Why does this keep happening to me?

Have you ever asked yourself this question?

I mean really, who hasn't?

Did you ever stop to really figure it out, or were you looking for a little sympathy?

I have been reading "What the Bleep" and listening to Abraham-Hicks lately and I got to wondering about this. I was told many years ago, before I had heard of the LOA, that life will keep handing you tests until you pass and move on to the next level. No judgements, no pressure, move at your own pace.

Now, in light of what I've been learning, I look at this from an evolutionary standpoint. Not physical evolution which takes millennia, but spiritual evolution that you can accomplish in one lifetime. According to A-H we are all here in physical form because we willed ourselves into being. And the reason we did that was to have new experiences and grow spiritually.

So, to answer the original question, I think we find ourselves in similar situations because we have not learned the lesson from before and so God, life, the universe (whatever you're comfortable with), keeps giving us chances to learn what we need to learn and move on to the next level.

If you truly believe in the LOA then you must accept that everything, and I mean everything, that comes into your life was attracted by you. If you don't like what you're attracting then you should figure out why you are. Remember, most of what we attract is from a subconscious level and provides us with an opportunity to work on an aspect of our self that we would have continued to ignore had the catalystic event not occurred.

In other words, don't see these situations as "Woe is me", see them as "Whoa, it's me!". They are put there for your benefit. Your job is to figure out what part of you is creating it, work on that part of you ( an excellent resource is Bill Harris' Centerpointe), then put it into "emotional retirement" and move on to the next level of your development.

Remember, as we clear away the old, we make room for the new.

Planting Daffodils

Apologies for not writing for a while. We have been working feverishly on our Law of Attraction website and it has taken most of my mental energies.

However, I came across this story that I wanted to share with everyone. Like most people, I want the LOA to bring me my desires right now! I understand what Abraham-Hicks refers to as "the wonderful buffer of time", but sometime it seems a bit too slow in the coming. Then I read this story of how one lady accomplished so much by planting daffodil bulbs just a few at a time. Now every day I take a moment to reflect back and I notice the couple of things I accomplished that I now look at as "planting daffodils". These are things that might not have a tremendous impact today, or even tomorrow, but over time will return my efforts many times over.

I hope it is as inspiring to you as it is to me.


"Mother, you must come to see the daffodils before they are over."
I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead.
"I will come next Tuesday", I promised a little reluctantly on her third call.

Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and reluctantly I drove there. When I finally walked into Carolyn's house I was welcomed by the joyful sounds of happy children. I delightedly hugged and greeted my grandchildren.

"Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! The road is invisible in these clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and these children that I want to see badly enough to drive another inch!"

My daughter smiled calmly and said, "We drive in this all the time, Mother." "Well, you won't get me back on the road until it clears, and then I'm heading for home!" I assured her.

"But first we're going to see the daffodils. It's just a few blocks," Carolyn said. "I'll drive. I'm used to this."

"Carolyn," I said sternly, "Please turn around."

"It's all right, Mother, I promise. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience."

After about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small gravel road and I saw a small church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand lettered sign with an arrow that read, "Daffodil Garden." We got out of the car, each took a child's hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path Then, as we turned a corner, I looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most glorious sight.


It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it over the mountain peak and its surrounding slopes. The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns, great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, creamy white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, and saffron and butter yellow. Each different
colored variety was planted in large groups so that it swirled and flowed like its own river with its own unique hue. There were five acres of flowers.


"Who did this?" I asked Carolyn. "Just one woman," Carolyn answered. "She lives on the property. That's her home." Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house, small and modestly sitting in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house.

On the patio, we saw a poster. "Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking", was the headline. The first answer was a simple one. "50,000 bulbs," it read. The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet, and one brain." The third answer was, "Began in 1958."

For me, that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than forty years before, had begun, one bulb at a time, to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop. Planting one bulb at a time, year after year, this unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived. One day at a time, she had created something of extraordinary magnificence, beauty, and inspiration. The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principles of celebration.



That is, learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time--often just one baby-step at time--and learning to love the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things. We can change the world .

"What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty years ago and had worked away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years? Just think what I might have been able to achieve!"

My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way. "Start tomorrow," she said.

She was right. It's so pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson of celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only ask, "How can I put this to use today?"

Use the Daffodil Principle. Stop waiting....
Until your car or home is paid off
Until you get a new car or home
Until your kids leave the house
Until you go back to school
Until you finish school
Until you clean the house
Until you organize the garage
Until you clean off your desk
Until you lose 10 lbs.
Until you gain 10 lbs.
Until you get married
Until you get a divorce
Until you have kids
Until the kids go to school
Until you retire
Until summer
Until spring
Until winter
Until fall
Until you die...

There is no better time than right now to be happy.
Happiness is a journey, not a destination.
So work like you don't need money.
Love like you've never been hurt and,

Dance like no one's watching.

