Not only pain, but very individualized pain based on our versions of hell.
It happens roughly like this:
We are born
Things happen to us
Eventually we begin to judge those things as pleasant or unpleasant
We begin to resist the unpleasant things
What we resist, persists.
In other words, our personal Law of Attraction outcome gets stuck on negative. That's because resistance requires a whole lot of energy and attention. We attract what we give energy and attention. So by resisting what we don't want, we actually receive more of it rather than less.
Why do we experience pain? Frequently it is a lesson or warning that we are in danger. Touch fire and you will get burned. That painful sensation prevents us from being seriously damaged by fire when we are in a position to avoid it. The popular definition of karma is basically the same as "what goes around comes around" or "we reap what we sow," but another, if less well known interpretation is that the lessons we need to learn throughout our lives, will repeat until we have learned them.
Someone asked me recently, "That means I attracted the men who cheated on me intentionally. Why did I want that?"
I couldn't answer. The things we resist on an emotional level aren't the same as brussels sprouts or liver. We don't tend to itemize them in our conscious mind. The best I could do is tell her to focus on how it had made her feel. In other words, the "why" component to the first step of the five steps to the Law of Attraction. The first step is to be "crystal clear about what you don't want and why." It not only shines a light on what we DO want, it also illuminates those unpleasant things and feelings we are likely to resist. Combine those feelings you resist with the limiting beliefs you are trying to clear in step three, "identify and clear limiting beliefs," and you will uncover a very likely scenario of your own personal treadmill of bad relationships, limited funds or whatever you would like to overcome.
Honestly, I've been studying stuff like this for years, but huge bits snapped into place for me the other day when I was talking with another one of the coach-elect students. As usual, I can explain everything a little bit more clearly, if I simply explain my situation to you.
Many of my limiting beliefs have tended to surround the notion of not being capable, not knowing what I'm doing, being incompetent, that sort of thing. They stem from being asked to be responsible for things that were a little too grownup for me to be asked to handle when I was a child, combined with being mocked about my performance or told I hadn't done a good job. At the same time, I realized that my most recent former ex had been a catalyst for some growth on that issue. Some of the things he said during the break up were direct hits on that level, but it was only talking to this other person that I connected the notion of "how did that make me feel?" After all, so what if I'm incapable? What will happen if I don't know what I'm doing?
The emotion was fear of rejection. If I don't know what I'm doing, I will be rejected. Which, of course, as that relationship ended, I was. And I resisted it big time. So much so, I pretty much pushed him away. I had let myself be open and vulnerable to someone, which was not something I had done very much in my life, and it ended with my own personal version of hell. In other words, the thing I had resisted my entire life: rejection. I have been a people pleaser. I have settled for less than I wanted in relationships. I have sculpted myself into other people just to avoid being rejected.
For many of you reading this, it isn't new territory. You already knew it. Really, so did I, but sometimes it takes putting the pieces together and voicing them aloud to really understand. But some of you haven't figured this out yet. Humans are motivated by pain. We will do anything to avoid it. Once emotional pain has been triggered, we become automatons who run a program we have learned over time about how to handle it. Perhaps we pick up a bottle or inject something in our veins. Maybe we bully other people. Maybe we sacrifice bits of our own uniqueness to simply make the discomfort go away. Maybe we stuff ourselves with food until we have no more empty spaces to shove it into.
Ask yourself, "what don't I want, and why don't I want it?" You will discover the negative carrots your destructive behavior feeds upon. In the meantime, you can use another Achieve Today coach, Gil Mciff's Three Step Clearing Method to avoid becoming a slave to your emotions. The principle is that our emotions take us out of the present moment and we run programs based on what we are feeling. If we are running a program, we have become a victim and cannot make choices.
Three Step Clearing Method by Gil Mciff
Feeding what you want is natural and easy, you are already doing this in many ways.
The emphasis of this practice is focused on starving what you don't want by simply observing your emotions and thereby dis-identifying from being them.
Your habitual state of consciousness is the number one determinant of your personal circumstances. The quality of your consciousness in this moment is the primary determinant of your future. And what determines the quality of your consciousness is your degree of presence.
Check in 10x a day with the question: "How am I feeling emotionally in my body right now?"
You can use a reminder app or alarm on your phone, sticky notes placed in random places, paint one fingernail different from the rest, wear your watch on the opposite wrist or upside down, or put a bandaid on your finger. Every time this catches your attention, ask yourself, "Emotionally, how do I feel in my body right now?"
(A further suggestion my fellow coaching student told me was to do it every time you needed to use the toilet or took a drink of water.)
If there is ANY kind of negativity or if it is simply a lower emotion than you would like to be feeling, the fact is you did not choose it. It's based on conditioned interpretation and is simply an old program running and it is time to do the following 3 steps:
(If you are feeling what you would like to be feeling then start with step 2.)
1. Say These Specific Words - There it is. That's not me. That's a program.
3. Thank you for checking in. I love you, I love you, I love you. Thank you for no longer feeding the program. Thank you for dis-identifying from the program, thank you for catching yourself and for no longer losing energy here. Thank you for whatever you want to say thank you for. I love you, I love you, I love you!
There it is. That's not me. That's a program.
I feel it here (location,) it feels like this (characteristics.)
Thank you for checking in, I love you I love you I love you.
These steps are not for the purpose of getting rid of the negative feeling (i.e. resisting and therefore feeding what we don't want. That benefit may sometimes come with it, but this practice is more about implementing a new habit/program. So every time you observe the emotion, it's an opportunity to do this practice without judgement. It doesn't matter what emotion is there, what matters is that you simply observe it without giving it any meaning. When this becomes habit you will have successfully reprogrammed the unconscious perpetuation of the old reaction with the automatic newly programmed conscious response.
It takes less than 30 seconds to do this practice. 30 seconds at 10x a day = 5 minutes
How many days will it take before this healthy response has become a new program for you?
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