A rational explanation of karma

Posted on by James Rowse in Blog, Philosophy and Spirituality

In my previous article, I alluded to some of the teachings of Buddhism that I have objections to. While I was researching for a potential article on this topic, the subject of karma naturally came up. I hold some very strong objections to certain principles of Buddhist karmic teaching, but this article should not be read as an attack on any particular spiritual tradition, and if it were to be read as such then Buddhism would not even be the major target. Rather, this is an attempt to cast a critical eye over some of the popular, superstitious beliefs associated with karma to see whether they stand up to the scrutiny of logic.

Some may consider it arrogant of me to take my axe to the root of this millennia-old teaching; but frankly, it’s long overdue. I’ve done the same thing before with the new age gospel of prosperity and the idea of heaven as a place – and the people who have taken the trouble to comment have generally thanked me for finally making sense of an otherwise foggy topic.

 

There is an unfortunate belief amongst new age people that karma is a vindictive like-for-like law, by which our every thought, word and deed, even the most trivial ones, rebound upon us in exactly equivalent measure. I suppose one of the reasons it has taken such deep root in new age thought is because we humans find it so difficult to forgive others. If we have any sort of spiritual aspirations then direct hatred is out of the question, so karma allows us to spiritualise our revenge by reassuring ourselves that we’ve fully forgiven the person – but that’s OK, because karma will get him in the end.

It’s not just vapid new agers who believe in this idea, though – it has even taken root in the minds of some scholarly individuals of the New Thought persuasion. I was shocked to find that even the great biblical scholar Emmet Fox subscribed to this like-for-like idea, which he believed to be supported by Christ’s sermon on the mount. In his book on the sermon, Fox writes:

“For every unkind word that you speak to or about another person, an unkind word will be spoken to or about you. For every time that you cheat, you will be cheated. For every time that you deceive you will be deceived. For every lie that you utter, you will be lied to. Every time that you neglect a duty, or evade a responsibility, or misuse authority over other people, you are doing something for which you will inevitably have to pay by suffering a like injury yourself. With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

The first major logical flaws in this interpretation of karma are that it interferes with free will, and appears to create a sort of infinite spiral of negativity. If I murder someone, then someone else will be compelled to murder me, either in this life or the next. The person that murders me is then required to suffer murder, compelling someone else to murder them. And logically, the cycle appears to be incapable of being broken. The only possible way the scales of karma could ever be balanced in such a situation would be if the perpetrator and the victim were the same in both cases. In other words, Cain murders Abel in one lifetime – then in a future lifetime, Abel murders Cain, and the scales are balanced. In this situation, there is no need for an ongoing cycle of violence. But what sort of justice is this, that compels Abel to murder Cain, just because he himself was murdered by Cain in a previous lifetime? That is neither just nor a free act of the will.

And Fox would have us believe that all acts create karma, even the little ones. This puts us at the mercy of an iron-clad destiny where everything that comes to us, big and small, is the result of our past actions. And all the actions we take, big and small, are seemingly preordained by the necessity of fulfilling some karmic return in the people we come into contact with.  Some will dispute this by arguing that there is no need to compel anyone to perform any particular actions, because human nature is such that there will always be people willing to commit all manner of acts, good and bad, and that the Universe is simply rearranging circumstances to satisfy justice, using the materials it is given to work with. But this argument has the same flaw discussed above – it requires an endless cycle of evil acts, and appears to prevent humanity from ever evolving beyond it. Furthermore, any universal law that has fickle human nature as one of the links in its chain of causation, is no universal law at all. The laws of the universe are self-balancing by their very nature. Gravity, for example, does not require the co-operation of humanity to carry out its effects. However predictable human nature may be, it is impossible to guarantee the operation of any universal law that is dependent upon the actions of a free human will.

The old Buddhist teaching that evil karma results in us being reborn as one of the lower animals has similar problems. Firstly, it is completely opposed to the universal law of growth, which is a forward-moving, evolutionary momentum, not a shrinking, devolutionary one. We may frustrate the law of growth through negative actions, for sure. We may create so much resistance that we even slow it to a crawl – but it is there nevertheless, nudging our soul onward towards its final destiny to become God in individualised form. The law of growth cannot set an opposing, devolutionary momentum in motion. Such a momentum would be tremendously difficult to escape from, and would surely result in the eternal doom of many souls. In fact, it would probably doom all of us, since we have all surely committed some major evil act throughout our soul’s journey across lifetimes.

Believing that there could possibly be a devolutionary momentum in the universe is equivalent to the old, noxious error that has retarded humanity for millennia – that is, believing in evil as having a substantive existence in itself. This is the chief error warned against in the parable of Adam and Eve in the garden. All Adam and Eve’s problems are caused after they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There are not two opposing forces in the universe, but only one – and what may appear to be a negative power is only the one good power being used destructively rather than constructively. Refer to chapter 2 of Thomas Troward’s Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning for the definitive explanation of this topic.

By the way, some mistakenly believe that being reborn as one of the lower animals is a tradition held in certain third world countries, which is not actually supported by any Buddhist teaching. This is incorrect – every school of Buddhism that I know of teaches it, although I have heard some teachers explain it away as a parable, or a non-literal teaching of the Buddha that was used to make an impact on his hearers. Still, by my reckoning most serious Buddhists believe in it as a literal truth. They generally teach that the lower animals cannot accumulate any further karma, which eliminates the possibility of an endless downward spiral but still leaves the lower animals trapped in their state for a potentially very long time, with no guarantee of escape. Presumably, if rebirth into human form ever happened, such a person would hardly be well placed to avoid falling back into the animal state again. The whole thing is difficult to reconcile with the law of growth and the concept of an all-good, all-loving universe.

It also compels the Buddhist to make a moral judgement over another living soul, because by the very fact of him being in human form, the Buddhist must assume his moral superiority over the animal. Of course, no Buddhist who is serious about his religion would suppose that he is permitted to indulge any feelings of superiority over any other living creature. Much less would he consider himself entitled to abuse animals in retribution for the animal’s past sins. Such actions belong only to ignorant people who cling to Buddhism as a superstition and a hollow identity but who do not care to follow any of its teachings in any detail. Still, a judgement of moral superiority over animals is required in order to fully accept Buddhist teaching – thus putting the Buddhist at odds with Christ’s warning to “Judge not, lest ye be judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

We are forced to make an even greater judgement if we accept the old Hindu superstition that the Indian caste system is the natural outcome of karma. The lower castes have long been fed the offensive lie that being born poor or ugly is the result of bad karma in a previous life. Being born beautiful and rich is, naturally, the result of good karma. This belief serves the higher castes well, but it is instantly disproved by the complete lack of any correlation between the possession of wealth and the practice of virtue, or the possession of beauty and the practice of virtue.

So what is karma, really? The first component of genuine karma is what I call explicit karmic energy. These are a specific species of negative energy that can be identified and cleared by the subconscious mind, and which appear to be created by the subconscious as a sort of internal response of the higher conscience. Such energies are usually only created in response to relatively large infractions. For example, thinking a single unkind thought about a person is unlikely to generate any of these energies, but being severely unkind to them over a period of time will very likely do so. The judge of the matter is our higher conscience, and its assessment does not always marry up to our ego’s typically flattering assessment of our own actions.

These energies can be easily cleared from a subject, as long as the subconscious is able and willing to divulge their existence – which it will usually do after some investigations by a skilled healer. If the energies are not cleared, then they form a sort of debt that must be paid by attracting circumstances that tend towards making amends. The beauty and perfection of the Law of Growth is evident in the fact that karma is more rehabilitative than punitive. Of course with that said, the rehabilitative circumstances attracted by such karmic energies may not be to our liking, and we are well advised to avoid accumulating any such debts.

