Getting To Know Yourself: Common Myth Regarding The Law of Attraction

If you have never watched the movie The Secret, this post may be difficult to really appreciate.  In talking to thousands of potential Miracles Coaching students, I've noticed a very subtle but critical misunderstanding and application of the law of attraction with virtually everyone.  The law of attraction states that everything we experience in life is a direct reflection of our internal energy level.  Some describe it more simply as saying "like attracts like."  Ultimately it is teaching that your internal "vibration" or energy level creates your environment.  Your beliefs create your energy, and your thoughts help you know what your beliefs are.
Most people make a costly mistake when they first learn about the law of attraction.  Many mistakenly believe that it is their thoughts that create their reality.  I remember at least one of the experts highlighted in the movie The Secret said something to the effect of "thoughts are things, each individual thought has it's own vibrational frequency that can be measured..."  While this is certainly true, it can also be misleading.

Actually, our thoughts are simply the final linguistic evidence of our energy.  We have an easier time recognizing and dealing with our thoughts, because they are available in a language we understand and use frequently.  However, the thoughts come from somewhere, and if we want to improve our lives our focus should really be on the origin of those thoughts.  Our energy is what is connected in some magical way with everything around us, and our energy is a reflection of our beliefs.  The "universe" doesn't speak English, or any other spoken language, it speaks vibrational "energy."  That is the true attractor power.  Our thoughts are really just our best tool for understanding what our beliefs are.  That is why true, sincere forgiveness and gratitude are essential to living a better life-- but that is another post for another time.
Let me see if I can explain it this way...  Many people consciously want more money, better health, and wonderful relationships.  Who in their right mind would ever attract poverty, disability, or abuse?  The reason why people can consciously desire positive things and still attract negative things is because of the subconscious beliefs about ourselves and about our world that create our energy.  You may say you want more money, and believe it consciously, for example, but if somewhere deep down you are afraid that if you have more money you will become greedy or rude or will not get into heaven, then you will subconsciously push away your conscious intention for more money. 

Why?  To put this in perspective, lets first compare the attractor power of the conscious mind verses the subconscious.  It has been measured that the conscious mind can focus on anywhere between 12 and 120 bits of information at any given time (I've heard differing numbers here, and would love it if someone could find a reputable source for me.  Regardless of the accurate number, it is very small.)  The subconscious, in contrast, is constantly organizing, filing, and functioning on tens of millions of bits of information.  Where is the law of attraction really taking place?  No question  that it is happening on a subconscious level. 

Chinese symbol for "qi" or the essence of life

Because of this misunderstanding, many people learn about the law of attraction and immediately begin to monitor their thoughts.  It is good to monitor our thoughts, but for a different reason.  Those thoughts can be the most effective tool we have to discover our beliefs-- and in turn-- our energy level.
What happens in so many people, however, is that they monitor their thoughts and discover lots of negativity.  Obviously if you believe that your thoughts create your reality then you will do your best to change your thoughts to something positive.  The ultimate effect is that you mask, or superficially cover up your thoughts and artificially create new thoughts that are happy and positive (because you want to attract happy and positive things.)  I believe that this is the last thing you want to do if you really want to elevate your energy and enjoy life more.
So what is actually happening?  Your beliefs create an energy level inside of you.  You might believe, for example, that if someone lies to you, you should be angry with them.  If that is your belief, and someone lies to you, then you will be angry, but only because of that belief.  If you believed it was perfectly healthy and normal for people to lie to you, or that it is sincerely funny when people lie to you, you would not feel anger  when lied to.  Make sense?  Your belief creates an angry energy inside of you.  Then, your mind interprets the negative, angry energy, and represents it linguistically in a thought.

Please realize that it is not happening the other way around.  You did not have a conscious thought followed by a subconscious feeling, which created a new belief about how the world works and how you should react to it.  Your thoughts do not create the energy, they merely give you insight into what your feelings are.  Your feelings were created because of your beliefs.
What happens then, as you try to mask your negative thoughts and replace them with positive thoughts?  Are you changing the energy?  Are you changing the belief responsible for the energy?  No*.  If you only change your current thought, and not the belief that created the thought, all you are doing is making it that much harder to understand and interpret your true beliefs, because you are artificially suppressing the emotions created by the beliefs.

give yourself permission to feel your true feelings.

Suppressing your feelings and thoughts will not attract a better life to you.  If you want to live on a higher plane of energy, you need to allow all of your thoughts to bubble up into your conscious mind.  If you allow these thoughts, then the mind will do a better and better job accurately reflecting the energy inside of you through language.  Suppressing those thoughts and emotions will lead to having a harder and harder time discovering your true beliefs.

So your first job is to allow the emotions to come up.  if you don't like what they represent, that is okay, you can only change the cause of the thoughts by allowing them to come out, and then interpret them and work through them. 
Once you have allowed the belief to surface, you can begin working on it.  In a later post I'll talk about some of the effective tools and strategies that you can use to work through this energy.  For now, just remember that honest, sincere forgiveness (of self as well as others) neutralizes negative energy, and love and gratitude raise your vibration (energy).  Stay tuned for more practical tips later on. 

*I recognize that it is possible to genuinely alter your energy state through changing your thoughts, I'll talk about that later.  Today's post is designed to help people realize the kind of change that attracts a better life is an energy shift, not a thought-replacement.