Unlimited Potential Healing Center

This is a reworked article originally written in March 17, 2015 that was formerly called: 

“Why Shit Happens (or doesn’t)”

Much talk has been made on the Law of Attraction–that you create your own reality through the predominant content of your thoughts, and that by dwelling on positive or negative thoughts, you will draw positive or negative experiences into your life. Popularized by New Thought authors (see list of authors here), the New Age Movement, channelers such as Esther Hicks, and promoted in movies such as The Secret, it has been so hyped up that it takes on the trappings of religious dogma (Science of Mind, Unity, Christian Science, etc.) or cultish in it’s uncritical, narrow minded philosophy. Followers seem to fall into the category of ‘true believers’.

As a hypnotherapist, I agree that the Law of Attraction does seem to operate. It is my job to help a client identify the self-sabotaging thoughts, emotions and expectations that may underlie any unwanted habit, pattern or experience. And it is my job to help them resolve their issues, healing trauma and other blockages, and shifting limiting beliefs and negative expectations so that the person is able to be more hopeful, take appropriate action, and move on with their life less burdened by the stress of the past in order to create a more rewarding future.

That being said, the Law of Attraction is only a possible cause (not the only possibility) and even where found, may be only a partial cause of why particular things happen to you. While important, it is, nonetheless, simplistic and very incomplete. And in it’s claim that it is the only causative factor, it lacks compassion for self and others, and it neglects the other things that may be responsible totally apart from LOA, or in addition be at cause. In other words, the possibilities are:

• Law of Attraction.
• Law of Attraction AND ___.
• Something else.

If you are blind to other factors that are or may be involved, you cannot, you will not take corrective action on them. That is a disservice.

Furthermore, ideas, beliefs, theories, models of reality change over time. They sometimes are more like the fad of the moment. They come and they go. Consequently, it is a mistake to get too attached or you will miss new insights. If you maintain an open-minded attitude, you may come to a greater understanding of how the mind works in creating our world. And as you examine other points in history or other cultures, other areas of the world where people have a vastly different beliefs, ideas, and experience of life than we do in our more privileged Western society, you may have a more expansive understanding in both our freedom and our limitations in what we can and cannot effect. 

But even within the Law of Attraction what is not usually talked about are the thoughts that are the most powerful aspect and the hardest to remedy are those that are so much a part of you that they taken for granted, unspoken, unverbalized, and, therefore, invisible. While your life gives you clues, yet other dynamics beyond your predominant thoughts can be responsible for drawing experiences to you. Hence, the beauty of hypnosis to uncover and release them.

In my first edition of Your Unlimited Potential, a complete self-hypnosis course book first published in 1992 [available through my website], I wrote about this New Thought principle and the others listed below in an entire chapter entitled Laws of Mind. While I am now embarrassed at how much the New Age Movement and New Thought permeates that chapter, New Thought only goes back about a 100 years since  Phineas Quimby. Quimby was a Mesmerist (follower of Franz Mesmer and the early hypnotists) in the early 19th century that healed Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science. Eddy in turn influenced Ernest Holmes who founded Religious Science (of which Fenwick Holmes, Raymond Charles Barker, Stuart Grayson, Louise Hay, Michael Beckwith, Joseph Murphy, Jean Houston, Terry Cole-Whittaker, and William Hornaday are notable ministers). Eddy also influenced Charles and Ethel Fillmore, founder of Unity Church.

• Overall Law of Cause and Effect
• Law of Knowing
• Law of Love
• Law of Gratitude
• Law of Forgiveness
• Law of Nonresistance
• Law of Substitution
• Law  of Belief (Expectancy)
• Law of Faith
• Law of Justification (Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Law of Judgment
• Law of Declaration
• Law of Feeling (Emotion)
• Law of Dominant Effect
• Law of Identification
• Law of Imagination
• Law of Practice (Repetition)
• Law of Neutrality
• Law of No Limitations
• Law of Association
• Law of Compatibility
• Law of Reaping and Sowing (Karma)
• Law of Compensation (Giving and Receiving)
• Law of Relaxation (Allowing)
• Law of Release
• Law of Vacuum
• Law of Opposites
• Law of Reverse Effect
• Law of Pharsing
• Law of the Now
• Law of Permanence
• Law of Connection
• Law of One

But here’s another take on how we may be creating our reality:

While I believe that all of the above influence what happens to us, I noted that physicist, Tom Campbell has another take on why we draw things to us. He says that

We draw experiences to us as learning opportunities, both individually and collectively.