The other component of what we call karma is simply the natural, unavoidable consequences of our own life choices. For example, if we are in the habit of stealing, then we are sending out an energetic signal of scarcity and dishonesty, which means that we are more likely to attract scarcity and dishonesty to ourselves.  The more negative thoughts, feelings and actions we indulge, the more of them become ingrained in our energy system – either as rigid beliefs and habits, or as stuck energies that can’t be cleared from the energy field without a rise in consciousness or the intervention of a healer. Any explicit karmic debts we accumulate are also added into this mix, and the resulting negative energetic signal put out by us will have a tremendous impact on the kind of circumstances we encounter in our daily life.

Even if the person ceases from overtly dishonest acts, he may still have to suffer additional consequences for a period of time, until his energetic system is purified by his persistence in virtue. Thus, all residual negative energy caused by persistent negative acts forms a kind of debt that must be paid. The only way around payment of the debt is to repent of the negative acts so completely and thoroughly that our consciousness is raised to a higher level. In a higher state of consciousness, negative energies cannot affect us, and they begin to be automatically cleared by the body.

Thus Christ’s instructions to the recipients of his physical healings: “go, and sin no more.”

For those who cling to pretty spiritual beliefs as a sort of security blanket, the old beliefs on karma die hard. But for those of you who are seeking rational spiritual beliefs to give your assent to, I hope this article was of some use.

Physical immortality – the folly of New Thought

Posted on by James Rowse in Blog, Philosophy and Spirituality

Although New Thought is the spiritual and intellectual movement with which I most closely identify, one aspect of it has always bugged me – the widespread belief in the possibility of physical immortality. Even certain great thinkers within the movement for whom I have a great respect fell victim to this folly. Yet to my knowledge, all of them died.

The belief seems to stem from a misunderstanding of Christ’s repeated promises of eternal life, and the specious assumption that death can have no legitimate place in a universe that is entirely life-affirmative by its nature. Physical death is purely a construct of our belief systems, they tell us. And yet plants and animals die, and they have no conscious belief systems. They die because it is a fact of nature that physical forms in our current plane of existence are temporary. If they were permanent, a dog would be stuck as a dog forever and have no opportunity to evolve beyond it.

Tragically, getting too deep into the physical immortality thing can be a great way of going off the deep end. Late in his career Charles Fillmore, founder of the New Thought movement Unity Church, was clearly undeterred by the palpable signs of ageing that were overtaking his body, and became convinced that he was immortal. He also betrayed certain other signs of his own mental instability, including believing that he was the reincarnation of St. Paul.

Fillmore and others fell victim to one of the errors I’ve previously written about. In order to successfully manifest anything, we need to possess a level of consciousness equal to the thing being manifested. Modern Law of Attraction teachers suggest that all we have to do is believe hard enough, and the thing will come to us. This is true for small favours within the reach of our consciousness – if you believe it will come to you, then it probably will. Driving all contrary thoughts out of your mind to the point where you become deeply intellectually and emotionally convinced that a certain thing is true is typically enough to manifest ordinary physical events – like a monetary gain, a house, a job, a relationship and so on. It is not sufficient to enable you to walk on water or stick your hand through the wall. It is certainly not enough to halt the ageing process and make you physically immortal. To manifest such things requires a level of consciousness far beyond the intellectual and emotional levels. It requires the type of deep spiritual KNOWING that Sydney Banks always wrote in capital letters.

Fillmore clearly did not understand this, and he remained convinced that discarding death from his belief system was enough to remove it from his reality. It was not, and he died in 1948. The level of consciousness required to escape physical death is, I believe, beyond attainment on our current plane of being. Or at least, it is so extraordinarily difficult to attain that it does not even bear thinking about.

That does not mean a soul that descends to the earth plane from some higher realm is strictly bound by the physical laws of this plane. Christ, I assume, could have easily returned from whence he came without subjecting himself to physical death – yet he subjected himself to it anyway. And we, being souls naturally born into this plane, and presently belonging to it – have no business supposing it should be any different for us. Like Christ we must die a physical death – and once we are ready, having gained all that we can from this plane and having attained the required consciousness – we shall discard our decaying physical bodies and slip seamlessly from this physical plane into the purely spiritual, maintaining our consciousness all the way. Eternal life indeed, since the only real death is the slipping into semi-consciousness that occurs when our objective (conscious) mind is severed from the subjective (subconscious) mind at death.

When we die, it is not the physical termination of the body that constitutes the real death. But our conscious personality really does die, unless we have sufficient understanding to take it with us when we cross over. If we do not, then all that remains is the subjective (subconscious) mind, containing our core beliefs and patterns. Whatever beliefs and patterns are contained within will shape our afterlife for a period of time. We shall live in a dream of our own subconscious creation, being incapable of initiating new trains of thought and thus caught in a loop of our own creation, until such time as the Universal Spirit deems that this state has served its purpose; then rebirth occurs. The loop may be positive or negative depending on the dominant nature of our beliefs – hence the many accounts of near-death experiences and encounters with ghosts caught in heaven or hell states. Good or bad, it is nevertheless a dreamlike limbo where we lack conscious volition, and therefore cannot initiate new trains of causation. For Troward, the intervention of some enlightened being who crossed over with its consciousness intact is required to bring such a soul out of this state. Or theoretically, anyone on earth could also assist in the matter by praying scientifically for the departed – from whence comes the concept of praying for the dead, or praying through some celestial intercessor for the dead.

Personally, I do not accept that the intervention of any third party is required to bring a soul out of this state, even though it may be of assistance. The forward evolutionary momentum inherent in the life-giving tendency of the Universal Spirit is enough to force us into a new incarnation, once the time is right. To suppose that we could ever get stuck seems to be a denial of this eternal momentum.  The Spirit does everything to ensure that we don’t get stuck, including erasing our memory from our previous life, lest our past modes of thinking should reassert themselves too readily.

Refer to The Creative Process in the Individual Chapter 8 and Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning Chapter 12 for Troward’s full teaching on this. In the former, Troward writes:

“…Substance is a necessity for the expression of Spirit, but it does not follow that Spirit is tied down to any particular mode of expression. If you fold a piece of paper into the form of a dart it will fly through the air by the law of the form which you have given it. Again, if you take the same bit of paper and fold it into the shape of a boat it will float on water by the law of the new form that you have given it. The thing formed will act in accordance with the form given it, and the same paper can be folded into different forms; but if there were no paper you could put it into any shape at all.

The dart and the boat are both real so long as you retain the paper in either of those shapes; but this does not alter the fact that you can change the shapes, though your power to do so depends on the existence of the paper. This is a rough analogy of the relation between ultimate substance and particular forms, and shows us that neither substance nor shape is an illusion; both are essential to the manifestation of Spirit, only by the nature of the Creative Process the Spirit has power to determine what shape substance shall take at any particular time.

Accordingly we find the great Law that, as Spirit is the Alpha of the Creative Process, so solid material Form is its Omega; in other words the Creative Series is incomplete until solid material form is reached. Anything short of this is a condition of incompleteness, and therefore the enlightened souls who have passed over in possession of both sides of their mentality will realize that their condition, however beatific, is still one of incompleteness; and that what is wanted for completion is expression through a material body. This, then, is the direction in which such souls would use their powers of initiative and selection as being the true line of evolution–in a word they would realize that the principle of Creative Progression, when it reaches the level of fully developed mental man, necessarily implies the Resurrection of the Body, and that anything short of this would be retrogression and not progress.

