We’re talking about the manifold and varied routes, methods and techniques to ‘manifesting’ –ie, turning your desires into reality – that go with spiritual teaching packages you can find all over the web. The promises are like Yee Shun-Jian’s, the ‘Chief Happiness Officer’ at richgrad.com, who we meet down below in our first instalment of Shopping in the spiritual supermarket: <<Enable you to overcome fear, build your self-confidence and develop an abundance mind-set. Inspire you to achieve your ideal weight and body image, attract the right life partner & find inner peace, clarity and your life purpose. Help you to easily activate the law of attraction so as to bring everything you’ve always wanted into your life!>>. Solve all your problems in one hit, in other words.
There’s ‘manifesteverythingnow.com’ (‘discover the secrets of effortless manifestation’), on which I have discovered and listened to some really insightful people, or ‘wealthforwomensummit.com‘, where I met Leela Francis and her idea of the four ‘modes’ of wealth – Spiritual, Emotional, Sensual, Physical, including money – which seems a very balanced and sensible insight. But we’re still trying to make physical things happen through some sort of spiritual practice, and I’m uneasy about this. If ‘manifesting’ doesn’t work as you’ve been led to believe it should, what are you left with? The danger of being worse off than if you’d never started, is what.
I like the Law of Attraction, I really do. Just look at simple ideas that come up through any religious tradition – do as you would be done by, as you sow so shall you reap etc etc – which express it, in some form or other. But it ain’t a simple matter of thinking about stuff and it will appear, folks. Sorry, but no. Robert Anthony is pretty much on the button when he talks about ‘alignment’. It’s a matter of responding to the universal vibration (sorry for the hippy mumbo jumbo, but it does actually mean something) and experiencing how you as a spiritual/physical organism fit into the macro picture. You are Nature with self awareness, in the midst of beautiful/ugly, kind/cruel, entirely un-self-aware, totally dispassionate, Nature. Develop that sense of your Self – crucially, your True Self as a specific, unique, pinpoint of light that is consciousness, that is silent, profound, Power and Peace – refer to it daily, in or out of your Magic Minute – and everything else slots into place. Don’t court disappointment, screwing yourself up trying to make that magical cheque appear. If you’re Soul Conscious, at least you’ll have the power to conquer worry and anxiety. Then you can get on with doing what you have to do to fix your wealth.
Here’s a knobbly one: how do you think the Law of Attraction and ‘manifesting’ fit together with the Law of Karma? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right? It means that sooner or later, over many lives perhaps, you get what you give. Stuff doesn’t just appear in your life without some sort of trail, some meaning, resonance, or implication – usually unfathomable. What the Law of Karma doesn’t mean is that you give up and sit in a cave because there’s no point in acting, since everything is pre-ordained. It means you work for what you want – with every ounce of positive mental attitude you can muster – until what you want begins to come to you. And a whole lot of other things besides, probably. Fix the mind and spirit issues first. That will give you a handle on the wealth ones.
