Success comes to those willing to commit with unwavering persistence. Committing to change first requires an open and willing attitude. You’ll find yourself tested with challenges that require you to develop tremendous inner courage. Ultimately you hope to see outer success as a result of the inner work you have done, but it usually takes some time. This will require you to develop the patience of a champion.

Unfortunately, while people may decide they want change, they rarely want to do the work for the time required to see tangible results. Understandably, they often get impatient to see change on any level, whether in regard to physical healing, mental healing, or life healing. While it has taken an entire lifetime to create what we see in the form of our financial condition, relationships, health, and general happiness overall, we may irrationally want instantaneous results. We tend to lose focus and move onto something else that offers a quicker return. There really is no easier or quicker way than inner healing work. That is ultimately the only way.

If you are going through a divorce that is causing financial and emotional difficulties, you need to look at it from the perspective that a bad situation is moving out. It is a situation undergoing the process of change. You may have traded what appears like one bad situation for another, but in reality, you are working towards an improvement. You have to view any negative circumstances in that way, when you are actively working on improvement.

Many people often neglect to realistically assess their starting place when working towards goals of self-improvement. If you have heard about the "illusion" of time, forget it now. If you have heard that it only takes the universe "one second," forget that one, too. It’s a whole lot more fun to contemplate change when we think it might take a second, but it’s unrealistic, given our starting point, to transform negative conditions in a second, in a week, month, or possibly even a year or more! Understand the necessity of cultivating the art of patience.

Do not allow your current situation to weigh upon you. It will pass. You may look at this and say, "How can I feel positive with this going on around me?" or "How can I feel healthy when I am sick?" Optimism becomes part of the healing process. Not only must you believe that the situation will pass, you must believe that it will ultimately produce the best possible results. The current situation is a part of yesterday. At some point, it will merely be history. Then, you can forget it entirely. For today, plod through with courage, and do not focus on negativity, as bleak as circumstances may seem. Focusing on the negative will encourage negative conditions to remain. Use the momentum of change to swing to the positive as you focus on positive change at all times.

People seem more willing to put time and energy into areas that do not hold as great a promise to transform their lives. Perhaps the pain of looking within serves as the impetus for seeking outer distractions and material possessions. But at the end of the day, no amount of money or stuff can substitute for inner peace and happiness. While you may at times feel overwhelmed by the inner work required to change your thoughts or habits, know that the longer you put off the necessary inner work, the more ingrained and habitual the patterns become. The best you can hope to achieve, lacking real change, is tolerant complacency to your own dissatisfaction. Eventually you will find that change is an inside job.

You will not find any better system to change your life. There is nothing more worthwhile than committing to your own growth. You can effect powerful change in your life right now with your growing awareness. It’s reasonable to want change to motivate you to keep moving forward, and this will happen. With the internal changes, your perspective will change. You will change. And then life will transform.

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.

You can 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.

The path to freedom is actually a spiritual path, not a material one.  The aim of the advanced seeker is:

Self Awareness
Willingness to first look within yourself for cause and be willing to scrutinize and understand your thoughts, feelings and actions, in order to remain committed to truth–regardless of your level of discomfort.

Self Acceptance
Releasing all judgments and coming to a place of forgiveness for any perceived shortcomings, lack or failure. This is a necessary step to self awareness. Often we resist self awareness because of the discomfort we feel when we begin to look at our "junk". When we release judgment about what we are becoming aware of, we are willing to look at more of it. The more we are willing to look, the more we will see. Self-awareness grows.

Self love/appreciation
Recognizing and appreciating your divinity, feeling and expressing love and appreciation for Self, and all that you are and have been.

Self Discipline
Commitment to altering your habitual patterns and to your growth in order to change your life.

Self Empowerment
Accepting full responsibility for the experience of your life. Every single second, with no exception.

Self Motivation
The willingness to combat inertia, and become committed to living with purpose.

Self Trust
Honor and trust in your divinity and intuition. Turning to Self before others.

The choices and actions that we make every day often contradict the intentions we hope to manifest. If you work with law of attraction, you’re probably accustomed to working with vizualization and affirmations. But you need to ensure that choices, behavior, and actions also support your intentions. If I participate in needless hostile or negative situations, I contradict my intentions for harmony, peace and freedom. By refusing to engage in situations where I might have experienced a reaction at one time, I support my affirmations through my choices and actions.

