Success starts with a dream. Inspiration and fire transform that dream into reality. Feel passionate about your desires! Dreams are meant to inspire you to live with passion and purpose to attain them, not to make you long for what you cannot have. In the process, you grow, you develop, and you discover the truth of who you are.

Our soul urges us to grow by placing desires in our heart. These desires push us through our limits, challenges, blocks and fears. If the desire becomes a driving need, or being deprived of our heart’s desire proves painful enough, we will work to overcome anything that limits us from getting what we want. Many times it is only the limits in our mind that keep us from what we want, and in this way, we are pushed to grow. Without a dream, we would not want more. We would not be driven to go beyond where we have been.

Many people give up on their dreams without trying to reach them. They may have been taught early in life that their dreams were simply unrealistic fantasies. If you hold a dream in your heart, you have the ability to attain it.

Sometimes people don’t have a problem coming up with a vision of an idyllic life, but cannot imagine ever actually achieving it, given their current mindset. Current law of attraction teachings have come to the rescue by telling us that positive thinking, affirmations, writing checks and rubbing lamps will bring those dreams into reality. But if we feel this vision lies so distant from our present reality that we couldn’t possibly achieve that kind of change in one lifetime, we won’t be able to manifest those ideals. We must take the necessary step to admit that deep down, we believe those goals are unattainable. Awareness and self-honesty is always far more empowering than denial. Taking the step towards recognition of blocks, and then working through them until you feel that your dreams are within your grasp, is how you will manifest your visions.

Perhaps we can use law of attraction to bring conditions to us that have eluded us in the past, simply by changing our focus, being positive, and defining our vision. Maybe we only needed to learn that it was okay to want what we want, and to believe we can have it. Maybe we need to learn to dispel negativity and belief in lack. But perhaps, if we are to manifest those goals, more in-depth healing is needed. When conditions exist for real shift and growth, the sooner we "get" what we need to learn, the closer we are to each and every single goal, no matter how unrealistic it may seem. The same vision that we think impossible, was very possible for many others. Why them, and not you? Imagine manifesting the love of your life, creating a successful and fulfilling career, feeling healthy, vibrant, and happy. If you can imagine it, you can achieve it, with commitment and patience.

It is the same thinking that created your life that continues to limit your vision. Eliminate those thoughts, and a new world will open to you.

Through the study of quantum physics, we find that our thoughts have great power in shaping our life on the imperceptible level through law of attraction. Armed with this knowledge, we finally realize the importance of the content and quality of our thoughts. Every negative and limiting thought limits our ability to create a positive life experience.

We may believe that our thought systems present unchangeable truth. In reality, we need to eliminate or alter these beliefs, which range from universal ideas about how the world operates, how people behave, what conditions exist, as well as personal beliefs about self-worth, intelligence, talent or capability. These untruths need to shift before we see a change in our conditions. These thoughts continue to draw circumstances and people to us. Can we diagnose sick thoughts, based on what we attract? 

Any initial discomfort brought by healing and change is only temporary, whereas the dissatisfaction you would feel from remaining as you are, comfortable as it may be, is permanent. You can attempt to develop complacency and tolerance, but frustration and unhappiness will develop on some level. As you numb yourself to your dissatisfaction, you also numb yourself to many of life’s joys and pleasures. It takes a significant amount of energy to hold off those repressed feelings, and eventually buried negative emotions leak out into our lives, affecting relationships, physical health, and emotional well-being.

It is never too late to take the time the time and effort to create a life that you are happy to wake to every single day. Ask yourself, if not now, when?

For a large group of people, the law of attraction does not have as much power as they would like. They wonder why they cannot manifest conditions other people have and wonder why. First of all, understand that it’s very possible that the author of the law of attraction book that you read, or the creator of the cd-series you purchased, may not have even succeeded financially prior to teaching the concepts. Many coaches and teachers develop a more free and prosperous lifestyle creating and selling books, cd-sets, leading seminars, or coaching. They aren’t teaching concepts they learned through their own personal experience. Further, some of the original New Thought authors of prosperity teachings who had acquired wealth using the principles, later found themselves in hardship or even destitute. So, you are not alone.

