You Can’t Always Get What You Want
By HARV BISHOP
Do your thoughts create your reality without exception?
Many New Thought adherents believe so. Yet did Dr. Ernest Holmes, founder of the Science of Mind philosophy, believe that to be true? Some parts of his writing suggest so. Other passages, where Holmes speaks in more qualified and nuanced terms, suggest that he did not.
Recent conversations with Dr. Edward Viljeon, a CSL minister from Santa Rosa, CA and the beloved late Dr. Nirvana Reginald Gayle brought this issue to the forefront.
Last year, Gayle told me about his favorite passage in the Science of Mind textbook from Chapter 16 “The Principles of Successful Living.” People “have misread our movement to be just about getting rich quick,” Gayle said. “Whereas in the Science of Mind textbook, in the chapter Principles of Successful Living, Ernest straight out says we are not a get rich quick thing. We don’t teach that you can get something for nothing. We don’t teach that everybody can always get what they want because it would be for certain that if everyone got what they wanted that there would be some things that people would want that would be harmful to other people. And I always add that it would be harmful to themselves. When people don’t have an idea who they really are (as part of the Divine) some of the things that they think are their needs are really harmful to them.”
As I look at Gayle’s words, they suggest a limitation on the relationship between our thinking and the reality we manifest. Apparently the Law is intelligent, not a cosmic PEZ dispenser, and can discern between wants that are for the good the whole and those that, in Holmes’s words, “would interfere with the wellbeing of someone else.”
Let’s look at what else Holmes says in that chapter where he cautions against what he sees as the dangers of teachings about prosperity and mental control of conditions.
- You can’t always get what you want, but you will have greater possibilities in your life with affirmative prayer.
- You will still have to work hard to manifest real world results.
- You can “greatly influence,” but not absolutely control your life circumstances.
Science of Mind Minister Dr. Edward Viljeon believes New Thought’s shadow can manifest around illness and include victim blaming and a lack of compassion. That judgment, he says, can be especially harsh when turned on New Thought ministers who become ill.
Once again, let’s check out the textbook beginning with the 1926 edition to see what Holmes had to say about the causes of illness. He writes “Very few diseases are inherited.” (Italics mine) Apparently he means some diseases are, in fact, inherited.
Later in this section he writes that “most diseases come” (Italics mine) from thoughts, conscious or unconscious, collective beliefs, and emotions. Yet his wording clearly leaves open the possibility that not all diseases have such mental causes. Few today would deny the mind body connection and we now recognize that stress and emotion directly affect body chemistry and depress the immune system as opposed to attracting disease out of the ethers. Holmes then remarks all that all diseases begin in Mind, but in a philosophy that believes in Oneness, nothing is apart from Mind.
In the most recent, now standard, edition of the textbook he writes “Diseases which are mental in their origin must arise from some inner state of consciousness. While most disease must first have a subjective cause…” (Italics mine.) Again, he does not generalize. There are apparently diseases which are mental in origin and those that are not. He would no doubt would say that healing prayer can be helpful for all disease regardless of cause. He repeats the section from the earlier edition that all diseases begin in mind, but its meaning is less clear as he no longer capitalizes mind indicating the One Mind.
At the least, all this suggests Holmes was too intelligent a thinker to ignore nuance and get trapped in absolutism. In holding on to an absolutist view of the Law of Attraction have we lost Holmes’s appreciation for nuance and exceptions?
I do not deny other passages seem to support the opposite view. But how do we interpret Holmes’ qualifying statements about the Law of Attraction? I am honestly asking for your perspectives, because I don’t know the answer.
Dr. Viljeon and I would appreciate your ideas, questions and topics related to New Thought, health and healing for our upcoming dialogue for this blog. Leave them in the comments section below.
I really like this post a lot and I agree with it most wholeheartedly. Thanks Harv.
Thanks so much Rev. Steve!
The Law of Attraction is repeated thought that’s become subconscious and in turn causes a person to do things, and act a certain ways in order to attract things that are in tune with their repeated thought(s), and Actions.
Great working definition for LOA. Thanks John. How would you interpret Holmes’s passages cited above?
I believe he was saying what anyone with any sense already knows. If we desire something enough and take action we’ll most likely obtain it. Sometimes or subconscious mind takes longer to fill with the desire and cause the will to act. As far as dis-ease I’d say it’s most likely die to poor diet, environment, lack of rest, lack of exercise, and unattended stress.
