Science Behind The Secret - Law of Attraction & How Thoughts Dictate Reality

Many of you may already be familiar with a concept called "the law of attraction", popularized in a movie called "the secret?" Simply put, the law of attraction tells us that we draw to ourselves whatever we think about, and that includes the things we are resistant about as well. So, resistance is often seen negatively. However, when viewed from a different perspective it can also become a tool for guiding us in the direction of correction.

Because of the momentum of your habitual ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, you may often feel like you are trying to move forward with a rubber band around your waist. So the closer you get to attracting what you want into your life, the pull of your old thinking is so strong, you seem to snap back into your old patterns. These patterns are stealing your energy. Every negative pattern you are holding onto from the past is robbing you of the energy that you could be using to create all that you choose and creating resistance. When you let go of these negative patterns, you can then channel this energy into your worthy goals and intentions.

Since you have over 50,000 thoughts a day, they can be a lot to try to control and make positive. Yet if you "wake up on the wrong side of the bed," you can have the same feeling the whole day coloring every thought. So it is much more effective to master your emotions than simply trying to control your thoughts.

Morning disciplines can be an important part of repositioning our thought patterns and help to establish the resonant frequency for the day. You are creating the sum total of your thinking and feeling about any particular topic all the time, but most of thinking and feeling is below your conscious awareness in your subconscious. In fact, 94-96% of your actions are motivated by the thoughts and feelings that are outside of your conscious awareness and control.

When you let go of your conscious feelings using one of the releasing tools described I described in my article, "releasing resistance to change", you actually empty your subconscious and you take back your control. Letting go of your thoughts and feelings actually dissolves the negative emotional charge and allows you to easily feel the natural feelings of joy, peace, happiness, wealth, and love that are your true nature. You can let go of anything negative and uncover the positive that is natural in each and every one of us at our core.

This will quickly and dramatically shift your sum total thinking and feeling about your goals and dreams and allow you to put the law of attraction into full effect in your life. No doubt about it, letting go is the secret to mastering the "Science of Successful Change". Remember, to create what you want, it is important to feel that you already have what you want and not just think it.

Subconscious Resistance and the Law of Attraction
The subconscious mind stores everything we've ever experienced, filters what we now experience based upon our beliefs, thoughts, attitudes, behaviors and habit. In a lot of ways it works to censor our reality. In some ways this is good. Can you imagine being aware of every little thing that comes into our field of view, or every little conversation going on in the background? Even so, all of this is collected by our subconscious. Our subconscious mind can determine how successful we are with actualizing the Law of Attraction and getting the results we want.

Let's take a look at how that works and how we can make it work for us. If our subconscious wasn't doing what it was doing, we would be prone to a lot of difficulty in keeping a steady, stable grip on reality. Every little bit of information that comes our way would begin influencing how we see the world, and in a lot of cases that could be terrifying. So our subconscious mind only accepts as a fact of reality those things which it is bombarded with over a period of time and has contributed to the "set point" regulated by our reticular activating system (RAS) and the cybernetic mechanism.

Many neuroscientists believe that this period of time can be averaged, and have chosen 21 days as the most common period of time needed to affect a permanent change in the subconscious. In some cases it may be more, and in some it may be less, but 21 days is a good average.

Remember Dr. Maxwell Maltz, MD, the plastic surgeon who discovered the cybernetic mechanism? Well he conducted extensive studies on why brain circuits take what he called "engrams" (memory traces), and produce neuropathways only if they are bombarded for 21 days in a row. NASA later did similar experiments and determined that it can take 21-46 days (up to six weeks) to accomplish this rewiring of neurological pathways.

This means that our brain does not accept "new" data for a change of habit unless it is repeated each day for 21 days (without missing a day). The idea may be simple but the trick is in the resolve to keep with it for the 21 days. The old habit does not leave you; it is simply replaced by the new habit. Old habits are not so easily replaced. The new habit will need to be encouraged and nurtured to have any chance of survival.

In general, our subconscious flushes things away within three days. New programming, new beliefs, flushed away, through our dreams at night. I'm sure you know people or have had the experience of being motivated to change something, only to fall back into your old habit patterns and behaviors? You may have done fine for the first couple of days, but then reverted to your set point behavior.

Most likely, the subconscious flushed this new programming while you slept and now the new programming is gone. This is why it is important to impress your desires on your subconscious repeatedly until they become part of your reality. The power of the subconscious is such that once you have impressed something upon it fully, and it is accepted by your subconscious as a fact of reality, that thing will now become a reality in your experience.

Thus, by repeating some simple daily disciplines you will be able to maintain the new programming. Spend a little time each day focusing on your desires, so that you continually impress them into your subconscious. I know you already know but, thinking substance takes the form of the thoughts impressed upon it and moves according to the thought.

But, It Just Doesn't Seem To Be Working!
Suppose you set a positive intention, focus your energy on its manifestation for the highest good of all, see the promising outcome, and then watch your results completely stagnate. Why did your intention fail to manifest as quickly as you desired? Whenever this type of reaction occurs the root cause is that you failed to become a vibrational match for your intentions. Probably without even realizing it, you remained stuck in a pattern of intending for your desires NOT to manifest, thereby sabotaging yourself from making progress.

What creates this drag? The answer is fear. Most of the time, your fears are subconscious. You aren't even aware of them, so they sabotage you from the shadows. Your fears act as intentions which keep your desires from manifesting. The more you resonate with fear, the worse your results will be when consciously trying to apply the Law of Attraction. The LAW is still working perfectly, but you'll be inclined to think it doesn't work because your fears will cause you to keep manifesting more of the same old "stuff". And the harder you push, the more your fears push back, because what you resist - persists.

Successful Change is a Package Deal
When you set a goal or an intention and begin moving towards it much more slowly than you'd like, the drag you experience comes from your fears, not the external world. If you put all your energy into changing your external circumstances without addressing your fears, your progress will be extremely slow, if you even move at all.

How can you identify the fears that interfere with your positive intentions? First, imagine you've already manifested your intention in its entirety. Sit quietly and just imagine it as being real right now. Don't imagine it happening in the future - imagine it right now. You're already there. It's a done deal. Take a few minutes to make it as real as possible. Now do some role-playing in your imagination. Mentally act out a few different scenarios to get a feel for what your life will really be like once this intention has become your present reality.

Be Aware of Anti-Intentions
Consider the major side effects of getting what you want. How will the achievement of this goal affect your health, finances, relationships, career, spiritual practice, etc? In what other ways will it change you? No change occurs in isolation, so how will this change ripple outward and create other changes? Try to get a clear sense of the entire spectrum of changes, and see if you can figure out where your life might re-stabilize after the initial change.

For example, if your intention is to manifest a million dollars, imagine how that extra money will affect the other parts of your life. How will it affect your family, your friendships, your living situation, your career, your taxes, your eating habits, your spending habits, and your spirituality? How will this one change create a tidal wave of other changes? Where will you actually end up when the dust finally settles?

These consequences of your desired change are called anti-intentions. Often times they contribute to your "fear pool" because you didn't anticipate or at least you weren't aware of the possibility that they might come along for the ride. So obviously, two key elements in the process of predictable change are awareness and releasing.

By Dr. Richard A. DiCenso