Let’s take a common example, and I’ll try to expand on it to show ways that we contradict our intentions. As you read, I hope you can relate other situations.

When you are in traffic, do you allow the car in front of you, containing some anonymous driver you will never see again, to come between you and your inner peace? Do you exert any thought or energy aimed toward their driving skills or about their lack of thoughtfulness, intelligence, or sanity?

When even minor irritating situations such as this arises, you may go into an instinctive and automatic emotional reaction. The more thought, attention and focus you put into it, the more energy you send senselessly in that direction. You place importance on what should be an insignificant incident by virtue of the amount of energy expended in thought and emotion. Either eliminate the underlying thought that caused your reaction, or simply remove the habit. Habit can be changed, and the thought can be eliminated. Then, events like this will cease to bother you.

The law of attraction states that it will bring to you objects or events upon which you focus. The more focus and energy you put into those thoughts, or intentions, the stronger the force. So, in this scenario, you would have sent a lot of energy into the Universe, requesting similar hostile situations to occur.

Here’s what you’re saying to the Creative Force in the previous example: "I like strife in my life. It is very important to me how people such as this think, behave, and drive. I focus on this, because it is important to me. I’ll think about it while it’s happening, and it’s so important, I’ll continue to think about it for a few more hours. I will talk to other people about it. I might even want to memorialize this event and put it in a journal! Give me more people like this to think about."

Is that where you want to place your focus? Free will exists in this great diversity on the planet, and there will always be inconsiderate drivers, and inconsiderate people in general. That driver has the right to act as they choose, and you can choose to what extent you include them in your life through your focus. Let them pass through for a few minutes, and then be gone. Do not give them power to disturb your inner peace or take any precious thought or energy.

When unimportant or undesirable people or situations appear in your life, you can simply choose to dismiss them. When you obsess, you have decided to include them as a significant part of your life. Simply observe and dismiss.

If you frequently react in such situations, you need to ask the following question: "Am I going to let you [whoever your block or irritant] come between me and my freedom, peace or growth?" In that moment, it should be clear that you have the ability to make a choice about what your reaction will be. You may find that making the choice to reject your reaction is difficult, but only because you have developed habit. Over time, this practice will give you control of your thoughts, emotional reactions, and even adverse physical reactions. The first step is recognition that you have choice. It may surprise you to know that these changes are not only possible, they are certain to happen if you stick with this work. And in the future, events such as this will not bother you. Make the choice, and own the choice. A cumulative effect occurs when you take control of your life events and choices. The more you exercise your strength and will, the greater control you will have over each event and reaction, every single time.

You may feel that you would not want a situation like this to disturb you if you had choice. But when it occurs, ask yourself this question: "Am I willing to let go of this reaction, right now? Can I allow this person to cut me off, beep at me, give me the finger, without a judgment on my part?"

You might just find that you feel justified in your reaction, and that you LIKE your reaction. You feel entitled to it. Perhaps you even feel they deserve it. People often make the mistake of engaging unnecessarily in hostile encounters, believing that they are defending their boundaries. These same people often fail to protect themselves when a situation truly calls for it.

If you follow the above process, and find that you feel justified or simply like your reaction, you have become aware that you are making a choice each and every single time you react.  Fear, anger, rage, rejection, hate, or any negative emotion you feel in response to an event or person can be turned off by your own request. Since you allow it, you can disallow it. Like knowledge of all choice, this is empowering!

At some point you learned that you needed to judge people who crossed your path. Rather than dismissing people or events that should be unimportant to you, you give them significance by your focus. When you judge people and focus on them, you include them more in your reality. "Give me more of these people. I like judgment, and I want people I can judge." So the Universe complies. It always does!

Once you’ve made the choice to dismiss or reject your emotional reactions and your judgments, inconsequential people and events will cease to be an issue for you. You will learn to focus only on circumstances and people that you desire to include in your reality. Then, the Universe will stop presenting these unwanted situations. The rare person who crosses your path will be observed, and dismissed.

Here’s the alternative. If you want to include them in your life, continue to judge their driving, their lifestyle, their relationships, the way they look, their religion, their hair color, and the food they eat. When you do that, you give them importance. If doing so enhances your life in any way, promotes your growth and intelligence, or brings love and prosperity, then it’s certainly worthwhile. Otherwise, notice that you would be contradicting any request or prayer you have made for more positive experiences.

