“What you desire you truly are” – Erica Jong

It is known as the Law of Attraction. It has also been known as the Law of Magic. Now, it is called the Secret. Really, it has never been secret, always available, but you had to know where to look. So, for most people it did remain secret. Now, on the other hand, it is becoming hard to avoid under one name or another. It enables us to reach to the source of what we truly desire, in every sphere of our lives, whether that is love, success in our careers or simply good health. However, it also has a shadow side. We will consider that later.

The beginning of magic

The Law of Magic is found in the most curious places. It is explored in the tales of Harry Potter and his friends. Their secret is in their intention to bring about what they desire. More important than what they desire, is the strong intent to bring it about. For example, making sweets that taste different every time you eat them. One time they taste like raspberries and another like mustard. If it is important to these characters, they do it. The magic words and incantations convince them that they know how to do it. This is how magicians through the ages have understood it and Harry brings this old tradition to us now, children and adults alike.

Of course, we know it is not quite like that in everyday life. For us ordinary mortals it is a little subtler. It is also much simpler. Whatever names it goes by, the Law simply says that whatever you are looking for in life, trust that it is available and live your life as though you already have it. In so doing, you will attract it.

However, most of us are caught in a misunderstanding about how to achieve our goals. Either we feel like victims of our circumstances, unable to do what we would like to do – or we seek to manipulate our lives and to bend reality to our will. Than, at some point we may discover the Law of Magic. By some lucky chance, an awareness of this Law of Attraction comes into our lives. When we do not fully understand it, we think it is about becoming better at manipulation. Actually, it is about tuning deeply into ourselves and what we truly need.

Careful what you want

The way the Law of Attraction works becomes very clear when you look at love. If you go around feeling like you are missing out, looking like you need someone, complaining that you don’t have a partner – what are you going to attract? Probably not the wonderful person you are looking for. On the other hand, if you feel like someone in love, look bright and shining and tell all your friends how lovely you feel, whom will you attract? You are a lot more likely to attract a rewarding partner into your life if you look like someone in love, someone who loves herself. This is not about putting on a good face or making the best of things. It needs to feel real.

What about Health?

Another example is our desire for good health. When we feel well, we hardly notice it. We take our wellbeing for granted. Then something goes wrong with some part of the body and our attention goes to that place. The focus is all on what is wrong. Life is not treating us in the way we want to be treated. Instead, we can bring our attention to all the places that feel good. In so doing we enhance our potential for growing well. Very often, we can bring ourselves back to good health.

The help of a professional healer may be needed to achieve this. If so, it is skilful to tune in and to feel what kind of healing is appropriate. A broken leg usually responds well to the techniques of Western medicine. Problems like Chronic Fatigue may need an alternative approach such as Acupuncture or Tibetan Pulsing Healing. For depression, on the other hand, it has been scientifically accepted that a skilled counsellor will be needed. Modern drugs on their own are not enough and some would prefer to do without them. Once we do tune in and recognise what is the best way to heal ourselves, often we will succeed and return to good health.

Of course, that is not always possible. What a weight it is to carry, this idea that we should always be able to manifest a healthy body. This is the shadow side of the Secret, the notion that we should always be able to get what we want. We conclude that we should always be able to heal ourselves. If we are not well, we blame ourselves for not manifesting a healthy body. Others join in this way of looking at things. People may even ask, “Now, how did you bring this on yourself? You must have been having negative thoughts.” Sometimes, the body is not going to heal. Life knows better than we do and we have to let go of what we want. When this is the case, arguing with life only makes us miserable. Letting go into what life is offering in this moment is the only possibility. Finally, whatever else happens, the time comes to let go of the body and to embrace death.

It has been proposed that the ultimate in fulfilling our wishes is the ability to achieve physical immortality. Perhaps many of us would like to live forever, but imagine the outcome if we could do it. Soon, the planet would soon have Standing Room only. Immortality for any but a small elite would be an absolute disaster. The real secret of eternal life lies in the realisation that we are already immortal, it is our being that exists through all eternity. We appear out of the eternal and eventually we return.

The secret misunderstanding

So, the shadow side of the Secret is the idea that we should always be able to get what we want and always be able to heal ourselves. Sometimes, life knows better and we have to let go of what we want. Finally, whatever else happens, for us all the time comes to let go of the body and to embrace death. This is where the Secret may be misunderstood. We think we know what is best but we do not know better than existence. Life may bring us just what we need, although it may not always be what we want. Sometimes, even the possibility of finding what we desire seems so far away. The sense of helplessness that arises has to be trusted too. If it is not possible to feel good, it is best not to try. At least we will not be frustrated. The blues singers tell us about this. They sing of those days when you just lost the only decent job you ever had, your best friend is about to die and your true love has found another. These are not good moments for feeling happy and attractive. These are the moments for feeling deeply what is happening in your life and perhaps accepting it, tuning into what is and where you are. As the singers know, sometimes there can be a sweetness in the saddest moment. Sometimes, there is simply despair.