It may appear that law of attraction is not working for us for a number of reasons. Negative beliefs held in either the conscious or subconscious mind affect our ability to manifest intentions, regardless how strong our desires. The subconscious mind always has the final say-so on which conscious thoughts have creative force. If, by prior learning and experience, the mind perceives a thought or intention untrue, it will not manifest. Deliberate creation requires clear intent, free of any opposing thought, in either the conscious or subconscious mind. This challenge pushes us toward growth. We should meet this challenge with willing commitment.

Next, universal and tribe consciousness restrict us in manifesting our intentions. No matter what we may personally believe with even absolute conviction, the beliefs of the groups of which we are a part will present limits. If you think about the diversity on this planet, you have to admit, this is a good thing!

And last, our "soul plan," as many refer to it, may restrict us. You can resist your path, and people sometimes spend a lifetime stubbornly resisting what they came here to do, especially if something else looks better or less painful. You will find that you are most guided and facilitated in following your path. When your life is in alignment with that higher plan, you find peace, happiness, and satisfaction. The only way out is through.

This also means that sometimes you’ll find yourself in difficult life circumstances which contradict your positive intentions. When you attempt to manifest conditions contrary to this grand design, you will find your path fraught with difficulty. When you desire conditions that align with your soul plan, you will find that powerful universal law supports you in every way, and those intentions easily manifest. If you encounter blocks, could it be that you are attempting to manifest a reality that is part of someone else’s vision? It may look good to you, but you have your own road to travel. You cannot skip needed lessons to get to that higher place in your vision. If you have a positive and clear vision, it is not only possible for you to achieve that, it is your destiny. But you must move through the difficult times, and learn the lessons to get there.

Many people attempt to manifest conditions using law of attraction, only to find that they manifest signs, words, or images, rather than the situation or condition. Especially if the situation involves money!  Why does it seem so difficult to manifest some green paper? In spite of the often quoted "there is no order of difficulty in the universe" statement, usually cited to illustrate why it’s as easily manageable for the universe to manifest one million dollars as one dollar, that logic simply is not true. It sounds good, so those of us with wishful thinking like to repeat it. Money is not just an object. It’s an entire concept, or ideal.

Consider this. Imagine that you acquired an acre of land, perhaps with the intention to grow trees. Then, you saw that your neighbor, who owned thousands of acres, was able to grow a million trees on his property. Would you consider it reasonable for you to manifest one million trees on your small plot, even if you had one million seeds? So, all of sudden, because you became aware that there are unlimited seeds in the universe, and people growing lots more trees than you, you decided you wanted more trees than you could possibly fit on the land you had purchased and prepared. But you do not have room for all those trees, given the allotment of land you own. You need to set about acquiring more land, which requires much work on your part, before you can manifest the fruits of your seeds.

The Prayer of Jabez expresses desire for abundance in this way: "Oh that Thou would bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast [territory]."

Open to expansion first, and then your holdings will increase. You cannot do this in reverse. 

If a large amount of money came into your life, many of your current problems would simply vanish. Money would remove much stress, irritation, anger, and lack. It would defuse many potential problems and challenges. It’s almost like a "get out of jail free" card. So if manifesting money would remove conditions that provide learning opportunities for you or changes some necessary condition, you will not get it. Period. The only way out of your conditions is through. This means, do the learning, overcome the challenges, and move to the next level of your growth. Perhaps a larger plot of land is there and you can manifest your millions.

I would not argue that some have manifested wealth using law of attraction, but I’d suggest thousands, or more, have not! We know that very non-spiritual people manifest great wealth also. I wouldn’t imagine they practiced the ingredients of love and appreciation, which current law of attraction teachings suggest is necessary; rather, one likely finds a less altruistic approach in their affairs. Maximum and quick profit and greed seem to be more commonly practiced methods of operation in business today. But we’d likely find unwavering persistence and commitment, resilience to failure, wise money management, patience, and enough self-belief to allow the required risk, key traits for success. One could say they were lucky, but perhaps they were guided by intuition while manifesting their vision. Certainly, if we believe in law of attraction, we must believe that at the core of their thinking, self-made millionaires believe they deserve, and can achieve prosperity. And if they were in alignment with their soul plan, we could go so far as to say, the universe fully supported their intentions of wealth by providing opportunity.

