One of the most common suggestions I see regarding getting the most out of Law of Attraction, or simply in the pursuit of success is, banish your negative thoughts.  Getting rid of all negative thoughts seems to be a key component of achieving success using most any method. 

One big problem with this approach is, the moment you place your attention on the negative thoughts you want to be rid of, you’ve activated them in your experience.  Your unconscious, the part of you that is your soul, your being, operates on rules that are different from those that govern you conscious thinking mind.  In an attraction-based universe, giving your attention to something is activating it. 

You are a conduit through which energy flows into the manifested world.  Your attention is the guidance system that determines what is activated by the stream of energy that flows from deep within you.  It’s like a garden hose with water flowing through.  The water goes where you point the hose.  In this case, the energy goes, and activates, where you point your attention. 

It is for this reason that focusing your attention on negative thoughts and feelings will simply end up giving you more of something you don’t want. 

It may be helpful to consider what benefit negative thoughts provide.  This may seem counter-intuitive, but the results can be quite beneficial.  Negative thoughts and emotions are simply signals telling you that you are presently focused upon something you don’t prefer, or don’t like.  To change your experience all you need do is change where you’ve focused your attention. 

Beyond their function as signals for things you don’t like, negative thoughts and feelings serve another function.  They support the egoic sense of self.  Egoic, in the sense that author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle talks about it, refers to the conscious mental processes that have been invested with a sense of “self” or “I.”  It’s your identification with the conscious thinking mind’s activities, its conceptualized past and future, that can cause confusion. 

It’s a little like identifying with the garden hose in the analogy above.  Most people are so identified with the thoughts they think, the ideas they have of who they are, the roles they play that they make the mistake of believing the content of the mind is actually who they are.  In the form of the analogy above its equivalent to believing you are the inanimate hose and not the vitalizing water running through the hose.  The vitalizing force that flows is who you are, not the structure that exists to provide direction to that energy flow.  This is the nature of the relationship between your conscious thinking mind and your source, your Being. 

Your conscious thinking mind is a tool that gives form to the impulses and intuition rising from deep within you.  Ego is the conscious thinking mind that’s been infused with “self.”  This is literally the content of your mind to which you’ve become attached and to which you identify. 

It’s the past you remember and describe as yours, not just to others, but to yourself.  It’s the experiences you call you own, it’s the culture you identify with, the political and religious affiliations you align with, the roles you play, and it’s also the future you plan for and anticipate.  All this and more constitute the content of your ego.  Negative thoughts are just a part of the manifested world, and a natural part of your own ego.  When you can learn to use them rather than being used by them by trying to banish them, or avoid them, you’ll have taken a major step toward using them as the tool they are intended to be. 

Best wishes,

Dr. Ralph W.

I’ve been toying with an idea regarding the Law of Attraction.  For those who read my post regarding the “Vibe” and Quantum Physics…, you may begin to see some more of the direction of my thinking regarding this topic.  What I’m proposing is a different way of thinking about the attraction issue.  For many authors on Law of Attraction, the introduction of quantum theory usually occurs in support of the assertion of how your thoughts, and in fact you, function as a broadcast antenna for what you desire.  The ideas, such as it’s been presented…

Upon deciding what you want, you hold an image of yourself having what you want in mind.  This act functions as a beacon sending out signals into the universe which then drawn your desire to you.  You increase the strength of your signal by increasing the intensity of the emotions paired with the image of your desire.  This is the “how it works” theory of Law of Attraction in a nutshell. 

This is another area where I’ve had some concerns, one where I’ve sought to find a different answer.  Granted, what I’m proposing may be nothing other than a semantic difference, but I am still going to offer it nonetheless.  I’m not going to disagree with the basics of the principle of attraction, I’m just trying to change where people are focusing their attention. 

It occurs to me that thinking in terms of attraction focuses one’s attention outward, into the world.  As it seems to be commonly understood, focusing on attraction seems to be encouraging one to be vigilant for the object of their desire showing up on the horizon, in their mailbox, or in their driveway.  As I understand it these are spiritual principles, meaning the focus is meant to be inward first, emphasizing your sense of connectedness to your inner Self or Source. 

