Thread: Tips for Manifestation

This is an open thread for people to post tips they know of for manifestation/law of attraction

Here's a couple more:

Pay close attention to happy people. You don't need to know their secret, just pay attention to them. You become like the examples you surround yourself with most, so surround yourself with examples that have what you want. The most learning happens through observing, because that teacher never stops lecturing us. Our neural patterns are constantly being reinforced or challenged by what we observe.

If you can consistently put yourself in a good mood, eventually it becomes automatic and you don't even have to try. But you do you have to try at first, and put in consistent effort to life your spirits and get excited about the world. Before you can be unconsciously competent at something you must be consciously competent.

Think about what kind of circumstances would create certain emotions and use those emotions as tools to create those circumstances. For example if you want life to satisfy you beyond your expectations then gratitude can deliver that because it will start to generate experiences that make you grateful. If you want to be satisfied because you have everything you want, shift your mindset to where it would be if you already had it. Why waste time waiting for the thing you need to make you happy? You know how happy it would make you, so just be that happy.

Step one from your first post is the most important step of all. I think everyone needs help with that one. If you really consider the reality of all of this, then there is no reason to doubt yourself. And if you have no reason to doubt your ownself, then you lose any reason to hold onto anything holding you back. So believing in yourself and happiness go hand in hand.

And if anyone here is looking for a supportive community, try this website
The 100 Day Reality Challenge

Hey Omnis Dei,

I have some criticisms of this manifestation approach, not because I don't believe it has that kind of power, but because I think there are undesirable side effects that aren't always obvious when it is viewed in this manner. If you want to argue about this a bit I'm up for that. Otherwise, my inclination is to let it go.

>.>

I don't want to argue but I'm curious what you think a side effect could be because I have no idea.

I seems about 65% good advice to me. However, it reminds me a scene I was in about four years ago, with a coworker who was always smiling. He did his algorithm development for embedded C applications in PLT Scheme, which is an obscure dialect of lisp. This would be sort of like making all of your posts to DreamViews in Calapoolia instead of English, with the main difference being that other people's jobs don't depend on DreamViews posts. I suggested to him, politely and cheerfully, that he should work in something that's compatible with the target language, and that other people can understand. This made him so upset that he was physically shaking. But at the same time he was still smiling! He got commendations from management for his work, because nobody else in the group could get anything done, because their work all depended on information that he had control over and wouldn't share. The product never actually worked, but they pretended it worked, and conned another company into buying them out for a large profit. The smiley guy manifested the reality he wanted, while the honest, actually cooperative people got screwed and lost their jobs.

I could give you at least 50 more stories like this one. To be honest and treat people the way they deserve to be treated requires a motive to do that. If you have any other motive, such as to manifest success, you blind yourself and hurt other people without recognizing it. That's where the success comes from, if that's how you approach it. So yes that magic really does work, but it turns you into the smiley guy. It turns you into someone who sees "friends" in terms of how much money they earn and whether they have the lifestyles that you want, instead of as fellow human beings. Of course you shouldn't hang with people who abuse you, or who share no common ground for a relationship. But people need other people even when they're unhappy, even when they're unemployed and facing homelessness. You think you'll stand with them even while you're manifesting success, that you can do both. But eventually you turn away, and find other successful, outwardly happy, parasitic people to hang with, and other weaker or more naive people to take advantage of. Ultimately this pattern brings more conflict into your life, rather than less, because more and more the 'friendly' people in your life are passive aggressives who are trying to use you, just as you would use them. And when more up-front, honest people try to communicate what they see, you feel attacked. Not because they're actually attacking you, but because you're programmed yourself to resist anything that threatens what you want.

That's how I've seen this play out anyway. Like I said, I think a lot of what you listed is good advice, but it goes in a bad direction if its not freed of that other, what-I-want-is-what-I-deserve, facts-don't-matter element.

Im not omnis but I can say there is a lot about your post that really disturbs me

For the LOA to work positively in your life you have to let go of attachment to that which you are trying to manifest. This is completely different than the corporate world you've just described where the end result is everything.

You should understand that omnis spoke about an inner happiness free from anything happening outside of yourself. If a person needs to be a snake and take advantage of a weaker individual for financial success - they dont know inner happiness.

In the LOA there are no exceptions, you are always manifesting your own reality. The point of this thread is to help you manifest the life you dream of. And that first requires you to feel happy for no reason at all. Once you are in this open happiness then you can dream of the life you want without fear. There maybe a few psychos out there -- by large most people don't dream with all their heart to ruin another life. This means when the average person is honest with their self on what they actually desire most in life, their most selfish desire is completely compatible with the rest of the world. In LOA this has been called aligning yourself.

When you align yourself, your dream isnt just good for you, its good for everyone. (for complicated reasons im too lazy to explain in full)

Sure, the LOA still means people will get dumped and others might lose their job. And if you're the one that made this happen, you're not at fault. You didn't ruin anyones life. This is an opportunity for them to do some real soul-searching and start living life they way they dream it. No one is a victim in the LOA. Everyone is empowered.

Bad things are never bad things in the LOA. These bad experiences are our teachers that reveal to us what our heart actually desires and the consequences for ignoring it.

Happy people with strong auras can have that effect on others.. Just by walking in the room they can make you realize you've been living life as an idiot. Its why people suffering depression are annoyed by happy people, because they can't stand to face their great lesson - that they are in charge of their happiness.

Which brings me to why I find your post slightly disturbing. You've suggested that happy people are parasitic-just-"smiling" people who only care about success regardless of who they burn along the way.

And then you placed honest people in a whole separate category as happy people.