I do absolutely agree with what you say very much related to the adage treat and move your feet. What about his view that we won’t get what we want if it will bring harm to someone else? Does that conflict with the view that Law is neutral and reproduces what we put into it?
I think that we attract either good or bad in tune with our prevailing yhoughts. I think we get what we give due to it being on yhe same vibration.
If by saying that the Law is “discerning” you mean it will not allow those who have evil’s thoughts to harm others or even themselves, I disagree. Rather, the results of their consciousness that creates their outer reality. If they are loving and of a positive disposition, expecting good for themselves and others, that is what they experience in their lives. If they’re negative toward others and filled with hate, then this becomes their experience. So the Law is totally even-handed as our circumstances mirror our inner selves. My belief is that each of us finally, at some point…likely after many lifetimes, come to realize we alone are responsible for our success in life.
Hi Daisy,
Thanks for your comments. You state well the traditional Law of Attraction view here, but understand I am not personally taking a position in this blog as to whether the law is discerning. I am saying Dr. Holmes clearly seems to indicate that it is in some way discerning though I also recognize there are places where he seems to say the opposite. My question is what meaning can we take away from these passages that suggest the law has some boundaries?
As Ernest Holmes teaches, perfection simply IS. While disease is of such a thing that we cannot dismiss, we must look beyond the construction of it.
Disease does not belong to us but rather we have yet to manufacture tools that surpass these specific appearances. Divine Mind knows only of perfection and wholeness. When we are not relating to life from this Truth, we are prone to faulty thinking that speaks otherwise and impedes our health.
Like anything, we must stop and recognize our relationship to this thing called life. Many things can be set into motion when one gets labeled or diagnosed… for either the good or bad to the individual. Perhaps our job is to continue to push past these constructions and work at our relationship to and with them. Do we view ourselves as “having” a disease or do we maintain our focus on our inherent perfection?
Ernest Holmes emphasized that spiritual treatment should not feel like work. We cannot however deny the difficult of this from time to time as we have been taught otherwise and therefore appears seemingly ingrained. Some people have been told they “have” illness and yet this label does not become the emphasis of their living. It is simply something to be recognized but not to attach with.
While in harmony with Divine Intelligence we understand this truth despite any facts to the contrary.
Hi Jen,
I would very much agree with your beautiful words in terms of identifying with perfection and an ease in treatment rather than will power.
Love the post, Harv.
Indeed, Dr. Holmes is pretty clear throughout his writings that it is the “preponderance of thought” and not any individual thought or a few thoughts that create our experience of reality. How we relate to reality is a key (also written about extensively by Joseph Chilton Pearce and others).
An issue with these “subtleties,” if you will, is that as a teacher of The Science of Mind, you tend to begin with a focus on the most straightforward approach to the development of consciousness and its relationship to the larger reality. When the student is ready for the subtleties is a good question. I see an equivalence with many other lifestyle topics – beginners are rarely ready for the subtle details.
You mention the need to “work hard to achieve real world results.” I would put in a caveat here – the “hard work” is in the development of consistent patterns of thought that allow a more regular manifestation of desired as opposed to undesired conditions.
I am currently learning French – and I have to crawl before I can walk. I know that if I continue to apply myself, I will eventually begin to think in French – then it will be easy. The hard work is in the preparation of the mind; once the mind is trained, it gets easy, as one automatically outpictures the higher order of being which has been developed within.
I am certain that Holmes understood this – what he did not do was create a systematic learning process to take students throught he various steps from beginner to master. And New Thought currently has as many processes as we have teachers. I think that may speak to the uneven nature of our results.
A second issue that I would take is the idea that the universe somehow prefers moral outcomes as opposed to immoral ones. There is no evidence of any universal bias in that regard. We are free to harm ourselves and others – that is clear. Morality is a human concept and if we want to live in a moral world, we have to make it so using our own devices.
Thanks Dr. Jim! I was very curious what your take would be on all this.
I agree that part of the hard work is in aligning consciousness with intent and I interpret the other part of his not getting something for nothing admonition as the need to treat and move our feet.
