Law of Attraction

Unconscious Relationships: The Patterns That Bind Us

 

I have been a couple’s therapist for twelve years and one thing I see over and over again is the uncanny way that couples who were intensely in love and attracted in the beginning of their relationship, become disappointed and disillusioned. The attractive qualities in their partner end up triggering their deepest childhood wounds. It seems almost inevitable that a romantic partner will be the perfect person for pushing all your buttons that you have put so much effort into hiding, even from yourself! There are unconscious reasons for this initial intense attraction, and then later the intense interpersonal struggle with your beloved.

To start off, I will introduce a few general points about intimate relationships. There are five stages of growth that intimate relationships experience to evolve. In the same way that there are life stages for an individual person, there are also relationship life stages. The first stage is the honeymoon stage. This is falling in love… rose coloured glasses… and perceiving your lover as perfect and complimentary to you. You see all their similarities. It is like this stage needs to be absolutely fantastic to get a couple through stage two. Stage two is the stage of negotiating difference. This stage is about power struggles, disappointment, inner wounds, issues being triggered, and fights. All of a sudden you take off the rose coloured glasses and you begin to see all of your beloved differences. It can be a very rude awakening!

Stage three is where after struggling together over years, you step out of the battle to find yourself again after being lost in the process of the relationship. Stage four is a coming back together in a real way. Now you know who this person is and you make a choice to be with them (or not). Stage five is the symbiotic stage, where the relationship takes on a life of its own. Have you ever seen two happy elderly people walking down the street, knowing exactly how to move with each other?

So while intimate relationships can tear us apart and bring us to our knees, the potential is a beautiful healing and connection between two people.

What has all this got to do with unconscious attraction patterns?

After working with so many couples, I believe unconscious attraction brings two people together to potentially heal past unconscious wounds or patterns. It is as if UNCONSCIOUSLY, there is a knowing that this person is the perfect person to match you and bring to your consciousness what is unconscious and needs healing. The patterns fit like a key in a key hole that unlocks the potential to heal with another. Of course, instead of healing we sometimes simply open the wounds and become re-hurt. However, I have faith that it is actually the potential of healing the wounds that unconsciously attracts two people in intimate relationship.

Perhaps that is why when we fall in love we have a sense of familiarity or of “knowing” them before. The unconscious does know all about them! It knows all about us! And it works its magic that we call falling in love.

The difference between successful relationship counselling and unsuccessful relationship counselling, is when both people leave counselling taking responsibility for their 50% of creating the dynamics between them. Often couples enter counselling blaming one person or each other for the relationship difficulties. They usually come into counselling in the second or third stages of their relationship. It is usually a last chance attempt at repairing the relationship before leaving. So the challenge of couple’s therapy is to explore the readiness of each person in the relationship to become conscious of their unconscious patterns that are triggered by their partner. In general, the more we all become aware of our patterns and how they impact on the people close to us, the more real choice we have in changing what is causing us pain and anguish.

Where To Now?

In the later part of January 2012, I will be posting a series of blogs on Conscious Relationship. So tune in later this month for more valuable information on how you can heal your relationship by healing yourself, and then working with your partner to shift the unpleasant dynamics in your relationship.

 

 

Spiritual Egotism!

 

Today I present the final piece of writing in this series on “The Law of Attraction… Are My Beliefs Ruining My Life?” My last point in that blog was that people who call themselves “spiritual” are actually in the process of identifying with a concept, which is an egoic state. Being spiritual is not an identity nor is it a belief.

 

I heard a story once… I think it was a Hindu story! I cannot remember all of it but here goes… there was a man who loved a certain God and was trying to prove he was the most devoted person on the planet. He succeeded at a range of increasingly difficult tasks to prove his faith and commitment, every time asking the God if he was the most devoted person an on Earth. Each time he got the response that he was not the most devoted. Finally after achieving some super human feat he broke down in exhaustion and asked who was the most devoted… has he not done everything to prove he is the most spiritual person devoted to this God? The God pointed to another man, a humble man in a field who ploughed the Earth every day. The first man turned to the God, confusion across his face, “But this man does not even call himself spiritual!” “Yes” replied the God, “that is the point exactly!”


The Key!!!

The truth is we are all spiritual. Spirit cannot be separated from matter. We may identify at a personality level with one religion or another, or some spiritual practice but as Eckhart Tolle states… these are all sign posts. If we remain looking for sign posts or strongly identifying with sign post then I guess, the belief in the sign post will be strengthened. But this has nothing to do with Spirit.

Irrespective of what a person identifies with, I can feel their connection or disconnection with Spirit or the Devine Presence (or God, if you are Christian). You can simply feel it!!! A person, who authentically walks a spiritual path and is connected to love, shines brightly. Through their own dark night of the soul, facing their inner demons, opening to love and honouring themselves, other people and the nature, they have found a sense of spiritual serenity.

The spiritual path is magnificent and beautiful. It has many thorns and challenges. And it is honourable and certainly, in my experience, worthwhile. Ultimately the key is LOVE. Spirit IS love!!! It does not matter what you call yourself… spiritual or non-spiritual or whatever. When you feel it, there is no mistaking it… it is beautiful… it is LIFE!!!