.......Why cant the honest person be the happy person? How can you ever be happy if you believe being happy means you have to be shallow?

I never said that honest people can't be happy. Note that I also said that more than half of what Omnis Dei said seems to me like a good idea. Specifically, one of the things that I think is a good idea is using whatever free will you have to be happy, irrespective of circumstances. There was a lot in Omnis Dei's post besides that though.

Here's another analogy. When you're with a date, do you listen to them and share your thoughts like they are another human being, or do you think about what buttons you can push to get what you want?

Providence is also like this. If you're thinking about how to manifest what you want, you're thinking about pushing buttons, and you've already lost the habit of honesty. "You have to let go of attachment to that which you are trying to manifest." If you're trying to manifest it, you're attached. If you pretend you're not attached even though you're trying to manifest it, you're playing tricks with yourself. This is like in Tao Te Ching when the natural way is lost.

I would like to throw in three goodies into this thread. The first one is a free e-book on how to get the astonishing power of gratitiude to work for you. Second is an awesome LOA course. And thirdly a video on using EFT to start your day off the correct way and works well for me.

1) Here is the free astonishing power of gratitude ebook link

2) There is a guy called Rishan, who has mastered the Law of Attraction, who walks the walk and reveals how you can do the same. I have purchased his course and it is an excellent comprehensive course. You can investigate it here at this link

3)

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Here's another analogy. When you're with a date, do you listen to them and share your thoughts like they are another human being, or do you think about what buttons you can push to get what you want?

I dont know what youre talking about! But I dont date so that whole world just goes over my head.

[/quote]Providence is also like this. If you're thinking about how to manifest what you want, you're thinking about pushing buttons, and you've already lost the habit of honesty.[/quote]

Becuase youre not supposed to think about "how to manifest". You're not supposed to control the process. Omnis did discuss this. The steps simplified are as follows:

1. be blissfully happy for no reason!
2. dream your reality as you desire
3. let go. How, when, where is not up to you.

The last step is so important. It seems illogical but its not. Its simply a misunderstanding of attachment and desire.

If you're trying to manifest it, you're attached. If you pretend you're not attached even though you're trying to manifest it, you're playing tricks with yourself. This is like in Tao Te Ching when the natural way is lost.

I shouldn't have used the word attachment because now where getting into buddhist concepts and buddhism got nothing to do with it. Buddhism teaches the human condition is suffering and all suffering is created by attachment and attachment is all humans do, so meditate until you cease being human--or something like that. Thats fine and all if thats what you believe. But thats really a distorted idiot-buddhism that emos who hate life follow.

The LOA is liberating because it teaches youre not a victim by any means. You're not trapped in a condition of suffering. Your life is exactly what you make it as, moment to moment.

The third step, let go, means you can't have an attachment to that which you desire. Maybe thats illogical to buddhists. But thats not illogical in other spiritual faiths, such as the hindu faith. Here is a much healthier way to view it. You're here for a divine reason - to experience being human.

Now that the human experience is also a divine experience, this means its your divine right to experience what it means to be human - experiences like marriage. The hindus celebrate every marriage as divine union - your divine right to experience. But buddhist practioners who only think with the left brain are left stuck asking "is that attachment?"

Attachment is simply your reaction to outer experiences. It has nothing to do with what you can or cannot experience. In otherwords youre free to experience whatever the hell you want!

The easiest and simplest way to make sure a desire isn't a attachment is to follow step one: be happy for no reason.

All these situations that youre describing is ignoring step one. Scores of books warn again and again to never manifest out of feelings of lack - thats also the same as attachment. In otherwords, I still dont see an argument against whats been laid out in this thread, I only see examples of what happens when you dont follow it.

Originally Posted by juroara

1. be blissfully happy for no reason!
2. dream your reality as you desire
3. let go. How, when, where is not up to you.

I think this boils it down nicely. I agree step one is good, provided of course that it doesn't require lying to yourself about your emotions. You can sponteneously generate joy, but any sadness that you have needs to be heard and healed with that joy, not denied. Its like if you're walking around with a thorn stuck in your foot - the pain is there to tell you something. If you just ignore it you'll get an infection.

Step three gives providence more flexibility to meet your desires. Sometimes you need to make definite choices of course, take definite steps towards making good things happen. But if you're not trying to micro-manage fate, pushing against every obstacle in stead of working in harmony with the flow of events, it tends to work a lot better. And of course the harmony involves a degree of trust and letting providence do its thing.

I think where people get into the most trouble is in step two. We share a reality with other people, and the reality we dream for ourselves can adversely affect other people's realities. Ideologically, some people believe this can never be the case, but believing that requires closing one's eyes to the whole story that is going on with other people. And this goes along with step one, a lot of times when people are unhappy with you, they're trying to tell you that something you're doing is hurting them. Of course they could be wrong, or might have unreasonable expectations, but the only way to know is to listen to what they're saying and consider it. If you believe a priori that nothing that you do can hurt other people if you are cheerful and dreaming about the reality you want, then you're not hearing them. You don't have to let other people make you unhappy, but you have to be willing to feel their pain at least enough to understand their situation, expecially when doing that casts doubt on your dream of reality. Its an essential part of empathy. People who believe in cheerfulness as a doctrine are generally friendly and empathetic, but its a weird kind of empathy, where they offer a sentiment of compassion but won't actually take a sober look at what's going on and make adjustments to their behavior. Their behavior is driven by step 2, their narcissistic dream that doesn't want to see reality. Even where that dream involves other people, step two advocates blindly imposing a pattern on reality rather than being conscious of and working with it. Step 3 helps by making the pattern more general and flexible, but it doesn't fix the problem if the dream itself is in oblivious defiance of circumstances. The process works if its a conscious dance, but not if its a relentlessly optimistic 3 step programme.

