Law of Attraction

by Vaishali

Unless you have been living under a rock, or isolated in a remote cave on a desert island, you have most likely found yourself in a conversation about the latest topic du jour: the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction looks like this:

Thoughts = Attraction

The truth of the matter is that the Law of Attraction is nothing new. It has been around as long as human consciousness. But thanks to the latest DVD, The Secret, this ancient idea is making a modern, popular resurgence.

If you Google "The Law of Attraction" the information you get will describe it as the most powerful force in the universe. However, those who have traveled to the other side and come back to tell the tale, all say that Divine Love is the most powerful force in the universe. So who is right - Google or the Spiritual realm? Attention or Love?

Well actually, they both are. We know this from the works of the great mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). He spent every day of the last twenty-six years of his life traveling into the Spiritual realm by entering into a trance-like state of extreme focus. Spirit gave him volumes of information to pass on to all of us in physical bodies, so that we might better understand the meaning of our lives. Swedenborg said that we are what we love... and we love whatever we give our attention to. Our awareness, our attention, IS love. Emanuel Swedenborg further said that we do not have love; we ARE love, therefore whatever commands our attention... we love. And, whatever we love, we ARE! We'll call this the Law of Love, and it looks like this:

You = Love = Attention = Love = You

Love is considered the most powerful universal force because it is wholeness making. In other words, it is the power of Love that will bring whatever you focus on into the whole of your life. This can be an extremely sobering reality, especially if you find yourself constantly drifting off into worry, lack, or fear-based thoughts. This means that you cannot spend 10 minutes a day focusing on copious quantities of money pouring into your bank account, and then work 23 hours and 50 minutes building a monument to scarcity with your attention, when you focus on thoughts like, "If only I had (fill in the blank) everything would be okay," or, "why is it there are never enough hours in the day?" Your devoted love for "less" will outweigh your casual flirtation with abundance. It would be like getting your nails done, and then spending the rest of the day biting them down to the quick. The cosmetic attention given to your nails would not stop the destructive end result of total erosion. Also, according to Swedenborg's wisdom, if this (erosion, lack) is where you focus your attention, this is also where you will be living: in a hellishly limited world. Not a pretty thought - which then manifests into your reality.

So, how can we use the Law of Love to improve our everyday life? First, we need to be aware of it. Second, if we are wise, we will be extremely judicious about what we are giving our attention to, because whatever it is, we will be attracting more of it into the whole of our life experience. And, third, whenever we find ourselves focusing on anything limited, we need to immediately put it down, and return our attention to that which is unlimited. The bigger picture is, the Law of Attraction is really just a restatement of the Law of Love. The primary difference is that the Spiritual realm focuses on Love; the human, physical world focuses analytically on thoughts.

The Law of Attraction, because it is based on the Law of Love, will work to bring more life sustaining influences into the whole of your life, IF you do not spend the bulk of your life giving attention to some other fatal attraction. The Law of Love has an intimate relationship with our free will. Whatever we chose to freely love, we are also choosing to freely learn from. Emanuel Swedenborg says, in his prolific writings, that we are here having a human experience to learn that we gain nothing by giving our attention to anything limited. Furthermore, that we learn this truth as a result of what we have practiced freely giving our attention to over the course of our lives. The Law of Attraction works because we have the free will to decide, at any time, that we will give our attention only to what lives in an unlimited place.

Whenever we find ourselves entertaining something limiting with our mind, only we have the free will to put down that thought and return our attention to what is beyond limitation. As Emanuel Swedenborg liked to say, giving attention exclusively to the unlimited is a remembering and a forgetting thing. You have to remember to give your attention to what is unlimited, and simply forget everything else.

Vaishali is the author of "You Are What You Love" (Purple Haze Press 2006) listen to her radio show "You Are What You Love" on Contact Talk Radio and a guest radio host on Seattle's KKNW's "Contact Talk Radio." For more information, email v@purplev.com