The question of a bias for non-harm in the universe could be a book unto itself. Your position is close to Jeffrey Kripal’s and one I largely agree with, but to be honest a part of me wants to hang onto an idea of “God” as love. Or perhaps that is part we are evolving and unfolding, elaborating as we go.
Can we read Holmes here as believing that there is that bias?
I also encourage any readers who have not checked out Dr. Jim’s excellent New Thought Evolutionary blog to do so https://newthoughtevolutionary.wordpress.com/
Thanks, Harv, and Dr. Jim,
I often look at the events of my life and considered how I got something I wanted and yet in there is the appearance that others were harmed or impacted by me manifesting my desires. Now these experiences often play out over time. My most recent example is almost two years from start to finish if I am even finished with it, And what I have come to believe is that the Universe has an amazing way of course correcting.
Considering your question from a “both/and”perspective I am able to see how I absolutely manipulated the LAW into creating a scenario of exactly what I thought I wanted, and the necessary lessons and consequences were wrapped up within the experience, and once the lessons for growth revealed themselves,
The Universe provided the course corrections that led me back to my original course of action, evolving in consciousness and experience. Thus anyone that may feel injured by my use of the LAW, also has the opportunity to experience a course correction through the events. Eventually, I come to realize that everyone wins, even tho not everyone sees the event as a win. In this we don;t limit our own power and there is no need to concern myself about the effect my use of the Power may have their experience, as they move through a course correction of their own.
Now I’m not trying to say that somehow our personal path through life is flawed or in need or correcting. I am saying that through the use of the power of my word, I can and do create situations and experiences where I get what I believe is most necessary for my journey, and people may feel injured or harmed, and while that is not the intent of my demonstration, I do Trust that the event opens a portal for everyone involved to grow and evolve in consciousness, so as to find their original course again and begin to move in the direction of the highest vision of their lives, whatever that vision may be.
Thanks again and again for all you do int he world, and more importantly all you ARE.
Until next time,
Peace and Blessings
Thanks Robert. This idea of course correction is similar to the Jewish mystical concept of Tshuva or returning to the light after a mistake. These mystics do see the world as complex and interdependent and human knowledge as incomplete. From that perspective it would be nearly impossible to manifest something without some feathers being ruffled somewhere. So they, as you, advocate putting our faith in the ability to course correct (not circumstances) and grow our consciousness from a wider, wiser perspective. As my rabbi teaches when we evolve past a mistake with higher consciousness we open a door in the cosmic filed of consciousness for others to find and walk through.
Great post. It seems Holmes was aware how little people realized they could influence their life by their thinking. His was a remedy and a way to a better life.
I would say that there is no “Law” of attraction. It’s a principle, and one of several. The principle of attraction cares not for morality. Saints & sinners, the righteous & the ruthless, those pure & those profane, all have an equal shot at attraction. Perhaps we need a benevolent G-d or Godforce in the universe to turn the tides of fortune, grace and providence to our aid.
We live in a physical world. To ignore the physical & chemical stresses, environmental factors, genetic and epigenetic sources of disease causation is truly narrow minded in scope.
Ken Wilber gives a good breakdown on the factors of disease causation in his book, “Grace and Grit”.
Thanks for these comments David. I agree Ken Wilber has a strong critique of easy explanations for illness because of their extraordinarily difficult experiences documented in that book and for which he and Treya heard every conceivable metaphysical explanation. As he has said more complex beings can be subject to illness simply because of that complexity. In his analogy, single celled organisms don’t get cancer, his dog can.
I appreciate these comments. I have a chronic illness, neuropathy of the feet and lower legs. I have worked with many healers from a new thought perspective and have concluded that all prayers are answered but Spirit can direct the time of their fulfillment. What doesn’t happen today stands in the Consciousness of possibility and probability and will arrive at its right and good time. It doesn’t stop me from living a whole and complete spiritual life.
On another note I have been mindful of many studies of hospitalized patients who have had people praying for them and have cut their hospital stay by a day or several days. Therefore I have concluded that we can pray for anyone whether or not they have asked for it. Even atheists can use some prayer. I also like Holmes’ idea that prayer works best when it is accepted by the one prayed for but I don’t think he was being dogmatic about it.
I live in the consciousness of the book by the great Walter Starke, “It’s All God”.
