The Skeptical Mind

With all the hubris over "The Secret," perhaps this is a good time to discuss some of the skepticism that surrounds "The Law of Attraction" and possibly why this is so.

First of all, let me say that I am naturally skeptic. I have a very analytical mind and my day job for the past 11 years has been that of a Quality Engineer. My career before that was in the U.S. Navy as an Electronics Technician.

My entire adult life has been about logic and data...and being able to provide solid proof for why I think something is true.

So when it came to the subject of manifesting...creating...attracting, what I didn't like about it all is that it required me to take something on faith without the ability to prove out the substance of what I was being told. This was something that always troubled me about religion as well.

I have never felt comfortable explaining to someone else how to do something without having first done it myself...and actually having done it several times to be able to explain the process.

So that has been the other staple of my career for the past 20 years. I became "the process guy."

So what I have realized is that while I did not set out intentionally 15 years ago to find out how the process of creation works...how the Law of Attraction worked...this is essentially the "process" I have been doing.

I have unconsciously made my body and my life my "laboratory" and I have been conducting experiments...to see what worked and what didn't work...and why if I could determine that.

My first introduction to all of these concepts was "The Power of Positive Thinking" by Norman Vincent Peale. I could understand what Dr. Peale was saying, but I was turned off by so much of it being based in Christian terminology.

After all, I was seeking a process that was not simply based once again on religious faith in the unseen. I wanted something tangible.

The next book I found was "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. This book provided me a more tangible process and I set about applying it.

Dr. Hill talked about a "secret" all throughout the book and it actually took me awhile to figure out that his secret was given away in the opening pages of the book "Whatever a man can conceive and believe, he can achieve."

I was in my 20's when I first encountered this book and at that time, I just didn't understand how I could change what I believed. I thought that my belief was created by my reality...and that no one could change reality. Reality was reality and I could either choose to face "reality" or live in some fantasy world.

I see this argument a lot now from the "skeptics" and I don't bother to argue with it. This is simply where some are in their understanding and there isn't anything wrong with that.

I didn't understand that there was more to understand about the concept of reality and how it is created.

In reading two books by Sanaya Roman, "Spiritual Growth" and "Creating Money" I found some advanced concepts for how we can create our reality. There were exercises and meditations at the end of every chapter...ones that I did not do for the most part. I thought I could get the information I needed by simply reading it. I didn't understand that it would be SO much more effective if I applied it to my life...but again, that's just where I was at in my understanding.

In "Creating Money," the book explains that we can get what we want faster if we focus on the essence of what we want instead of focusing on the object of our desire...and the book gives many examples of people have created what they desired by allowing the Universe to create the form.

What I had a difficulty with at the time I read this is that these books were supposed to have been written by someone "channeling" a spirit.

My mind got caught up in wondering where the examples came from, if they were real, etc. My skeptical mind prevented me from really using and applying the information there.

I had no explanation for why I felt better when I read the book or the fact that the information provided was so simple and yet profound. I studied it for awhile and in not being able to tie what I was experiencing in my reality to what I wanted to experience, I moved on.

In being frustrated by not being able to create what I desired, I decided that maybe someone either needed a special gift to be able to do this...or that I didn't deserve it...maybe that just wasn't what I was here to do.

So I left my path for a couple of years and focused on enjoying my life.

I left the Navy and was working at a metal detector manufacturer from 1993-95. The owner of the company was a self-made millionaire and decided to start a company library from the books in his personal library.

One of the first books I saw that he had was one I recognized..."Think and Grow Rich." I checked it out and read it three or four times. My mind did grasp the concept and I would start plan after plan.

The problem for me was that I didn't know what it was that I wanted to create and I couldn't ever get past how I could create the feeling of achieving something without knowing what it was that I wanted to achieve.

It's a concept I understand now...but was totally beyond my understanding at the time.

Not being able to understand these concepts frustrated me. I felt at the core of my being that what I was reading WAS possible and that I could grasp it if I could only figure out what I wanted to create.

But here's something I have learned since then that may help you. I realize now that all along I had the ability to imagine what it would feel like to have found "my project."

All along I had the ability to imagine what my life would feel like, look like and sound like when I had achieved my project.

I might not be able to imagine the specific details, but I had achieved enough things in my life to know what it felt like...and it was this visualization that I could have used.

Now how can that help you? Well, I'll explain further a little later on that.

It's only important at this point to understand is that even if you have not found your bliss or your calling in life...that this does not have to be the obstacle that it appears to be.

As long as you believe that this is an obstacle, it will be.

About the time that I started reading this book again, I started waking up in the middle of the night with songs in my head. I would toss and turn and just couldn't sleep unless I got up and wrote them down. I ended up writing about 10 or 15 songs in a matter of a couple of months and didn't know what to do.

I read "Think and Grow Rich" again and realized that now I had something to pursue this with. I decided I wanted to be a songwriter.