[Ammendment: Though I've focused on the issue of treating other people right, oblivious cheerfulness as a philosophy will also enable people to take advantage of you. They'll be friendly and cheerful and offer you some deal that seems positive and rewarding. It falls right into what feels like your ideal dream, and you accept. But the reality is usually different, and its not right to allow people to steal from you, its not good for you or for them. "Positive thinking' advocates tend to fall victim to pyramid marketing and other exploitive schemes, because their 'all positive' mindset greatly weakens their natural ability to recognize such situations for what they are.]

The problem, Juroara, is that it's very easy to follow incorrectly. And Shadowofwind made some valid points, actually. It's important to keep in mind not only what people can do with these seeds if they handle them correctly, but also the ways people can handle them incorrectly.

Frankly my first introduction to LOA--which I believe is accurate, as I believe The Secret has removed a lot of essential instructions and that's why it earned itself such a cynical reputation--was intended to help people make money, and was not concerned with the greater effect on society. The instructor's philosophy was similar to yours Joroara, he believed that if everyone was pursuing their own personal happiness they would be exempt from parasitic or opportunistic motives because those are lower ideals and do not return the same kind of happiness as communally driven motives.

But not everyone is so evolved. It's much more rare for a person to truly master LOA if they're still stuck in those lower thoughts, but it can happen. Most of the time, though, it's exactly like you say. In order to surmount doubt, you have to let go of personal investment to such an extreme it's like real Buddhism (not the buddhism you described). You have to realize that the piece of yourself that you tap into in order to feel so good right now is a piece of yourself not invested in the outcome. When you find this space, it changes your perspective on yourself and the world. It changes your priorities, and you realize the happiest you can make yourself is in a state of giving. But it's still true that people can occasionally bypass this realization when they first hear about LOA. It's a very rare occurrence but still needs to be taken into account.

However they'll learn their lessons, all the same. When you're on your death bed and forced to wonder if you lived a good life, you'll realize the gains and losses you thought were so important are not. You'll realize that your ups and downs don't seem so different now, they were just different heights in a roller coaster. What matters is who you loved, how much you loved them, and how freely you gave it. And yes, I understand this information can be misused. But it's already being misused. All sorts of secret societies like the Freemasons and the Brotherhood teach this secret, and all sorts of people are causing for themselves happiness at the expense of the world, without enough spiritual understanding to know what tremendous damage they are doing to themselves. I think it's better to let the secret spread so it can reach all the people that would use it correctly than to allow those that do know it continue to use it for such nefarious reasons.

Omnis Dei,

I think that most people are already using something very much like 'the secret', minus some of the awareness of the power of desire. I'd go so far as to say that its pervasive, and that the 'negative' patterns we see are in the world are symptomatic of how it breaks down. I think that for the most part its the 'misuse' of the power that has brought about the loss of awareness of it, not the other way around. To some extent I'm speaking historically - in various forms these ideas have been around and known by a lot of people for a very long time. Also to some extent I'm speaking of an unknown spiritual history that made our history what it is. Imagine for illustration that the reason we can't levitate and control elementals is because Atlanteans and Lemurians abused their 'mental science' knowledge. I don't think that's quite true, I don't think that Atlantis and Lemuria are literally in the history of our world. But I feel there are other places like that somewhere, and they are tied to our world having been created with the laws and thought patterns that it has.

In any case, if you're willing to be up front about the various qualifications and potential pitfalls of Law of Attraction, then I agree its positive to tell people about it. I agree that the secret society mindset is unhealthy.

[One other comment: The ideological mindset that decides what should be without also looking to see what is, strongly undermines one's ability to learn from experience. A person who thinks that way is unlikely to learn from their life when on their death bed. In order to 'try it and see what it does', the philosophy needs to make room for honest perception, not trumping perception with the positive thinking agenda. That is my most essential point.]

Though the posts here are thoughtful, interesting, and even enlightening, I'm having a whole lot of trouble with the thread's basic premise. Let me paraphrase it just to clarify my understanding of the OP:

Be positive, be happy, and anything you want will magically find its way to you -- as long as you don't actually "want" it. Is that close enough? Does it sound as absurd to you as it does to me when read that way? It should.

Now I hope you'll bear with me a moment while I explain:

Yes, Omnis, the lifestyle you outline, with Shadowofwind's caveats in place, is a good one, and would be most rewarding on a personal basis -- but those rewards are no more or less than what's available to you regardless of the exercise of your desires. Yes, if you live happily -- in a truly honest and harmless way -- you'll likely be happy; you'll even find the folks around you are happier too. But you won't suddenly manifest the root of your desires (and trust me, some of our desires would be most impressive and dangerous if ever manifest) -- you'll simply improve the ambiance of your life. You're likely already spooling up your objections and explanations, but when you do, could you include in them a note about how, exactly, this manifestation works, and what force suddenly senses your happy smile and chooses to fulfill your dreamy desires?

Seriously. I'm not being skeptical, here. This concept -- put essentially nothing into a pot, wait a while, and that pot will be full to the brim with whatever you desired -- simply does not make sense when viewed from any actual condition of human experience. I'd love to see it be real -- and God knows I've spent years trying to make it so, with my only reward being that I remembered during all that time to work hard, be good to people, and pay actual dues in life (from which I've benefited well enough, I suppose) -- but no matter how tightly I squint, or how broadly I smile, the world continues to spin as blindly as ever, heedless of my desires.