 

Have your say on the Law of Attraction and contribute to the greater consciousnesses of humanity ….

 

 

It Is A Myth To Think We Can Avoid Emotional Pain Through Spiritual Practice

 

The seventh point I made in my blog “The Law of Attraction… Are My Believes Ruining My Life?” was that we experience emotional processes that cannot avoid through spiritual practice. This has been one of the hardest lessons for me to learn on my spiritual journey!

Our emotional selves can knock us over if we do not know how to work with and honour our emotions. Anyone who has been railroaded by powerful emotions knows it can be like being hit by a tidal wave and can be very hard to keep your head above water.

An Attempt To Escape The Pain

A lot of people turn to spiritual practices to save themselves from experiencing intense emotions, however this is incredibly mislead! The way most people try to cope with powerful emotions is to withdraw and shut down from them. This is a very natural reaction. It’s like when you put your hand on a hot plate… you withdraw it so it doesn’t burn. In spiritual awakening the opposite happens. We open to experience and to ourselves. This can really throw people if they expected something nice and gentle… the spiritual path is usually anything but gentle, at least until we have shifted of the patterns that cause us the deepest suffering.

It is not surprising that many people from Western countries especially turn to spiritually to alleviate suffering and distress. In Western countries we tend to try to supress emotions and if that does not work we medicate them either legally or illegally. But emotions are out guidance mechanism system, they are there for real reason. So when we ignore them they simply scream louder. They are meant to get our attention and shoe us what needs changing in our lives. As a general rule, the more we dismiss our emotions the more they intensify. So when we use spiritual practice such as mediation, prayer or magical beliefs as a way to escape emotional pain, we are really using these practises as we would a drug. Then they can become addictive to keep the unwanted emotions at bay.

Spiritual Practice Connects Us To Our Emotional Selves

The irony is that practices that raise awareness such as mindfulness, meditation or psychotherapy generally increase sensitivity (hopeful safely) and therefore aim to help us to reconnect with our emotional selves. Of course we want to do this from new and safe perspectives, or from a place of witnessing them rather being overwhelmed over by them, but still the aim is to feel rather than avoid emotion. But in short, it actually healthy to feel our emotion and to connect with who we really are.

So you could say that spiritual practice is likely to intensify emotion at first. Opening our hearts often results in feeling deep anger, fear or sadness before we feel the love. It’s like breaking through the ice on the surface before finding fluid water running in the stream underneath. To stand in our power, courage and truth requires that we overcome fear and inadequacy caught up in the solar plexus. We often hold a great deal of hurt in our bodies and there are real emotional processes that need to be honoured to release that pain. Clearing the energy of these wounds through alternative and intuitive modalities can definitely help the release process along but our emotions do not become superfluous.

Another important aspect of the spiritual journey is as we change our energy, patterns and our gain clarity and strength, our life often changes around us. These inner shifts can result in changes in our relationships, employment and goals in life. And yes, these changes tend to cause emotional pain, even if we feel the inevitability of these changes deep down.

So as we embark on the spiritual journey we do not avoid the emotional pain. It is rather that we gain wisdom to better understand that pain and we develop techniques such as mindfulness to dis-identify from the pain. But it is still there, we just learn to make better choices. Our emotions are here to guide us but if we think we can override the tangible world and our emotional selves we have another thing coming! We don’t just “rise above it” when our partner leaves us, we lose our job and our parent dies. These real emotional processes have to be honoured, even when we are aware of Spirit!

 

Have your say on the Law of Attraction and contribute to the greater consciousnesses of humanity ….

 


 

Who Said We Should Get Rid Of Our EGO?

 

The fifth point I mentioned in my blog “The Law of Attraction… Are My Beliefs Ruining My Life?” was that we are not meant to supress or eliminate our ego. However, how we understand the term “ego” is essential if we are going to know what best to do with it.

Defining the Ego

The ego can be defined in a range of different ways. Freud was the first to use the term ego in his psychosexual theory of neurosis. He was referring an aspect of the self that was somewhere in between the id and the superego. For Freud, the ego was a kind of balanced self between the child-like, impulsive id and the overly rigid, moralistic super-ego.When people are talking about the ego in new age circles, I ‘m sure they are not referring to its original meaning!

Another version of ego that I have heard in new age movement is what Eckhart Tolle speaks about in his “Power of Now” and a range of other books and CDs. When Eckhart talks about “ego” he is referring to thought and emotional processes in the mind. So for him, the ego is equated to the human mind.

Yet another version I hear about in the “spiritual community” and general community at large, sounds more like the term “egotism”. Ego is seen as a bad thing to get rid of. So here we have three very different concepts of ego. There are more definitions however, I’m going to focus on the last two.

The Ego is Our Friend

Eckhart Tolle’ definition of the ego makes a lot of sense to me when talking about the psychospiritual. The ego is all mental and emotional activity of the mind. It includes our personality, values, likes and dis-likes and interpretation of the world. It is our self-identity, conscious beliefs and memories, and the associated emotions attached to those beliefs. Based on this idea of the ego, we are not meant to get rid of our ego, we are simply meant to dis-identify from it.

