Introduction to the Law of Attraction and Resistance

How the Law of Attraction Came Into My Life

I want to clarify right away that I'm not a physicist or any other kind offormally trained scientist. Nor does one need to be to utilize Law of Attractionprinciples. While I ground virtually everything I teach in science, I do notplay the role of a quantum physicist because I have found that for the mostpart, people's eyes begin to glaze over when my explanations of the Law ofAttraction become too complicated. After all, if you felt you needed amathematics degree to be able to create your life by design, the entire processwould be too daunting to take on in the first place.

A basic understanding of the physics of the Law of Attraction is essential tofully integrating many of the ideas discussed in this book. I believe you'llfind most of the ideas to be utterly fascinating rather than overwhelming, andmy hope is that you will find this part of the education to be as fun andinspiring as I do.

When I began investigating the whole idea of "creating reality" (as I called itwhen I first began exploring the concept in the early 1990s), I was absolutelyturned on by the idea that we have more control over our experience of realitythan we as humans are generally aware of.

I will never forget the fateful evening of December 26, 1990 when a friend ofmine and I were marveling over the technical wonders of a special "holographic"paper wrapped around a pencil we picked up at a convenience store. Depending onhow light hit it, a truly unbelievable array of colors would shoot forth fromthe paper in three dimensions. It looked as if it were lit electronicallysomehow from the inside. I remember truly marveling that science had createdsuch an amazing light show that only a decade before would have cost literallythousands of dollars to create, and yet now was available for pennies onstickers, notebooks, and countless other trinkets one could pick up at any gasstation.

It was while I was in this mindset of "anything is possible" that I receivedwhat I can only call a "download" from the Universe, an ah-ha moment to beat allah-ha moments: Everything Is Energy.

Again, I've never received any kind of formal scientific training aside fromwhat I learned in high school. But what I received in that moment was a knowing.I could clearly see the energetic nature of the Universe and how everything inthe Universe is connected and has influence over everything else—even if wecan't detect it with the five senses we've been trained to acknowledge.

I was so affected by the information that came to me at that moment that I spentthe next twelve years of my life trying to make enough sense of it to actuallydo something with it. In that time I read several books, but most of my work wasinner work. I learned to meditate. I studied hypnosis. I became totallyfascinated with quantum physics, Energy, and the power of the mind.

With all that study came a strong intellectual understanding that actuallycreating life by design was all somehow truly possible, and that people weredoing it. However, a very big piece of the puzzle was still missing for me.Although I read several books that were scientific in nature, there were somedots that weren't connecting for me. I realized that although understanding on aconscious and intellectual level that "anything is possible" was a good start,there was another level of understanding and believing that I was going to needin order fully integrate the idea that I could consciously create my realityinto my worldview.

My breakthrough finally came in October of 2002. I had quit my corporate job inJanuary of that year because it was literally killing me to go there day afterday and feel absolutely no sense of myself or my value in what I was doing. Andalthough the money was good, I had still managed to accumulate roughly sixtythousand dollars in debt. No matter how many raises I got (and I was making justunder one hundred thousand dollars a year when I quit), my financial situationcontinued to decline.

More important than my financial situation was this feeling that my life wasliterally being drained from me. Like most people, I wanted to have a careerthat I was passionate about and in which I could express myself fully andcreatively. Sitting in a windowless office working on human resources softwaredid not afford me that opportunity, and finally the day came that in spite of mypersonal economic crisis, I simply had to walk away from being an employee.

My plan was to fully involve myself in teaching people to create their realitiesusing all the information I'd been researching for over a decade. The onlyproblem was that I wasn't an actual living example of what I was teaching.Still, I forged ahead. I created audio programs on the subject, and tried(mostly in vain) to book myself at hotels to speak and sell CDs and tapes—becausethat's what I believe I had to do to be a part of the self-helpindustry.

I studied marketing like my life depended on it (which I believed it did), andtried so hard to make sales and convince people that I knew what I was talkingabout. At that point, I didn't feel out of integrity because I truly believedeverything I was teaching. But the truth was that there was something I wasn'tgetting.

No matter how hard I worked, no matter how much new information about marketingI learned, and no matter how good my intentions were, nothing was changing forme—except that my money problems continued to increase.

My wife and I reached a breaking point when our financial woes forced her toreturn to work. This was a major blow to my ego, as it had taken me many yearsto convince her to quit the job that was making her so miserable. After all, mycorporate job was paying well enough (I was great at ignoring the truth aboutour financial situation), and my wife finally resigned from her position so shecould stay home with our young children and be a full-time mother.