Wishing you a beautiful, daffodil day!

Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin.

The Secret Law of Attraction

Well, it’s not really that much of a secret anymore. Many of the cast members of the movie “The Secret” have been on “The Oprah Winfrey Show”, “Larry King Live”, and “Ellen”. But what is it really?

There are two ways to look at this. One is the way I first learned it and it goes something like this:

We have all heard about goal setting and how it is a great way to get what you want. To do this you have to become crystal clear about what you want, and the more why’s you can attach to your wants the stronger your desire to accomplish them. This school of thought says that opportunities are all around you at any given time, you simply don’t see them because you’re focused on getting the kids to school, doing your job well, balancing your checkbook, etc. In other words: every day life.

But have you ever had a headlight in your car go out? Did you notice how many other cars on the road also had a headlight out? This is a part of your brain called the reticular activating device and it helps you to focus on specific things. The truth is there are no more cars on the road with one light on than there were before, you’re simply noticing them.

Want another example? Have you ever decided to buy a certain car then notice them everywhere you went? Same thing.

So by becoming very clear on what we want and focusing our attention on them, we start to see things that were there the whole time but went unnoticed because our subconscious mind didn’t know to look for them. And all kinds of opportunities, resources, chance meetings, etc. start to happen for us that move us toward our goals.

This works. I’ve done it myself.

The other school of thought is the quantum physics angle. Don’t nod off on me. This is actually quite fascinating.

According to physicists the subatomic world exists as a wave of probabilities until they are observed (by us). The moment of observation they move from being a probability to becoming a “reality” (very loose word in the world of quantum physics). It’s like the old philosophical question of the tree falling in the woods. According to this field of science, not only does it not make a sound, it doesn’t even happen.

Okay, I went too far. Please stay with me.

All of these subatomic particles are really little packets of energy. That means that literally everything you see is made up of this same energy. And although you might not be able to see them it doesn’t mean they’re not there. Just as some animals can see infrared light, or hear sounds we can not, (both of these being examples of energy), there is other energy out there we are not aware of.

Again, by focusing our thoughts (energy) on what we desire we are literally sending a vibration out into the world. And what we are attracting back are things with the same vibrational frequency as our dominant thoughts. We are attracting everything into our lives, hence the name The Law of Attraction.

This works too. I’ve done it.

Which isn’t really surprising. Either way you choose to look at it it will work for you. All you have to do is become very clear about what you want, believe and expect that you will receive them (the more why’s, the better), and then get out of your own way and allow them into your life.

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!

Emotions as Drugs

A rat that learns a maze or receives an electric shock while under the influence of a drug will remember how to solve the maze or avoid the shock if retested under the influence of the same drug. Since much neuroscience now suggests that emotions cause/are the result of chemical reactions at the molecular level, much the same as drugs, it should be noted that our emotional state at a certain point in our past has as much to do with how we remember it as the actual events. This partly explains why someone who has been through a traumatic experience (especially as a child), will behave in a predictable manner when faced with similar experiences. Their memory of the past experience literally starts a cascade of chemical reactions that puts them in the exact state they had experienced at that time.

Well, this is all very interesting John, but what does it have to do with me and the Law of Attraction? So glad you asked. Everything.

You see, the mind and the body are one. Interconnected in many ways but especially at the cellular level. If your conscious mind is saying it desires certain things, but on the subconcious level your body (emotions) are telling a different story, guess which one is going to win?

So how do we get past this? One word: Consciousness. By being aware of what is happening and deliberately setting out to change it. There are numerous examples from numerous sources that have proven that we have the ability to create new neural pathways in the brain. We can literally reprogram our physical brain by thinking new thoughts and expecting different results. There are ways to help you along with this including Gary Craig's EFT (emotional freedom technique), and Bill Harris' Holosync Solution. They both help to clear blockages that are keeping you in your own way. You can find them on my website if this is an area of concern for you.

I'll leave you with a story that illustrates this point very well.

There was a man visiting the circus and at the end of the day he got a guided tour of the behind the scenes world. As they passed the area where the elephants were kept, he noticed with some consternation that the elephants were held by nothing more than a wooden stake in the ground with a rope tethered to their legs. He of course pointed this out to his guide who quickly explained.

"You see," he said, "when they are very young we put an iron band around their legs with a steel chain that is anchored to a steel pole in a concrete floor. No matter how hard and long they try to escape, they are simply not strong enough to do so. Eventually they give up, as they now know that they can't break the chain.

"So even now when they've grown into these huge, poweful animals who could easily break free, they no longer even try."

So I ask you, dear reader, what emotional bonds do you have from your past that were forged before you became the powerful being you now are? What things do you know about yourself to be true? Do you now see how easily you could break free from those limiting thoughts simply by making the decision to become the person you've always known you could be?

