The Law of Determination
I have been through hard times. You have too. We don't want them back.
With you, I wish them away.
But whether they come to you or me individually, or not, we know how to make it through.
And we know how to come out on top.
Most of you know that I teach law of attraction, or manifesting, workshops.
It is far from all that I teach. I also teach how to access your deep unconscious knowledge - how to center, spiritually, and obtain wisdom and guidance. I counsel people through the trials of life. I
counsel on sex, and sexuality, and their intersection with our spirituality. And I teach college-level
diversity courses (gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, ablebodiedness): how to come to a greater understanding of who "we" are, and how to come to a greater understanding of those who differ from "us" (however "we" and "us" are defined).
But when it comes to manifesting, one of the questions that I often get asked about the law of
attraction is a question that seeks to affix blame - on self.
People often ask, "Did I attract my present (or past) circumstances?"
To those of you who ask that question, I submit the thought that it is the wrong question.
We are all trained by our culture to say, and visualize what we have. So what we have becomes self-reproducing, unless we take action. We all reproduce what we have, and if what you have is
something you don't want, and you are focusing on it and speaking it, you are set to reproduce more of it. We all manifest, sometime or another, stuff we don't want.
But most people who ask, "Did I attract this?" are actually asking about more than their present. They are asking about the big picture.
We (and I really do mean a very inclusive "we") have all been dealt a hand at birth - a
socioculturalpolitical, genetic, gendered, raced, classed, embodied hand, embedded in a particular environment - the mental/emotional gymnastics of the circumstances and people of our childhoods.
And that, as far as any of us can prove from this side of Spirit, we did not "attract."
(Some schools of religious thought hold that, for various reasons, we choose our lives and the
circumstances of them, before we come here. But our earthly, lived experience does not definitively address that. It is beyond the boundaries of what we experience here. Here, you did not manifest your gender, race, class, degree of ablebodiedness at birth, genetic predispositions, parents, or guardians, etc. You discovered them as your awareness changed from infant to child.)
Rather, the hand we have been dealt forms the structure, from within which, we reach out for change.
So, "Did i attract this? is the wrong question.
Manifesting/attracting is not about assigning blame for the past and present. It's not about figuring out what you've done wrong in the past to be in the shoes you don't want to be in now.
Manifesting is about shifting your present reality into a future good - about shifting the present into a future that meets your needs and feeds your soul.
So, I don't like the term, law of "attraction." It is the most common label used for this set of principles and the phenomena they produce. Most of the books, CD's, and films on the topic use it. But . . . .
It doesn't really express my experience with these principles.
As all of the books say, the core of the teaching is "ask, believe, receive."
Thinking positively, and visualizing desired outcomes, is an important part of asking, believing, and receiving.
Thinking and visualizing positive outcomes does "attract" positive outcomes to you.
But in my lived experience, there is more to this than simply attracting.
"Attracting" is not what I want you to hear - not what I think you need to hear.
Attracting is too passive.
And spiritual passivity is the antithesis of working this law.
Instead of the law of attraction, I often call it the law of intentional creation. Because, while it is (like gravity) a law, and while we do all manifest all of the time (whether or not we know it), what I am trying to teach is how to do it on purpose to achieve a higher good than what it looks like is likely to come your way.
So doing this on purpose, for the things in the near (and far) future, is a concept I do want to
communicate to you.
Perhaps, it should be being discussed as the law of determination.
Every time I have moved heaven and earth, and brought heaven closer, I have done so, because I
determined that I (already) had my clear and undeniable outcome
Which is not to say that I used my will power to micromanage every detail (and told the
universe/God/Spirit/Source) how to deliver it to me. And it is not to say that I used my will power to
override the free will of others.
It is to say, I moved heaven and earth and brought heaven closer when I refused to let go of my
desired end result.
I determined that I ALREADY HAD that which I believed I had received.
And then, the universe/God/Spirit/Source manifest it for me - as much, or more, than I had initially asked.
I often say, "It has worked every time that I have worked it."
And there is an element of work in this.
It is an interior work.
It is making a decision about what you really want.
It is taking hold of it in the spirit.
And it is a "casting down" of every thought and feeling that does not align itself with what you believe you have (already) received.
These principles have worked every time that I have:
- 1. gotten clear and decided what I wanted/needed,
2. asked in specific terms,
3. released faith that my asking was being answered and that my desired end result was being
created in the spirit, and
4. received it with a determination that refused to let go.
And it's worked in ways that were not hit-or-miss.
It has brought me unlikely victories that were clearly (to me and to those around me at the time) not attributable to chance or coincidence.
It has worked in a boy-it-sure -didn't-look-like-it-was-going-to-turn-out-alright, kind of way, as I got even more than I had believed for.
Does this mean I didn't go to doctors?
No.
Does it mean I didn't go to work or school?
No.
Does it mean I did none of the natural things that normally contribute to the outcome (or income) I want?
No.
I did the natural things.
Not doing the natural things that make sense is usually, or often, about fear - the fear that our faith won't manifest - and so, is a form of trying to do denial.
I did the natural things.
But I ALSO ACTIVELY USED these principles (along with the natural things).
And I got more than it seemed at all likely that I would have gotten using the natural things alone.
For many of us, Christian and Hebrew bible stories are unfamiliar or even, loaded, with a history of genocide or oppression. However, if you will permit their use as metaphors here, there are two
stories that describe the kind of determination I am speaking about.