Because I'd made such a big deal about how we could afford for her to quit herjob, my wife's return to work was a major wake-up call for me. I suddenly becameclear that all this "work" I was doing wasn't getting me anywhere. All thistrying to "figure out what was wrong" wasn't producing any answers. I finallydecided to step back and become a true student of my own teaching.

That meant giving the whole thing up to a much more intelligent power.

Much of what I'd learned was that if you were clear about your vision and heldit, the Universe would provide you with the answers and resources you needed tomove forward. Those answers came in the form of something called intuition. Forthe nine months after I left my job, the voice of my intuition was being drownedout by the screaming of my ego and intellect, and it was time to quiet the noiseand listen to what was being sent to me.

My new strategy became simply to get very clear on what I wanted (a career I waspassionate about); being aware of what was showing up in my life; and takingdefinitive action at every step, regardless of whether it made logical sense ornot. Truth be told, that is absolutely all you need to know about making the Lawof Attraction work in your life. What makes it more difficult than it seems isthe Energy that's running deep within us that we don't even know about. Learningabout that Energy was the key to my eventual success.

To summarize what happened to me over the coming weeks, I'll simply say that Ibegan to pay attention to things that I might have overlooked as trivial orirrelevant to my goals in the past. Conversations with new people gave rise toopportunities to explore various resources that I would never have found if I'dkept looking to my intellect for all the answers. A series of chance meetingseventually led me to discover a book called A Happy Pocket Full of Money byDavid Cameron Gikandi.

This book is what finally turned on the lights for me by clarifying in new waysseveral of the principles I'd already learned. The most important distinction Ilearned was just how powerful my belief system was, specifically my limitingbeliefs about money and success. Gikandi's book explains the physics of ourthoughts in such a way that I finally understood that thoughts are not justdormant ideas floating around somewhere in our brain, but that—like everythingelse in the Universe—they are real Energy, and thus have a real effect on my ownexperience of reality!

What were my limiting beliefs? Growing up in a single-parent home, the son of aschool teacher who did not like her job, my family constantly experienced a lackof money. I learned that money was hard to come by, debt was always present, andin the end, it didn't matter whether you enjoyed what you did to earn money ornot. You simply had to do what it took to bring in money.

When I could clearly see that these beliefs had run over the course of my life,it was easy for me to understand why all my attempts at generating revenuethrough businesses of my own, or through other means, always resulted indisappointment. My belief system simply didn't support my having financialsuccess!

This revelation was a huge breakthrough for me. In that moment, I realized thatmy number one priority was to go to work on my beliefs, and that instead offilling my head and emotional state with fear and worry about money, I needed tofind ways to saturate myself in feelings of abundance to the best of my ability.I understood at that time that it didn't matter how much I consciously desired adifferent situation; if my belief system wasn't congruent with that success, itsimply was impossible for me to experience it. You'll learn more specificallywhy that is as we explore the concept of resistance and how the Law ofAttraction really works.

If you watched The Secret, you learned about Vision Boards. These can take manyforms, but essentially they are something of a visual collage of the things thatyou want to attract into your life. I'll share more details on vision boards aswell as other techniques later, but this is a technique I began using rightaway. Because I spend so much time at my computer, I decided to use mycomputer's background wallpaper as my vision board. I began by taking ascreenshot of my online banking statement. Then, in an image editing program, Ichanged all the numbers (which were pathetically low at the time) to very largenumbers, unlike any I'd ever seen in my bank account. At first, of course, thesenumbers seemed unrealistic and way too huge to ever come true. However, afterdays of looking at these new numbers, I stopped reacting in such a dubious way.The numbers became the norm in my mind.

What I had done was stretch my energetic comfort zone around my bank account. Asyou'll learn, this is essential if you wish to significantly change yourfinancial situation for the better.

So did money just magically appear in my bank account because I did thisexercise? Of course not. What did happen was that I was provided with more andmore creative inspiration about actions to take that would result in generatingmoney. By now I'd learned not to judge these ideas, but to immediately move intowhat I was inspired to do. In my case, the inspiration was to put together anonline program where I would share what I was learning. I called the programWealth Beyond Reason, and its creation marked the beginning of a whole new lifefor me.

Another thing I did was absolutely key. It's something I'll be reiteratingoften. Rather than enter the online world of personal development with themindset that "one day I'll be successful at this" or "eventually I'll be aseffective as so-and-so who's already doing it," I made a commitment to myself tostep powerfully into already being who I aspired to be. There is a hugedifference from an energetic point of view (what you're "putting out there")between "wanting" to be something and "already being it."