As living human beings we have a human mind. We are meant to become conditioned and hold psychological patterns in our minds and bodies. The Taoist states that we need to be carved before we can be uncarved… this is the process of gaining wisdom! Our ego has a real role to play in our lives. Without the mind we could not think. We could not interact socially or believe in anything. We could not create technology or society. We would not have unique personalities or be able to day dream. The mind is truly amazing! Yes… the ego is amazing!!!

The problem is not about having an ego, but rather the problem emerges when the egoic mind has control rather than what I will call “our presence”. When the mind drives things, as opposed to being utilised for the creative expressive vehicle that it is, then chaos prevails.

How to Dis-Identify from the Ego

The trick is not to eradicate the ego but rather to master it! Mindfulness, for example, teaches us how to witness psychological reactions consisting of thoughts, emotions and actions, such as what Eckhart Tolle calls the “pain body”. This is process is about dis-identifying from the thoughts and emotional attachments, and simply watch them play out. We then cease to believe that we are the patterns. We take our power back from them and they cease ruling our lives. Only then can we begin to make more conscious choices.

When we witness our thoughts and emotions with space and curiosity we learn to release the attachment to these beliefs and emotions. This kind of disrupts the automatic nature of the pattern. Mindfulness is beautiful! It produces a gap between the observer and the ego (the observed). It allows us to aster the mind rather than being ruled by it.

So in a nut shell, we were never meant to surpass or get rid of our ego. We may be able to witness the mind or master it, but we cannot escape it! We have a living human mind that thinks and identifies as a “self”. This is the ego and it is a blessing!

 

Have your say on the Law of Attraction and contribute to the greater consciousnesses of humanity …

 

 

The Nature of Unconscious Attraction Patterns

How Does the Law of Attraction Work?

If it is Unconscious… What Can I do About That?

The fourth point in the “Law of Attraction… Are My Beliefs Ruining MY Life?” is that the unconscious holds beliefs that work its own kind of magic that we are not conscious of! Our conscious mind may desire a whole lot of material good and types of relationships. However the process of unconscious Attraction does not really work that way.

Through previous blogs we see that the unconscious and awakening spiritual awareness involves a lot more than what we might consciously want. I personally believe alignment between our conscious mind and the unconscious can attract experiences to us. I belief in certain states of mind we are attracted towards certain types of relationships and synchronous events that can lead to successful outcomes. However, I also believe that there are certain themes that we are put on this Earth to learn from. We could call it “soul lessons”, “sacred contracts”, fate or God’s Will. Whatever you call it, this is where certain themes or issues play out and are being resolved through our life experience.

Psychospiritual Themes and Psychological Patterns

Even if we step away from a spiritual understanding and adopt a purely psychological perspective, these themes show up throughout a person’s life. Whether we focus on a person’s presenting issue in therapy stemming from their current interpersonal problems or whether we focus on the inner child or family generational issues, the themes are generally the same. For those who work in alternative or esoteric fields and embrace past lives, again the themes are generally the same. So it is the themes and the psychological patterns connected to those themes that are important here.

Psychological themes have a core belief or issue that the pattern is attached to. Like a spider’s web, everything is built around a core point or a few key issues. These themes differ for all of us. They could be about self-value or worth, they could be about narcissism, control, abandonment, judgement, public humiliation, success, self-efficacy, over or under responsibility, lovability, just to name a few. Patterns are made up of the thoughts, feelings and actions that are the manifestation of the core belief. These patterns could be self-sabotage patterns, addictions, avoidance patterns, or self-destructive patterns. The pattern and the core issues can be identified either through observing a repetitive theme in a person’s life or by the disproportion of the emotional reaction to a current event. These themes may show up in the area of intimate relationship, employment, housing, finances, family, substance abuse or a range of other areas in a person’s life.

So through the last few paragraphs I have worked my way from the unconscious/spiritual dimension of core beliefs and patterns through to the material/practical arena of how they may be manifested.

Responsibility and the Unconscious

As a rule of thumb, in my clinical experience and what is understood in Eastern traditions and alternative therapies, is that generally the outer world and behaviour reflects the inner world, even if the person is not consciously aware of why. This is not the fault of the person, it is normal. Until we do a lot of deep exploration, no one has a clue of what is really happening inside them! So I like to steer clear of saying it is their responsibility or choice to “attract in experiences” and would rather say it is their choice whether they heal or not. Even then there needs to be a readiness and it may not be now. This too is not a bad thing. I have complete faith that people do heal when they are consciously and unconsciously ready to do so. This readiness is essential to increasing awareness and releasing old patterns. But I do want to emphasise if they are not ready it is because they are legitimately not ready…a healthy respect for the safety mechanism in the mind and the unconscious forces in life, is important I belief.

A Combination of Modalities Works Best

Working to release patterns and core beliefs may take a while. They tend to have a circular nature, they are layered as they say in Gestalt therapy… like layers of an onion. Through each layer we understand a little more. The wisdom of that theme becomes deeper. Eventually we see it so clearly we do not need to play it out anymore. We see it for what it is! I love the practice of mindfulness in combination with energy healing modalities for releasing patterns. As a psychotherapist/ psychologist, I enjoy working with people who are working through the conscious with me and are accessing either kinesiology, spiritual healing, acupuncture, a chiropractor or similar fields for the unconscious energy shifts.