At the same time persons who had passed over with this knowledge would never suppose that Resurrection meant merely the resuscitation of the old body under the old conditions; for they would see that the same inherent law which makes expression in concrete substance the ultimate of the creative series also makes this ultimate form depend on the originating movement of the spirit which produces it, and therefore that, although some concrete form is essential for complete manifestation, and is a substantial reality so long as it is maintained, yet the maintaining of the particular form is entirely dependent on the action of the spirit of which the form is the external clothing. This resurrection body would therefore be no mere illusory spirit-shape, yet it would not be subject to the limitations of matter as we now know it: it would be physical matter still, but entirely subject to the will of the indwelling spirit, which would not regard the denser atomic relations of the body but only its absolute and essential nature as Primary Substance.”

Individualised spirit is incomplete without a physical form. And thus, our bodies shall be resurrected after death – whether by reincarnation on the earth plane, or if we cross over with our consciousness intact, we will choose to reconstitute our bodies through an act of will. Christ told us as much when he resurrected his body after three days – the supreme demonstration of Christ as the model of perfected humanity. And thus, like Christ, even perfected humanity will still pass through physical death – but the dissolution of the body shall not be permanent. It shall be reconstituted, though not in the same dense, mortal form that we now find it.

I close with the alleged dying words of the Buddha. I’ve previously shared my reservations about certain teachings of Buddhism, and some of them are even evident in this quote. Nevertheless it’s hard to deny that he had a high level of spiritual understanding. The following quote is reproduced in the book The Emerald Tablet – Alchemy of Personal Transformation by Dennis William Hauck, and it attributes the information on Buddha to the Encyclopedia Britannica, The Teaching of Buddha by Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai and The Elements of Buddhism by John Snelling. It does not reference the original Buddhist text from which the quote originates. So like a lot of Buddhist quotes, the attribution is somewhat nebuluous – take it or leave it.

“Do not weep, dear friend. Have I not told you that Separation is inevitable from all near and dear to us? Whatever is born, produced, conditioned, contains within itself the nature of its own Dissolution. It cannot be otherwise.” To the others gathered around him, he said: “Do not forget that death is only the end of the physical body. The body was born from parents and was nourished by food; just as inevitable are sickness and death. But the true Buddha is not a human body—it is enlightenment. A human body must die, but the wisdom of enlightenment will exist forever in the truth of the Dharma and in the practice of the Dharma. He who sees merely my body does not truly see me. Only he who accepts my teaching truly sees me. After my death, the Dharma shall be your teacher. Follow the Dharma and you will be true to me. I have withheld nothing from my teachings. There is no secret teaching, no hidden meaning; everything has been taught openly and clearly. My dear disciples, this is the end. In a moment, I shall be passing into Nirvana.”

The best explanation of how the Law of Attraction actually works

Posted on by James Rowse in Blog, Philosophy and Spirituality, Practical Exercises

Every spiritual school seems to have its own explanation of how the Law of Attraction actually works. Many of these are confusing and contradictory, and yet – as we shall see – many of them still work, because they correctly make use of certain principles, even though they seem to be mostly unaware of what those principles actually are.

I am here offering an explanation of the Law of Attraction that appears to tie all these schools of thought together, and cast a new light on things that will help us to understand the Law of Attraction in a different way. My primary source is, as usual, Thomas Troward – although I will also rely heavily on personal experience to extrapolate Troward’s teachings. I will begin by quoting from a remarkable chapter of Troward’s Edinburgh Lectures, where he delves into the two main aspects of the human mind – the subconscious and the conscious, or as he here calls them, the subjective and the objective.

From The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science, lecture 4:

“A long series of careful experiments by highly trained observers, some of them men of worldwide reputation, has fully established certain remarkable differences between the action of the subjective and that of the objective mind which may be briefly stated as follows:

The subjective [subconscious] mind is only able to reason deductively, and not inductively, while the objective mind can do both. Deductive reasoning is the pure syllogism which shows why a third proposition must necessarily result if two others are assumed, but which does not help us to determine whether the two initial statements are true or not. To determine this is the province of inductive reasoning, which draws its conclusions from the observation of a series of facts…”

“Innumerable experiments on persons in the hypnotic state have shown that the subjective mind is utterly incapable of making the selection and comparison which are necessary to the inductive process, but will accept any suggestion – however false – but having once accepted any suggestion, it is strictly logical in deducing the proper conclusions from it, and works out every suggestion to the minutest fraction of the results which flow from it. As a consequence of this it follows that the subjective mind is entirely under the control of the objective [conscious] mind. With the utmost fidelity it reproduces and works out to its final consequences whatever the objective mind impressed upon it; and the facts of hypnotism show that ideas can be impressed upon the subjective mind by the objective mind of another as well as by that of its own individuality…”

“Under the control of the practised hypnotist the very personality of the subject becomes changed for the time being; he believes himself to be whatever the operator tells him he is: he is a swimmer breasting the waves, a bird flying in the air, a soldier in the tumult of battle, an Indian stealthily tracking his victim: in short, for the time being, he identifies himself with any personality that is impressed upon him by the will of the operator, and acts the part with inimitable accuracy.”

In summary, the conscious or objective mind possesses the faculty of inductive reasoning – or observing facts and determining truth from falsehood – while the subconscious or subjective mind only reasons deductively, which is the faculty of calculating what consequences follow when certain initial facts are assumed.

The subconscious mind is essentially our connection to the Universal, undifferentiated mind, or the mind of God. God does not deal in truths or falsehoods; God simply creates. If God decides that something is true, then it becomes true, and our subconscious minds operate in the same way. Hence, if the conscious mind is put to sleep via hypnotism and a sufficiently skilled hypnotist impresses a certain suggestion upon it, then the subconscious accepts that suggestion and works out the logical consequences of it. The subconscious mind does not evaluate the truth or falsehood of the suggestion; it simply responds by working out the conclusions that follow if the suggestion is true.

The subconscious mind has no ideas about itself and no concept of limitation. It conceives of itself as being precisely what is conveyed to it by external suggestion; typically the external suggestion of our conscious mind – this is how all visualisation and self-suggestion works. To take a common example, if you visualise yourself as a millionaire and feel the truth of it so palpably that it becomes real to you, then you are programming the subconscious mind just like the hypnotist who convinces his subject that he is a bird flying in the air. Once the subconscious has accepted the suggestion of the visualisation, it will manifest as a physical reality, provided that no stronger contrary suggestion is impressed upon the subconscious to undermine the initial suggestion.

And here is where most people fail in programming their subconscious. They allow external circumstances to program the subconscious with contrary suggestions to their visualisation. We see the destructive effects of contrary suggestions in the hypnosis example – when the hypnotised subject returns to his normal state, his conscious mind resumes its observation of facts, finds that the subject’s body is not covered in feathers, and the hypnotic spell quickly wears off due to the stronger contrary suggestion received from the observation of the senses and reasoning of the conscious mind. Similarly, if the would-be millionaire awakes from his visualisation and then proceeds to pinch every penny as he previously did, his actions are impressing the idea of lack upon the subconscious. If he instead begins to spend as though money were no object then he is acting consistently with his visualisation. But if he spends in this way for a few weeks, fails to see results, and then panics, then he has undone all his good work and may in fact end up further back than where he started from, as his panic will form a powerful suggestion of lack that the subconscious will respond to.

Hence, most people simply do not have the consciousness required to successfully carry out such a spectacular manifestation, and so the Law of Attraction becomes like all other too-good-to-be-true schemes like foreign currency trading. In theory, it holds an easy solution to all of our problems. In reality, its tremendous simplicity can be supremely complicated to grasp.