So if you can explain to me how this works, in a way that transcends cop-outs like "If you don't know then you can't know," I'd most appreciate it. Also, before you guys get all condescending on my ass, keep in mind while you're responding that I've been practicing this stuff for longer than I'll bet most of you have been alive. Among much else, I've read the Masonic Handbook (even witnessed rituals), the Golden Dawn, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, The Secret, even Seth Speaks, Peale's The power of Positive Thinking, and everything Richard Bach ever wrote; everything you discuss above is covered by those works in some form or another, so this is nothing new to me literally. All this reading doesn't even include the uncounted hours I've spent in the dream world exploring to some fairly amazing depths the concepts of manifestation they, and you, describe. As I said above, I have also been testing the claims of the treatises for many years (in and out of dreams) and, though living the OP's lifestyle can make things more pleasant, the only way I have ever found desires to be manifest, whether I'm thinking about them or not, is by putting real work, energy, sacrifice, and discipline into their "manifestation." Noting else has ever worked. There is no free lunch. If there is, I haven't found it ... and God knows I've looked! ... tell me, if you can, where I went wrong.

One quick BTW, if you're still reading: Groups like the Freemasons, Rosecrucians, theosophists, romantics, etc, tended to be founded by fairly rich and powerful people who already had the means to get whatever they want. They also, because of their wealth and power, had enough time on their hands to invent their happy little cults to codify, and perhaps justify, the good fortune they already experienced. In other words, the progenitors of all this stuff already had their "good life" manifest, no doubt by hard work, inheritance, misdeeds, or whatever, but likely not through some mystical happiness payback. Their mystical magical "work" was more an excuse for rare good fortune in a very sad world than path for everyman.

You also seem to have completely misrepresented the Buddhist (real or not, whatever that means) view of things: They have no plan to "manifest" anything. In their quest for awareness, enlightenment, and a way off the Wheel after death they might share some of the steps you list (as do most religions), but they are by no means looking to fulfill their personal worldly desires, be they dreamt, imagined, or well thought out. The best in their business lived in caves, for God's sake! Cut the guys some slack. The only other true similarity here is that many Buddhist sects -- particular of the Zen variety -- are phenomenally narcissistic by any measure.

So be happy; spread those grins, find joy in nothing. All that will certainly make your life better, as long as you heed Shadowofwind's warnings. And yes, you will make other people happy because that's what being nice to people does -- nothing special there either. And, of course, if we all behaved this way, the world would indeed be a better place, but as a result of our own plain-old-up-front-mundane-human actions. There is nothing metaphysical in a well-heeled smile.

I have to say, while ideological pontification is prevalent among Buddhist commoners, the way you broke down the philosophy strikes me as incomplete. And I'm not trying to say that you're not well read in esoteric philosophy, but you have to understand what teachability means. It seems you're approaching this subject from a standpoint that you understand whatever there is to be taught to you. It was already taught to you. Teachability does not end. You cannot grasp information completely. The moment you think you can, you are no longer teachable. Sometimes information can appear redundant, and it's our judgment on information that stops us from grasping a lot of powerful concepts.

I did not state that buddhism was about manifestation. When I related LOA to Buddhism I stated that the part of you capable of feeling happy in a doubt free way is not the same part of you invested in your desires.

To put it simply, I believe one possible way to translate enlightenment is the realization that something in you is completely and unconditionally fine. It is through this unconditional acceptance that you find a path to bliss. And when you tap into this bliss, life starts to work in any possible way it can to justify that bliss.

Most of us have a list of things we need in order to be able to fully accept the moment and blissfully soak in the Now. The basic philosophy I am communicating is to set your attitude there now, rather than wait for the list to be complete. The list cannot be filled, anything you check off leads to something else. If you truly believe you need to complete your list of desires in order to be happy, you are looking at an endless list. But that doesn't mean you can't find happiness, just because you can't fill the list.

And here is where the biggest misconception about Buddhism occurs. People take it ascetically, thinking they need to remove all attachments and just wade through the lack until they're numb to it. What I say is let the unknown be unknown. You don't need to break the glass just because its next stage in life is broken glass. You don't know when it will happen, only that it will happen. That is the core of impermanence. You realize no thing will make you happy, and you cannot complete your list. This is where manifestation comes into play. Just because you don't know whether or not you'll find the love of your life and a million dollars and a nobel prize, why live in the lack of those things? It makes no more sense to pretend you don't have something just because you don't have it now than to pretend your glass will never break just because it isn't broken now.

I think I understand more what you guys are saying - everyone is using the LOA unconsciously 24/7 - so selfish people can use it for selfish reasons as they already do

But I think the average person using the LOA consciously needs to worry about the dark night of the soul even more. My favorite author described the dark night of the soul as a hook n bait process. He described it like this:

You use the LOA and you say to the universe "Im ready to live without fear because now I know I co-create every moment!". The Universe listens, 'you're ready to live life without fear? Prove it. Face them.' So you use the LOA to live your dreams, all the while you have NO IDEA that the Universe is about to challenge you. Something will happen in your life thats gonna present two options. Life your life without fear, without knowing what tomorrow brings. Or take the safer predictable option, because you aint really ready to accept the truth.

Faced with your fear, most people take the safer option. At first theyre happy. And then, there are signs. Something went wrong. They ignore the signs. And then your happy little world falls apart even though you had used the LOA. Your confused and lost, I used the LOA so why is my life so messed up?

It happened to me the first time I used the LOA! Yay. But I didn't realize it until three years later when I learned about the dark night of the soul.