Know that difficult conditions exist for the sole purpose of bringing you towards the highest of possible realities–freedom, love, light and abundance. No soul plan denies anyone this. It is our soul’s urging that we grow to accept these conditions. Just remember to move willingly through your challenges. Only your resistance holds you back from reaching your highest attainment. You cannot skip necessary steps to get to the next level.

Nothing outside of yourself prevents you from attaining your goals. Cultivate commitment, patience, and a postive mind-set. While you may encounter blocks when attempting to influence elements outside of yourself, law of attraction works infallibly 100% of the time on internal shifts and goals. In other words, what you think you are today, you will be, tomorrow.

 

If we harbor negative thoughts, either consciously or subconsciously, we cannot use law of attraction to manifest desirable conditions in our lives. Negative beliefs also affect our abilities to make clear and productive choices, to set positive goals and certainly to achieve these goals. They affect our beliefs in our own abilities and skills, the way we view the world, and what we believe life holds for us. We can cross our fingers and make a wish, but our intentions will remain outside the realm of possibility as long as our beliefs limit us.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s say birth is the beginning. At that time, you began to learn and form core concepts for how you would view and deal with the world, by gathering information from experiences, environment and conversations. As the needs of an infant are, at first, the very center of its existence, whether or not those needs are answered in a balanced way begins to teach optimistic, or pessimistic, expectation. Whether or not desire and effort are rewarded with "manifestation," or futility determines their expectancy of future gratification. Were your needs met in a healthy and balanced way? 

As you grow and develop, life experiences serve to further instill that early learning. Do you have expectations of success? Or do you find that you give up on your goals or resolutions before succeeding, certain that you will fail? Can you find a theme, or pattern, running through your life that might suggest some deep, and very early learning of futility, hopelessness, or powerlessness? Perhaps over time, your parents or other authority figures told you that you wanted too much, were too demanding, or dreamed too much, perhaps to compensate for their own inability to provide what you needed or wanted.

You later relegated the learned early knowledge to the subconscious to free the conscious mind for new skills and ideas. What you learned at six months, at one year, three years and so on, was no longer recognized as acquired knowledge. Those thoughts became automated. You don’t need to stop and think, you just know. This habitual thinking serves as our default thinking on a conscious level. Subconsciously, negative programs developed that direct thoughts, perspectives, choices, actions, and interactions with others. Essentially, this forms our rule book for life on this planet, totally unique to each of us. While life is a continuum of learning, you can instill positive and effective programs that can counter any negative beliefs you learned .

All of your experiences, starting at birth, set an undercurrent in your mind, regardless of what you believed you consciously desired as an adult. Your subconscious mind had installed core programs that either provided unlimited access to the world, or a small box that you kept banging your head on when you jumped too high. Too many of us feel the lid of a very small box! When, later in life, we chose our attitudes, beliefs and thought processes, we often chose those with which we felt most comfortable. Unfortunately, in this case, comfort due to old familiarity led to the same small box. Choice remains a powerful tool that requires wise and careful use. You chose the thoughts on which you focused. Choice allows you to change that, now!

While we may combat negativity by re-learning, people rarely put in the conscious effort to change themselves so completely. They have created a strong identity and spent a lifetime validating those beliefs through experience. We like validation and we’ll take it any way we can get it. This applies to negative, as well as positive experience. You probably know of people who relive their negative experiences by sharing them with anyone who will listen. Why would people choose to re-experience an event that caused them pain the first time? They provide validation to themselves, and seek validation from others. With each person they tell the story, they say "see I was right." If the person confirms that idea, all the better! We all do this. And there’s a time and place for it–in the wake of some events, we need confirmation and support. We need to feel that people care, sympathize, and understand our perspective. But if we would work toward a new perspective based on new judgments and beliefs, we would then see life circumstances differently, and begin to experience a new reality. You must consider the possibility that you have been wrong–about men or women, about bosses or employees, about money, the government, the system, love, others and/or yourself.

Through the process of self-healing, buried subconscious programs will rise to the conscious level. These beliefs and thoughts will often be uncomfortable. Strive for honesty with yourself. Everyone has their own "junk," whether irrational or ugly. Simply allowing that junk into your conscious mind begins the healing process. With your full acceptance, forgiveness, and non-judgment, these thoughts release. Each time you recognize some underlying issue that corresponds with your experience and acknowledge responsibility in creating it, you further the ongoing process of revelation and healing.