But then, the Law of Attraction was never meant to be the saleable commodity it has become. Its enticing promises have invited exploitation from opportunists, who have often stripped out every other teaching of the spiritual life and focused solely on the promise of riches. But it was never meant to be taken out of the context of our wider spiritual development. It’s not a magical formula for getting stuff; rather the ability to use it is the natural consequence of an increase in spiritual understanding.

Yes, Christ said “ask and ye shall receive” – but he also said “seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all other things shall be added unto you”. Not only will our spiritual powers naturally unfold as a result of our increased knowledge of the Universal Spirit, but our desires will begin falling into order, and we will discover that the legitimate use for all spiritual laws is doing good for others and evolving our souls. This does not mean we cannot ask for particular favours, monetary or otherwise – but they should fit into the grand scheme of our spiritual development, and not simply be directed towards creating a luxurious life. And as our spiritual development unfolds, our consciousness increases – and in this higher state of consciousness, things tend to come to us without us even needing to ask.

With that said, we are certainly entitled to use our spiritual powers, provided that the end goal of our efforts is in conformity with the will of universal love. In Chapter 5 of the Edinburgh Lectures, Troward offers a suggestion as to how to overcome the negating effects of existing circumstances that we encountered earlier. He encourages us to reflect that there is a spiritual prototype of our completed goal that already exists on the metaphysical plane. As spirit has no concept of time, it follows that the spiritual prototype of our visualisation must exist as an already accomplished fact, here and now. By focusing on the existence of this spiritual prototype as an already accomplished fact, we are taking our attention away from external appearances and secondary causes, and focusing instead on first cause. By reversing our mode of thinking in this way and focusing on the originating principle rather than the secondary results that flow from it, our world will begin to change – just as a change in a shadow inevitably follows upon a change to the object that casts it. We need to view the spiritual world, where we are truly rich in every way, as the real world, and the physical world the mere reflection of it.

And despite the insistence of many Law of Attraction teachers, it is not strictly necessary to visualise anything. The advantages of visualising are that – if palpably felt – it conveys the truth of the visualised outcome very powerfully to the subconscious mind, and also helps us to get very clear with exactly what we are trying to manifest. But for those who struggle with visualising, it is possible to obtain results purely through the power of belief, as long as we hold fast to the belief and do not plant a contrary suggestion in our subconscious by entertaining doubts or acting as though the belief were not true. Explicitly religious people typically do not visualise; but many successfully manifest favours simply by their belief in the power of prayer. Christ said “Believing ye shall receive”, not “After visualising, ye shall receive”. In the end, belief is the funnel through which everything flows. Believe that an outcome will occur, and you are powerfully programming your subconscious to expect it. Believe that your methods are faulty, or you’re not skilled enough at them, or you took a crucial misstep, and you’re programming your subconscious for failure. Hence certain Law of Attraction teachers who prescribe specific methods as being absolutely necessary to the creative process sometimes set up unhelpful negative expectations in the minds of those who find their methods difficult to replicate.

Furthermore, many of the different schools seem to directly contradict each other on certain points. Most notably is the question of whether we should continue thinking about a goal after we have visualised it, or whether we should simply set the intention and then let it go. And here it is helpful to understand the principles behind the teaching, in order to decide which method is most suitable for you.

Generally speaking, if you are good at visualising and able to form a vivid, believable, lifelike picture of your goal fulfilled, then you should visualise it once and then drop the matter. Your vivid mental picture will deeply impress upon your subconscious mind, and it will immediately go to work to bring the vision into physical manifestation. You should await the results with calm and confident expectancy; anything else that you add to it from that point onward is only likely to retard its progress. If you do use any other technique to keep your mind on track, such as Troward’s suggestion mentioned earlier, it should only be to chase away doubts, rather than to speed up the process or increase its effectiveness.

If you are unable to form vivid mental pictures, then your subconscious may require some additional programming. It will act upon whatever is impressed upon it the most vividly, and so if you are unable to do this with a mental picture, you can do it with frequent reminders of the goal, such as palm cards with your goals written them in present tense, or some other form of regular affirmations. The only drawback with this method is that you must be able to evoke the feeling of the wish fulfilled on cue – at least to some extent – and avoid any negativity concerning that subject. For example, it may be relatively easy to indulge in positive feelings concerning a romantic relationship; but for most people who don’t yet have such a relationship, this will also stir up feelings of loneliness and discouragement. It is also very important to avoid any sense of trying to hurry the speed of the manifestation by the use of these methods. The end game is to convince the subconscious that the goal has already been fulfilled by vividly conveying to it the feeling of the goal fulfilled. If we attempt to hurry it in any way then we are only impressing it with our own impatience. This is why, despite their potential, so many people find affirmations to be useless or even counterproductive.

My recommended method for those who cannot vividly visualise (and also for those who can – along with continuing their visualisation methods) is to use the principles of Emmett Fox’s The Golden Key. It’s a mere brief pamphlet – shorter than this article even – but its power has been proven by the thousands that have used it over the decades since it was first published.

The formula is simple: don’t think about the problem, but instead think about God. So if you are trying to manifest a relationship, rather than visualising your own perfect relationship, just know that it is all in God’s hands, and then meditate frequently on God’s love without any specific reference to your own loneliness, and without any specific expectations. Rather, maintain a confident expectancy in the ability and willingness of God to bring you all good things. If you are trying to manifest wealth, instead of visualising yourself swimming through a tank full of money, meditate frequently on the infinite abundance of God, and expect all good things to come to you. If you are trying to advance spiritually, meditate frequently on the infinite wisdom, goodness and intelligence of God, and know that all these things will come to you.

Fox prescribes this as a remedy for dissolving any difficulty, but it can be used as a means of attaining goals, too. If you feel the need to stick scrupulously to Fox’s original formula, then simply phrase the goal as a difficulty and ‘golden key’ it. If you are trying to manifest a relationship, ‘golden key’ your loneliness. If you are trying to manifest money, ‘golden key’ your lack. If you are trying to advance spiritually, ‘golden key’ your spiritual stagnation.  If you need further instructions on how to think about God, read Fox’s The Seven Main Aspects of God.

The beauty of Fox’s technique is that it works directly with belief in absolute spiritual principles, rather than concerning itself with evoking feelings or changing existing circumstances.  See, often by thinking about goals that are yet to be fulfilled, we activate old programming, old negative expectations, and past negative emotions. This is what Law of Attraction teacher Esther Hicks calls ‘blocked pipes’ – it’s negative energetic residue that can sabotage our attempts to feel positive about our goals. It’s much easier to program our subconscious to expect all manner of good things to come from the Universal Spirit, than to program ourselves for very specific things – especially when we have many blocked pipes. By powerfully affirming our belief in spiritual principles, we are raising our vibration and denying any additional energy to our existing unfavourable circumstances.

Don’t get me wrong – visualising and affirmations work well for many people. But Fox’s techniques work for everyone, when persisted in.  At the end of the day, we don’t even require a technique at all. Christ made the whole matter incredibly simple – according to him, it is all a matter of asking and believing:

“Therefore I say unto you, all things whatsoever you ask when you pray, believe that you shall receive and they shall come unto you.” Mark 11:24.

Every age has its great spiritual error. Here is ours.

Posted on by James Rowse in Blog, Philosophy and Spirituality

The commonly held view in modern spiritual circles is that organised Christianity’s promotion of poverty and asceticism was a misinterpretation of Christ’s warnings against riches, and that this led to that great error of the past – thinking that money is evil and unspiritual. This is indeed a grave error, but unfortunately modern spiritual thinking involves an equally monumental mistake – which is that chasing and accumulating vast sums of money is a legitimate object of the spiritual life.

This new “abundance mindset” offered by mainstream spiritual thinking is even less in line with Christ’s words than the poverty consciousness it replaced. There is no getting around it – Christ says “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven. For it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Luke 18:24 -25).