It just occurs to me that the concept of resonance can work a little better in service of emphasizing this inward focus first.  The kind of resonance I’m referring to is similar to that represented by a glass being broken by sound waves.  A tone is produced that induces the glass to begin to vibrate.  As the amplitude of the tone increases, the glass begins to vibrate more and more until it finally breaks.  A similar phenomenon can be seen when you strike a string on a guitar.  The vibration of that string sets off sympathetic vibrations on other strings.

The point is, recognizing that your desire is already within you first.  Consider it like this…  You may want a million dollars, but why?  What would become available to you if that cash were to be given to you?  Is it just about having a million dollars?  Pay off your bills, you might say, get out of debt, go on a trip.  All very nice, I’m sure, but think in terms of the internal dimensions of these experiences.  I know I’d certainly experience a sense of peace of mind, and security paying off my bills.  And while these are the outward things I’d seek, I must find their corresponding inner states first. 

Peace of mind, joy, enthusiasm, achieving a sense of balance and enlightenment.  These are the objectives that reflect the truth of your Source.  The object in this case becomes incidental to the state of your being, your sense of connectedness to yourself and others.  It’s the internal states that are reflected in the outward conditions we’re really after.  Yet our perspective, the perspective of the Western worldview, tends to focus on the outward conditions first. 

When you can recognize that these internal states are the essence of what you’re seeking in the outer world, you can also begin to see that what you desire is already within you.  All you need do is to BE NOW what you anticipate the realization of your outer dreams will bring you.  The strange thing is that once you’ve realized that what you’re seeking is already within you, that the wealth and abundance is available the moment you chose to recognize and allow yourself to be present to it, the realization of your dreams in the outer world becomes much easier because you will already be resonating with the vibration of your desire.

If you have any questions or comments, please let me know. 

Best wishes,

Dr. Ralph W.

Understanding Law of Attraction and applying what you know to your life can sometimes be challenging.  I’ve visited many discussion groups at which many questions are posted regarding why the Law of Attraction didn’t work they way they wanted.  The frustration is palpable, and my interest here is to try to provide some information that could be useful to those who still find themselves struggling, or who just want to get a little bit more from their efforts. 

“Train your mind first,” I say to my students.  The greater clarity you posses, the faster and more powerful your results will be.  This is how I approach teaching, and it is a philosophy that is clearly present in this post.  Before you can really understand what affirmations and visualization can do for you in the deliberate creating process, it can be helpful to understand how these techniques operate, how they function. 

Since a full description of that entire process would be a post that is essentially the size of a book, I thought I’d start with one of the more fundamental concepts as a part of the foundation—Consciousness. 

It may be helpful for you to consider that there are two kinds of consciousness.  The first is your conscious thinking mind, the waking awareness you identify with and which is referred to in conversation by the personal pronouns “I,” “me,” “my,” or “mine.”  The other is typically regarded as your “unconscious.”  It’s in quotes to highlight a couple of points.  First, it’s unconscious relative to the waking awareness of your conscious thinking mind.  Second, because while we like to think of two kinds of consciousness, these seemingly different constructs, consciousness and unconsciousness, are really just discrete points along a single continuum of consciousness.  It’s easier for conversation sake to talk about them as discrete entities, but in the end that’s not entirely accurate. 

That your unconscious and conscious minds operate by different rules, however, lends support to the idea that they are discrete entities.  As I said above, talking about them as discrete entities makes them easier to talk about and easier to understand, but it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that they are both part of the same whole. 

The “Unconscious” Mind

One of the important rules governing the unconscious mind may be broadly described as “inclusion.” This simply means that what you’ve given your attention to is active in your experience for the time your attention is focused upon it.  Your unconscious is the well-spring of the energy that vitalizes everything in your experience, including your thoughts, mind, and body.  Equally, it vitalizes everything external to you while you’re focused upon it.  A project you’re working on, the road you’re on while you’re driving, the people you see on the street to which you give your attention.  All are activated in your experience while you are giving your attention to them. 

The unconscious part of you is source energy, your Being.  It is the “God” part of you or your soul; whatever you want to call it doesn’t matter.  It is simply the source of all the energy in your experience.  This level is without time, without limit, it is pure potential.  The information in the form of inspiration or intuition coming from it is not structured in the way we think of it until it gets to the level of your conscious thinking mind.  It is at that level, the level of the conscious thinking mind that the impulse or intuition is given form, as in a thought form.  The form the impulse or intuition takes is consistent with the conditioning the conscious thinking mind has been subjected to.  In my case, part of my history of conditioning has been my education in psychology, my wife’s is in social work and computers, and so on.

