Jennifer Louden is known as “The Comfort Queen” and featured on many globally recognised TV shows, including Oprah, with over 800,000 copies of her first book sold internationally. She is the world's leading authority on carving out the time and desire to look after your own well being and hence achieve more with less stress despite having a very busy life.
About the whole law of attraction stuff? Whether it's Abraham stuff or Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill or now The Secret? It's that, in me, it encourages my small self to rule the show. I find myself attracted to these ideas (pardon the small pun) but then my scritchy, controlling, to-do list, hurry up and gulp the world self gets all stoked. It rubs it's little lovely hands together and starts chasing it's own tail - or tale.
The New York Times today highlighted where I fall into trouble when reporting about The Secret: "In the film a woman says the law of attraction cured her cancer, but many followers settle for more prosaic victories. Victoria Moore, a saleswoman in Silicon Valley, said the principles of The Secret help her snag coveted parking spots. “But if I let in the slightest bit of doubt, it doesn’t happen,” she added.
When I read this, I get all freaked out and tight chested. To not let in the slightest doubt is to be in a constant war with myself. Thoughts arise, I can't stop them. How can I not have doubts without separating parts of myself, judging myself?
It isn't that I don't bow (constantly!) to the power of the mind -- I totally agree with author John Selby who said in a Body+Soul article, "Nothing is more urgent or more important than learning how to take charge of your thinking."
Learning to work with the mind is a key step in creating a life you love -- you learn to observe your thoughts and to see them as a story, simply an interpretation of events, the way the brain works. Then you can test your story for veracity, you can let go of your story, you can choose a different story.
To do this (using ontological coaching, Bryon Katie, cognitive therapy, the practice of accepting what is) is to practice essential mental hygiene, and that is one secret to being healthy. I can certainly see how prosperity thinking can help me choose a different story yet it never goes beyond story. “Ask, believe, receive" are the basic instructions but I don't want to believe. To believe is to keep referencing thoughts and emotions as ME and that isn't me.
Hang with me here and let me quote Adyshanti from his website a recording about Identification --
"We cannot find the truth in our thoughts. We can't find ultimate reality, our true nature in our minds -- it is the immense silence beyond our minds."
"We can spend our entire life without ever wondering, what is this me that everything occurs to? Every thought, every feeling, every experience, every thing that ever happens in my whole life, what is this me that it happens to? Who is the recipient of all this?"
"...mind, thought, and feeling is all happening to something. What is the mind occurring to?
What is it that feels a feeling? What is it that witnesses emotions?
What is that? I don't ask that so the mind will answer. I ask this question so the mind will be quiet because the mind doesn't have an answer for this question.
"This is not the silence of discipline, it is not forcing our minds to be silent. It is mind becoming silent through intelligence, through seeing it's limitations.
"What if you woke up this morning and you couldn't believe in anything? Just think of all the things you believe in? ... You wake up tomorrow morning it's like you woke up in a Twilight Zone and you'd see little beliefs floating through your mind but you couldn't actually Velcro onto them. Just like a normal day you notice as soon as you wake up you have thoughts like '
“I've got to get going, I must do this, I must do that... I've got to make a decision, what do I do, where do I go, is that right, how do I know?' just imagine there is no Velcro... There you would be, empty handed, total emptiness, total quietness. In that moment, you just might realize this is it, this is what Spirit is, this is what Divine is, this is what the Radiance Emptiness is? This is it. This is it?? This? How did I miss this? How could I miss this!!"
So...
False paste it on top of what I’m really thinking positive thinking leads me to worries like, "Am I doing it right?" It increases my experience of duality, "I can want this but not that, I can have this thought but not that” and it helps me to imprison myself in a maze of "I am my thoughts.” It makes me crazy and I think it does a lot of people.
Rabbi and meditation teacher Jason Shulman counsels us to use "up the material of this thing we call 'the seeker.' We must actually spend the currency of our ego until it is poor enough to go on welfare, as it were. When the ego is empty, silent, without more treasure to spend, without more intelligent schemes to promote or try out, what is left is God -- right there, within the poverty of the ego itself. God is not hidden, except when it is blocked by the shadow of the small self that believes it is a mountain. When we use up the go, it remains as it always was, simply part of us. The only difference is that we are looking at the sun and not the shadows cast by the small self."
So let the thoughts be there, welcome them, and then choose. Subtle difference but hugely important