The Kingdom of Heaven represents the internal state of spiritual enlightenment. Christ plainly states here that if we view spiritual operation as a means of mere material growth, we will almost certainly never reach a state of enlightenment. Christianity’s error was to take these words as a declaration that all wealth is evil. Modern spiritual thinking falls into the exact opposite trap by declaring all wealth to be good and conveniently bypassing all Christ’s teachings to the contrary.

It’s true that Christ never teaches poverty as a requirement for following the spiritual path. But he does teach it as a requirement for perfection, as when he told the young man: “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.” (Matthew 19:21.)

Furthermore, when sending his apostles out to preach, he instructs them not to take anything more than the bare essentials:

“Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils: freely have you received, freely give. Do not possess gold, nor silver, nor money in your purses. Nor scrip for your journey, nor two coats, nor shoes, nor a staff.” (Matthew 10:8-10).

So Christ, the most enlightened being ever to walk the earth, preached as he lived – and his life and teachings were one grand sermon on poverty. So why is modern spiritual teaching so enamoured with the idea of amassing vast sums of money?

However, here we must make a crucial distinction, and one that is missed in all erroneous teachings on the spirituality of money. The distinction is between poverty and lack. Poverty means personally owning nothing, or nothing but the bare essentials. Lack means actually suffering the deprivation of something essential – so lacking sufficient food, clothing or shelter. Christ practised poverty, but he never suffered lack. In fact Christ’s entire life could be seen as a perfect sermon on this precise topic. He lived his life in poverty, because had complete trust in the providence of the universal spirit. He did not need to stockpile money or supplies, because he knew the infinite treasury of heaven was always open to him. All he had to do was “ask and it shall be given you…knock and it shall be opened.” (Matthew 7:7).

Thus did he strictly charge the apostles to go on their journey in the same manner – taking no preparations for the journey, but simply trusting that all would be provided by heaven. It is not the poverty itself that Christ was teaching us, but the trust that must necessarily accompany it, and the detachment from worldly concerns that must precede any ascent to great spiritual heights.

Modern Law of Attraction practitioners often teach that the best way of getting into alignment with our desires is to act as though they are already fulfilled. With this in mind, the best way to act as though heaven will provide for your every need is to make no preparations of your own, and live entirely by trusting the storehouse of heaven. This is the true abundance mindset, and people who spend their lives stockpiling riches in unthinking rebellion to Christianity’s poverty fetish have missed the point entirely. The rejection of one error has simply led to the opposite error. As with all things in life, the truth lies at the mean between the extremes.

I must also repeat that living in poverty is one of Christ’s counsels of perfection. Christ came to make men perfect, but not everyone is sufficiently evolved to follow his path to the utmost, and of course he was well aware of this. For those of us who are not yet ready to abandon all things and live entirely off the providence of the universe, we can apply Christ’s teachings simply by becoming more neutral to money, and seeking spiritual enlightenment ahead of material gain. Paradoxically, this makes money easier to obtain anyway because too great a desire for it causes resistant energy. Thus Christ tells us: “Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33).

By this method, we may or may not end up with limitless riches – but it doesn’t matter. We will live a far more fulfilling life and will evolve our souls to a much higher degree than we ever could by making money the end goal in itself. Again, the modern error is that wealth is the only worthwhile yardstick for one’s success in life. Health, happiness, wisdom and love are fine as well, but they are not quantifiable. People judge themselves to be a success once they’ve made their first million dollars – but there’s no similar benchmark for the others.

Study after study shows that once people have their basic needs met, there is absolutely no correlation between money, happiness and love anyway. And what are we here for but the evolution of our souls? There are so many experiences a soul can have to further their evolution – many of them involve no worldly success whatsoever. Modern spiritual thinking judges this to be a failure, because it views wordly success as a sign of inward spiritual alignment.

Indeed the great teacher Thomas Troward agrees with them, up to a point. The material side of life should not be despised, he says, because it represents the spiritual. In other words, if we are in genuine material lack, then something has gone wrong spiritually – we are yet to learn Christ’s lessons about the providence of the universe. But if we go to the other extreme and live purely for the material, we’ve missed something equally important – the detachment from wealth that Christ says will make us perfect. For, as he says, “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3). That is, it is not necessary that we be materially poor – only that we be detached from wealth. But this crucial distinction is almost completely absent from modern spiritual writing.

Freeing ourselves from limitation is indeed one portion of the spiritual path. There is no benefit to be gained from holding on to the outdated notion that having money is wicked, immoral, or unspiritual, and that lack is the only acceptable path. But the idea that there is nothing to be gained from any life that falls short of unbridled wealth and luxury is every bit as much a limitation as the former. It’s a fear based limitation proceeding on the false assumption that a life without material wealth must be a life of suffering.

Of course, having money gives us no guarantee of avoiding suffering whatsoever – but having sufficient spiritual wealth does indeed offer such a promise.

“Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth, where the rust and moth consume, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither the rust nor moth consumes, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also.” (Matthew 6:19 – 21).

How to achieve your desires by giving up completely

Posted on by James Rowse in Blog, Philosophy and Spirituality

This is the final part in a four-part series about the misunderstanding and misapplication of the Law of Attraction, which is prevalent in modern popular spiritual teaching. If you haven’t read the other parts, I recommend doing so before diving into this one. In part one I discussed the Law of Growth, and why we should always consider the spiritual impact of any attempts to manifest. In the second part, I discussed the need for consciousness in the manifesting process. In part three, I debunked the idea that the Law of Attraction is intended as some magic formula for material prosperity.

In the previous article, we finished with a quote from the great New Thought writer Thomas Troward, where he advised us to aim all our efforts towards a higher degree of spiritual development, rather than towards material gain. The material side of life should not be despised, he said, because the external is a symbol of the internal – but it is a by-product and not the overall aim. Bypassing all the internal growth – the wisdom, the knowledge, the true experience of peace and security and seeking only the external symbols – is attempting to short circuit the process. At best, such efforts are likely to give you flaky results. At worst, you may become proficient at dealing with spiritual forces, but lack the framework of true spiritual knowledge and virtue which is required to apply such forces safely and profitably.

In times of greater religious fervour, this latter scenario was known as sorcery – and was widely regarded as one of the most perilous paths to tread. Indeed, Troward in his book Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning, sees the flood of Noah as being a partly symbolic and partly historic event which was caused by the psychic plane becoming saturated with an abundance of competing mental forces, each seeking personal gain and being completely divorced from the harmonising spirit of growth and virtue. Even if you scoff at this interpretation as though it were a miniature Harlem witch trial, nevertheless the selfish abuse of spiritual powers has been consistently condemned by a variety of traditions throughout history. Attempting to harness spiritual powers for personal gain without the virtue that entitles us to it has been unanimously regarded as one of the most wicked paths a soul can tread. But seeking the virtue first and then enjoying whatever benefits arise, spiritual and material – well, such is the highest path of all!

Again, the material side of life should not be despised and many of the legitimate requests we make during our journey will be material ones – and that is where the Law of Attraction comes in.

Indeed, Jesus tells us in Matthew 7:7-8: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.  For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”

But the more we concern ourselves with asking for spiritual advances and insights instead of material things, the more rapid and profound our progress will be. As our consciousness ascends and we receive true spiritual insights, then the full possibilities of Christ’s words will open up to us – when we are wise enough to understand and apply them correctly. If we are weighed down with our own plans and desires instead of united to the will of the Universe, we will create resistance and suffering.