Hopefully you see how the two levels of creation, both active choice/action and passive law of attraction, interplay in creating every life situation. The process of healing reshapes yor thinking, and then your life. Begin to ignore your default thought patterns, until positive thinking and productive choice-making becomes habitual. As you attract new and more positive experiences through law of attraction, opportunities for success will present themselves. You will learn to seize the options that are most productive. You will form new relationships that support your goals. When all your actions are congruent with the goals and visions you have set in place, you will be unstoppable!

If you let go of those core and limiting programs you learned from day one and the experiences that validated those beliefs, you will experience transformation. It is NEVER too late to let go of negativity and false beliefs, and that is all that stands in the way of the life you want.

While many people who have heard of law of attraction hope to use this powerful concept to attract better financial conditions, others feel that it is wrong or even evil to want money. Is there a right and wrong way to view wealth?

Remember the saying “money isn’t everything?” Well, let’s consider that. You can’t live without money. We’d like to think relationships and our health take priority over money, but it’s really pointless to debate. Without money, we can’t live in today’s society, much less maintain health or an optimal love relationship, so the argument is rather circular.

Money plays a huge role in modern life. Until we start bartering fruits and vegetables for land, shelter and other necessities, that will remain the case. Our well-being, health, and relationship possibilities and stability, not to mention basic survival needs, all depend on our financial condition. Yet many don’t know how to manage their money. While companies no longer take care of even long-term employees’ retirement, few know how to invest for the future. Today we know we cannot lean on Social Security for retirement, and unfortunately, even if you become unable to work prior to retirement through disability or illness, it will be difficult to collect SSD insurance to cover your economic needs while you are unable to work. Ask anyone who has applied for SSDI.

Let’s refer to Wallace Walles’ philosophy on wealth, in The Science of Getting Rich:

"There is nothing wrong in wanting to get rich. The desire for riches is really the desire for a richer, fuller, and more abundant life; and that desire is praise-worthy. The man who does not desire to live more abundantly is abnormal, and so the man who does not desire to have money enough to buy all he wants is abnormal.

“There are three motives for which we live; we live for the body, we live for the mind, we live for the soul. No one of these is better or holier than the other; all are alike desirable, and no one of the three—body, mind, or soul—can live fully if either of the others is cut short of full life and expression. It is not right or noble to live only for the soul and deny mind or body; and it is wrong to live for the intellect and deny body or soul.

“We are all acquainted with the loathsome consequences of living for the body and denying both mind and soul; and we see that real life means the complete expression of all that man can give forth through body, mind, and soul. Whatever he can say, no man can be really happy or satisfied unless his body is living fully in every function, and unless the same is true of his mind and his soul. Wherever there is unexpressed possibility, or function not performed, there is unsatisfied desire. Desire is possibility seeking expression, or function seeking performance."

Today I agree with Wattles, although that was not always the case. I once believed that money did not have the power to affect my level of happiness in a particular moment in time. Because of life experiences, I now have the view that the more money available to you at that moment in time, the easier it is to maintain inner peace and happiness. And the optimum life provides for more than mere existence. Abundance will enhance your life and open the possibility of many positive experiences. So while you seek freedom in the spiritual realm, you may reasonably seek freedom in the physical realm. Inner peace and serenity is the by-product of your spiritual growth and transformation, and abundant conditions in the outer world will complement and enhance your inner sense of freedom.

Prosperity is a common desire and intention for students of law of attraction. When they fail to manifest prosperity, they may believe that law of attraction does not work for them. Sometimes conditions may even worsen. While law of attraction undeniably works and we easily manifest in other areas, we’re often left struggling with the issues most important to us, such as money.

The law of attraction states that all thoughts, conscious and subconscious, draw matching circumstances, and not just our positive intentions. This tells us that we are responsible for attracting our conditions, whether they are conditions of poverty, or conditions of wealth. So, examination of our beliefs should reveal that although we desire abundance, we don’t believe we can have it for one reason or another.