And you should ask yourself why you continue to exert precious energy on these experiences. What do you get out of it? There has to be a payoff somewhere, or you would not do it. Does it provide justification that your belief systems are correct? If you find a persistent belief underlying your emotional reaction, you need to examine, and be willing to dismiss that thought, whether it pertains to bad drivers, ignorant women, callous men, inconsiderate bosses, or an uncaring government. And as much as you feel justified in that belief, you have to ask whether being right is more important than creating something different. Remember that the principles of law of attraction tell us that our thoughts will draw matching circumstances. So these underlying beliefs we hold onto will cause these very events, over and over, until we are willing to change, or let go of, these beliefs.

In some cases, people simply operate on autopilot. They feel their emotional reactions and judgments are normal and expected, and don’t question them. They may not like those encounters, but don’t know any other way of handling life situations, big or little.

Know that while your goals may be of a more positive, loving and peaceful nature, your own beliefs, actions and focus will continue to bring undesirable events to you, serving to oppose your positive intentions. Action conveys your serious intent to the Universe, not a few stated affirmations. So what are you really asking for? You may be keeping your desires from manifesting.

When you put energy and emotion into situations that you do not desire to include in your future vision, you also waste creative energy and power. As you put emotion behind the words and thoughts, you add power to them. Emotions take thought and roll it into force. Thought is a spark of electricity. Emotion behind it is a bolt of lightning. Use your power of emotion wisely. Put it where it matters. When you want to make clear intention to the universe, use thought, word and emotion to back it up. Learn to follow through with choice and action on each of your goals of intention.

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.

 

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!

If you could paint your life exactly as you wanted beginning today, what kinds of experiences and ideals would you choose?

If you haven’t framed out a life vision or set goals, you’re manifesting a default reality. Your subconscious programming determines these condtions. Without a guiding vision, you find that events and choices happen almost by accident. When you reflect back upon some major life decisions such as marriage, career choice, children, or where you reside, you may have a sense of wonder about how you chose a particular path because you cannot recall exerting conscious choice. Because of your own pattern of choice-making, or lack of it, you may fear life changes, as if some dreaded outcome awaits you after each turn.

A desire for change requires you to develop clearer vision. Setting a goal will activate your internal guidance system while a point of positive focus will fuel law of attraction to bring opportunities to you. Guided by your internal wisdom, with your cooperation by choice and action, you will move in the most expeditious way possible, towards your goals, visions, and ideals.

On a conscious level, goals help you plan and make choices on a daily basis. Think, for example, if you set a basic goal for a desired target weight. That goal provides a scaffold for meal and exercise choices. You may want to explore diets or exercise options, and thus set in place more specific goals, but you would have set a very general and needed framework for action to bring you to your vision of a healthier and slimmer body. You know if you choose to eat a certain type of food, say doughnuts, that your choice contradicts your goal. While you can eat a few anyway, you know that it does not support your vision, and if you do so repeatedly, you will not reach your goal.

When you have framed a goal, you can more easily make choices based on whether or not they bring you closer to that goal or keep you from attaining it. In the same way, a general long-term goal of sucess, achievement and happiness will provide a scaffold for intelligent choices and action. Success and happiness does not happen by accident.

Without a vision, you have nothing to move toward and no true direction. How can you make decisions when presented with choice? Random choice will bring you closer to the unknown.

Realize that you cannot receive guidance if you have not provided direction. You cannot ask for directions when you do not know where you are going. Your internal guiding system works hand-in-hand with you once you have developed a vision. If you want more active control of your life, you need to set a course. Have faith that you could not have a dream without the inner wisdom and ability to get there.

Vision marks the first step in the process of transformation. Once you set your goals, make conscious and intelligent choices to move toward them. Your intuition works with you in powerful ways even when you are not aware of the possible outcome of choices. You will find the more you honor intuition, the stronger that inner voice becomes. Law of attraction will bring amazing and synchronistic opportunity, but it cannot work alone to change your life. When you cooperate with universal law, you empower yourself to become a conscious creator. 

Your choices and actions work with the law of attraction to form what you see around you. While you state your desires via affirmations, visualization exercises, and vision boards, you must support your intentions through your choices and actions. This is how you convey your serious intent to others from whom you seek help or opportunity, as well as from the Universe.

When you begin your holiday shopping for your children, you ask them for a wish-list. You verify their list to observe their real interests, before spending money on something that might just sit in the closet. When you look for validation, you’re really looking for serious intent. You can observe their real interests by watching how and where they spend time and energy. This is the same way you relay your intentions to others. This is the same way you communicate serious intent to the Universe, when you attempt to manifest using the law of attraction.