Unfortunately, the promises of easy money and the apparent successes of the prominent Law of Attraction gurus have distorted our view of this. They tell us that when we encounter resistance, it’s a sign that we need to work on ourselves, or visualise more – or cease visualising altogether and let go – or a hundred other bits of contradictory advice designed to put us in the precise mental sweet spot that will enable limitless prosperity to flow into our lives on cue.

These techniques may indeed have worked for the people teaching them, and they may work for some people who apply them – particularly if that person’s life purpose is to learn the lessons associated with material prosperity. Of course, the underpinning law never changes, but people’s aptitudes and level of evolution varies wildly. Some people are capable of generating sufficient enthusiasm and effort in order to prosper materially, while others who are more spiritually advanced simply cannot muster the motivation, the frame of mind, or the correct mindset in order to make these techniques work with the aim of material gain.

There is a huge element of self-selection at work here. In other words, the most prominent Law of Attraction teachers tend to be people whose life purpose is highly biased towards the material – whereas the people with a higher spiritual purpose and more profound spiritual insight tend to be locked away in monasteries, or at least far less concerned with self-promotion.  Hence on the major sites like YouTube, the deeper spiritual advice tends to be drowned out by the New Gospel of Prosperity.  Again, manifesting material things is absolutely possible and permitted – but such things must take their proper place in the Universe’s grand scheme for our soul.

Sadly we humans are a stubborn lot, and prone to take the path of least resistance – so when we’re promised an easy way out of suffering, we will not give up the idea willingly, even after experiencing a string of failures.  So how do we make the shift from self-seeking materialism to spiritual aspirations? Well, the only thing that has worked for me is total surrender. And I must emphasise the ‘total’ part, because there is no such thing as a partial surrender. One simply can’t say “Okay God, I give up on striving for what I want – I surrender to you, now please give it to me.” That is no surrender at all; such a person is clinging to their desires just as much as ever. It reminds me of the old joke about Murphy’s Law – it is recursive: you can’t wash the car to make it rain. And you can’t give up on your desires to make them happen – you truly have to accept that they may not happen in this lifetime. Such a genuine surrender may take a form like the following:

“Oh Universal Spirit, I have struggled and striven to attain my desires, and they are as far away as they have ever been. They have caused me nothing but misery, and will continue to do so if I hold fast to them. But what is this life in the light of eternity? When we see it for what it truly is, it will be but one night in a bad motel. If my desires cannot be attained in this life, then perhaps in the next. Or perhaps they are not good for me and will never come true. Therefore, I let them go and make way for something better. May whatever is best in the light of eternal truth be done. Now I seek only you.”

This kind of prayer, when made with complete sincerity, has the effect of pressing the “reset” button on our desires. We accept that whatever silly things we thought we needed to make us happy may actually be harmful to us. We let all of that go, and resolve to instead seek nothing but whatever is best for us – knowing with full trust and certainly that the Universal Spirit can and will provide us with our ultimate good in due course.

As I discussed in a previous article on surrender, when we truly surrender to the divine will, it has a tendency to surrender to us. But I cannot say this enough – the key is to make a genuine surrender with no ulterior motive. You must fully accept that your desire may not come true, as indeed it may not.

If you say every word in the prayer above and mean it, you truly are letting go of your own desires and putting yourself at the mercy of a higher power. The inevitable outcome of such a surrender is that you will either get the thing you originally desired, or you will get something you never desired, but which is even better. If you have truly, deeply given it up and detached from it, then maybe you will get that ten bedroom mansion – but you won’t even care if you don’t. And it’s more likely that such extravagant desires won’t be fulfilled, but the inner peace and joy you will feel will make up for it many times over.

Many Law of Attraction teachers teach this same principle by stating that we need to remain neutral about our desires in order to attract them. But this de-spiritualises the process and turns it into a mechanical formula, whereas the neutrality you are seeking is a deep, complete trust and hope in whatever the Universe decides to send you – without the ulterior motive of attracting anything specific. We are seeking to become something, rather than to attract something.

Distilled down, this is the essential basis of all Christian, Taoist, Buddhist and Hindu teaching – we find true peace and happiness by raising our minds and hearts to higher states of virtue and purity. Seeking material prosperity as a means of happiness is a stark departure from centuries of consistent spiritual teaching. Of course, once we are in a higher state of vibration then material prosperity is easier to come by – but it won’t have the same chokehold over us as it once did.

So fill your day with thoughts of security, peace, love, fun, confidence, happiness, and any other spiritual influences you feel the need of. Note that I said spiritual influences – you want to feel the essence of the energy back of all your desires. So if you desire more money, for example, please don’t listen to those people who tell you to breathe in the scent of money or imagine counting out hundred dollar notes in your hands. No doubt this works for people who approach it with exactly the right mindset, but for the majority of people it will simply inflame more desire and cause more fruitless searching and book-buying when it doesn’t work as advertised. Instead, ask what you are really searching for through money. Is it security? If so, feel a deep sense of solid, grounded safety. Is it knowing that your needs will be taken care of? If so, feel a deep sense of providence and provision. Feel the truth of Christ’s words in Matthew 6:30-31:

“And if the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little faith? Be not concerned therefore, saying: What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed?”

Begin to truly feel all these energies. But here is the crucial part: feel them for no other reason than because they feel good, and place you in a positive frame of mind.

Please take a moment to understand this correctly. We are not doing this to attract anything into our lives. We are doing this to feel like a secure, peaceful person who is taken care of by providence. By incorporating these feelings into our daily life, we are creating a new framework – a spiritual reality – that is based upon thoughts and feelings of a high vibration, instead of the limiting, low vibrational thoughts and feelings that created our previous reality. By stepping into this new framework, we open the door to new and positive influences to be attracted into our life. But anything we may attract is merely the icing on the cake – we are seeking a positive spiritual framework for its own sake, and nothing else.

If all this is confusing, please read it again and meditate upon it until it begins to make sense. At first, this may seem like an impossible tightrope walk – trying to counteract the opposing forces of non-desire and achievement while remaining upright and poised. But the truth is so much simpler – give up the tightrope act altogether. Give up the desire, accept that your life is what it is and ask the Boss to show you the way. He’s only waiting for your surrender to give you a peace and a happiness far beyond what all those silly childish desires could ever give you.

A real life example of turning the other cheek

Posted on by James Rowse in Blog, Philosophy and Spirituality

It shouldn’t be any surprise to the spiritually inclined to learn that one of Christ’s most powerful teachings is also one of his most maligned. The great admonition to “turn the other cheek” doesn’t sit well with the self-centered, egotistical society we live in. There is also a tendency for people to interpret this admonition literally, almost as though it were boxing advice, and miss the underlying point. If I were to summarise the underlying message, it would be something like this: “When you see others acting badly, don’t let it concern you, and never be tempted to react. Rather, with all humility, let it inspire you to act better yourself.” Or if we make it a tad more practical still: “When someone acts inappropriately towards you, don’t argue with them or tell them how inappropriate they have been. Rather, humbly show them by your superior conduct.”