When I was first introduced to the LOA I became so inspired, I told myself I can make my living as artist and quit my job where I shovel dog shit (literally). Shortly after I used the LOA I had clients ligned up for mural paintings!!

I finally found the courage. And I quit my kennel job to be a full time artist! When I left that kennel, I was panicking! What am I thinking quitting my job? Ive got bills to pay! I need a stable income! OMG

The day I quit my job I went to the art supply store to stock up for the murals paintings I was gonna make. The owner saw that I looked glum, I told him I just quit my job and now Im having second thoughts. He tells me "Ill hire you!". All I had to do was show up.

I thought it was a miracle....It felt like destiny.....lol....It was the hook n bait of the dark night of the soul. Be a full time artist and live without fear. Or work here.

Three days later I was working at the art supply store. The pay was crap. And I remember thinking "why did the universe give me a min. wage job?". I told myself this was a temporary thing, temporary. I'm gonna be a full time artist! Ive got murals to make.

Within a month my mural clients fell through one by one - which I had feared. I was so lost and confused. I was at the min. wage job for three years. The whole time I met people like me, artists, muscicians, writers, all who lacked the courage to live their dream. Three years later that I learned the dark night of the soul is the flipside for initiatng conscious manifestation. What a rude awakening.

And all those people who just watched The Secret have NO IDEA that this is a spiritual process. You're gonna tell the universe you're ready to live without fear, well I hope you know what you just initiated!!

Anyways, thats kinda how I feel about this problem of people using the LOA and causing harm to others. I ideally and naively assume that there are protections in place to make it hard for the lower egos to abuse and misuse the LOA. The first step requires joy, true joy free from anger and fear. The third step requires letting go, hard for ambitious power hungry people.

Trying to use the LOA when you aren't ready and there are going to be negative consequences - for you! But hey, even the dark night of the soul is a blessing. (so they say)

edit: pfff I was eating while typing....so many new posts

Sageous:

Its true of course that things like houses and phones don't just precipitate out of the aether, someone has to work to make them. And when we naively trust providence to provide for us, or even to provide an opportunity to work to provide for ourselves, we get burned.

In a way it would be nice if the 'thought science' stuff was 100% bullshit. Then we could have closure. Yes we squandered the best part of our lives exploring it, but now we know better. Trouble is, its not 100% bullshit. I'd go so far as to say I objectively 'know' this. There really is something like destiny, and it really is interrelated with desire somehow, even though we have barely the foggiest idea how something like that would work.

I'm still pissed at the people who introduced me to the Theosophical bullshit. It would be different if they were innocently duped, but they intentionally hid stuff that they thought would undermine the credibility of the message. The life choices I made in good faith set my career back at least ten years, and career matters when you have children to support. And yet, something in it is real, so somehow we have to decide what to do with that. Speaking for myself anyway, someone else with different experiences would reasonably arrive at different conclusions.

Juroara:

Thanks for sharing your experiences, those resonate with mine in many ways. I'll respond later, I've got to go to bed and go to work tomorrow.

^^ Agreed on all points, Shadowofwind, including my suspicion/hope that there is something to thought energy -- trouble is, as you noted, it may take years and very much work to get a "return" on what we put into our efforts to tap thought energy (or develop a sort of thought science) ... it does not just come with a smile.

I also understand your experience with the empty promises (aka Bullshit) of the Theosophists; my time wasted with them was almost as bad as the time I wasted lurking about the Magickal Chylde shop in Manhattan, learning about spells and potions meant to change my life!

So if I understand you correctly then, nothing is literally manifest by following the OP's steps? Life just becomes more pleasant, maybe, but good things, people, and opportunities don't start finding their way to you, a la The Secret? I think some folks on this thread might beg to differ...

Originally Posted by Sageous

So if I understand you correctly then, nothing is literally manifest by following the OP's steps? Life just becomes more pleasant, maybe, but good things, people, and opportunities don't start finding their way to you, a la The Secret?

No, that's not what I mean. Despite all the limitations and qualifications, it still does something that can't be explained in the way you describe, and which requires desire to have some kind of supernatural agency.

I really have no idea how the process of this actually works on a scientific level. Sure ive heard explanations but they all leave questions. For now im calling it a spiritual process until science catches up. I simply know on a personal level that some of the most important events over the past years have happened within two to three weeks of using the LOA.

Really, when its done right, the LOA happens relatively fast. Fast enough for you to see its not a coincidence. I'm not trying to put a time limit but...if you've been struggling with the LOA for months and months, you goofed up on one of the steps.


MORE TIPS

1. Its all about the intensity of your joy and your openness to positive change in your life - right now! In the IOSDP they call it the Law of Explosion. Because you really should feel so happy you could just explode!

2. Most people just feel "blah" all day long. They've forgotten what joy feels like. Meditation and yoga should help to correct this.

3. But if you're depressed meditation and yoga at first won't be enough. Actually if youre seriously depressed you'll find you don't even have the effort to take either seriously! You need to cleanse your toxic energy field.

4. Nothing gives you joy? Cleanse your toxic energy field. There are different ways to do this depending on your beliefs. If you believe in a higher power then pray! Ask the higher power to cleanse your energy field and bind negative entities dragging you down. I know a good cleansing prayer to archangel michael if thats your thing. Otherwise theres plenty of other pagan style cleansing and banishing rituals you can do.

5. The effectiveness of any of these prayers or rituals, is your willingness to accept you've got a problem and your capacity to surrender them. Why hold onto them?

6. If you've followed those steps joy will come easier in your life. Remember that what most people consider happy isnt good enough for the magic were trying to do. We need to feel so much more!