Thanks Frank. I also love Strake’s work. His biography of studying with Joel Goldsmith was also wonderful.
Great blog and great comments.
My only addition to the wisdom already offered is, it is often helpful to inquire – whose thoughts are we talking about? Race conscious/collective conscious or unconscious thoughts, family thoughts passed down, your own individual thoughts – and who are you that is wanting these things? As Ramana Maharshi liked to say (over and over and over again) – first, find out who is wanting these things and everything else falls into place. 🙂
I am. 🙂
Thank you Harriet for this reminder from Ramana Maharshi.
What this suggests to me is perhaps that Universe knows more than one way to use illness to move forward. A multipurpose tool?
For some reason I have historically been turned off by the idea of getting what i want since i don’t always know what i really need and my idea is that what Universe has in mind for me is greater than what small ideas i may have for myself.
Good point. Our small egoic mind is limited and can’t see the bigger picture.
Brother Harvey, thank you for the work that you are doing and the questions you are asking. I believe that each of us become better through this type of reflection.
After reading your post, I have some comments and perspective to offer.
As I read the words of Holmes highlighted in your post, I take into account a sense of diplomacy in his words. I also recognize that in 1926 he may have been concerned about being so dogmatic that the heart of his message would not have been embraced. As a pastor when I am speaking to an audience with varied degrees of understanding, it would be unloving to make generalizations about the mental causes of illness and disease. When I am working in a class setting or one on one, I am able to guide a student/client through the process of uncovering the thoughts and patterns of belief that have now manifested in his or her body.
In this century we have an overwhelming amount of data and research that demonstrates the power of mind to heal and to create illness. The nocebo effect is now being documented by researchers and scientists. We have 40+ years of studies on the effects of Transcendental Meditation to heal the body and publications like “Spontaneous Remission” compiled by The Institute of Noetic Sciences which documents “the disappearance, complete or incomplete, of a disease or cancer without medical treatment or treatment that is considered inadequate to produce the resulting disappearance of disease symptoms or tumor.” Holmes simply did not have access to this information in his lifetime.
In my eyes, The Science of Mind and the words of Holmes in general serve as a jumping off point. I honor and appreciate all that has come to us through him and yet I recognize that he had his own blindspots based on the time he lived in, culture, gender, etc. Just as I learned in seminary to “question the text”, I do the same with the sacred writings of all traditions. We must be careful not to become literalists as many have done with the 66 books compiled as The Bible.
The three points you raise here are troubling to me.
1. You can’t always get what you want, but you will have greater possibilities in your life with affirmative prayer.
We always get want we want. Most of what we “get” is the result of unconscious, habitual patterns of thought/belief that no one would knowingly ask for however, it is the result of our thought. The reason why this is fundamentally important is that this is also the basis from which we can reverse any condition or experience in our lives. This is the reason why we call it “Law”. Otherwise it is unreliable, unpredictable, and could not be understood.
2. You will still have to work hard to manifest real world results.
Action is an inevitable aspect of living.
Action however, does not have to be “hard” nor does it require that we “work hard”. There are many, many people on this planet who work hard and yet they have not manifested the tangible results they expected from working so hard. I just recently heard a portion of a lecture about how “hard” enslaved Africans worked in this country. After examining the bones of adult males found in a slave cemetery at Wall Street here in New York, injuries were found that suggest the muscle was torn away from the bone. Now if working hard meant anything, one would have to expect that every enslaved African who worked tirelessly in this country would have manifested “real world results”. Of course since we know this did not happen, we must call into question the very idea of “working hard” and the expected results from it.
Let me be clear, action or doing of some kind is natural, normal, and inevitable but the quality of the action/doing can be easy or hard and “hard” does not promise the results one may seek. There is always an easy, simple, and gentle path available to us.
In my eyes, this is “good news”.
3. You can “greatly influence,” but not absolutely control your life circumstances.
We’re either dealing with “law” or not. Either the Universe is mental and all comes from thought or not. I understand how jarring this can be for some as it can lead to self-blame however, as a teacher and minister, it is my job to embody the unconditional nature of love and support those whom I am working with in moving out of shame or blame.
Coming to an understanding that we create or control our lives is good news. The person who is battling an illness feels helpless. The person who is in need of a job feels hopeless. The person who has had bad relationship after bad relationship feels like giving up. Learning and ultimately understanding how we create our lives, is the greatest gift we could ever receive.