Acts of great virtue are inspiring to all people, regardless of religious conviction. The following example from a truly virtuous man, Fr. Willie Doyle, SJ, is a perfect demonstration of the true meaning of Christ’s words. The story comes from the lovely, inspiring and sadly long out of print book Merry in God by an anonymous author:

“I recall one memorable scene. It is a common occurrence in Clongowes for one cricket club to challenge another. The consequences for the loser are serious, since the beaten side is liable to confiscation of its bats, pads, in fact all its good gear, and to get in exchange the battered property of its rival. This is the material aspect of the result, but there is a more important element at stake, the loss or gain, namely, of prestige. In the instance to which I refer, the game was keenly contested and feeling ran high. The junior club won eventually by a narrow margin. Whereupon the beaten side declared that the victors had ‘doctored’ the score. Immediately there was uproar, and quiet was restored only when someone proposed that Fr. Doyle should be called in to arbitrate. He gave the case against the defeated eleven. This verdict so exasperated one of the boys that he called Fr. Doyle a ‘damn cheat!’ This outburst cleared the atmosphere and produced a sudden calm, as nobody
knew what would follow this amazing piece of impudence. But Fr. Doyle did nothing. Two or three days passed, and the culprit, who was prepared to take a flogging and hate his Prefect to the end of his days, began to grow sorry for his conduct when he saw that no move was being made against him. At last he apologised, offering to accept punishment, but Fr. Doyle only laughed good humouredly, and gave him biscuits and lemonade and a few pieces of sound advice. Fr. Doyle won a fast friend and a most loyal supporter, but his self-control under the circumstances needed character.”

Most of us would have argued with the boy by telling him how inappropriate he’d been – and have activated his defenses by doing so. Instead, Fr. Doyle activated his admiration by humbly failing to defend himself.

If you’ve found Christ’s words impractical or difficult to imitate, consider imitating this wonderful example instead.

How misusing the Law of Attraction creates suffering

Posted on by James Rowse in Blog, Philosophy and Spirituality

This is part 3 of a series discussing some of the misconceptions about the Law of Attraction which have been caused by the explosion of publicity it has received in the wake of the movie The Secret.

In part one I discussed the Law of Growth, and why we should always consider the spiritual impact of any attempts to manifest. In the second part, I discussed the need for consciousness in the manifesting process.  In this third part of the present series I will discuss what I believe to be the true meaning and purpose of the Law of Attraction, as distinguished from the magic formula for material gain that it has become through modern popular teaching.

Let me begin by stating that although I find certain core tenets of Buddhism hard to swallow, I cannot find one word to argue against the Buddha’s core teaching that desire results in suffering. Contentment equals having everything we want; while its opposite – desire – always implies that something is missing. The same principle is stated in verse 20 of the Tao Te Ching, where Lao Tzu teaches non-striving as the way to contentment. Similar teachings are repeated elsewhere in the Tao.

Therefore, the whole Law of Attraction premise would seem to be flawed from the very outset. It’s based on an egoistic concept of happiness that says “you are unhappy because you do not have what you want. Let me show you the way to get what you want.” If the process happens to succeed, the ego will simply ask for more – because attaining some material success will not change our mindset and the energetic pattern created by our mindset. The moment you create a specific worldly goal, you are energetically saying “I am here, but I wish I were there.” The implication of the energetic message is: “I need to be there to be happy. Here is not good enough. Being here is the cause of my unhappiness.”  I am loathe to even say it, because it’s one of those oft-repeated yet rarely appreciated truths that sounds like little more than a slogan on a motivational poster, but here it is, in all its apparent triteness: happiness comes from within.

Unfortunately, we all empathise with Ashleigh Brilliant’s famous quote about money (sometimes falsely attributed to Spike Milligan): “All I want is a chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.” We think we can be the single exception to the rule. Others aren’t happy because they’re using their money foolishly, we say. I would use it wisely, or for purposeful pursuits. Or we pin medals on our chest by saying we’d use it to do good in the world. Despite all our fantasies, no-one has ever found lasting happiness through money per se. When Sylvester Stallone was asked by an Australian TV show whether money and fame had brought him happiness, he answered:

“Well, you can afford a better grade of psychiatrist – that’s about it. No, I mean money certainly gives you a chance to be independent, but it doesn’t buy happiness at all. No it doesn’t.”

His reference to independence may set off another train of thought within us – “that’s all I really want – independence. I want to be free from my mind-numbing 9-5 job, or free to move away from my irritating housemate. If I had a source of easy income, I’d be free to dedicate more time to work on myself and develop my spirituality.”  Again, it is one of those ideas that seems so true in our imagination, but is immediately disproven when it is tried. Removing ourselves from noxious influences can help, but if we do not remove the real source of the influences then we will simply attract more.  Furthermore, if we are unhappy working a 9-5 job, we will be unhappy without one. There are some advantages, for sure – but there are disadvantages in equal measure. I can assure you from personal experience that if you quit your 9-5 job before you’ve developed your true spiritual understanding and calling, your life will not improve one bit. You may be free from certain irritations like early starts and team meetings, but other difficulties like loneliness, isolation, lack of direction and frustration with your spiritual state will arise to take their place.

Your ego may argue with this and remind you how great your last overseas holiday was. What if you could live that way all the time? It may remind you how great it was for the first week after you quit your job – and how peaceful it made you feel when the pressure was released. It may remind you of the first few months of being in love. If we could only grab hold of those fleeting pleasures and make them last, it says! Of course, we can’t – a change in circumstance only ever makes a temporary change in our happiness.

You simply cannot find that magical place called ‘ease’ and attempt to use it as a base camp from which to live the rest of your life and develop yourself spiritually. Not only is it energetically impossible, but it is not what we’re here to do. Reaching a state of ease through material security and nothing else would put us a state of stagnation. We came here to evolve, and to ultimately manifest the Uncreated Formless in created form. That doesn’t mean our lives are fated to be hard, but if our dominant thought pattern and its resulting energetic signal is one of discontent, the result can never be different – although we artificially change the circumstances around us.

I stated just before that no-one has ever found happiness through money per se. However, some rare individuals have found meaning after having money, and this meaning has led to their happiness. A still smaller number have found spiritual peace after having money. But these people are the rare exception – the vast majority of people who pursue money first, either fail to attain it or get ensnared by it.  I mention this only because if I don’t, someone will pull out the rare example of a person who made millions on the stock market, then gave it all up to become a yogi hermit.  Please don’t assume that the very rare exceptions disprove the whole premise.  The only course of action that will infallibly lead to true peace and happiness is the one Jesus gives to us in Matthew 6:33: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all other things shall be yours without the asking.”

I said that artificially changing the circumstances will not make a discontented person happy, and the opposite is true too – a change of circumstances will not make a truly contented person unhappy. There have been truly enlightened souls who have retained their happiness in prison, because happiness comes from within. We need not look for examples of this – we know it to be true, because many people on the highest spiritual paths voluntarily choose to “imprison” themselves in monasteries or even hermitages.  The outward circumstances simply do not matter, and have no correlation to our happiness or unhappiness. So let us begin any analysis of the Law of Attraction with the assumption that its true purpose is not for us to attract wealth and status into our lives in order to create our dream lives and attain happiness.

In fact, I don’t even agree with the term “Law of Attraction” – it implies that we are striving to pull something we do not have into our reality. But the law simply does not work when we strive to attain something. It only works when we are something. It is much easier to understand if it is referred to as the Law of Resonance. What we are will grow and increase, because our energy is resonating with it. What we are not will never come to us. Standing at point A and attempting to attract things from point B will never work – you are resonating with point A, and what you resonate with is what creates your reality.

All of us will pass through a phase of evolution where our goals and our achievements are based primarily on worldly gain – whether it be attainment of power, wealth, fame or all three. Such people do not need to strive to attain anything – by virtue of their present state of evolution, they are already are the kind of people that will succeed in worldly affairs. They are already being successful people. They are already at point B from the moment they’re born, if you like. They do not need to fight deeply against themselves to muster up the motivation to achieve worldly things. By the very fact that they are at point B, they are resonating with worldly achievement, and thus worldly achievement flows naturally to them.