The journey is as important as the end result. Life does not stop and we are suddenly perfectly healed. Rather, we wake up every now and then and realise how far we have come.

My Personal Spiritual Healing Journey

For me personally, I realise that I forgot that I used to wake up dreading the day because now when I wake up, I embrace it. I feel excited about meeting new people and seeing where this journey in life leads me. Before I was full of fear, when now I am excited. Before things were heavy, where now they are light. I still feel the full spectrum of emotion and I witness my thoughts as they sometimes replay old patterns, but now I simply witness them without acting out of them. Where that point was when I woke up happy, I do not know. I ventured in and out of the darkness for years while accessing healing modalities, until I integrated the awareness of happiness, outside the patterns that created suffering.

Through this healing process I also became aware of synchronicities that flow through my life. The Law of Attraction seems to work its magic when I am happy and light. It happens when I’m in the right emotional space… the flow… the zone! But I did not get there by sitting around thinking about it. I got there by pro-actively healing myself through counselling, energy clearings, massage, hypnosis, and spiritual healings. I slowly became conscious of that which I was previously unconscious. As one of my beautiful spiritual healers (Barbara Van DeBrug) said… I was pea soup and now I am clear! That took seven years of kinesiology, Barbara’s chakra balances, Miriam Schafer’s Hara healings and counselling! Before I saw Barbara and another healer, (Leonie in Canberra) before her, I’m sure I was black tar!!! I feel blessed for all their help!

Based on accumulated wisdom and guidance, I learnt to make better choices (by “better” I mean more life enhancing rather than destructive). My conscious mind gained clarity and I learnt new ways of being, which yes, involve new ways of “doing”.

So the unconscious mind has its own agenda that our conscious mind may be completely unaware of, or in conflict with. However, as we work to heal and balance ourselves, we learn how to align the conscious with the unconscious. And if we allow it… life’s magic can unfold in ways that do amaze us!

Have your say on the Law of Attraction and contribute to the greater consciousnesses of humanity …

 

 

 

Spiritual Emergency: The Dark Night of the Soul!

I would like to give thanks to Stan & Christina Grof for all their wonderful information on spiritual emergency. My dedication goes to Alli Lawler who was the beautiful woman who introduced me the Spiritual Emergence Network.  And I would also like to thank Kama Frankling for her support and wisdom on spiritual emergence.


In my blog “The Law of Attraction… Are My Beliefs Ruining My Life?”, the third point that was raised was that spiritual emergence without grounded reason can lead to serious mental illness with dangerous implications. Many people are inspired towards the spiritual path because they want to be special or because they think it will bring happiness and enlightenment!!! What most people are not told is that a spiritual journey is actually the harder path. It’s not a Sunday walk in the park… Spiritual awakening is about transformation at a soul level, this sort of stuff often happens through trauma or tragedy. It can shake the core of your being. In spiritual awakening you are changing your old thought and emotional patterns on a deep level and then relearning how to interact with the world and people again. Through the process some people even experience what we term in the West, mental illness such as depression, anxiety and psychosis.

In some non-western cultures Shamans may go through a dark night of the soul before they emerge into the tribe’s Sharman. In the West we would see that person as having a mental illness and possibly a psychotic episode. In these cultures they are seen as a Sharman in training. These cultures understand the psychotic episode to be a deep transformation and spiritual emergence lead by their own inner demons (and maybe outer demons too). People can go through this type of spiritual awakening for years, supported by their communities until they come out of it. Some never come out of it. However it is interesting that there is a far higher rate of these people emerging out of a “spiritual emergence” than there is a person in the West recovering from a “psychotic episode” through the mental health system.

In Eastern practices such as Buddhism, it is also well known that a person can suffer from symptoms of mental illness through regular meditation practice and spiritual awakening. When someone begins to experience symptoms of anxiety, depression or even psychosis through their emergence, they are guided away from spiritual practice to re-ground themselves. It is the only time they can eat red meat, they work in the gardens or fields and they cease meditation practices.

It is no wonder demons and scary images are captured and portrayed in religious art, including Christian art. Spiritual awakening burns through what we want to see least about ourselves. While not all of us go through a full blown spiritual emergency (that looks much like mental illness), spiritual emergence does tend to bring us to our knees in humility. It often throws us into an egotistical state for a while SO WE CAN CLEARLY SEE THE EGO! It’s a little embarrassing, trust me!!! We go sky high and lose our grounding for a while… I was ungrounded for years. It has bouts of pristine clarity and then complete confusion and disorientation. Any underlying unconscious patterns tend to be brought up to the light of consciousness, even when we struggle to remain ignorant and try to avoid what we don’t want to see. If we don’t know what we are doing we can get lost on the spiritual path… it can be a frightening place!

In saying all of that, I do believe with the right psychospiritual guidance, the practice of balance and mindfulness, and honouring the self and others, emerging into spiritual awareness can be a rewarding and honorable journey. The more aware we become, the responsible we can be and the more we can make choices where before we were largely ignorant of ourselves and reacting out of unconscious patterns. For those who chose to walk the path… you have my blessings and be wise on your journey!!!!

