The Law of Attraction and your Power to Heal Yourself

This article got published in the North Shore Magazine of June/July 2007 in a shortened version

Many people these days are watching the movie “The Secret”, which teaches about the law of attraction. It seems we are entering now an era of becoming more aware of our power, which is the power of our mind.

The law of attraction is a universal law which states that whatever we deeply believe

will manifest for us.  

In this movie, the Universe is compared to the Gene, which fulfills all our desires, saying “Your wish is my command”. In The Secret it is described how whatever we wish, we can have, be or do. Different speakers suggest slightly different techniques to go about affirming what we want, but the common aspects which you may already be familiar with, is the following:

First, state in present tense what you wish to receive, create, or do, as if it was already accomplished. Secondly, generate as much positive, joy filled emotion as you can, while imagining vividly with all your senses how great you will feel when you have or do the thing you are focusing on. The last step is to let it go, to surrender the wish to the Universe, trusting that it will be accomplished without you needing to know how. Also, it is important that you put yourself in a positive mind state, so that you match vibrationally what you want to attract.

The term “vibration” is important with the law of attraction, as it is based on the knowledge of how energy works. It is the science of Quantum Physics which is researching energy and which has proven the concepts laid out in the movie and in this article. Quantum Physics affirms that the whole universe, including ourselves and all objects everywhere are made of the same tiniest building block, which is energy. Energy has different frequencies, according to its higher or lower vibrations. Positive thoughts create pleasant feelings, which have a higher vibration compared to negative thoughts, which have lower vibrations and feel therefore unpleasant. Thus we always create our emotions with our thoughts. They do not come from other people, situations or events.

In The Secret, Joe Vitale says: “Yes, you attracted all you have”, and Esther Higgs states:” You’re the only one who creates your reality”.

Now, if we really create all we want, why would anyone want to have difficult circumstances in their lives? Why would we want to have fights with our loved ones, troubles at work, illness, depression, anxiety, etc? Why would we? Do we like to suffer, or what is it? Here is why: Another part of the Law of Attraction states:

What we resist persists.

We do indeed resist greatly most of our negative thoughts; we push them down into our unconscious mind and then project them out. The result is that we see aspects we believe about ourselves in others and fight them “out there”. In psychology these two processes are called repression and projection. Translated into the language of energy, and following the Law of Attraction, we can state:

Our world is an out picturing, a mirror, of our own (unconscious) beliefs.

This statement can be clearly seen in our relationships. Let’s say we have a partner who seems not much available to us. We then complain to him/her, asking him/her to change, so we feel better about ourselves. Often, the partner feels criticized and defends him-herself. If we insist, then the result often is a fight. Sounds familiar? Imagine your own pattern here, so you can understand the process. It could be with an abusing partner or any other complaint we may have about someone else. Using the knowledge of the fact that our world is an out picturing of our own beliefs, instead of blaming the other, we may realize that our perception of our partner is bothering us because in our unconscious mind, we believe it means certain things about ourselves: We believe we are not good enough, unimportant, unworthy of being loved, too fat, too dumb, and the list is endless. Thus, we encounter again and again the results of our own “pushed down” beliefs out there, in unkind people, in the horror of war, in every negative aspect we perceive “out there”, and we spend our lives fighting back, defending us, wanting to change other people….What we resist persists…To merely create positive goals and attract them with positive thought will not change this pattern, as long as we continue denying that we have also negative, destructive thoughts about ourselves and others, pushed out of awareness.

How can we heal this source of suffering, unhappiness and disease?

To heal means to make whole; to become conscious of our negative beliefs we projected “out there” and to let them go. The way to deal with these negative beliefs is first to be willing to become aware of them when we perceive negative traits or actions in others (because that’s where we see them most of the time). Using the example of a partner who seems unavailable to us, we may think to ourselves something like: “Even though he is again not there for me, I deeply love and accept myself.” With this thought, we first acknowledge our feelings of blame and state we are not those feelings; my feeling may be negative, but I am good. (I am not my feelings). Then, based on the process of realizing that we projected our own beliefs on the other, we may think: “Even though I was again not available to myself – by focusing on him instead of myself – I deeply love and accept myself.” When we do healing with Energy Psychology, these are the statements we use, while tapping at the same time with our fingertips on the side of our hand; it helps dissolve the negative thought patterns. This corrects the error of believing someone else did something bad to us, and we are their victim. We chose to perceive someone to do something bad, we interpreted someone’s action as bad, thus, we created the “bad”, in order to justify our negative unconscious beliefs. Every time we feel unfairly treated, we can then think: “I knew this would happen! I was right!”. We like that; we like to be right, even though it perpetuates our suffering. From the partner’s perspective, he/she just doing his/her own thing; it is not against us, it is not even about us.

This process of understanding our interactions and our whole life as perceived, painted, projected by our own mind gives us the power back.

We can change our patterns, we are not victims of anyone or any circumstance,

but when we suffer, we are victims of our own unconscious beliefs.

Thus, healing is allowed by our willingness to acknowledge our negative beliefs – in this example it is the belief that our partner is against us- and to realize that it is not true - that this was not against us, the partner was just being him/herself.

Beliefs are thoughts or stories we choose to treat like a religion.

We live and abide by them without knowing - until we discover them and realize

they are all false.  

All our negative beliefs are untrue, because we are none of the negative things we believe we are. As stated in the movie The Secret, we are Spirit, not a body, we are an extension of Source, the energy that created us, and Its nature is deep peace and love, and so is ours. Imagine we are light, and all our negative beliefs that we created are like clouds in front of this brilliant light we are.

In summary, healing is bringing the darkness to the Light; the negative beliefs to awareness and to realize we were wrong believing those beliefs, because they are not true. Once we realize that, we can choose to experience joy and peace instead of suffering.

Marlise Witschi, M.Psych.