Once upon a time, when I was in my mid-forties, I found myself standing beside a wild, rushing stream in Northern California. It was a chilly Autumn day and the forest was a wonderful mix of giant redwoods, twisting madrones, and towering, ancient oaks.
I was alone that day and the feeling of magic seemed to positively vibrate through the air. I came to a rocky promontory where the stream poured over a limestone outcropping and dropped twenty feet into a crystal clear pool. I thought that if there was any place in the world where the Fairie Folk would be likely to hide their enchanted treasures, it would be in that mystical glade. And so I asked them, “Fairies, show me your gold!”
Seemingly out of nowhere, there was a powerful blast of wind in the tree tops and thousands and thousands of golden leaves fluttered to the forest floor.
I learned two valuable lessons that day. First of all, don’t get uppity with the Fairies, particularly on their home turf. Secondly, Fairies may have an entirely different idea of what’s really valuable than humans do. I suspect that they may find a shower of golden leaves far more precious than a lump of yellow rock.
I was cogitating about all of that today because I just discovered that the movie, “The Secret,” is now available for free on YouTube. If you haven’t seen it, it’s all about how we can have absolutely anything that we want in life, if we really, really understand the Law of Attraction. It has a sort of a breathless, Dan Brown meets Norman Vincent Peale feeling to it, but it was a groundbreaking film at the time of its release and it’s been a positive force in many people’s lives.
The thing about the Law of Attraction is that it definitely works. Sometimes. And sometimes it doesn’t. For most of us, it works just enough for us to scratch our heads and think, “There’s something going on here and I want to know what it is.”
There is a general principle that if we think positive thoughts, more positive events and people will enter into our lives. If we become more loving, then we’ll start to encounter more loving people. If we’re grateful for the abundance that we have right now, then more abundance will flow into our lives. On the other hand, if we’re constantly depressed and anxious, then the Universe will flow things into our lives to get anxious and depressed about. If we’re constantly cynical and negative, we’ll attract cynical and negative people.
So, yes, “like attracts like,” and the energy we’re putting out will attract energy just like it. The problem seems to be that the Universe may have very different ideas than we do about what we’re looking for.
I have a friend who was completely jazzed when, “The Secret,” came out. She literally watched it several dozen times and took reams of notes so that she could get The Method of Manifesting down perfectly. She made vision boards and spent many hours visualizing and writing out affirmations and she was so relentlessly positive that it was irritating to be around her.
Shortly after that, her husband lost his job, their house was repossessed and they had to live in a travel trailer parked at a camping site in the forest.
Quite understandably, she threw up her hands, pronounced it all, “New Age bullshit,” and even went so far as to become a dedicated atheist. So what went wrong there?
Most Americans approach spirituality and religion as if it were a television game show. For most of us, those are issues we don’t much think about right up until we get our asses caught in a crack. We float right along through life, mostly happy, mostly decent to other people, mostly content with our new cars, new computers, new lovers.
And then – KABLAM!!! – something awful happens. We learn that we have some terrible illness or our life partners leave us or we get fired from our jobs and our houses get repossessed. That’s the point where a lot of us get POWERFULLY religious and we suddenly remember that there’s a God-person who’s supposed to fix everything that’s bad.
We might call that particular God-person the, “Let’s Make a Deal God.” As in, “Let’s make a deal, God. If you’ll just get me out of this mess, I PROMISE I’ll never be bad again. I’ll be a lot better person, God, and . . . and . . . I’ll start going to church and I’ll adopt a puppy and . . . I’ll be good, God. Just PLEASE get me out of this!”
Now, here’s the thing: the God-person (or the Fairies or the Angels or the Universe or Jesus or whatever our particular religious configuration is) does answer our prayers, just not necessarily in a way that makes any sense to us at the time it happens. Like the Fairies on that Autumn day, the Higher Powers out there may have a very different idea about what constitutes gold in our lives than we do. And so, we don’t get exactly what we wanted.
When that happens, we tend to carry the Let’s Make a Deal scenario even further and get really pissed off at the God-person for not holding up his end of the deal. “Look, I wanted the shiny new Jeep that was behind Door Number Three and you gave me the crappy toaster oven that was behind Door Number Two. Well, just forget that part about me adopting a puppy, God. In fact, I just won’t believe in you anymore. Neener, neener, neener!”
Many people approach visualization, manifestation, and the law of attraction in exactly the same way. They think that if they can just find THE method that will make it all work right, they’ll suddenly own a mansion, a sports car, a private jet and they’ll get laid every single night and perhaps every morning, too.
Let’s face it, though: if there was ONE method that worked EVERY SINGLE TIME for EVERY SINGLE PERSON, we’d all be millionaires and we’d be so tired from having great sex that we could barely crawl out of bed. Hell, our butlers would have to serve us our meals in bed, only there wouldn’t BE any butlers because they’d all be millionaires, too.
What a conundrum!
It’s very possible that there’s a guardian angel standing at our shoulders saying, “Yes, dear, I know that you wanted the shiny new Jeep but you really can’t afford the payments or the insurance and you don’t know how to drive a stick shift. On the other hand, we could put some bread in the toaster oven and, look: I brought butter and raspberry jam and Red Zinger tea.”
Or perhaps my friend’s guardian angel was saying, “Yes, dear, I know that you wanted a pot full of Krugerands to appear in your living room, but maybe what you really need is to stop sitting in front of a t.v. watching a movie 30 times in a row and have a little adventure. Life is short. Here’s a nice travel trailer and there’s a beautiful forest. Go.”
Einstein said, “Either everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle.” It can be really hard to wrap our heads around the idea that we’re getting precisely what we need, when we need it, even if it’s not exactly what we wanted. The key seems to be to realize that miracles are constantly unfolding in our lives, but they tend to unfold slowly and in their own peculiar ways.
Just be patient, wait for the magic to work it out, don’t try to make toast with a Jeep, and don’t get uppity with the Fairies.
Remember that my ebook, “Just the Tarot,” is available on Amazon for less than a jar of raspberry jam.
Just the Tarot 