 

Have your say on the Law of Attraction and contribute to the greater consciousnesses of humanity …

 

 

 

 

Balancing the Spiritual and the Tangible World

The second point in the blog “The Law of Attraction … Are My Beliefs Ruining My Life?” is about balancing the spiritual with the material. When we either chose or simply find ourselves embarking on a “spiritual journey”, balance within our mind, body and the external world are essential if we are to stay sane through the process. Of course, increasing awareness generally creates chaos both within and without, as self-transformation often occurs through experiential change. However, we cannot forget how important it is to come back to a state of balance when we are going through change.

A spiritual journey is simply about opening your awareness to the spiritual dimension of experience that we are already having. Ultimately spiritual connection can help us to heal, especially through practices that honour the self, others and nature. However it is vital to hold balance as an essential ingredient in the process.

In my experience, both within my own spiritual/life journey and what I have heard from others, there is an enormous tendency to become elated and fly sky high for a while. This can happen due to beginning a regular mediation practice, spiritual healing or energetic clearings, or from awakening in other similar ways. When this happens, it is amazing! Everything is beautiful and we can easily be lead to think that everything will be perfect from now on. This is an altered-state-of-consciousness and yes, it is an amazing, beautiful spiritual experience. But it is important not to be fooled!

Spiritual practices that have had thousands of years of evolution such as Buddhism, are aware that these amazing states of being are a “glamour”. They know what goes up, must come down. Depression can result from a period of meditation and psychosis can result from spiritual emergence. I will go into more detail about spiritual emergence and mental illness in my next blog. But for now, it is important to recognise that the intensity of spiritually awakening can fool us when it is beautiful.

Of course, at other times the spiritual path can feel intensely painful too. Whichever way, it tends to take us out of suppressing emotionally charged patterns and issues so we can heal and release them.

Another point about balance is this. One of my favourite authors and therapist, John Welwood explains the balance between Eastern spiritual practice and Western psychology of the mind and science. John wonderfully illustrates people’s processes of healing at a deep unconscious level in his book “Love and Awakening”. The core of this process involves acknowledging the underlying real needs underneath the wounds that are often revealed within the context of intimate relationship. The real need may be to belong, to be loved, to feel valued, to be safe, to be supported, and to connect. The memories of having any of these needs neglected or violated is held in our bodies and energetically until healed. So a spiritual journey will trigger them as will a close relationship. So to balance the Eastern and Western perspective is a great way of moving forward to heal ourselves.

As we embark on these sometimes painful and sometimes beautiful journeys, it is essential to “hold the balance” so we can integrate the learnings into our minds and souls.

Balance is the practice of mindfulness… a process of witnessing emotional patterns and thoughts that come up when triggered. And likewise, witnessing the glamour of the blissful altered-state-of-consciousness when everything shines brightly.

Balance is embracing the Western science of psychology AND Eastern spiritual practices. I believe this is essential as we step into the changing awareness beyond 2012.

Balance is awareness and nurturing of our body, what we feed our mind, and compassion for emotion, as we become increasing more sensitive mind, body and soul. What are we eating, what are we watching on TV (horror movies might not have the same appeal!), what music are we listening, who are we putting ourselves around are all about balance.

Balance is stepping away from the busy human created world and cyber-world and being with nature! And it is stepping out of the simple non-action-of-being, to act and actively create within the human world of our creations.

Balance is our gentle breath… in and out! It is the flow of giving and receiving… It is a “Both/And” reality as opposed to an “Either/Or” reality. It is connection and integration!

Balance is the Key to integration of the material and spiritual!!!

For tips on practicing mindfulness … subscribe on this site and you will receive 10 days of mindfulness tips and 7 audio meditations.

Have your say on the Law of Attraction and contribute to the greater consciousnesses of humanity …

 


 


The Consequences of Separating Spirit from Matter

The first point in my blog called “The Law of Attraction … Are My Beliefs Ruining My Life?” was that the spiritual and the tangible material world are not separate. Today my blog focuses on that point and demonstrates the consequences if we perceive them as separate.

When we separate the spiritual from the material world we lose something! The material world loses a sense of soul when it is devoid of spirit. The spiritual realm loses colour and substance when it is divorced from matter. Spirit loves to dance in the material world and cannot be separated from it.

Together, the spiritual and the material create life itself. Spirit is not IN matter … it IS matter! Matter cannot exist without spirit because ultimately it is one and the same. I believe they are not actually separate. It is all about how we human beings perceive them, understand them and speak about them.

The consequences of treating the spiritual and material realms as a duality can been seen over the last two thousand years throughout the world. In the Western world religions and influential philosophical thinkers have separated mind from matter, and spirit from mind. As a culture we have also separated humanity from nature and men from women. We have been living an illusion of segregation and separation which has led to loss, grief and destruction across the planet.

We do not have to look far to see how the Western mindset of separation affects us on a very fundamental level. The very air we breathe is jeopardised by narrow thinking of how we can use our planet rather than how we can LIVE WITHIN IT. Our environment, social structures, relationships, physical and mental health and a great deal more have suffered and will continue to suffer, if we do not change our mentality of separation.