Tom Campbell on Creating Our Future           

Campbell, author of My Big Toe, consciousness researcher, out-of-body experiencer, and former associate of Robert Monroe (founder of the Monroe Institute),  says that physical existence is a virtual reality. The future is a yet unrealized array of multiple possibilities of everything that could happen. As to what does happen or is most likely, he says:

“If a particular occurrence is determined to be an effective learning opportunity for someone or everyone, the probability of it happening is increased. The system is designed to automatically deliver timely custom-fit individual learning opportunities — the presentation of such opportunities to individuals or groups is part of the feedback one receives relative to the choices one makes. Because the point of the system is to overcome fear (about you – high entropy) and replace it with love (about others – low entropy), if you have fear, the feedback system will manifest that fear in PMR [physical reality] to force you to deal with it (learn) or suffer the consequences.”

If it is your soul’s intention, or the intention of the virtual reality system of which you are a part, to learn and to grow, well then, you will be provided with experiences to do just that. That does not mean that you will learn, but the opportunity is there to do so.

For example, years ago I realized that I was much too naive, and, consequently, trusted untrustworthy people. So I made a clear intention to learn the true, underlying nature of others, their motivations and personal, hidden agendas. Immediately after I made that my intention  I came across one pathological lier, manipulative, self-serving or conniving person (all with smiling faces and pleasant exterior personalities) after another. How could someone be outwardly nice and inwardly, not nice? Think of white collar criminals, con men, snake oil salesmen. But did I learn? Yes, I am more discerning today.

Even if you are a good, positive person, you can draw painful experiences in order for you (or someone else) to learn. Have you ever wondered why bad things happen to good people?

Here’s another example. About a decade ago, I found that a ‘friend’ and colleague had plagiarized a full eight pages of my stop smoking book. Now I have never plagiarized anyone so I did not deserve this on the basis of karma. In fact, I go out of my way to acknowledge sources. Nor was I focused on fear that someone might steal from me. In fact, I trusted this person as well as my other colleagues to behave differently. So I did not draw this experience on the level of my predominant thoughts (aka Law of Attraction).  I worked hard to do the research myself and the hard work of writing the book, and here comes someone who above all should not mistreat a friend, and a colleague and fellow presenter who above all should set a shining professional standard of behavior. Furthermore, we had just roomed together at a conference where we were both teaching, so this betrayal was a shock.

Yet in meditation, I was informed that it was a soul agreement–that if she did this (not predestined to happen), that I would be the one to confront her and help her to learn not to steal someone else’s intellectual property. But there was also something in it for me–I could learn to more powerfully to stand up for myself and establish better boundaries instead of letting things slide. This understanding enabled me to let go of the anger and to proceed to taking prompt, effective legal and other countermeasures even though it was very time-consuming to do so.

Pain is a great motivator

My original push to study psychology, dowsing and many self-help modalities  was precisely to deal with and stop the stream of unpleasant ‘learning opportunities’ that life dished out. Of course, at the time, I did not perceive such events as an opportunity. But over time, I decided to use them as such. After all, I might as well get something good out of the experience. Why not salvage something out of the debris, right? As a result, that decision, repeated over and over again as new events showed up, was a powerful part of allowing me to mature and move with greater grace and ease through life. It also stopped some of those types of experiences happening again, or slowing me down in an emotional quagmire if they did.

Although only one factor among many, thoughts and emotions absolutely do impact upon what experiences show up and how they affect you. It is not always obvious, nor necessarily a direct correlation, nor necessarily immediate. But sooner or later, they build sufficient momentum to bring a harvest.

The collective mindset

Scientists are more and more talking about the morphogenetic field, and entanglement of consciousness.  This theory says that the consciousness of each of us is tied psychically to the larger whole of humanity. Your thoughts and emotions are added to my own and that this is what can attract a collective (common) experience.

While the humans may not appear to have the same kind of hive mind of a school of fish or swarming ants, it appears that collective human consciousness exists. My mindset is entangled with yours and yours is entangled with mine. Even where they are disagree, even when antithetical, on some level, they are felt, and that will influence our sense of ease or dis-ease, our individual mood, and our choices (congruent or reactive). The most powerful  effect will be felt with those with whom we are in rapport (friends and family), then with those in close association (neighbors, work associates), those with whom we identify, but ultimately with the larger humanity. The commonly held thoughts and emotions in any group, neighborhood, region, even nation can sometimes be felt. Think of any place where a tragedy has taken place like 9/11 or a mass celebration like Christmas, New Year’s Eve or the end of a war.

Applying the Law of Attraction to the Collective

Perhaps this newer scientific understanding of the morphogenetic field and entanglement can be joined with age-old spiritual awareness that you and your brother are one, that what you do to another, you also do to yourself. If we apply Campbell’s idea that we draw experiences collectively as well as individually to learn, and to move from fear to love, let’s learn as fast as we can to jointly experience a nicer, kinder world.

Copyright by Roxanne Louise. However, this article may be shared in free online sources only if this copyright notice and link to http://www.roxannelouise.com and http://unlimitedpotentialhealingcenter.com  are included with the content.