We can usually trace our beliefs regarding money back to ideas learned in childhood. While we routinely see images of the fun, comfort and luxury a life of wealth brings, most of us received conflicting negative messages, instilled a long time ago, both about acquiring money as well as having it. The set of learned concepts, along with our life experiences, provide the foundation for a set of  beliefs that form  "wealth consciousness" or "poverty consciousness." This determines the extent to which we can manifest prosperity in our lives.

If we observe children in action, we see that they usually believe they can have, and do, anything. They know what they want and usually believe they will get it! Any parent can testify to this. Instead of nurturing this zest for life and passionate desire for attainment, many parents, and later the school system, tend to quash it, to prepare the child for the "real world." Taught to work hard and not expect too much in return, the individual is well-trained for a lifetime of unsatisfactory labor!

Think about the messages you received as a child. Did you receive positive messages about work or career? Did your family treat work simply as something you had to do as a distasteful necessity? What about the alternative? Your mentors could have encouraged you to explore your interests and find your native gifts so you could enjoy your life’s work while getting paid.

It isn’t really those who work the hardest who acquire wealth, but many believe that a secure life necessitates hard labor. Limiting fears of not having enough keep them from finding and exploring their true passion, or purpose, thinking that it could not afford adequate income.

Purpose is the activity you would want to do whether or not it earns income. Since you need money to live, you are able to invest time doing that which brings you happiness. But, for many, natural interests and talents fell behind in childhood. Notice that the hobbies and interests you might have felt drawn to at one time provide someone else an income. While people continually resist exploring natural talents out of fear they cannot bring in a sustainable income, you can always see someone else making a living doing it!

Now, think about other messages you received about money. Did your church or your parents discuss the sin of wealth? Did you receive any messages about the value, integrity, or goodness of a person who was well-off? In what type of environment did you grow up? Did you have to clean every crumb off your plate? Were you warned not to leave a light on when you left the room? Did you worry about the supply of heat, water, air conditioning or electricity? While economic conditions within the family may have demanded budgeting, many people receive so much unnecessary negatively-charged information about money, they are set up for life to struggle with financial issues.

Unless you have put conscious energy into changing those default thought patterns, you probably have manifested a reality that matches those ideas. To stop your thoughts from creating a financially difficult life, you must gain control over your belief system. We cannot turn off law of attraction! It’s at work, whether we like it or not.

Many people attempting to manifest money easily find signs of money, read about money, or perhaps find small money, such as change. Few actually succeed in using law of attraction to change the big picture. Money encompasses many conditions, making it difficult to intend. If you received a large amount of money, your life would undergo vast improvement. Much stress would be removed and your freedom would increase substantially. Current law of attraction teachings neglect this, saying "there is no order of difficulty in the universe."

You may have to work on numerous issues before you see an improvement in finances. If it is part of your soul plan to work on other issues in order for you to grow, desirable conditions will not manifest that would remove those challenges. That means you’ll need to deal with painful issues that need resolution before you succeed in manifesting your financial abundance. In this way, law of attraction will not rescue you.

You must dedicate time, effort, awareness and energy to change your current beliefs. You need to examine what beliefs, conscious or subconscious may interfere with your ability to draw abundance. For some people, using tools like subliminals and affirmations, might suffice. If money really challenges you, you might have to do deeper work to look at the underlying issues surrounding areas of life relating to money.

I do not agree with current teachings that advise you to spend freely to pretend that you have already manifested prosperity. This may work for some, but it will not work for most. It will be destructive if it does not work, because you will have spent money frivolously you may later need, putting you in a state where you feel more deprived and fearful. "Believe it and you will see it" is a motto that must follow “know thyself." Know what you can achieve with your belief systems, and with some honest and aware scrutiny, your abilties, before spending resources you may need. If it doesn’t cause financial hardship, and the items you invest on provide you with motivation, then do it. Do not do this blindly, on someone else’s advice, or because they tell you that it will work. While a few testimonials may tell you this method worked, thousands more can tell you it did not.

I believe that it’s far more important to attain the prosperity mind-set or wealth consciousness, regardless of what is in your bank account, what clothing you wear, what car you drive, or whether or not you can afford a vacation. True healing and resilient change comes from within. In other words, you must feel lovable before you will be truly loved, you must feel capable and healthy before you will heal, and you must feel deserving and rich inside before you will attain wealth. Deeper healing requires removing feel-good illusions. Illusions often prevent people from authentically having what they desire.