So when it comes to separating spirit from matter in the Western mind, it is no surprise how extreme this divide has become. The consequences include the number of people who are driven by profit and material gain at the expense of honouring themselves or others or the environment. The material world has become something to exploit, rather than something sacred with a memory and soul of its own. Eventually civilisation will fall because our spiritually devoid practices are simply unsustainable.

The flip side of this duality between spirit and matter is that religion becomes a separate exclusive club based on judgement, fear and guilt. I am not saying that there are not positive aspects of religion and spirituality… there is a lot of good that comes from it. I am simply saying that when the spiritual becomes separated from the world, our bodies and nature, it becomes more about the mind than the soul. Through this process of separation, religion and spirituality lost its heart and connection with life. These are some of the consequences of separating the spiritual from the material.

There is another consequence to separating spirit from the material world. The spiritual both in the East and the West has adopted the idea that to be spiritual is to renounce worldly goods and become self-sacrificial. Again, this perspective of separation between the spiritual and the world can lead to an extreme state of physical deprivation. There are spiritual benefits of detoxification, fasting, and practices to enhance altered-states-of-consciousness that help separate us from our addictions and unconscious habits. However, when these practices are driven by an egoic state of mind that thinks it is good to self sacrifice, the psychological and interpersonal effects can less than desirable. People can end up giving while harboring resentment and a sense of self loathing. This mindset is not love based and does not foster healthy boundaries and empowerment.

I wonder if we balanced the spiritual and material if we would evolve to a higher state of being? I wonder…

I wonder what would happen if we brought the spiritual and the material together? I wonder if we could align honouring ourselves and Spirit with our everyday lives IN THE MATERIAL WORLD. As I sit in my chair, facing my computer, writing a Work Cover report for a person suffering severe stress in the workplace… I wonder!

I open my heart to my writing this report. I hold compassion within my being for my client, Work Cover QLD and those involved in causing harm and stress to my client. Report writing becomes like a prayer! And yet on the outside it looks just like a Work Cover report! But it is created with love and grace.

When I creatively merge the material with the spiritual, what amazes me the most is that the mundane tasks at work become a beautiful expression of spirit!!!

 

Have your say on the Law of Attraction and contribute to the greater consciousnesses of humanity …

 

 

The Law of Attraction … Are My Beliefs Ruining My Life?

 

Since my first blog on the Law of Attraction, I have experienced a series of interesting events. First, I received some fantastic comments in response to my first blog on the Law of Attraction from people I admire and look up to. Second, I attended a regular network meeting, unaware that the guest speaker was presenting on guess what… Yes, the Law of Attraction! Thirdly, I was pointed in the direction of Kayley Grace who has just made a video on the result of having given up everything over the last seven years based on beliefs espoused by people advocating the Law of Attraction.

So in this blog I am attempting to make sense of the Law of Attraction in a far more grounded and reasonable way than some of the popular messages thrown around out there. I would like to give a special thanks and appreciation to all of the people who have commented on my Law of Attraction blogs, Judi Mason for her talk on the Law of Attraction in our Coolum Health Practitioner Network meeting and Kayley Grace for her inspirational videos on the Law of Attraction.

My Personal Story of the Law of Attraction

When I attended the Coolum Health Practitioners Breaky last Thursday on that beautiful December morning in front of the ocean, I was reminded of my first conscious experience with the Law of Attraction. It was seven years ago when I was living in Canberra and was facing some emotionally difficult experiences. As a last ditch hope, I accessed a spiritual healer. I had experienced a series of traumas throughout my life and was carrying some heavy energy which back then was “my normal”. I simply could not move forward in my life while carrying it.

So after three months of intensive spiritual healing, I resigned from my public service job, sold my house, put my furniture in storage and said to my girls, “we are going north on a holiday that we are never coming back from.” I did not know much about the Law of Attraction back then. All I knew was I felt so light and free after the heavy burdens and darkness were removed. It was complete liberation! Everything shone brightly and life worked like magic! I was sky high, and it was not drug induced.

So I drove up the Eastern coast of Australia from Canberra with my two girls, Jessi and Tashie, over the next month. I maintained my daily meditation practice and clearing my chakras and repeating my spiritual mantra given to me from my spiritual healer. We stayed at a grungy little old pub in Bellingen and had a wonderful seafood basket that fed all three of us. I loved the character of the Bellingen Hotel but Jessi, my oldest daughter was convinced that we should stay in a luxury resort after our last stay. So we found a brochure in a café on the way to Byron Bay and she got to choose the next place we stayed. She chose the Oasis Resort.

It was an Easter weekend in Byron Bay and the Blues Festival was on. So I called from my mobile phone and the receptionist said she could give us a room for the two nights… for half price! My happy high vibe continued as we entered Byron Bay. Over the next two days we got parking spots near the beach every time. It worked beautifully! I played like a child and openly laughed with my girls for the first time I could remember. It was amazing! I couldn’t believe how easy it was.