CHANGE

A lot of people are using the LOA to change their life, but they haven't yet accepted they need to change as a person. My friend whos suffering from clinical depression says she wants to be happy. But shes got zero interest in the things happy people do - she sneers at singing and dancing. At some point, living a happy life is impossible if you have this silly idea you CANT do the things happy people do.

A lot of the NO CHANGE people get after using the LOA for months or years is simply the reflection that they haven't changed at all as a person.

Well its not like you have to change...!! But if you're miserable I recommend it......

Dreams Are Our Best Friend
Dreaming and the LOA go hand in hand!!! If you're running into problems with the LOA you can turn to your dreaming for guidance.

1. Can you remember your dreams? If you're struggling to remember your dreams you're pretty stressed out or depressed. Both are counter-productive to the LOA

2. Hows the quality of your dreams? Fuzzy? Super detailed? Fuzzy dreams are a sign of lack of concentration and mental over loads. You don't have the mental focus for the LOA, time for meditation and quieting your mind

3. What are you dreaming about? Are your dreams super fun? Or are you dreaming about all the things you loathe? If you're dreaming about all the things you loathe, then you're holding thoughtforms for all the things you loathe, and you're going to be living all the things you loathe. LOA wins!

4. Your dreams should be fun and they should reinforce your LOA efforts!! Before I finally left that min. wage job, I had a dream I was saying goodbye to all my friends at work. Before I moved out, I had a dream I had just moved into my new apartment.

5. Either way, good or bad, dreams give us a good indication of what we are really manifesting in our lives!

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

No, that's not what I mean. Despite all the limitations and qualifications, it still does something that can't be explained in the way you describe, and which requires desire to have some kind of supernatural agency.

Oh. So you do believe that, aside from obvious things like houses or cars emerging from the aether, you can get something for nothing more than holding an honest smile; that there is a free lunch for the happy few. I hadn't expected that. I guess that brings me back to my question above, which apparently remains essentially unanswered. I'll post it again below, since it seems to have been lost in the dust of the two long posts that followed it.

I also want to add one other question: What about the many many people I know who do go through their entire lives happy -- even blissful -- and yet bad things still happen to them, plus they never receive what they truly desired? Surely this manifest reward isn't only bestowed upon those who know to ask? Wouldn't the Powers that oversee it be even more impressed by those who hold to happiness in the face of everything gone wrong, all the while completely ignorant of this manifestation system? Why aren't they being rewarded? You'd think they deserve it, given that they seem to be following all the rules as dictated in the OP.

Again, I'm being neither facetious, sarcastic, or skeptical here; I've been thinking about and actively working on versions of this subject for a very long time, and I have found that the polar opposite of the OP is likely true ... which implies much hard work, very few fulfilled desires, and even a (limited) potential for evil to work the "system" as well. I would very much like to be shown why I'm wrong, and not just told, again, that I'm wrong (or just be ignored again, which really sucks).

Here's my post from above:

Though the posts here are thoughtful, interesting, and even enlightening, I'm having a whole lot of trouble with the thread's basic premise. Let me paraphrase it just to clarify my understanding of the OP:

Be positive, be happy, and anything you want will magically find its way to you -- as long as you don't actually "want" it. Is that close enough? Does it sound as absurd to you as it does to me when read that way? It should.

Now I hope you'll bear with me a moment while I explain:

Yes, Omnis, the lifestyle you outline, with Shadowofwind's caveats in place, is a good one, and would be most rewarding on a personal basis -- but those rewards are no more or less than what's available to you regardless of the exercise of your desires. Yes, if you live happily -- in a truly honest and harmless way -- you'll likely be happy; you'll even find the folks around you are happier too. But you won't suddenly manifest the root of your desires (and trust me, some of our desires would be most impressive and dangerous if ever manifest) -- you'll simply improve the ambiance of your life. You're likely already spooling up your objections and explanations, but when you do, could you include in them a note about how, exactly, this manifestation works, and what force suddenly senses your happy smile and chooses to fulfill your dreamy desires?

Seriously. I'm not being skeptical, here. This concept -- put essentially nothing into a pot, wait a while, and that pot will be full to the brim with whatever you desired -- simply does not make sense when viewed from any actual condition of human experience. I'd love to see it be real -- and God knows I've spent years trying to make it so, with my only reward being that I remembered during all that time to work hard, be good to people, and pay actual dues in life (from which I've benefited well enough, I suppose) -- but no matter how tightly I squint, or how broadly I smile, the world continues to spin as blindly as ever, heedless of my desires.

So if you can explain to me how this works, in a way that transcends cop-outs like "If you don't know then you can't know," I'd most appreciate it. Also, before you guys get all condescending on my ass, keep in mind while you're responding that I've been practicing this stuff for longer than I'll bet most of you have been alive. Among much else, I've read the Masonic Handbook (even witnessed rituals), the Golden Dawn, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, The Secret, even Seth Speaks, Peale's The power of Positive Thinking, and everything Richard Bach ever wrote; everything you discuss above is covered by those works in some form or another, so this is nothing new to me literally. All this reading doesn't even include the uncounted hours I've spent in the dream world exploring to some fairly amazing depths the concepts of manifestation they, and you, describe. As I said above, I have also been testing the claims of the treatises for many years (in and out of dreams) and, though living the OP's lifestyle can make things more pleasant, the only way I have ever found desires to be manifest, whether I'm thinking about them or not, is by putting real work, energy, sacrifice, and discipline into their "manifestation." Nothing else has ever worked. There is no free lunch. If there is, I haven't found it ... and God knows I've looked! ... tell me, if you can, where I went wrong.