Still, all things pass, and a day may come when we feel ourselves to be on the crest of a wave again. It is time for a period of wellbeing and success. You wake up one morning and to your surprise there is nothing wrong. Really, today you are in love with the whole universe. Be whole-hearted, don’t leave anything of yourself out, dissolve yourself into this knowing when it comes along and then see what happens. The Indian mystic Osho, speaking on the Law of Magic, has said, “Once you start feeling that everything is divine you will not feel the thirst for love, because from everywhere it will be fulfilled.”

The magic misunderstanding

When you are in love, whether with your beloved or with the whole universe, it is easy to see how you attract joy into your life. This does not only work with love. Try it and see. If you want success in your career, imagine success and start living your life as though you already have it. If you want more friends, see them in your life and live as though you already have them. If you want good health, imagine how you will feel when you are well. You attract what you desire when you are tuned in to what you desire, yet you are not complaining that you do not have it, not trapped in neediness or wanting. You are already able to enjoy your life.

However, this truth can be being misrepresented, which leads to immense trouble. It is co-opted, taken over by the ego. That is the shadow side. We believe it means I can have whatever I want. In fact, it is this very sense of I that gets in the way. Actually, it is a truth from a realm beyond the limitations of ego. It is our being that attracts love, beauty, abundance, health and all that we truly need into our lives. When the ego gets out of the way there is nothing to stop us from shining. Still, the ego is made up of all the old patterns we have acquired or inherited. Strangely enough, we usually prefer to cling to them rather than letting them go. These old patterns are known as karma and they keep us from being all that we truly are. We cling to them because they are familiar.

Unfortunately, as long as the law of Attraction is an understanding of the ego, based on what I want, every positive we attract must necessarily bring with it a negative. This is a natural law in our earthly realm; this is what is meant by duality. When I gain a car, I also become responsible for the pollution it causes. When I gain a beautiful partner in my life, I also gain someone whom I must one day lose: at the very latest when one of us dies.

So, how can I attract into my life what I am truly looking for? The answer is so simple, I can’t. It only truly happens in letting go of the I. Then, mysteriously, that which is truly needed appears on its own.

When we try to attract a particular person rather than someone to love and to be loved by. Or when we try to attract some material object, a new car for example, we occasionally succeed. However, we are barking up the wrong tree. Our lives are intimately connected with the lives of six billion or so other people on planet Earth, not forgetting the myriad other creatures who live here. Each breath contains the same oxygen that was once exhaled by a tree on the other side of the planet. Imagine if all of us human beings want to win Lotto – and many of us do. Are we all going to try to out-visualise each other? Or if everyone on the planet were to succeed in attracting that shiny new car into their lives, where are we going to put all the roads? If we all want that particular lover, who is going to win?

One exponent of the Law of Attraction actually told a group of salesmen at a famous car company that each and every one of them could be the company’s top salesman that month. Yet they were all working for the same company! It does not work like that. Of course, each one could be the company’s best salesman for there are other ways of defining best than who sells the most cars. We can all achieve our personal best.

The practical guide to the real magic

Finally, it is helpful to remember that there are a few steps involved in the Law of Attraction.

• Number 1 – live your life as if you already have what you desire.

• Number 2 – imagine that you already have it, creatively visualising what it brings into your life.

• Number 3 – (this is the one that gets forgotten when the ego gets involved) – tune in and see it, feel it, does it feel in tune with you and with the whole existence for this to come into your life. Perhaps you do not need the most beautiful man or woman in the world, just the one who is most beautiful to you.

• Number 4 – even before it comes, experience the gratitude for all that is coming into your life including that which you desire. In deeply receiving and giving thanks for the things we need, slowly slowly desire drops away.

Final thoughts

We can all attract the best into our lives. Awareness is needed, for that best must in the end be in alignment with the planet and with all of us who live here. Once we understand the depths of the Secret and its true meaning, only then can we begin to attract what is truly the best into our lives, the best for us and the best for everyone. A good place to start is to imagine what that best would look like in my life and in your life, in everyone’s life. It is not about self-sacrifice or creating a planet-load of do-gooders. It is realising that we are all interconnected. What is truly good for one is good for all. What your heart truly desires is in alignment with existence.

Our thoughts can create heaven and they can create hell. Once you have seen this, then it is also possible to realise that we can simply stop and watch our thoughts passing by. Even heaven can seem pretty busy after a while – all the gods and goddesses dancing and all the saints playing on their harps. There is the possibility to simply rest in peace, in touch with the source of our energy rather than everlastingly seeking more from the outside. Do whatever can be done and then relax, accepting that the universe knows what to do.