Once you have set a goal, you need to do your part by following through in ways that support that goal. Praying for, or affirming an outcome, only to spend time negating that affirmation is counterproductive, and you will not see positive results. Use your valuable resources to move you closer to your vision. Commit to your goals through action.

This requires developing unbiased awareness. Awareness allows you to you to look objectively and non-defensively at yourself, removed from your normal perspective. What motivations do your choices and actions suggest? Through this unbiased lens, you can see the negative or destructive underlying programs or belief systems that have been driving your choices. When you move out of habitual pattern and begin to make conscious choices, you will be empowered to make truly positive changes.

Do you allow negative thinking to dominate your mind? Do your thoughts and spoken words support your conscious vision or contradict it? Do you share negative conversations with friends, perhaps to catch them up on your day? Affirmations are a method of conveying your desires of intention, but if you speak them only a few times a day, and spend the rest of the day contradicting them, you will not yield positive results.

Do you invest in yourself, in your vision, or spend money perhaps opposing that same vision? As an obvious and easy example, say you affirm for energetic and vibrant health. Then, you purchase cigarettes. Even worse, you smoke the cigarettes. Perhaps you ask to develop your own inner guidance and then put money into psychics.

Where do you expend your effort and energy? If you have affirmed for a healthy and fit body, but do not expend effort into the exercise required or make unwise choices on diet, you aren’t serious about that goal. Perhaps you have a goal of self-employment. You need to research your interest, network with others, and learn what you need to make it a part of your world. Eventually, you will take proper action, armed with guidance and opportunity that the Universe supplies as you move toward bringing that goal into manifestation.

With whom do you spend your valuable time? Simply do not put time into events, people, situations, or activities that have no place in your vision. Begin to cut negative or unsupportive affiliations. It may sound harsh but you need to remove people who are critical or unsupportive. By the same token, if people from your past do not fit, you need to think about limiting time spent with them, or letting go altogether. For example, if you want to strengthen your significant relationship, but you hang out with single or non-single friends who spend their time at bars looking for opportunity with the opposite sex, you might find that counterproductive to your intentions. Find friends who have or share similar goals.

When you give some thought to this, you might see how you contradict your own intentions. Realize that you affirm intentions by the spoken word, but also by action. You can see from the relationships in your life, that people relate their needs and desires to you in just this way. Would you assist someone that asked for help, if you saw them resist your efforts? Or worse, not make any effort to help themselves? When you declare your serious intent in all ways, the Universe will respond by providing opportunity and success.

Your personal success on any level requires taking action. Recognize that you have to ask to receive, but you also need to be serious about what you want, and commit to your own success, before you will receive. You simply cannot hope for the law of attraction to bring the changes that you want without your cooperation. Rubbing a lamp does not count! If it lightens the mood and keeps you happy and entertained, it certainly has value, but you’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to your success.

Become more conscious of the choices and actions you make on a daily basis that shape your life circumstances. Imagine the positive changes that will begin to take place with only a change in your own behavior and choices. Then imagine how much you can accomplish by using the power of law of attraction. 

Focus on the desires you want to manifest. Develop the commitment, wisdom of choice, action, and self-discipline to effectively utilize your resources to support your goals. Remain mindful of the spoken and written word. Talk about what you want, not what you don’t. Do not spend time, energy, effort, thought or money in areas that will not help you reach your future goals. What has no place in your ideal future vision, should not be included in your present in any way whatsoever. Consciously practice this until it becomes automatic and ingrained. And it will, with committed and diligent practice.

People once regarded the law of attraction as a concept that fell within the realm of spiritual or metaphysical study, but suddenly, people from all walks of life have been talking about it as though a well-guarded secret to the universe was just discovered. As much as pop trend wants to cast an air of mystique around the subject by suggesting that this information has been deliberately hidden, printed information has circulated freely on the subject since the early 20th century, when many authors of New Thought literature shared their knowledge and success using law of attraction. See the online library on this site for many of these classics. It was mentioned in the Bible, taught by eastern religion since the dawn of time, and revived in the latter part of the 20th century with the concept of the power of positive thought. These early works laid the groundwork for later teachings and also provided us with a good history of many who succeeded by using the methods that these authors detailed in their writings.