One quick BTW, if you're still reading: Groups like the Freemasons, Rosecrucians, theosophists, romantics, etc, tended to be founded by fairly rich and powerful people who already had the means to get whatever they want. They also, because of their wealth and power, had enough time on their hands to invent their happy little cults to codify, and perhaps justify, the good fortune they already experienced. In other words, the progenitors of all this stuff already had their "good life" manifest, no doubt by hard work, inheritance, misdeeds, or whatever, but likely not through some mystical happiness payback. Their mystical magical "work" was more an excuse for rare good fortune in a very sad world than path for everyman.

You also seem to have completely misrepresented the Buddhist (real or not, whatever that means) view of things: They have no plan to "manifest" anything. In their quest for awareness, enlightenment, and a way off the Wheel after death they might share some of the steps you list (as do most religions), but they are by no means looking to fulfill their personal worldly desires, be they dreamt, imagined, or well thought out. The best in their business lived in caves, for God's sake! Cut the guys some slack. The only other true similarity here is that many Buddhist sects -- particular of the Zen variety -- are phenomenally narcissistic by any measure.

So be happy; spread those grins, find joy in nothing. All that will certainly make your life better, as long as you heed Shadowofwind's warnings. And yes, you will make other people happy because that's what being nice to people does -- nothing special there either. And, of course, if we all behaved this way, the world would indeed be a better place, but as a result of our own plain-old-up-front-mundane-human actions. There is nothing metaphysical in a well-heeled smile.

Originally Posted by Sageous

I also want to add one other question: What about the many many people I know who do go through their entire lives happy -- even blissful -- and yet bad things still happen to them, plus they never receive what they truly desired? Surely this manifest reward isn't only bestowed upon those who know to ask? Wouldn't the Powers that oversee it be even more impressed by those who hold to happiness in the face of everything gone wrong, all the while completely ignorant of this manifestation system? Why aren't they being rewarded? You'd think they deserve it, given that they seem to be following all the rules as dictated in the OP.

Again, I dont have a complete scientific picture of how this works.

But the basic premise is simple. Reality is like a dream. Just as our thoughts, emotions and expectations create a world when we sleep so do the same thoughts, emotions and expectations manifest in the waking.

However the waking is a shared reality and the laws of physics make it distinctively different than dreaming. The actual process at this point is fuzzy, anything I say is just an idea and not an absolute.

The best explanation is that this shared reality is like a sea of thoughts. And just like the sea, some places are muddy, mucky, some places cold, some places beautiful and pristine. Thoughts are like waves (well actually they are waves). Like all waves, these thoughts can resonate with each other.

So if your "wave" resonates with the pristine part of the sea of thoughts, then thats what you experience. Or if your "wave" resonates with the mucky waters of the sea of thoughts, then thats what you get.


Thanks to HeartMath, its been proven our emotions are literally more powerful than thoughts. This means its actually our emotional state more than anything that is projecting what our reality will be.

But to answer your question, youre gonna have to stop telling fairy tales.

NO ONE has gone through their entire life "happy" or blissful. That's just an outright self-delusion. Such a person wouldn't even be recognizable as sane. They would be half naked in the streets, laughing, dancing, raving 24/7 and we would all think they're off the wall mad.

Nor you can say with certainity that just because you know someone to be "very happy" that they have never had such secret sadness in their heart. Or that this person has never known doubt. Or that this person has never known fear.

The LOA is the cosmic mirror, you can hide nothing.

I already mentioned this in my other post. What MOST people consider to be HAPPY is not really good enough.

Its because our happiness is so pathetically weak in the face of BLISS that it takes so long for that happiness to make a dent in the sea of thoughts. Bliss cuts through that swampy sea and creates a clear path almost instantaneously. But "happiness" is still lofty and uncertain.

I hope you realize by now its got nothing to do with "deserving" or being "rewarded".

The reason why the LOA is actually a spiritual awakening process and not some magical get rich scheme--is because for it to actually work for you - you have to accept that you are not separate from creator. You have to stop blaming outside forces for the way your life is. You have to stop begging, wishing and hoping.

You have to accept full responsibility for yourself and your life.

And more importantly, the LOA is an invitation to accept that you have the freedom to live in the space of joy. The only catch is, you have to exeperience that joy first.





I was burnt out and pretty upset at this LOA thing. It wasn't working right for me. Finally I had to accept that either its all bull or I have never known true happiness. I choose the latter.

This is the very reason I don't put all my eggs in the LOA basket, but also practice Buddhism. I almost feel it's worth quoting my original post as well but I'll try to elaborate instead.

A buddhist would say everything is impermanent. Your favorite toy is in a state of flux, and its next stage is either lost or broken. An ascetic would remove all their toys and go live in a cave in order to numb themselves to suffering. A hedonist would forget the toy's next stage and suffer when it comes. A buddhist (the middle path) would simply understand that while the toy is going to be lost or broken eventually, he has it right now and it can be enjoyed right now. He doesn't know when it will hit its next stage, only that it will happen. It is inevitable.

Doubt is a mind killer, and serves some amount of purpose when planning action but in the moment it greatly impedes you. The runner that doubts themselves is slower than the runner that does not. The man that doubts himself does not seduce the woman as well as the man that does not. When performing the action, doubt has no place. Doubt is also the main obstacle in LOA. It creates an anxious feeling like you cannot have what you want. It hinders your ability to blissfully soak in the now because not only is your list of desires not complete but it may never be complete.