I followed that path for awhile, finding a songwriting partner, copywriting them, studying about publishing, getting them recorded. I worked at it for five years and got all the way up to the point where I had the opportunity to present them to a publisher that had an office on Music Row in Nashville.

He liked them well enough that he wanted me to write with his partner who was a successful artist at that time.

And I turned it down.

You see, I had come all of that way believing in the songs, but not believing in myself. I had a core belief that I was unconscious to at that point that "I wasn't good enough."

Still it would be many years before I discovered that this belief was coloring my view of the world. 

Needless to say, I didn't get my songs published with that company.

Still, I got another opportunity to have an artist record one of my songs...and once again I stumbled and missed my opportunity.

I didn't understand why I wasn't getting the opportunities I needed to be successful...and I didn't see that the opportunities were coming...just not the way I had imagined. I was focused on a specific outcome...not the essence of it.

I read book after book including: The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, the Conversations with God series, The Celestine Prophecy & The Tenth Insight and Living with Joy to name a few.

With each book, my knowledge grew...but I still was not able to make the leap in understanding. I kept thinking that the next book would be the one that would help me to bridge the gap.

I will say that as someone with a Christian background, the Conversations with God series did help me to take a great leap forward in how I looked at myself, but none of it was empowering to me.

My studies continued up until I found the Self-Mastery course in 2004. With this course, my life changed, transformed...because for the first time I was able to start seeing some of these beliefs that had been coloring my world.

I understand now that I could only heal that which I was aware of...and there was SO much I was unaware of. The Self-Mastery Assignments (SMA's) drew out of me a little at a time what those beliefs were, how they were formed and what I had created in my life as a result.

I started to see how one little erroneous thought that I had as a child in a stressful situation...came to be a pattern of thinking...until it became a belief and that belief formed my reality.

I came to understand how several of those beliefs formed a fearful foundation of thinking in my mind and how that foundation kept me from creating that which I wanted to create.

In Self-Mastery: A Journey Home to Your Self, Hu Dalconzo states: ‘"There is a Latin term that originated in ancient Greece called "Tabula Rasa" which means "clean slate." In the 4^th century B.C., Aristotle state, "The mind is a clean slate upon which experience writes." Every negative experience of your life is inscribed on the slate of your mind. Unless the slate of your mind is periodically cleaned, it eventually becomes so layered with contradictory programming (negative & positive) that it triggers the Law of Physics that states: "No two things can occupy the same space at the same time."'

So what that means is that I was not able to create a new thought, a new belief as long as the old one was firmly rooted. And as long as I was unaware that it was there, I didn't understand the effect it was having on my life. I had long ago just accepted that what I was experiencing was part of my life...it was just something I had to live with.

We use rationalizations for illness such as genetics to rationalize why we must suffer. We tell ourselves that because something runs in our family, that we will get this too.

But what if the "illness" that runs in our family is our habitual emotional responses to stressful situations...instead of there being something wrong with our bodies?

What if these genetic impressions simply design how our repressed emotions will manifest in our lives?

What if rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, heart disease, blood clots...etc are all linked primarily to the emotions we have repressed instead of how we are genetically programmed?

And yes, diet plays a part here too. But here's something I have learned about diet.

The more I release my negative feelings, the more I eat foods that are loving to my body. The more I release the anger and hurt, the less I eat foods that create more stress in my body. I don't have to "think" about my diet. It's just that some foods don't feel appealing to me anymore...mainly junk food.

I also experienced that once I had healed much of my emotional wounds, my blood clots simply rose to the surface and healed on their own. I didn't understand how that happened when it did though. I knew I had done something...but I didn't know what.

In the last week, I have had somewhat of a relapse with my leg...not full blown blood clots, but a scary situation.

I went to an acupuncturist who helped me get my energy flowing in my body again. I turned back to meditation and my Self-Mastery Exercises and the exercises in "Ask and It is Given" and suddenly I got it!

I understood how the emotions I was repressing were creating this problem and that the more I focused on the pain or the swelling or how my leg looked in that moment, the worse it got.

I had to imagine (create) something different. So I started visualizing how my leg looks completely healthy. I started allowing my mind to just stop thinking about ‘what is" and to not think at all.

I learned in the Virtual Reality exercise in "Ask and It is Given" that if I would but just stop my thought, my vibration would rise automatically! I realized that this was true...because if my mind is mostly fear based programming, then it would naturally bring down my vibration.

So for the past few days, I have spent any time without pain, appreciating how good I feel. I have visualized a healthy body. I have stopped my thinking about "what is" and allowed God to give to me.

Because in all that I was doing, this was what I was not doing. I was not Allowing myself to receive. I knew I wasn't. I had read about Allowing many times, but I kept thinking that there was something I needed to do. I told myself that I needed to get into a meditative state and focus on what my desire was...and this was incorrect.

To allow myself to receive, I only had to stop my thinking.

And when my thinking stopped, my vibration rose...and since I can now feel my feelings, I could feel the difference between how it feels to think...and how it feels to be in alignment with Source.

And there my skepticism ended.