OK, I'm back, but just for a minute.
Over the past 6 weeks or so I've been on the receiving end of a series of harsh shocks involving health, relationships and career. None of these were my own making.
But, in keeping with the concept of 100% responsibility (hat's off to Angela for that), I did some research and questioning as to why these shocks were presented to me at this time, in this order, and at this stage in my life.
What I believe I've discovered goes to the core of what LoA is all about.
This is where John Ruskin (1819 - 1900), art critic, social gadfly and author, comes in. Jack Canfield - the Chicken Soup for the Soul guy - uses a Ruskin quote in his (Canfield's) Success Principles coaching materials.
And True Believers probably aren't going to like it very much.
Ruskin wrote, "
What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do."
Through my own experimentations with LoA, what has become abundantly clear is that "asking the Universe" for what you want, regardless of what it is - or what you want to be - makes up about 10% of results.
Sure, there will be the occasional "hit," and some might consider random "hits" as some sort of proof that LoA without action actually has some merit. But, in short, they're wrong.
Life is random. And even in this chaos, sometimes things seem to come together. But we end up creating meanings for these events when no meanings exist. We see cause-and-effect patterns in events that have no cause-and-effect. Humans do this; it's an evolutionary adaptation and has served us well for millennia. "Og ate mushroom. Og died. Me no eat mushroom," or, "Og make noise in forest. Sabre-toothed tiger heard Og, killed and ate him. Me no make noise in forest."
The vast majority of what we wish to bring into our lives comes not from who we are or even what we believe. It comes from
what we do.
That is extraordinarily liberating.
Now, one can argue that what we do comes from what we are. That's fair comment. But it also misses the point.
We don't have to ask our Higher Selves or our Guardian Angels
(if they even exist; my suspicion is that those who think they've tapped into some sort of supernatural consciousness have deluded themselves into thinking that their active imagination is some sort of alternate reality. But there simply isn't any such thing. If there is, prove it). We don't have to tap into our core unconsciousness. We don't have to visualize, we don't have to imagine, we don't have to pray, we don't have to change the fundamental foundations of who we are, we don't have to cultivate some sort of Zen-like consciousness.
By all means, if that's your thing, then go right ahead. But don't think for a moment that it's actually going to make much of a difference
unless you attach an action to it.
We just have to
do. We just have to make verbs out of our desires.
But without the verbs, we're dreaming. We're fantasizing. We're living in a world that doesn't really exist.
So how does this relate to those things that avalanched upon me over the past few weeks and turned my comfortable life upside down?
It means that I did not bring those things onto myself through some inner fault. It means that I'm not being somehow punished or getting my own back through some sort of karma. It means that the "universe" isn't out to feed me a bucketful of sh!t because I somehow deserve it. It means that what's taken place is
not a reflection of who I am.
These things just
are. The only context and meaning they have is the context and meaning I give them. And in keeping with 100% responsibility, I choose NOT to give them meaning because they don't have any.
The principles of LoA - the visualization, the "think as it already is" and all the rest - are all fine and relatively innocuous. There's really no harm in them unless they're relied upon to provide a result without some sort of action.
"The only consequence is what we do."
There's a direct connection between what we do and what we get. There is, alas, no connection whatsoever between who we are or what we think or what we believe or how strongly we believe it and what we get.
I know this runs completely counter to the basic principles of LoA. And I, for one, am hugely thankful for that.
So there you have it. Stop dreaming. Start doing.
(Hey, this is my post number 1000. Kewl.)