Regarding LOA with the example above, LOA is like knowing you want a toy that you don't think you can have by any practical means. The only way to get it would be if some sort of miracle were to happen. But you want it, and because you want it, you suffer without it. Someone looking into Buddhsim from the outside might think, "So they teach you that you shouldn't want it, right? You're supposed to relinquish all desire." In actuality, the wanting is not the obstacle, instead they have a more accurate word that translates to something like "thirsting," which is actually like running from the desire.

See, when we want something, the act of obtaining it is often a means to escape that insufferable feeling of wanting it. We need it because we're seeking to alleviate the feeling of wanting. But on its own, the feeling of wanting is actually a really pleasant feeling. The unpleasantness comes from doubt and resistance. So embrace the feeling of wanting. You don't need to embrace it without acting upon it when the circumstances are right, nor embrace it with the assumption that if you embrace it then it will magically manifest and alleviate the feeling. Instead, allow the unknown to be unknown. You don't need to save yourself from suffering by killing your expectations with doubt from the beginning, nor do you need to set your expectations as high as the moon. The feeling of wanting is enough, not to manifest it necessarily (though I think it helps) but to stop projecting your happiness into a future where you'll be alleviated from wanting. Take the reward now. The wanting never goes away. It's not something you need to numb yourself to, nor something you need to chase. Wanting is the magnificent bath water of the moment. Soak in it.

Originally Posted by Sageous

So if you can explain to me how this works, in a way that transcends cop-outs like "If you don't know then you can't know," I'd most appreciate it.

Sageous, This is the same topic as shared thought in another form, and like I've said before, I don't know how it works. That's not a cop-out. People had compasses for centuries before Maxwell's equations were developed, and even those equations merely describe but don't explain magnetism. I don't see why we should be held to a higher standard of objective knowledge than most of history's best scientists. Its only been for the past 100 years or so that this 'explain how it works' approach to experience has even been possible, and most of the people who do that aren't the same kind of people who made it possible to start with.

I have to wonder if there's something else eating at you here that's connected to the potentially magical nature of desire but isn't exactly that. Somehow you read my comments to suggest that I was completely dismissing the supernatural reality of positive thinking, even though I stated clearly at many points that I wasn't. Then when I said that wasn't what I meant, you went straight from there to "getting something for nothing". I never said anything about getting something for nothing. Desire is not nothing. By desire you can move your body, a sensitive instrument well suited for being manipulated by desire. If by desire you can also move other objects besides your body, how is that getting something for nothing? It may be a lot harder, or arguably even impossible, but judging that comes down to understanding what desire is, and that is not something anybody understands. The people who say its an emergent property of electrochemical interactions in the brain may be right, but they're just guessing, they have no idea.

You must know me well enough to know that I don't view cheerfulness as a cure-all. So that must not be what I've been saying.

People claim to have figured out how it works but it hasn't endured enough scientific rigor to be considered a valid theory.

But theory is the wrong word. Theory is part of the problem. When you read the Celestine Prophecy, for instance, you're reading about events that never happened. In this way, you're reading about Theory. When you read Eckhart Tolle, who describes in detail what led him to his state of mind, you're reading reality. There is a difference in information. Someone who got rich by selling a book on how to get rich is delivering theory. A biography about someone who got rich delivers real instructions rather than just theory.

Theory is not as important as practical stories showing how it's actually been done, and most successful practitioners of LOA did not become good by reading Theory from The Secret, they learned from other successful people and followed their example.

So the theory is secondary to the instructions delivered by people who have succeeded. But the theory essentially states that everything is a vibration set a particular frequency. Life emerges from the collective of frequencies into practically infinite different designs. This essentially means all information is stored via variations in frequency, which is not so hard to believe when you think about what a bit of information stored in a computer is actually comprised of, or a pixel in a virtual image. Very simple code, linked together, can store very complex information. We are all essentially a system of information before anything else. Our essence is information, and the essence of everything else is information. These various systems of information can interact with each other which essentially means they act upon each other and change the values of each other through action. This is transactional, but certain actions prove more functional than others causing certain transactions to be more one-sided.

When regarding a radio broadcast, we think in terms of electromagnetic waves. These waves must travel through space and time, meaning they must cover a distance and take time to reach their target. With the essential transactional relationship between systems of information, space-time is not a factor. If you consider everything you are capable of perceiving (both directly and indirectly) as an event horizon, that is the sphere of what LOA instructors call the mind. One of a fundamental lessons you will learn from these people is that you have a brain, and then you have a mind, and they are not the same thing.

Think Schrodinger's Cat for this one. The cat is both alive and dead until the box is observed, at which point one possibility is erased (for all intensive purposes) and the other is manifest. This is the mind in action, not purely receiving data but creating it. This does not mean if someone puts a deck of cards in front of you without looking at them that you can manifest the card you want every time. Every observer present affects the results so you'd have a better chance by yourself, but even then you'll be lucky to score 50% above chance and won't have any way to differentiate whether you willed the card you desired into existence or merely predicted the one that would come up. See, you need to follow your desire and as you explore the source of your desires you'll find the distinction fades. You won't be able to tell if the ace of diamonds makes you excited because it's about to come up or because you're just really excited to get the ace of diamonds to come up. Keep in mind, interaction between information systems is transactional, after all.

And you may wonder if the heart of your desires is already in tune with what's going to happen naturally, or at the very least symbiotically tuned into the natural flow of energy, then what's the point? To alleviate suffering, one might answer. But it's all just theory, and no matter how much explanation you can give as to why the falsifiable experiments don't work, it doesn't hold a candle up to how instructors explain it works in the practical sense, free of quantum theory and everything else.

Instructors explain it like this scene in Benjamin Button.