We have great power and that must be shouted from the rooftops.
Again, we must always be careful in making generalizations. If I am unable to provide proper context and supporting information for a listener in that moment, then I take the most loving and compassionate approach with my words. This is, in my eyes, an important aspect of the work we do as ministers and spiritual teachers
Thanks so much for this in depth and heartfelt reflection Gregg.
I do want to be clear that those three troubling points are my summary of Dr. Holmes’ text, and Dr. Nirvana’s interpretation of same not necessarily my own views. I hope some of these ideas are true. I don’t know that they are true. I truly am asking for responses like yours because I really don’t know what to make of these contradictory texts.
It’s very possible that Holmes may have been adapting his message for a wider audience in 1926 though some of the qualifying statements also come from the latest edition.
I do agree that even a strict Law/ cause and effect teaching can be given in a compassionate way and I bless you for doing that. Unfortunately not every practitioner or minister is as careful.
Akin to your tragic example of the slaves there used to be signs over concentration camps that read “work sets you free.” I think in context that Holmes simply meant that you need to treat and move your feet rather than rely on prayer alone. I don’t read him as saying work alone creates results. The Protestant work ethic began when people believed that worldly success was a sign you were destined for limited slots in Heaven. It still hangs around in a secular form with the assumption that people who work hard are successful and deserving and if you aren’t successful you are lazy. That rationalizes a lot of injustice and needs to go away.
I 1o0% agree with you about prayer, healing and the mind body connection that I mentioned in the text. And while it’s true that Holmes did not have access to it he was onto to something in identifying repressed emotions etc. as related to many illnesses even if he did not understand the exact mechanism.
I do have to disagree with that we have absolute control of our lives, at least from the standpoint of our egoic minds. Holmes had a dated passage in the 1926 text that was related but would have detracted from the core question here of what to do with his contradictory texts. Part of the evidence he used to argue for the predominance of mental causes for disease is that most babies were born perfect and really didn’t become ill until they matured and started to take on collective beliefs about illness. That was what! moment reading that. Having a lifelong friend and the grandchild of other friends born with heart defects it didn’t make sense. What creates these tragic circumstances before any real control is there? One woman wrote to this blog saying her son and daughter in law were told (in a religious Science church, hence my earlier point about not all churches being as compassionate as yours) that the parents thoughts had created the death of their baby. One could argue that situations that can’t be explained by individual conscious could still be manifesting collective beliefs about birth defects but why some children and not others since they are all in the same collective field? Joe Dispenza, who absolutely believes in powerful spiritual healings disagrees with the notion that mental causes apply in such cases.
That aside I think we can agree that we are powerful in some degree and can effect healings no matter how causes are explained.
Absolutely my brother, absolutely! Thank you for taking the time to respond to and acknowledge these thoughts. This type of conversation is needed and I am in gratitude for the space you have created here and on Facebook.
Continued blessings to you! ??
This inquiry concerning the Law of Attraction’s nuanced reciprocal dynamism of like engaging like, and sometimes with apparent dis-ease, has moved me to a week-long intermittent contemplation thereof.
The opening sentence – “Do your thoughts create your reality without exception?” – reminded me of an anecdote that circulated the Internet two decades ago, and which now (according to a Google search) appears in numerous versions on over two million websites:
[Emboldened by humankind’s increasing command of atomic, molecular, and genetic engineering, by means of which we thereby presently wield powers that were formerly attributed only to God, the scientific community concluded that our species had no further requirement for a deity. A representative was therefore dispatched to inform God that He could take the rest of eternity off.
God was unconvinced. ‘Do you really think that you can create life from scratch exactly the way I did?’
‘No problem,’ said the scientist, as he stooped to pick up a handful of dirt.
‘No, no,’ said God. ‘That’s not the way I did it.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked the scientist.
‘Get your own dirt.’]
Whether or not we presume the actual existence of a deity, being in effective command of our relationship to reality is not the dirt simple “secret” process that some “reality coaches” presume it to be. Its is only our EXPERIENCING of reality – i.e., our self-fabricated manner of interacting with our daily business – that is custom-tailored by us to correspond with our neurally choreographed, cerebrally configured, and behaviorally projected perceptual and conceptual assessments of what is real. These self-tailored fabrications of our immediate experiential reality, which are selected by us in our response to the situational milieu of our given circumstantial reality, do nothing more than alternatively fashion a preexisting fabric, which is neither initially nor entirely of our own weaving.
