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Philip Bradbury
As I begin to write these words, I know it could be the end of my writing career. The words you are about to read could have me abused, pilloried, shunned and ostracised. The second-worst fate* of any person is to be separated, isolated, from his fellow humans and I know I'm bringing that fate closer with every word I write. (*The worst fate is, of course, to be right. Oh perfidy, to be caught being right - something I've avoided for so long!)
I previously resisted writing these words but I cannot resist further. The words in my heart must be laid on paper and I must, finally, come clean and let fate fall as it does.
What must I say? I've hinted at it in earlier articles (e.g. The Secret Of The Secret) and it's just not done to kill, hurt or even look sideways at our sacred cows. But I'm now about to prod one of these untouchable beasts.
One of the "facts" of our lives, especially since the release of The Secret is the Law of Attraction and it is this sacred cow that we must not challenge. Yet I must. OK, I'll say it …
THE SECRET MAY NOT BE RIGHT ... the Law of Attraction may not be a law!
Whew! There, I've said it! What, no screams of abuse, no looks of horror, no threats of psychic attacks or eternal damnation? Golly, I can carry on.
You see, none of us know the answer to the meaning of life, how God thinks or how the universe works. We can all guess at it but no one knows whether the sage or the fool is closer in their respective guesses. Many pretend to know. We're all stumbling along in blind ignorance to somewhere we don't know, on a road we build as we go. Our belief about how the "system" works comes, therefore, from how we build our road and what difficulties and joys we encounter to where we think we're going.
Some peoples' journey has been that they struggled aimlessly and then they created some aims and life opened so the idea of the Law of Attraction was born in them … not in the universe, but in them. Then others saw the successes of these aimful people, so the idea became more accepted … but never universally one as not everyone believes it - others' journeys are different.
My journey with Anna, my wife, has not always followed the Law of attraction. When The Secret came out, several years ago, we were into it like rats in a seed bag. We wrote daily affirmations, we stuck a $100,000 note to our bedroom ceiling, we made a vision board, we monitored our conversations and did everything The Secret taught us.
And, yes, our lives changed. The magazine we owned failed financially, leaving us with huge debts and few assets. We kept on with The Secret and, after a year, our debts were largely paid and we'd achieved our aim of going to England for a long-term experience. We got to England, full of hope and everything turned to mud.
English banking systems and technology is 20-30 years behind that of New Zealand and we had to adjust to everything being slower, tearfully frustrating and soullessly unfriendly. I managed to get a job but got the sack soon afterwards. Then my father died and so we returned to New Zealand and another, resultant, bout of indebtedness. On returning to England I got another job, a credit crunch and another job loss. We tried network marketing and applied all we learned from The Secret to all we learned from the many internet gurus. We paid out lots and made nothing, while others in the same program made millions! It just did not work for us - it was not in alignment with our life mission. When I suggested we give it up, we both felt the relief - going out of alignment is hard, unpleasant work. We were wanting something that wasn't in alignment with our life path.
After applying for over 200 jobs we stopped applying and got on with creating two websites and personal development courses for them - costing us only time and we had plenty of that - which we so loved doing. It was such a buzz. Between us, Anna and I have been running personal development courses for over 15 years - that's our passion - and we'll soon be adding relationship courses to that.
The point of the story (yes, there is a point!) is that, for us, The Secret didn't work - we didn't ask to lose our magazine, to lose two jobs, to lose my father, to have huge hurdles to exist in England or to have frightening indebtedness. We didn't ask for any of it. In fact, we asked for the opposite … obviously!
However, what we do have is a deep sense of peace and joy every day, whatever we're doing. An hour ago I was mucking out three stables - a very stinky and sweaty job - and I was enjoying it. I'm enjoying writing this article. We're loving the ability to travel around England in a motor home, seeing the diversity of this olde land.
So, though the Law of Attraction isn't working for us - as it's not working for many, many people we know - something is. This something I've called the Nearly-Law of Getting Out Of My Own Way. Laws are only laws if they're universal - they work for everyone, all of the time - so when it's working for everyone, we could call it the Law of Alignment. You see, my theory (and please never tell me I'm right in this) is that we all have a certain path to walk, certain functions to fulfil, certain experiences to have. We don't get a guidebook for this and we've just got to figure it out as we go along. The fact is we never know what it is we are meant to do or how to do it … but someone does.
Being avid fans of A Course in Miracles, we've finally got it that we never know our best interests - God does. We've finally got it that we're never upset for the reasons we think. We've finally got it that we know nothing but God does - when we step aside and let him in, our peace returns and we find ourselves on a path of passion.
When we stopped and asked God what we should do, nothing much happened, except that I lost my job! We were strangely serene over that tragedy. At the time it was the worst English winter for 30 years so what better way to spend it than working at home (no commuting) together in a warm house, having fun creating websites and courses … and they just happened, so easily. Oh, they're www.bbcorp.info and www.personaldevelopmentacademy.org
We were then provided with a huge motor home and so two homeless, incomeless people are now enjoying the freedom of travel around Britain!
Then, when we gave the job-search over to God, he came up with a website editor job. It means that we can live anywhere we like in England, I get regular paid trips to Barcelona (the head office), I'm doing what I love and income has returned.
I suspect that people featured in The Secret got out of their own way, followed their soul-passion and they soared. If they had asked for anything else, it may not have happened.
So, if life isn't working, stop, give up, give in and listen. Listen to the fear of not working, not earning, not achieving or whatever your fears are … then let them go. Then listen to the second, quieter voice, the Voice for God, the Universe or whoever you listen to deeply, and watch the dross drop away to leave a magic space for your soul-directed activity. This is your time to play.
If I'm right (ooh, that sounds scary!) tell me about it - your experience could inspire others. And, if I'm wrong, halleluiah to that!
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