The Conscious Thinking Mind

The conscious thinking mind is the creator of forms.  It is what gives form and structure to the impulses arising from deep within.  The important rules that govern the conscious thinking mind have to do with what it does.  It discriminates, differentiates, selects, categorizes, identifies, labels, among other things.  It’s discriminating and distinguishing characteristics are reflective of its structure.  The conscious thinking mind is compelled by its structure to carry out its discriminating activities. 

Preferences are selected at the level of the conscious thinking mind.  We identify what we like and dislike at this level and the conscious thinking mind operates to help us select a path toward what we like and away from what we don’t.  It separates; it distinguishing likes from dislikes.  Its structural imperative is also fulfilled in the more basic distinction of, “I am this and not that.”  In this manner it is possible to see our identification with the content of our conscious thinking mind.  In this way we can also identify ourselves as separate from or different from others.

The “others” that are referred to above become important when the conscious thinking mind is transformed into ego through our desire to seek a sense of self in the conscious thinking mind.  In short, you can say that we Identify with the conscious thinking mind as though this is who we are, as though it is the source energy.  Through identifying with the conscious thinking mind, now the ego, we are immediately confined and confounded by the limitations of the conscious thinking mind. We are subjected to its rules and its influences, particularly the influence of feeling separated from our source and from one another and the world around us.  When we are present to the sense of separation, the feeling experience is one of negative emotion accompanied by negative thought. 

This is not Evil, as some have suggested, but merely the product of identifying with a mind-made sense of self that must act in accordance with the rules that govern it.  The conscious thinking mind, the ego, separates, classifies, and distinguishes, all because these are the functions it was intended to do.  We can free ourselves of the emotional turmoil associated with this condition by remembering we are not our ego, we are the source energy, the Being that flows forth from deep within and vitalizes the world of forms. 

There are many implications of this kind of understanding for those interested in being deliberate creators.  I’ll go into this in more detail in another post.  For now, I invite any comments or questions.  I like hearing from others with whom I’m sharing this journey.

Best wishes,

Dr. Ralph  W.

Personally, I see the benefits of knowing the Law of Attraction in my life daily.  After more than 20 years of reading, studying, and writing about it, these principles are a well-integrated part of how I see the world.  In other words, you could say I operate from my understanding of universal principles and they’ve become a habitual way of seeing the world for me.

It’s not just about getting more money, a new job, a big house, or a new car for me.  While these things are great, and I appreciate the benefit items such as these provides as much as anyone else, I’m even more grateful for the peace of mind, the personal tranquility, and the refuge from uncertainty my knowledge of these principles provides.

Through my years of studying universal principles I’ve become increasingly sensitive to the appearance of these concepts in the popular culture, on television, in movies, books, in the paper.  What I’ve noticed is that except on rare occasions, you’re not likely to see any direct mention of Law of Attraction in most of our popular media, particularly on television.  That doesn’t mean that evidence of its presence in the popular culture doesn’t exist.  To me, it means that you have to look for the sometimes not so obvious manifestation of these concepts in the popular culture.  It means that maybe what you find when you look is evidence of the change in consciousness. 

The evidence I see could consist of a little less pessimism and a little more optimism; evidence of looking toward solutions rather than being captivated by problems.  Statements that reflect a sense of the abundance of our world regardless of the circumstances one might be personally facing. 

Finding evidence of a shift in our collective consciousness that signals a movement in the direction of an awareness of the abundance within and without can be a tall order, particularly when the media, and especially news programming seems so doggedly intent upon reporting “what is.”  “Tell it like it is,” “reported as it happened,” are the statements that reflect the modern culture’s credo. 

Of course telling the truth is important, and I’m not advocating for lying or being dishonest as a virtue.  But goals require vision and commitment.  To achieve them requires adopting a vision for the future that is more compelling than the signals coming back from our environment that sometimes tell us that our cause is hopeless, foolish, or impossible.  Sometimes you have to look for something other than “what is” to realize your vision. 

This is also the essence of being a deliberate creator; actively taking steps in your lives that are consistent with what you know about universal principles like Law of Attraction.  This knowledge, knowing universal principles is as much about a disciplined way of living your life as it is about “using” Law of Attraction to realize your material dreams. 