I can't go too much further in my story without going into a more in-depthexplanation of the energetic nature of this Universe we live in and providingwhat I believe to be the most accurate definition and explanation of how the Lawof Attraction really works, so let's get into that right now.

The Truth About the Law of Attraction

Probably one of the biggest misconceptions about the Law of Attraction is thatit's some kind of new personal development technique. Because of the success ofThe Secret and the subsequent influx of programs purporting to teach the Law ofAttraction, many people started to view the Law of Attraction as some kind of"trick" or technique. This creates a mindset that the Law of Attraction can workor not work depending on whether or not one "does it right."

The whole notion that the Law of Attraction is something one "does" or"activates" is at the core of the misunderstanding that causes people to give uputilizing the principle to shape their lives.

Let's get this very clear: The Law of Attraction is not a tool or technique, andit is not all about "getting stuff." The Law of Attraction explains the behaviorof Energy. It's a much bigger concept than simply how we as human beings canshape our experience of reality.

Remember, everything is Energy. This is something that science tells us forcertain. Everything in our Universe, tangible or not, is composed of Energy invarious forms, vibrating at various frequencies.

What we experience as physical reality, for example, is the result of ourinterpretation of Energy through our senses. As humans, we experience things as"physical" if they fall into a specific range of frequencies. At higherfrequencies, things become less "visible" to us. Thoughts, for example, vibrateat a much higher frequency than does a chair; thoughts are not visible to theeye. Nonetheless, they obviously exist.

To use another example, there are colors in the spectrum of all possible colorsthat our eyes cannot see, but that can be seen by a snake. Dogs can hearfrequencies of sound (also Energy) that we cannot hear. Those frequencies simplyvibrate at a frequency that is out in our range.

As energetic beings, the Energy that makes up who we are is always vibrating atsome frequency or series of frequencies. We call this our "vibration."

The most important concept that we need to understand as human beings attemptingto work with these principles is something called resonance. If vibrationalfrequencies are in resonance, they attract. The opposite of resonance isdissonance. If vibrational frequencies are dissonant, they repel.

This is where I have a problem with the "like attracts like" definition of theLaw of Attraction. While this can be the case sometimes, it is not thedefinition of the Law of Attraction, and certainly doesn't explain the behaviorof Energy across the board. For example, many will be quick to point out that itis opposite polarities of a magnet that actually attract. And what about Mr. andMrs. Jones who are clearly not at all alike, and yet are very much in love andmost definitely attracted to each other?

You see, it's not about vibrational frequencies being the same. What determineswhether the attraction process takes place is whether or not there is resonance.

You may have heard someone say that they resonate with a person, or an idea, ora piece of music. There is a vibrational harmony that takes place on aninvisible level of Energy, and it results in an emotional state. For example, ifyou resonate with a piece of music, your emotional state will shift in some waythat keeps you listening to it, wanting more, or simply enjoying it. Thisdoesn't necessarily mean that the feelings you have are always positive. You mayhear a sad piece of music and still resonate with it; your emotional stateshifts accordingly.

Dissonance works differently. If you hear music that you absolutely can't listento for whatever reason, it is because there is energetic dissonance. Noattraction takes place, and in fact you experience a literal repulsion to themusic.

Understanding resonance and dissonance is absolutely key to workingintentionally with the Law of Attraction because you want to be absolutely surethat you are in vibrational resonance with what you're trying to attract. Soalthough the scope of the Law of Attraction goes way beyond how it affects thehuman experience, the aspect of this law that we need to understand in terms ofcreating our lives by design is this:

We attract into our experience those things with which we are in vibrationalresonance.

I've previously mentioned the fallacy that the Law of Attraction is somethingthat you "activate" or "turn on." The Law of Attraction is always on, and isalways responding to your energetic vibration, bringing you more of the thingswith which you are in vibrational resonance. It doesn't matter whether you'reconsciously trying to attract something or not. If you're in resonance with it,you are in the process of attracting it. Most people are attracting by default.

It's also important to fully understand the role of our emotions when workingwith the Law of Attraction. They are the very force that determines ourvibration and tells us to a great extent what our vibrational state is in agiven moment.

Law of Attraction teachers are often criticized by people who challenge the ideathat we are attracting all parts of our experience by pointing to situations inthe world where they claim that the person or people involved could not havepossibly attracted said situation. Natural disasters, terrorist attacks, birthdefects, and the like are all pointed at as evidence that we do not attracteverything into our experience and that some things just happen withoutexplanation.