There is, in the Christian texts, the story of a Jewish woman with (as the King James version calls it), an "issue of blood" - a woman who had been having her period, ongoingly, for years and years, perhaps at the onset of menopause (?). By the culture of her time, she was considered unclean (as were all women on their periods or after childbirth) and was forbidden to touch a man - to even bump into a man on accident (there is a feminist conversation in this text, but that is not where I'm going right now). Though doing so exposes her to the risk of severe punishment, she presses through a mob of people surrounding the rabbi to grab hold of the "hem of his garment." She pushes through the crowd and wraps her hands in the bottom of Jesus' robe, determining within herself, "If I touch the hem of his garment, I will be healed."
In the Hebrew texts there is another story. Jacob is said to have seen a night vision of angels going up and down a ladder to heaven. He takes hold of one of the angels and wrestles with him all night long, saying, "I will not let you go, except you bless me."
Working this law of determination is like wrapping your hands in the garment of God and fate and All
That Is, and determining that you will not let go - will not stop wrestling - will not stop holding on - until
your blessing comes.
I will not let go.
When we set out to use our faith (and make no mistake, faith is what it is), to effect a change in our circumstances (particularly a change that looks unlikely or impossible), we take hold of our blessing/s and refuse to let go.
We say, in the words of a song we used to sing when I led a congregation, "It's mine. I have it now."
And we keep on telling ourselves that, until it shows up.
In my workshops, I sometime talk about a song, sung by Gene London (Philadelphia area children's television host, circa 1960s), which talked about "living happily ever after in the Land of Let's Pretend."
When we are working this law properly, even though we still do the natural things logic dictates, we spiritually move ourselves forward in time, until we visualize (as we rise up and as we sit down, as we come in and as we go out) already having.
If you want to call that "pretend" or imagination, that's fine.
However, we're not "in denial," because we're perfectly cognitively aware of what the likelihoods are (in the natural).
But we mentally and emotionally choose to live forward in time, in a space where we already have
what we have believed for (in the supernatural, or in the spirit), and when we do that, it manifests, in the natural.
We are actively believing it in.
Seek, in the spirit, to know what it is you want/should ask for.
Ask.
Take hold of it.
Refuse to let go.
The Land of Let's Pretend delivers.
What you take hold of, and refuse to let go of, comes to pass.
It has worked every time I have worked it.
Being honest with myself,
every time that I have failed,
when I have searched the core of my being,
I either did not:
- 1. clearly decide what it was that I wanted
2. take hold of it with all my will
3. wrestle with my thoughts and emotions until having it became real to me.
You have to come to a clear cut understanding and decision about WHAT it is you want, to choose between alternative or conflicting possibilities.
You have to take hold of it, to reach into the other world (whether you conceive of that as God or the limitless possibilites theorized in Quantum Physics) and (spiritually speaking) drag it into this one.
And you have to come to a determination that you ALREADY have it, to spiritually draw a line in the sand and determine to act and speak as if it already is. You draw the line, cross over it, put a guard over your thoughts and the words of your mouth, and never look back.
It is necessary, in this stuff, to be deeply honest with ourselves. To ask ourselves:
Have I come to a clear cut objective? Have I satisfied my own heart that my desire is in line with
Spirit? Do I know what I really want?
Have I moved my feelings and emotions from a sense of wanting into a sense of already having?
Have I taken hold with my faith and moved myself from asking into believing, and then from believing into feeling/thinking like I have already received?
Don't stay stuck on step one, deciding what it is you actually want. Figure it out. Feel it out in your place of solitude, in meditation, in prayer. Access the deep space within you where your answers already lie, not the noise of your warring thoughts. Get the wisdom and guidance of the Spirit about what's already going on and what it is you should shift by your faith. We're not alone here. There is a communication of God, of Spirit. If you don't know how to hear, I can help you learn.
And then, don't spend years on the next step either. Once you know what it is you should or want to believe for, take hold of your faith and believe that you actually already have that which you have decided.
Believe that you have it NOW, and it will come to you.
Do whatever makes sense in the natural.
But also, at the same time, do what makes sense in the Spirit.
I hope you now see why I don't want you stuck on the word, "attraction."
I don't want you to blame yourself for the hand you were dealt at birth or in childhood.
I don't want you to blame yourself for any part you played in the present.
I want you to lift your eyes up, and off of what you have now, and onto what you believe you receive - until you know that what you believe you receive IS what you have now.
I don't want you to overlook the work of believing that you have already received.
There is more to this than trying to think positively in order to attract positive things.
There is even more to this than sitting and picturing having, though that is a good, and even
necessary, part of Step One.
There is more to this than being thankful.
There is filling yourself with the belief that what you desire is already yours: to the point that you
refuse to speak as if you didn't have it, to the point that you (from this point forward) refuse to
entertain the picture (or feelings) of not-having.
Don't waste your time on the "whys" of how you got where you are.
Invest your time in the "how to" manifest the tomorrow you desire.
There are the voices speaking of hard times.
The more right they are, the more valuable this will be.
No one wants to struggle.
But I've struggle without using these principles, and failed.
And I've struggle with using these principles, and won.
Winning is better.
To quote another Teacher of the Law of Determination:
- "And all things, whatever you ask for in prayer,
believe that you receive them,
and you shall have them." (Matthew 21:22)