In short: We self-tailor only our situational RESPONSES to our circumstantially given reality, and it is thereby that we create our self-fabricated EXPERIENTIAL reality, not the given reality that we thereby modify. It is thus that our given circumstantial reality, and our own busyness within it, is PERceived by us only in accordance with how we experientially REceive it and vice versa.
As was appropriately noted in your inquiry, the LOA is not a universally automated PEZ dispenser of our desires. Nor is it a failsafe fishing line which, when we adequately bait it with our desires, automatically hooks onto the objects of our desires and reals them into our immediate life experience.
Why the LOA does not proceed in such a straightforwardly linear manner – nor can it ever thus proceed – is because this view of causality doesn’t conform with what Ernest Holmes called “The Way It Works.” For even though in his causal understanding Holmes occasionally prescribed “setting a new cause in motion,” he more often prescribed the setting of cause itself in a new motion. The latter prescription is the more correct one because – also according to Holmes – there is only One universal Cause, and thus there can never be some new Cause available for our activation. There are rather only new ways of activating the single and only Cause that universally prevails
Mindful comprehension of this causal distinction is essential to any effective procedural understanding of all causally grounded lawfulness, including the procedural dynamics of the Law of Attraction. In common with the way that all other causally grounded laws work, the LOA is likewise a procedural law of reciprocal correspondence, because in addition to there being only one universal Cause, there is likewise only one universal Principal, the Principle of Reciprocity.
All causal laws, the LOA included, are variations of a single overall pancosmic principle of omni-reciprocal interrelationality. The pancosmic presence and procedural prevalence of omni-reciprocal interaction prevails throughout the entire micro-to-macrocosmic incarnational domain, as was noted over a half century ago by quantum physicist Eugene Wigner: “We do not know of any phenomenon in which one subject is influenced by another without [the other] exerting a [corresponding reciprocal] influence thereupon.”
In other words, all so-called “objects” in the universe are simultaneously the ongoing subjects of their own self-causally initiated reciprocal feedback.
Thus rather than the LOA being a linearly simplistic law of one-way prior causation and subsequent effect, it is instead a law of reciprocal synchronicity, a causally grounded law of pancosmic omni-mutuality that intertwines the prevailing tendencies of our inward consciousness with their co-responding outward tendencies of manifestation. Within this correlative dynamism of universally interiorized synchronistic omni-mutuality, there can be no functional separation of cause AND its effects. There is only the organically functional dynamism of what Holmes termed “cause AS effect.”
There is thus no such thing, for example, as a family, a team, or any other grouping AND its members. There are only groupings AS their members, whose mutual inclusion is co-causally unitary rather than being solitarily additive. The procedural foundation and manifest outcome of this unitive synchronicity is illumined in Job’s proclamation that “The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me.” (JOB 3:25:). It is to whatever we inwardly are most preponderantly anticipating that the LOA causally configures a corresponding outward demonstration.
In short: It is the PREPONDERANT rather than the residual tendencies of our inner feelings and thoughts that the LOA synchronizes with correspondingly co-resonant outward possibilities. Thus Shakespeare’s assertion that “anticipation is greater than realization” not only acknowledges a familiar tendency toward “buyer’s remorse” when our anticipations have been realized, it also acknowledges the attractive power of anticipation that enables our eventual self-realizations of these tendencies.
As we activate the LOA in accordance with the preponderance of our assumptions, these assumptions may themselves be largely subliminal, and therefore unknown to our conscious mind. Accordingly, a person whose known conscious desire is to experience abundant wealth will, nonetheless, never attract the situational presence of such wealth so long as this desire is causally grounded in a preponderant subliminal consciousness of lack. In such a case, the LOA co-responds by drawing into this person’s experience an even greater abundance of perceived lack. And even if wealth does manifest in such a person’s experience, an ongoing sense of insufficiency will continue to prevail, just as it so famously did, for instance, in the psyche of billionaire Howard Hughes, who never ceased to lament not having enough.
