The law of attraction is a universal law that states that like is attracted to like. This means that all thoughts and emotions will attract experiences of like vibration. If we feel loving and accepting of others, happy, safe, and abundant, our lives will reflect this reality because we can only attract experiences of like vibration. If we feel judgmental, guilty, dissatisfied, or experience our lives as lacking, we will experience this as a reality in our lives. The law of attraction is completely neutral and does not care whether you hold a positive or negative vibration, it will bring you more of whatever vibration you emit. You can use the law of attraction to your advantage by changing your thoughts and your perception, thus improving your life by attracting more positive experiences. There are ample literature and YouTube videos available to anyone who wants to understand this law. Using it to your advantage involves practice and engagement with your emotional guidance system.
The emotional guidance system is simple to understand but requires vigilance. When you feel negative emotions, you are holding a negative (and untrue) belief. When you feel happy, you are on the right track. Negative beliefs and emotions lead you further away from your soul’s purpose; positive beliefs are beneficial and lead you toward that which you truly want. The only truth, however, is love and acceptance. Love is the Source of all that is, and therefore when you feel loving, you are living in alignment with Source. Living in Truth brings you on a joyful journey through your life to your soul’s purpose and highest expression of itself. Guilt and judgment keep you stuck and feeling separate from source, though ultimately, separation from Source is simply not possible.
My journey into separation began abruptly at almost 9 years old. Due to the crisis (read here) which elicited much condemnation from our community and myself, I began to project a world of my own making and reflecting my projection. Feeling judgment toward my brother, I attracted experiences in which I felt judged. Seeing Colin as guilty, I began to feel guilty, and because the law of attraction will bring to you whatever your dominant vibration is, my belief that I was alone, unlovable, and deeply flawed was faithfully reinforced many times over. I wandered in a mist of confusion for several years, shrouded in self-consciousness and asking always to understand how to be loved.
Thank God for the mother I chose. As early as twelve years old, three years after the fire, my mind had become a place of torment, and in my soul was a constant longing for truth. Poems poured out of me about the fleeting nature of life and imminent death. There were themes of attachment and questions about the nature and illusion of beauty. The twelve-year-old was beginning already to see that the world was an illusion, and her mind was the source of her troubles.
I remember sitting at the table with my mother in sixth grade, at the edge of despair and feeling very guilty. I had somehow maneuvered my way up the social ladder that year, molding myself into some shape I had hoped would be acceptable. My friends and I had all gone skating together in a big group, and there was a boy who had a crush on me. He asked me to skate with him during the slow songs, so we held hands and skated around the rink. This boy was a neighbor and a friend of a girl I thought was the queen of that group, and she had brotherly affection for him. She was his “wing-man,” and she and a few others innocently pressured me to say yes, when he asked me to declare myself his girlfriend. I felt I would disappoint him and them if I declined. When he skated over to me and asked the question, I said, “Ok.” Then, at the end of the party, he gave me a little peck on my lips. I was mortified.
Kissing, to me then, was a huge declaration of love, and I did not like this boy enough to have kissed him. I became ill at ease and very upset with myself. A boundary had been crossed, and it was clear to me that I had betrayed myself somehow. I felt sick and anxious because I knew I would have to take it back, to say, “no, actually I don’t want to be your girlfriend.”
A day or a few days later, I did take it back, and when I came home to an answering machine blinking manically to signify many messages had been left, a feeling of dread came over me. Pushing the button, I consented to listen to message after message of vitriolic scolding for breaking this boy’s heart. I had upset the queen who felt protective of her friend, and she and the rest of the girls took this opportunity to tell me how horrible I was.
I broke down; I could not cope with this world; I didn’t understand the rules; I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, and it seemed to me that making a decision was just about the most dangerous thing I could do. If I made decisions for myself, I upset others. If I made decisions for others, I betray myself. I was paralyzed, and all I could do was give myself over to a torrent of grief that had been churning for three years.
I refused to go to school, and finally, overcome with shame, I confided in my mother, my sweet mother with a heart that feels everyone’s sadness. Thank God she’d been working on her healing for a few years by then, and she recognized self-loathing and guilt when she saw it.
She spoke to me patiently, listening to how much I hated myself, how unworthy I felt, how unlovable I was. She asked me if I could think of other times when I felt unlovable and judged. And then, it finally hit me – the fire- and I sobbed and sobbed. To the twelve-year-old in this story, it seemed I was releasing grief over the event, but in reality, I was grieving the beliefs I had adopted due to that event, the belief that I was separate and unworthy of love and forgiveness. My mom eventually became a councilor, and I think that at this moment I recognized that would be her destiny.
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My mom grabbed a picture of me when I was eight or nine that was hanging on the wall. She asked me to look at that child, “Is she unlovable?”
At first, I said, “Yes!” She is!” I hated her.
But she asked me to look again, “What has she done? Look at her sweet smile.” Then she grabbed another picture off the wall, this one from when I was five, and she asked the same question.
Looking at the five-year-old, I began to forgive that nine-year-old. Yes, there she was, the innocent child I wanted to be.
My mother asked me what had happened now that had gotten me so upset. I told her I had done something terrible, and the pain returned. She patiently led me on, “What is it called when we do something we didn’t mean to do?”
“A mistake?” I asked in between sobs.
“Yes,” my mom’s voice rasped, “a mistake. You made a mistake.” I sighed, letting down my tightened diaphragm. “You just made a mistake,” she said. “Does anyone deserve to be hated when they’ve just made a mistake? Doesn’t everyone deserve forgiveness? We need to forgive ourselves for the mistakes we make, all of them.”
It was the first lesson on a very long road to freedom, one I would learn, again and again, one I still remember today.
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