It is for this reason that I see knowing and applying what you know about universal principles as a call to transform your consciousness.  To live each moment with the richness and vitality this knowledge can impart to you now, not just in those moments after you’ve acquired the new car, new house, or new job when you’re standing with your desires fulfilled.  This is the evidence I continue to seek. 

I continue to look each day for evidence of the shift in consciousness I know must accompany knowledge and application of these principles.  Looking for it leads me to seeking and finding the best in others. 

Best wishes,

Dr. Ralph W.

The “Vibe” part of the law of attraction conversation is both central to understanding how it works and the one aspect of this principle most criticized by skeptics and nay-Sayers.  Most authors I’ve read regarding the law of attraction offer a somewhat complicated description of quantum physics as an explanation for understanding the importance of “vibe” in the attraction process.  I think this effort has produced some good results, but often times, unless you understand quantum physics, having the knowledge doesn’t do much to prove helpful.

While I applaud the effort and the results of the quantum physics arguments in law of attraction, I believe their practical application in the lives of everyday people is questionable.  My question is this,

“What benefit is intended by offering a description of the quantum physics of vibration?”

If the idea is to make this and other universal principles more accessible and useful to more people, then perhaps cutting past the quantum physics, at least in the short term, can be more beneficial. 

At its heart the introduction of the quantum physics conversation can be understood as a device used to help your conscious mind grab hold of certain concepts that are useful in deliberately creating your life.  The quantum physics conversation is intended as a way to transform your consciousness helping you think in terms of the universal principles, like law of attraction. 

The transformation in consciousness implied is different from the kind of consciousness we typically associate with our waking hours.  The rational, selective processes distinguishing between who we are and who we are not; sifting through the data of our daily experience looking for that which we prefer versus that we dislike.  This is the consciousness of our identity, our ego, or sense of self, our personality.  This is what we are typically referring to when we’re talking about our mind.      

The education of our mind is what our process of education is all about.  But what we typically don’t realize is the extent to which our educational process is also training non-conscious levels of our experience such as our intuition.  The kind of intuition that informs a mechanic of what might be causing that strange sound coming from your car, or when your doctor offers several labels in response to a description of symptoms. 

Our education provides a context assisting in the formation of concepts out of an otherwise undifferentiated mass of data.  Our success as a species has been dependent upon our ability to effectively educate our minds.  The result has been the development of technologies that transform our interaction with the world and each other.  The changes brought by this process have been increasing in speed and intensity creating pressure to adapt to an ever-changing and sometimes uncertain world. 

The pressure created is forcing a new type of consciousness transformation.  Not a throw-back to an earlier stage in human development, as some have suggested, leaving behind the benefits reflected in our current state of mental development.  What is implied, and what many believe is occurring, is the development of a new and inclusive consciousness that embraces the best of the previous mental models in a new model that is more inclusive, conscientious of our connection with our environment [social, economic, and otherwise], and with one another.  

Thus, I see learning law of attraction and other universal principles as something more than just a technique to get a new job, more money, a better relationship, or whatever else.  I see its presence at this time in our human history as a reflection of our collective need for consciousness transformation, a reflection of our readiness to find a new level of existence to which we are evolving. 

In observing the results of those deliberately using universal principles to improve the quality of their lives I’ve noticed a change occurring in their consciousness.  My conclusion based on these observations is that you cannot deliberately use these principles to bring things into your life without also inviting a transformation in your consciousness; essentially moving yourself in the direction of a spiritual awakening. 

Deliberate use of universal principles draws your attention to your source, and seeking to create and experience more abundance in your life is a direct reflection of your connection to your source, the wellspring of the abundance you wish to experience in your outer life.  The greater the abundance in your outer life means the greater the strength of your connection to your abundant source within. 

 Your conscious mind is a conduit through which your source flows and is given form on its way into the world.  Recognizing that the conscious mind operates by rules that are different than your unconscious is an important first step to transforming your conscious thinking mind making it a better conduit through which energy flows, rather than a place where the energy stops.

Best wishes,

Dr. Ralph W.

I was watching a television show recently that featured people who are struggling with various kinds of addiction.  My heart goes out to these people.  Granted, their behavior can sometimes be very difficult to deal with, confronting, even abusive.  It’s important to keep in mind that this is the addiction, the disease talking.  Despite the sometimes challenging behavior, I can still see the pain these people are in.  The addiction is so often a means of self-medication, and I know that in addition to the physical pain they feel, there is the challenge of confronting the emotional pain their addiction has covered up for so long.