It ultimately comes to this: although I can experience having what I genuinely desire and require, I cannot experience having what I am preponderantly conscious of wanting and needing. My preponderance of wanting and needing something precludes my being conscious of having it. This preponderant consciousness of DIS-ease locally short-circuits the pancosmically prevailing equilibrium and ease that Ernest Holmes described as follows:
• Everything in the universe exists for the harmonious good of every other part. The universe is forever uniting what is harmonious and diminishing what is not…. It is the unessential only that is vanishing, that the abiding may be made more clearly manifest.
As scientist Harold Morowitz has more poignantly said of his own similar procedural assessment of universally interiorized reciprocal causality, “Local pain is forever being reconciled to cosmic joy.”
This understanding of The Way It Works likewise testifies to how the LOA works. The principle of lawful attraction may therefore be procedurally summarized with the observation that, although I do not always get what I am looking, seeking or praying for, I do always get what I am looking, seeking or praying from. Therefore, the familiar statement, “what you see is what you get,” is far more accurately stated, “HOW you see is what you get,” because it is the way of our perception that most consistently prevails over the HOW of our moment-to-moment manifest experience.
When no strongly preponderant singular focus of anticipated outcome is present in one’s consciousness, the LOA proceeds in a more nuanced manner, in correspondence to whatever patterns may prevail within the overall miscellany of one’s feelings and thoughts. And while these prevailing patterns may tend to elude one’s conscious awareness, my own consistent experience has been that whenever there are unwanted tendencies in my life whose presence defies my conscious understanding, it is always rewarding of insight for me to deeply contemplate the questions, “What would I have to be thinking and believing in order for this outer tendency to prevail?” and “What would I have to cease thinking and believing in order for a preferred alternative tendency to prevail?” Whenever this introspective inquiry is sincerely entertained, what formerly has been only subliminally conscious is thereby brought to light.
For instance, during the first half of my life I was beholden to the perception that when I finally had enough money I would be secure. Thus even when I was eventually provisioned with riches to spare – though nowhere nearly as lavishly as was Howard Hughes – there never outwardly was enough to assure an inner feeling of security. There can be no eventual experience of one’s finally having enough so long as one’s consciousness remains grounded in the perception of insufficiency.
And then one day, for no discernable reason, I recalled Jesus’ pronouncement: “Not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man, but that which comes out of the mouth is what defiles a man.” (Matt. 15:11) I recognized for the first time the pertinence of this proclamation to the relationship between mind (mouth) and thought (ideas issuing from the mind), and this gave me sufficient pause to wonder: Is it possible that feelings of security are more likely to attract money to me, than is money able to make me feel secure? Perhaps I’ll experience having enough money only when I first of all am feeling secure.
With the shift of perception that accompanied this insight, I experienced an instant diminution of my lifelong inner subliminal mindset of financial insecurity. Even though my immediate financial circumstances did not change, my relationship to my life’s situational circumstances was profoundly altered. I had released my feelings of insufficiency where money was concerned as I let go of being subliminally at money’s effect.
It was only several months after this perceptual shift that I discovered the Science of Mind, and I could immediately appreciate its procedural perspective on our experiential reality. And ever since that shift occurred, money has at most been only marginally related to my perception of wellbeing. Though I continue to value having money, my valuation thereof has been quite different ever since my sense of security was re-grounded within a deeply ongoing and ongrowing inner expectancy of ever-enduring wellbeing.
I have also become mindfully aware of the self-limiting nature of mere expectATIONS of wellbeing, which take particular forms that may or may not manifest even upon a diligent application of the LOA. It is rather a deep and formless inner expectANCY of my genuine overall wellbeing that empowers me to attract and experience wellbeing in outward forms that are far more wonderful than I’ve inwardly imagined.
The way the LOA works – and the way that all human consciousness is likewise causally grounded – is briefly and brilliantly assessed by operations researcher Alan Smithson in his book, “The Kairos Point: The Marriage of Mind and Matter”:
• [U]ltimate reality is encountered neither in our minds nor in the physical cosmos, but at the point where these meet…. Each person lives at a succession of unique points at which the reality of the whole structure is experienced as a simultaneous presentation of external and internal events.