So then we kept going north! First the Gold Coast and then the Sunshine Coast. The energy of Coolum Beach spoke to me and it only took two days before I found our cheap little rustic beach house to rent. The little house was in walking distance to the beach… perfect!

It was nine months later and it was time to move. I wanted to buy a house but I had no job and only a deposit from selling my house in Canberra. I remember the energies shifting and could feel that magical space within. One morning I looked down from the balcony and saw dozens of birds of different species all flying in a figure eight… It was freaky! So I began to look for a house.

I was drawn to Mount Coolum and I sat in front of the mountain and asked with openness and humility for a house in this area that I could afford that was adequate for me and my little family. House prices were already high in the Sunshine Coast so I wondered if it were possible. But I “put it out there” anyway, with love in my heart.

As I got into my car I looked at my Refadex and noticed a little street called Gypsy Close. I thought “wouldn’t that be cool to live in that street!” When I arrived home I noticed a real-estate brochure on my door step and low and behold… there was a three bedroom pole home in the bush that I could possibly afford in guess where? Gypsy Close, Mount Coolum!!! I had to go and see it. So I got in my car and looked at it from the outside but decided it looked a bit strange. Over the next week it played in my mind so I eventually went to see the inside. I was sold! It was great for us. My girls and I have lived in our little tree house for the next seven years but this is not where the story ends.

My “powers of manifestation” faltered when it came to men and finances. Over the time since I bought the house I have had an ex-boyfriend threaten to kill me over three months and another ex-boyfriend who exploited us until I nearly lost the house. I became very sick. I think my adrenal system finally gave up and I put on dress sizes of weight overnight. I could not function at “normal work places” without becoming intensely drained of energy and yet had a mortgage and two children to support. So I decided to take another leap of faith and set up my own business on nothing but a line of credit and stubborn streak to land on my feet. I took on the Law of Attraction philosophy and got started….

After a year or two of setting up my business, I realized that the “doing’ was as important as the “being”. I struggled for years between illusions, false beliefs, stomach ulcers, social reality and spiritual emergence… all the time getting further and further into debt. I became confused, lost all sense inner truth and self-trust, and was wide open to exploitation.

Somehow something half way sensible emerged from inside me and I moved away from the spiritual to re-ground myself in the tangible world. I stepped away from anyone who drained me or confused me and began to re-claim the long and narrow path towards sanity. I reconnected with my voice of reason and took a stand to my magical and wishful thinking that was leading me down the garden path.

So What I Learnt About the Law of Attraction!

My bitter-sweet story of the Law of Attraction gave me some powerful and important learnings about the spiritual path! But before I share what I learnt, I would love you to watch this video made by Kayley Grace called “If I’m so infinite then where the fuck is my stuff?”

 

 

 

Wow!!! Thank you Kayley Grace!

Kayley and I are far from the only two who have been affected by false messages about the Law of Attraction. I have heard many stories of people dangerously lead astray by these sorts of beliefs.

 

So here are some of what I have learnt about the Law of Attraction and the spiritual path….

  • The spiritual and the tangible word are not separate. We cannot embrace one without the other, without unpleasant consequences.
  • Balance between spiritual practice and grounded, tangible action in the world is essential.
  • Spiritual emergence without grounded reason can lead to serious mental illness with dangerous implications. Any Buddhist will tell you that and they have been practicing this stuff for over three thousand years!
  • The unconscious holds beliefs that work its own kind of magic that we are not conscious of! As I discussed in my last blog, when it comes to the unconscious it is not an individual personality or self. So the unconscious attraction forces might be quite different from what we consciously want!
  • We are not meant to surpass our ego. According to Eckhart Tolle the ego is the conscious human mind. We may be able to witness the mind or master it, but we cannot escape it! We have a living human mind that thinks and identifies as a “self”. This is the ego!
  • If the spiritual and our emotional selves are out of alignment, it can create havoc! Our emotions are here to guide us but if we think we can override the tangible world and our emotional selves we have another thing coming! We don’t just “rise above it” when our partner leaves us, we lose our job and our parent dies. There are real emotional processes that have to be honored even when we are aware of Spirit!
  • All of those people who call themselves “spiritual” are actually in the process of identifying with a concept. This in itself is an egoic state … an identity statement! In truth, we are all spiritual whether we consciously think it or not.
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    I will explore each of these point in greater depth in seven blogs over the next seven days, in my blog series on Psychospiritual Reflections. However, for now I want to make the simple point that it is vital to hold onto your voice of reason when embarking on a “spiritual journey:” The tangible, financial and physical world does exist and we do live in it! We are a part of it. As Kayley generously pointed out in her video… WE ARE HUMAN and WE HAVE REAL TANGIBLE HUMAN NEEDS!!! It is important to remember this when we take on and identify with beliefs associated with the Law of Attraction!

     

    Have your say on the Law of Attraction and contribute to the greater consciousnesses of humanity ….