In this particular show, a young man was struggling with an addiction to heroin.  As is often the case, the first few days in recovery are the worst.  As he was speaking about the physical discomfort and pain he experienced, he then commented about his emotional and psychological struggle.  He said, “I don’t know why God put me on this planet.”

The look on his face revealed the pain and desolation he experienced at not knowing how to answer this question for himself.

His comment struck me and made me think about what his experience can teach.  Perhaps because I work as a therapist I see more than my share of people who struggle with a similar sense of personal desolation; not knowing what to do in the absence of a sense of meaning for one’s life.

I thought about what it might be like to talk to such a person about Law of Attraction.  It occurred to me that this may not be such a welcome conversation, particularly at such a low point in one’s life.  It occurred to me that before someone in such a situation would really welcome such a conversation there would need to be some personal healing (that seems obvious, doesn’t it…).  But beyond that, the statement itself, “I don’t know why God has put me on this planet” suggests a lack of control;  a perception that the circumstances of your life (his life, in this case, but really anyone who is trying to successfully apply these principles) are in control and you’re at the mercy of these powerful forces.

It’s like a pinball in a pinball machine, bouncing from one bumper to another.

Knowledge of the Law of Attraction holds the promise of realizing your dream life, but it also calls on those who want to deliberately apply it to take full responsibility of the circumstances of their lives.  It’s worth noting that this is much easier said than done in most cases.  The way we, humans, that is, tend to interpret experiences and attribute causes seems to reflect a stronger desire to avoid responsibility than to embrace it.  Yet being successful as a deliberate creator means owning what’s yours to be responsible for; embracing your responsibility and in the process recognizing that doing so demonstrates your awareness of yourself as a powerful deliberate creator.

Best wishes,

Dr. Ralph W.

I’ve spent a good deal of my time over the past 20 years working with the concepts associated with the Law of Attraction.  I was first introduced to the idea back in the late 1970s when I was exposed to the Unity Church.  At first I didn’t think much of the “thought for the day” program I used to see daily on my local television.  I just thought it was just another “church thing,” that is, another of the familiar ministries of the common mainstream religious groups.  I’ve got nothing against these groups at all, mind you.  I was a member for many years. I grew up as a Lutheran and recall quite fondly my interest in going to church each weekend as a child.  I simply found my interests changing over the years.  I wanted a message that revealed the underside of life, the inner-workings of what it means to be human.  That motivation has been strong with me ever since I was a teen. 

In 1980 I received a book for my birthday.  It was the “Metaphysical Bible Dictionary” put out by the Unity Church.  I found myself reading it much like may might read a novel.  Every day after school I would spend an hour or two reading from its pages.  It was this experience, I believe, that galvanized my since of direction and interest in philosophy and other forms of mysticism and mystery religion, and of course what I would come to find later were the principles related to the Law of Attraction. 

I didn’t know about the Law of Attraction under that name until I met Esther and Jerry Hicks in the late 1980s.  by then I had already started my journey toward getting my degree in psychology, and was a student at the University of Michigan.  The message that Jerry and Esther presented was mind-altering.  I immediately recognized the clarity of their message and found it attractive (no pun intended).  That the information was “channeled” didn’t trouble me.  As a child I had grown up with both my parents seeing spiritual mediums, readers, astrologers, and the like.  It occurred to me as common even exciting.  I myself had spent time in my late teens learning astrology and later I started to learn about Kabbalah.  I had long been interested in these topics when my parents would speak of them.  I would sit and listen as often as I could. 

Now my interest has changed again.  I’ve completed 4 degrees in psychology and have a considerable amount of knowledge about the mechanisms of human experience.  My interest in the Law of Attraction and other topics has never wavered.  It is this steadfast interest that supports my desire now.  I’ve decided I want to take what I’ve learned and begin sharing with others in the hope that there are others who can benefit from my experience.  It’s my desire to offer comments on other sites related the Law of Attraction and other principles.  There is a great deal of information in the public domain regarding this topic and not all of it is clear and not all of it is beneficial.  I’d like to try to help sort out what I and my clients and students have found helpful and useful, and what’s been less useful.  I encourage your comments and look forward to our ongoing dialogue. 

Dr. Ralph