Smithson’s assessment of the synchronistic dynamism of our self↔world intersection directly addresses The Way It Works. And although we may mindfully establish procedural self-command of The Way It Works, we never will be able to control its incarnational conditions. Mindful self-command is realized only as we learn how to surf most effectively on the procedurally principled dynamism of The Way It Works.
A deep intuition of how best to synchronistically engage The Way It Works is anciently recorded in two of the most profound incarnational surfing manuals of all times, the “I Ching” and the “Tao Te Ching.” Their causally grounded synchronistic intuition of The Way It Works is further and profoundly featured in Richard Rudd’s recently published massive procedural manual for surfing on The Way It Works, which he entitled “Gene Keys: Unlocking The Higher Purpose Hidden In Your DNA.” Of the book’s 203 reviews at Amazon.com, 91% of them are 5-starred, along with a featured “Look inside” at https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Keys-Unlocking-Higher-Purpose/dp/1780285426.
Because Rudd’s book illumines what might be billed as “the LOA on steroids,” his work is a major contribution to today’s emergence of what I am coming to understand as bio-neuro-cosmological New Thought 3.0, which I also signify as “the ecology of spirit.”
• Ancient wisdom New Thought 1.0 intuited a KNOWING (aka “gnosis”) in the universe that exceeds our own, and which we may mindfully appropriate for our own benefit.
• Modern mental scientific New Thought 2.0 intuits a POWER for good in the universe that is greater than our own, and which we may likewise mindfully employ for our own benefit.
• New Thought 3.0 intuits a BENEFICIAL PRESENCE in the universe that is eternally and latently interiorized in all that exists, and which we may mindfully empower within ourselves for the benefit of all concerned, and to collectively manifest a world that optimally works for all beings, by allowing its fulfilled expression WITHIN, THROUGHOUT and AS ourselves.
As Howard Thurman acknowledged this Beneficial Presence:
• “Ask not what the world needs, asking instead what brings you alive. And then go do that because what the world most needs is people who have come alive.”
As Meister Eckhart acknowledged our relationship with this Beneficial Presence:
• God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction…. God does not ask anything else except that you let yourself go and let God be God in you.
And as contemporary mystic Andrew Harvey acknowledges the purpose of this relationship:
• We are placed here as a seed of the Divine within time, space, and matter to unfold fully all our divine powers and capacities within them. We do this not to escape the ‘illusion’ of creation but to divinize not only ourselves but also reality within it.
In summation: there exists no such thing as a whole and its parts, there are only wholes AS their parts. And the prevailing resonant attraction that abides within, between and among wholes is of the same fundamental procedural order that governs the familiar behavior of magnets.
For instance, it is only via their superficial outer appearance that the attraction of magnetic north poles to magnetic south poles proceeds in seeming contradiction to the LOA principle that like reciprocally attracts like. The superficial outer alignment of their contrasting poles obscures the actual causality of their alignment, which is the INNER likeness of their electrons’ south-to-northward flowing polarity. Their seemingly contradictory outward alignment is a merely superficial view of their corresponding inward alignment. Just like gravitational attraction, the LOA functions via inwardly substantial likenesses, rather than via superficial outward similarities. Reciprocal attraction procedurally emerges from mutually corresponding states of inner centeredness, not from a coordination of mere surface appearances.
The LOA synchronistically co-aligns all manifestations that are commonly centered within whatever is being mutually attracted. And because the universal Principle of Reciprocity is commonly interiorized within all that exists, we are always dependably experiencing the resonant alignment of our inward tendencies of thought and feeling with their resonant outward corresponding possibilities.
In conclusion, and again with reference to the question of whether our thoughts create our reality without exception: Because the Principle of Reciprocity is itself without exception, it is therefore more accurately said that “You ALWAYS CAN’T get what you WANT,” because the experience of getting is reciprocally precluded by any preponderant consciousness of wanting and/or of needing.
To paraphrase the great martial art master Bruce Lee:
“When I was a beginner in Kung Fu, I thought a punch was just a punch and a kick was just a kick. When I learned Kung Fu, I learned that a punch wasn’t just a punch and a kick wasn’t just a kick. Now that I have mastered Kung Fu, I understand that a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.”
As we evolve spiritually, we will see the same principles differently and see the subtle differences. However the master sees the simple in the seemingly complex and is able to apply the principles beyond the the comprehension of the outsider, novice, or intermediate practitioner.