Magical Thinking

All of my life I have always felt that my wanting something to happen had an affect on whether or not it did. There is an amusing book by Augesten Burroughs with the same title as this blog where he defines it as the ability to change the outcome of an event solely by by his desire for it to be different. He considered it an amusing personality characteristic.

Well guess what? According to quantum physicists this is actually true! Without getting too far into the science of it, they have conducted experiments on sub-atomic particles (electrons, photons, neurons) where the particles behave as wave patterns until observed by a measuring device, when they start to act like particles of matter. In other words, they are not fixed things, merely probabilities until they are observed.

Sorry if I lost you there. In a nutshell, when these particles are observed (measured), the assumptions and perceptions of the observer actually do affect the outcome of the experiment. And since everything (matter and energy) is made of atoms then that means our beliefs and expectations are very much involved in what makes up our "reality".

And this is the essence of the Law of Attraction. By consciously focusing our thoughts (energy) on what we desire, and truly believing in the outcome that we want, we are literally creating the world around us. And the more emotion we put into those thoughts, the more power they have, delivering our desires much more quickly.

In the words of Goethe: "Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid."

Asking the Right Questions

If you've ever seen the movie "What the Bleep do we Know?" then you know it has some pretty deep, mind-bending stuff in it. Every time I watch it I am completely mesmerized, energized by the possibilities, and at a complete loss as to what to do with the information I've just heard.

For Christmas, I was given the book by the same name. It is a very different experience in that now I can stop and ponder a question or statement and absorb it at my own pace. A case in point is that right now I am reading about asking questions. I was often told in my personal coaching/success training that if I didn't like the answers I was getting, then perhaps I wasn't asking the right questions.

There are of course the really big ones like "Why am I here?" and "Who am I?" and "What's the Meaning of it All?". But there is also "why do I believe what I believe?" and "what is reality?". Those can keep you going for a while. Have you ever questioned your most basic assumptions about reality?

Let's go a step further with this one. How about "do I really need a job?". This is one of my all time favorites. I asked myself the same question about 3 years ago and lo and behold!, the answer was no. If I hadn't asked the question my reality would have never changed. I found a way to make my living from home through real estate investing and now I'm also creating websites. From trading hours for dollars to creating wealth and abundance in all areas of my life.

I watched a little of "Swordfish" the other night and there's the great scene where Travolta asks Hugh Jackman (I can't remember the character names) if he can hack his way into the DOD computer system. Jackman tells him it isn't possible. So Travolta tells him he will pay him $10,000,000.00 if he can do it. Then he asks "Is it possible now?". Great question! And of course it was possible, just difficult.

I know that was just a movie but it illustrates a great point. So many times we simply say a thing is not possible because that's the easiest answer to give and we don't have to think about it anymore. But what if we stopped and really thought not if it were possible, but how could it be possible. Maybe the only thing missing is the proper motivation.

I'll leave you with a thought:

"Some people will give you all kinds of excuses why something can't be done when all they need is one good reason why it should."

Beginnings

So this is how it all began.

After much anticipation brought about by so many people telling us of "The Secret", our copy finally arrived. We settled in eagerly that night and prepared to learn something unknown.

After only about 15 minutes into the movie, I realize that I know one of the "Teachers" in the form of Bob Doyle. He and I had been best buds way back in 7th grade and had not been in touch for a looong time.

Immediately after that I went to my trusty PC to try and track him down. Sure enough, he has a web site called "WealthBeyondReason" and is an internationally recognized expert on the Law of Attraction. He also has a program named Six Figure Streams that teaches you how to build multiple streams of income doing the things you love to do and are passionate about (I'm a big believer in passion). After joining his program I sent him an e-mail appropriate for a 7th grader and he responded in kind. Talk about the Law at work! It is truly remarkable to have that kind of knowledge at my fingertips or on the other end of the phone.

So after telling everyone I knew about Bob's site, at least those who would appreciate it, I went looking for some of the other teachers (cast members). And although it wasn't that difficult, it was time consuming and a little exhausting (mentally). So I decided, along with my girlfriend Alana, to create a site of my own where you can find almost all of the teachers in one spot, along with a few other items that relate directly to the secret.

Here's a clip of Bob from "The Secret".



As of this writing on Saturday, January 27, 2007, we are within a few days of launching. We are going to be ready when the Oprah show airs on the 31st. So just in case you click on the link in the next couple of days, it will probably not be working just yet.

One last word on this. I think the reason the LOA came so easily for me is that there was a time when I was in the corporate world and I studied success extensively. You know, goal setting and whatnot. I find the teachings of my mentors from then (Zig, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Jim Rohn, etc.) to be in perfect alignment with the teachers of the secret. They're all saying the same thing, just from different perspectives. There must be something to this stuff.

Always remember, it's your life, make it a life worth living.