Happy Valentines Day! It seems like a peculiar time to revisit this idea that whatever you dream of you can achieve, given, as one of my daughter’s friends noted, “It’s the anniversary since we first quarantined.” But after a year in quarantine, finding a life hack for well-being feels like a necessity.
Since my last entry on creative retreats while in quarantine, I’ve circled back and returned to yet another set of authors: Esther and Jerry Hicks, who wrote Law of Attraction.
1. Rewind, Play Again: The Secret
Thirteen years ago, after working in corporate environments as a graphic designer for about a decade, I wanted to change course. I was getting little sleep as all mothers of newborns do, waking up at 3-4 hour intervals breastfeeding my first child when I first saw The Secret. The video’s positive psychology messaging in sound bites resonated with me, and I watched it over and over again. It really was a silver lining in those hours of post partum depression!
I envisioned my next job, which came in the form of my former colleague friend who called me during a feeding and told me of an opening at her school. I even did a vision board and mentally play acted entering the building of my dream teaching gig. I’ve upgraded my position there but still teach where I vision boarded. I think the novelty of this approach fired me up then and made it the most effective iteration of visualization I’ve ever done.
Fast forward thirteen years, mid-life crisis and quarantine, and I feel like I’ve been back to square one. From The Secret, I had tracked down a self-help source amongst those sound bites here and there. I followed a binaural beats program offered by Bill Harris, who has since passed away. I was drawn to his program (which is heavy on the marketing, I might add) by the idea that I could follow an audio program to help retrain my tendency toward a negative self concept. I also liked the idea of assisted meditation through brain entrainment.
The first few months to a year of doing the program felt euphoric and had other unexpected side benefits. As an introvert, I found it a lot easier to socially navigate and felt a sense of connectedness with my fellow human beings and strangers that I had never felt before. But subsequently two years later at an hour a day, I feel I’ve been doing it out of habit and still feeling bouts of procrastination and guilt for not achieving what I’d set out to do, particularly when feeling financial pressure to produce. The billable hours through work are so much easier to deal with than starting your own business! And these billable hours were dwindling—mind you, I am still grateful for gainful employment.
This summer, I revisited The Artist’s Way, to start a creative practice. It disciplined me to write three pages in my journal everyday. The other prompts, like finding time for yourself for creative “play,” I found I already practiced anyway (to the point of procrastination). I found some steady progress but not a profound breakthrough like I had anticipated. I felt proud that I got through the twelve weeks of the program. I was creating again.
Recently, I’ve turned back to Law of Attraction as written by Esther and Jerry Hicks. I don’t recall how I got there from The Secret but my guess is reading the Amazon reviews, more than one person had recommended it as the OG. Years ago, I was turned off by its Q&A format and the idea of Esther being inhabited by a spirit called Abraham. Since then, I’ve been willing to give it a second shot, and the copy I borrowed from the library set me off again on taking up a law of attraction practice everyday. Here are its 3 principles:
- The Law of Attraction: Like attracts like
- The Science of Deliberate Creation: That which you think about and expect is (or shall we conclude, comes into being).
- The Art of Allowing: I am allowing myself to be what I am and allowing others to be what they are. (Though this is tough in this political climate!)
2. The Vortex
I would read the passages from LOA, get excited and then the excitement would dissipate, and I felt like I had to reread the passages. Finally, I checked out their guided meditation: Getting into the Vortex, (which is different from their other book, The Vortex: Where the Law of Attraction Assembles All Cooperative Relationships) from the library, wanting to test drive the CD first. I can say the meditation is only 15 minutes, as opposed to an hour, which is great! An hour per day of even augmented meditation is really hard to achieve unless you have a spouse that always wakes up too early and you can’t go back to sleep anyway. Binaural beats worked then, but not in quarantine!
The book is divided into four 15-minute guided meditations: the first is for general well-being, then financial abundance, then physical well-being (we could all use this one), and relationships. After the first week of use, I’m feeling happy again and optimistic. Interestingly enough, the concept of being in the Vortex is about being connected with your Source. Which really is quite the same message that Julia Cameron had in The Artist’s Way. However spiritual and ethereal it all seems, there’s something pragmatic in listening to your feelings and emotional responses to your customary drivers in guiding you toward your deeper yearnings, toward your authentic self and also feeling safe and grounded.
I am stating this as a self-blocked creative person that had been fulfilling societal expectations, always led by feelings of obligation. For years, I had plugged myself into the job market to earn the amount my educational degrees were supposed to get me as a woman. Doing this for what is almost half my life in the job market. I also had had intermittent panic attacks during my work commute, anxiety, and disrupted sleep. So there have been layers I’ve been trying to alleviate through meditation.
3. Life Visioning
Another practitioner who was on The Secret, Michael Beckwith has a book, Life Visioning Process, which I borrowed as an audiobook download. He too has a guided meditation, which I found profoundly moving, though initially a bit foreign, since I haven’t stepped into a church for awhile (I grew up Roman Catholic) and he leads like a reverend would. He approaches law of attraction as a spiritual practice, with a more altruistic bent. So if you’re not ready for what he terms reverent alertness or practicing humility in “having a beginner’s mind,” it might not be for you. But ultimately, I would argue that that is the deeper journey, and he does state that some of us are not quite ready to provide for the greater good but that the guided meditation can still help us navigate toward our goals.
For me audio downloads, DVDs and audiobooks are of great help due to the emotional delivery of the content, since fundamentally, the teachings around law of attraction require the emotions as a guiding point. Others would prefer to read. For me doing both helps me absorb the ideas while taking in the spirit behind them through their delivery.
Please feel free to leave a comment about your experiences with LOA. And I want to express gratitude to our libraries for keeping us sane free of charge!