Examining the Law of Attraction

This week’s blog features an excellent question I received about how manifesting, fate, and karma are all interconnected. Enjoy!

Q. Many of us have heard the popular idea that anyone can be, do, or have whatever they want. Is this true? It sounds nice, though also too simple of a concept to take literally. I think that every soul comes into the world in each incarnation with a specific purpose, various experiences to go through to help the soul grow and learn, etc. If everything the person wanted were to come to him, or at least arrive so easily, what would be the point of this life? I’ve even read some Kabbalah-related texts where it says that the main form of free will that we have in this world is choosing how we respond to situations.

A. As far as the whole notion of the destiny of the soul, I think that what you wrote is an accurate reflection of one aspect of the metaphysical reality of our journey in this life. That is to say, we all have a certain amount of karma ‘carried over’ that we have to go through in order to grow and learn. But not everything is bound by fate. We also have free will, and more of it in direct proportion to the amount of karma we’ve resolved.

In terms of manifesting whatever we want, theoretically anything is possible. We are creative beings with intention and imagination, and much of what we visualize can come to pass. But not like some magical formula as suggested in The Secret, the movie that popularized the concept of the Law of Attraction. The part that many viewers gloss over is the fact that not everything comes as easily as we might expect or want.

Some things take years to materialize, often requiring a great deal of personal sacrifice and self-discipline. On that count, the Kabbalah-related texts stressing the will to choose how we respond to situations could be extrapolated upon. Which means the choices we make will also determine what our options are in terms of realizing our dreams. Plenty of bright souls have come to the sobering realization that they spent too much time wasted on lesser pursuits and distractions when they should have been developing their God-given talents.

So, just to bring this conversation down from the abstract, if you have goals and dreams you would really like to accomplish, I think it is definitely worth going for it! But remember that things don’t always turn out the way we expect. If we “Let go and let God,” though, in the end things tend to turn out better than we could have imagined. Hope that helps!

Q. Thank you, Stephen. In regards to your last point, it’s true that when we set goals we have to take some steps toward them and trust that if it’s meant to be then things will flow along to allow us to reach success. Sometimes it may take longer, though, for example if you still need to earn some money while on the side working on building a company/idea, but also sometimes you can start delving more into things without having everything ‘in place.’

A. You're welcome and I agree with you about not having to wait for everything to be in place. Sometimes that’s part of the risk we have to be willing to take and then also be willing to stick with it through thick and thin.