     

     

     

    The Difference between the Conscious & Unconscious in the Law of Attraction

    Psychospiritual Reflections 23.12.2011

     

    In my blog “Misunderstanding the Law of Attraction” I looked at the statement “you must have attracted that into your life” and I demonstrated the harm that these types of statements can do to people who have experienced trauma or abuse. In that article, I made the distinction between the unconscious process that may be happening in the Law of Attraction, and the conscious emotional self that responds to experience. In this blog I want to look at the unconscious and how the Law of Attraction may work on that level. I also want to look at exactly who or what is “attracting” these experiences into our lives. In other words, at what point we are really able to say that we made a choice to attract in an experience, or that we are responsible for attracting that experience. The terms “choice” and “responsibility” are central to today’s discussion of the Law of Attraction.

    The Mysterious Unconscious

    The unconscious is a huge reservoir of information and memory that is far more expansive than an individual conscious mind. There are a lot of theories about the unconscious and what it is but in general there are a few common themes. Generally, the unconscious:

  • Is a huge store of information where the conscious mind is very small in comparison. This is much like the conscious mind being the tip of an iceberg compared to the unconsciousness submerged beneath the surface.
  • Exists outside the dimensions of time and space (causality and locality)
  • Contains memory of past, present and future, often including past lives
  • Is without boundaries of the individual person. That is it could be a tribal memory or family memory, or even a cultural or species memory
  • These features make the unconscious very different from the conscious mind.

    The conscious mind on the other hand, consists of our conscious beliefs, values, likes and dislikes, insecurities and worries, feelings, self identity, knowledge, and personality. Basically, anything that we are consciously aware of at any one point in time, is our conscious mind. Consciousness itself is a very interesting phenomenon, however this is outside the scope of this article.

    For today’s purposes, what is important is that the unconscious does not consist of the same psychological qualities that the conscious mind does. The unconscious has no identification with an individual personality. It is not an “I” or a “you”. It is not a “Self” at all.

    All we can really say about the unconscious is that when we hypnotise people we tend to access memories that we were not consciously aware of. Many say these memories are past life memories. We also know that the unconscious processes information at night in our dreams. Some people claim to know the future through their dreams or through a deep inner knowing, which we associate with the unconscious. Eastern traditions are very familiar with understanding unconscious processes in their medicine, including the chakras and meridian systems. While we understand something about the unconscious, it is still very much a mystery.

    What Choice Do I really have?

    There was a funny little story I read in a psychological astrology book on freewill and fate. In this story, there was a man who whole walking in the market place spotted Death. Death tried to talk to him but he quickly fled the market, went home, packed and left town. He finally stopped at an Inn in another town late at night, believing he had escaped Death. A while later that night he heard a knock at the door. Upon opening the door there was Death, who promptly said, “Hi, I was trying to say earlier that I’ll meet you here at this Inn tonight.” [“The Astrology of Fate”, Liz Greene (1984)]

    This great little story captures the quandary between freewill and fate. What is free will and what is predestined or set up by the unconscious? What choices do we really have in life? Freewill and determinism have been debated since the binning of recorded history. Plato and Aristotle approximately 2500 years ago developed their philosophies on this topic and they were not the first. So the question becomes can we unconsciously make choices or are choices by definition conscious? The other part of the question is if experiences ate attracted into my life on an unconscious level, am I responsible for them? So let’s try to make sense of these questions.

    Unconscious Patterns & Conscious Awareness

    In a nut shell, we can not be responsible for things that we are not aware of. You could say when we act out of a lack of awareness, or when we are caught in unconscious patterns, we are not really making choices at all. We are more like an automated robot, repeating and rehashing the same thoughts, feelings and actions.  Yes, we do experience it and we feel the consequences of it. However because we are unconscious as how the events were created, we feel at a loss as to how to change it.

    As I have already stated, the unconscious is far more extensive than a conscious human self. This is where the terms Choice and Responsibility have become really confused in discussions about the Law of Attraction. If the unconscious is NOT a SELF, then how can we possibly be responsible for unconscious attraction patterns? We are not “Making A Choice” when we find ourselves in the midst of a natural disaster or subjected to cruelty and abuse… BECAUSE IT IS NOT A CONSCIOUS PROCESS!!!

    So while we may not be responsible for those choices because they were not choices at all, we can learn how to become responsible for making choices through conscious awareness. Bring the shadow into the light of the conscious mind and you will begin to SEE! The biggest difference between remaining unconscious of psychological patterns is that we tend to stay in a place of suffering and by default affect others in the same way. To increase conscious awareness of what is unconscious leads to self-responsibility and choice, where before there was simply unconscious reaction.

    Ultimately Self-Responsibility is Freedom!

    So today we have explored the differences between the conscious mind and the unconscious and I have suggested that it is the unconscious that is involved in the Law of Attraction and not the conscious mind. Therefore, while we DO have the choice (and are responsible for) healing our psychological wounds which can release the unconscious patterns, we are NOT responsible for unconscious attraction patterns that bring experiences into our lives, whether those experiences are pleasant or unpleasant.

    In my next blog post on psycho-spiritual reflections, I want to take a closer look at unconscious patterns and discuss the different types of patterns including family patterns, tribal patterns and cultural patterns. I also want to show how we can these patterns and in the process increase our conscious awareness which leads to self-responsibility, choice and intention.

     

    Have your say on the Law of Attraction and contribute to the greater consciousnesses of humanity ….