Be prepared to commit the time necessary to change a lifetime of beliefs. With patience and awareness, you will get there. In the process of doing so, free yourself of restricting concepts that keep you from true inner freedom. When you’ve accomplished the inner work, your outer manifestations will be that much sweeter and more enjoyable!

Are you hoping you can change your life the easy way? If someone offered you a quick fix, perhaps some power mantra, magical chant, a charm you could wear, a release point you could press that would remove all bad luck or inner subconscious issues, or perhaps some yoga position you could assume once a day, would you try it?

We hope for a magic formula, because the longer we remain in a life that doesn’t work for us, the more desperately we seek a quick fix. Unfortunately, there really is no easy fix, but there will always be someone willing to offer one in exchange for money.

In truth, our challenges would go immediately with our surrender. While we cling to our problems with tight fists, we hope that some quick fix will chase them away. We avoid the path of change and growth until the pain becomes too great. Pain precedes change, and eventually drives growth.

Our lives are designed in such a way as to facilitate our spiritual healing, at the expense of our mental, physical, and emotional peace and well-being. This design includes challenges and pain–learning to let go, learning to reach out, learning to love, learning to forgive–and through it all, becoming greater, and so much more than we had been before. Our only real purpose is growth.

Our soul’s growth is primary. We don’t want to hear this. Modern-day societal expectations don’t mesh with a concept that implies we must endure some pain and spend time and attention on ourselves doing spiritual work.

Spiritual healing presents an unchangeable course. It has not responded to our demands of an instant fix. A loving and unprejudiced creative energy moves us toward wholeness, via our own growth, whether we like it or not. Because we are spiritual beings having a human experience, and not simply bodies having a life, we must tend to the needs of spirit.

If we knew how to manage life from the outset, change and growth would be so much easier. In a society more sensitive to our spiritual needs, perhaps mandatory early reading would include a guidebook for living an abundant and healthy life. We now know that the map for success lies within our own thinking and belief systems, which develops at an early age.

“What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.”

The contents in our mind determine our health, our life circumstances, how well we function, and our emotional well-being. But, when you consider that major medical insurers would not cover mental health therapy until late in the last century, you can see how slow progress has been in appreciating this important concept.

The idea that thoughts, belief systems and feelings affected our life, was neglected. Those seeking therapy or emotional healing were labeled weak, needy, or thought to require too much attention. Now we know that attending to mental health needs is more than a privilege. Forgotten memories are not forgotten problems; we know that traumatic events, especially those repressed, and even those that occur at too young an age to remain in conscious memory, have great impact on the quality of our lives. They impact our relationships, our productivity, our health, and our level of happiness. We now know, as of the 21st century, the importance of what occurs on the mental plane. We still have much to learn.

The spiritually-aware have a greater advantage. The spiritual seeker accounts for what happens at the soul level, as well as on an energy level. This expands and facilitates our ability to heal. We have many tools available to us in our healing work, as opposed to standard counseling. 

In alternative/spiritual healing, we might discover some pre-birth or other lifetime issue to be a block. Does standard therapy help this? There are methods that can help us when we hit a stick-point in our work. When we have committed to the spiritual path and surrendered to our growth, we will always be led to the next step in our progression. We must let go of the blocks, the people, the beliefs, or lifestyle, that keep us rooted in unhappiness. When some thought pattern remains, we can consider that a healer working on the right level can help us progress.

A painful condition or life experience has led to miraculous healing for many. Extreme emotional pain–either caused by life circumstances or threat of a painful or fatal physical illness–was the common thread. Does a shift require extreme pain? I don’t think so, but for most people, pain does seem to be the impetus to growth. Some of us need harder knocks to break through our excuses, rationalizations, and the hugely defensive ego. Perhaps some of us ignored the pain till it became so great that it erupted in a huge tidal wave.

If you would like to learn some healing method or try some system or process that someone has developed from his/her own healing journey, remember that each person’s journey is individualized. Do not rely upon it as the answer for you, or consider yourself a failure if that method does not succeed for you.Take what you learn and modify it to your own needs. Develop the inner guidance you need to follow through on your path.

Life presents no challenge for which you do not also have the inner knowledge to overcome. And each and every challenge is a gift that ultimately leads to freedom and joy.