From 1963 to 1984, Jane Roberts channeled spiritual information, including law of attraction concepts, from an entity named Seth. Almost immediately following Ms. Roberts’ death in 1984, Esther Hicks channeled similar information, beginning in 1985, from a group of entities who referred to themselves as "Abraham." Hicks’ many books and tapes have been widely available ever since. Most recently, the release of the cleverly-titled DVD, The Secret, illustrated a rather seductive and magical presentation of the law of attraction. The release of this movie spawned a deluge of get-rich-effortlessly-and-quickly instructional seminars, CD-sets, books and e-books, targeted toward people easily wanting to reach their material goals. However, aside from those who directly benefit from the sales of these products, the manifested results are less than profitable!

The law of attraction states that what you create in the inner world, or your conscious and unconscious mind, will crystallize in your outer world. The visions and thoughts that you impress upon the creative energy in the universe, through the process of your thinking, will manifest in your reality. This creative energy is also known as universal divine energy, or God. At first bite, this concept is usually difficult to grasp, but quantum physics tells us that science supports this concept. So your thoughts have a force that create your outer world. This suggests that everyone is already creating their reality, whether or not they are doing so deliberately.

This premise is based upon only a fragment of spiritual truth, a fact that current teachings don’t factor in when they tell you that you can achieve all that you desire. For this reason, most people do not achieve any predictable success using law of attraction. So, while the teachers tell you that everyone has total responsibility for their life, they can’t begin to answer why they, or others, don’t really have the ultimate control they tell you is possible. You may believe that you haven’t learned enough, or put into proper practice the principles they teach. Did you detach enough? Were you grateful enough? Positive enough? Did you put emotion into your intention? You may feel that if you attend some seminar, watch the movie again, purchase a CD-set, or another book, you might learn the real secret to making this work.

What is the point and purpose to these elaborate teachings of a fundamental universal law that is actually amazingly simple? Perhaps the only point is to manifest prosperity–not for the students, but for those who teach the principles! So, then, we might need to validate the teachings. We might want to see whether the teachers manifested wealth prior to, or aside from, creating and selling the information. We might ask to what extent they manifest other desirable conditions or situations in their lives. Clearly, if we are honest, we have to admit that while appealing, the law of attraction does not have the ultimate power that this current trend suggests.

As knowledgeable and experienced spiritual leaders know: it works for a while, sometimes, and then it doesn’t. As point in fact, some of the published authors who had acquired wealth using the principles, later found themselves in hardship or even destitute. So we need to understand the limitations in order to understand how it can help us.

As spiritual beings, first and foremost, our lives depend upon the demands of the soul, also called the soul plan. Our lives are neither at the mercy of whim, karma, luck nor chance, but neither are they entirely controlled by our conscious, or even unconscious, desires. Common sense, ancient wisdom, and experience tells us this. Spiritual masters have told us this. Health, wealth and the happy and fun life are, like it or not, expendable items, until we take care of the business of growth at hand. This means that sometimes we find ourselves in difficult life circumstances, which greatly contradict our positive intentions. These conditions are in place for the sole purpose of bringing us toward wholeness, light and freedom. Difficult times should be temporary conditions, and the sooner we "get" the lesson, the sooner we move to a higher and clearer level, more empowered to create a positive reality.

The content within our mind presents another challenge for us. The subconscious mind always has the final say-so on which conscious thoughts or desires have creative force. This is based on what ideas the subconscious, or unconscious mind, perceives true by virtue of prior learning and experience. Deliberate creation requires clear intent, free of any opposing thought, in either the conscious or subconscious mind.

Next, the universal consciousness, or "one-mind" restricts us. In the highest spiritual sense, we are all one, despite having separate physical bodies. We cannot escape the belief systems of this group. Tribe consciousness refers to the beliefs of the smaller groups we belong to, such as family, gender, or ethnic.  No matter what we may personally believe with even absolute conviction, we will be limited by the beliefs of all of these groups.

Developing a practical approach that takes into account all these considerations will yield far better results than attempting to use law of attraction in an unrealistic way. Wishful thinking will not make it so.

Nothing outside of yourself will prevent you from attaining abundance, love, health and happiness. There is no soul plan that denies anyone this. Rather, it is every soul’s urging that we grow to accept all this and more. Your success in attaining your goals depend upon you cultivating commitment and patience, as well as a postive mind-set. Your spiritual progress, ability to let go of core negative beliefs and programs, and your ability to eliminate destructive habits of negativity, anxiety and fear will largely determine the results. 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.