The great mistake that modern Law of Attraction teaching makes is to try and teach people at different stages of evolution how to get to point B. Thus, the young soul which has not evolved beyond money discovers something about the spiritual workings of the universe, buys his first Ferrari, then jumps on YouTube and attempts to teach everyone else how easy it is for them to do the same. But the audience may be at point C or point D already. Attempting to take them back to point B is just going to contravene the Law of Growth and create resistant energy. We’ve all felt the disappointment, the struggle for control of our thoughts and feelings – the painful struggle that ensues when we try to change ourselves into something we’re not. The Law of Attraction teacher will tell you that you’re getting there, and you just need to persist, or try harder, or buy their book to create the right mindset where abundance and success can flourish. But your soul will tell you you’ve been there already. Now is the time for something greater. A bitter truth for our ego, which seems to steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the truth that external circumstances cannot make us permanently happy.

Some will argue that feeling resistance over our attempts to attract money is purely a sign that we need to clear our past traumas and money blocks. Perhaps that is so – but what does the clearing process entail, anyway? Does it entail years of releasing trapped emotions and energetic saboteur patterns? Years of tapping on meridian points to clear old traumas? Years of positive affirmations, and clearing of the negative patterns that sabotage those affirmations? It’s possible to go through all of this healing and more, and come out a great deal the worse for it, because you’re taking on the vibration of someone who is broken and needs fixing.  On the other hand, if everything goes right, the soul is then free to easily attract their millions and discover for themselves how much it will not bring them happiness. Success at last! But it wasn’t quite as easy or as fulfilling as YouTube made it out to be, was it?  Thus, a soul which may have been destined for higher things gets sucked back into the money trap. Instead of clearing its energetic baggage by raising its consciousness through spiritual practices, it gets to a certain stage of spiritual power through artificial means, and doesn’t know the true use for the power.

Even Neville Goddard – historically one of the great Law of Attraction teachers – eventually moved on to a deeper spiritual phase of his career. This chapter of his life has been all but forgotten, since his Law of Attraction lectures and books hold far more mass appeal – but Goddard eventually declared that the Law of Attraction was merely one phase in the process of spiritual development. A spiritual bait and switch, if you like – to turn our minds heavenward and then bring us to something greater, which he called “the promise.”

So what is the true use for the power of spiritual attraction? Let me answer it by quoting a far greater mind than my own. Genevieve Behrand, student of the great New Thought writer Thomas Troward, imagines a conversation between herself and Troward, in her book Attaining Your Desires. She asks him the following question:

“Then one’s efforts should be wholly directed to the attainment of a higher degree of intelligence, rather than to the acquiring of material things?”

Note that intelligence was the word Troward used to indicate a soul’s level of evolution. He answers:

“Such a purpose is the very highest, and aspirations along this line would surely externalise corresponding things. Under no circumstances should you allow yourself to form the habit of idle dreaming. The material side of life should not be despised, for it is the outside of a corresponding inside, and has its place. The thing to guard against is the acquiring of material possessions as your ultimate aim. However, when certain external facts appear in the circle of your life, you should work with them diligently and with common sense. Remember that things are symbols, and that the thing symbolised is more important than the symbol itself. ‘God will provide the food, but He will not cook the dinner.’

Pupil: My part then is to cook the dinner, so to speak; to use the intelligence with which I have been endowed, by making it a power to attract, from out the universe, ideas that will provide for me in any direction that I may choose to go, according to law?

Sage: Yes, if you choose to go with life’s continual, harmonious movement, you will find that the more you use the law of harmony through progressive thinking, the more intimately acquainted you will become with the law of reciprocity. This law corresponds to the same principles which govern physical science; that is, ‘nature obeys you precisely in the same degree as you obey nature.’ This knowledge always leads to liberty.

Pupil: How does nature obey me?

Sage: Nature’s first and greatest law is harmony. You see the results of harmonious law in the beautiful world around you. If you obey nature’s suggestion, and follow the law you will be the recipient of all the benefits contained in this law of harmony that nature has to offer, such as health, strength, contentment, etc., for all of her laws bring freedom and harmony. You will find nature responding along the same lines, to the extent that your thoughts and acts are in accordance with her perfect laws.”

To distil it all down – the true purpose of the Law of Attraction is to bring ourselves into perfect resonance with life itself. To make our every thought, word and deed resonate with life and love.  When we attain this, we experience a deep, lasting happiness and peace that a change in material circumstances can never take away from us. We experience health, love and happiness. We desire nothing, yet seem to have everything; and necessary favours are granted almost before we ask for them. In short, we attain heaven on earth.  Says Sydney Banks: “The Kingdom of Heaven is a state of consciousness.”  Says Christ: “For lo, the kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:21.

I will conclude this series in part four with some final thoughts on how to put this all together through non-striving and surrender.

The Law of Attraction and the absolute necessity of consciousness

Posted on by James Rowse in Blog, Philosophy and Spirituality

This is a continuation of last week’s blog post, One crucial question to ask before using the Law of Attraction, where I argued that many people fail when attempting to use the Law of Attraction because they ask for things that are opposed to their own spiritual evolution. This, I argue, is contrary to the universal Law of Growth, and thus their efforts will be frustrated by the universe. If you have not yet read it, I recommend you begin with that article rather than jumping straight into this part.

Some will object to me subjecting the Law of Attraction to the Law of Growth by saying that this is a return to the old paradigm where our prayers are only answered if approved by the erratic will of some capricious god. However, this concept is vastly different for a number of reasons – the first being that we do not need to grope in the dark to understand the motivations of the Universal Mind; it will only frustrate our desires if they are opposed to our spiritual evolution. Furthermore, the old paradigm turned us into helpless pawns with no recourse against the final judgement of the Great One – whereas we now know that our power is absolutely limitless once we have attained a sufficient level of consciousness.

So the basic New Thought assumption that thoughts and beliefs are the only true limitations is correct, when understood correctly. Christ was not lying when he told us “All things whatsoever you shall ask in prayer believing, you shall receive.” (Matt. 21:22). But note that he said this just after he had performed an incredible miracle by cursing the fig tree and having it immediately wither away. In verse 21, just before the famous verse above quoted, he says: “If you have faith and stagger not, not only this of the fig tree shall you do, but also if you shall say to this mountain, Take up and cast thyself into the sea, it shall be done.”  This gives us some idea of the level of consciousness required to manifest a lottery win or a free Lamborghini. If you can’t imagine yourself throwing mountains into the sea with your mind, then perhaps it is best to give up all other ideas that are presently beyond your reach and focus on the smaller things.

So how come your favourite Law of Attraction teacher drives a Bugatti Veyron? If, as I implied in part one, he hasn’t yet evolved beyond money, then how did he have the consciousness to manifest that?  Firstly, we can’t make assumptions about other people’s level of evolution. I stated earlier that I could not think of any spiritual lessons that could be learnt by lottery wins or luxury cars other than knowing the hollowness of riches and their inability to give us true happiness. I also stated that there may be other lessons that do not immediately come to mind – so we cannot assume that any particular person is still in need of the first lesson. But it is certain that such people do exist – so how do they have the consciousness to manifest expensive luxury items? It’s simple: because it is broken up into smaller chunks, no tremendous level of consciousness is required, because nothing truly improbable has happened at any step of the way.  Motivation for worldly gain lends itself to belief, action follows belief, and results follow action.  In other words, their achievements are primarily the natural consequences of their own actions, rather than the result of some inexplicable coincidences miraculously orchestrated by the universe.

For example, firstly the person believes they can succeed at business school, so they do. Once they’ve graduated with honours, the next obvious assumption is that they will soon be making a six-figure income. This is easy for an already successful person to believe, so it soon comes true. Once the money is coming in, that luxury car really doesn’t look so improbable after all.

Nothing miraculous has taken place, but rather a simple series of causes and effects. There were mental forces and spiritual laws at work all throughout the journey, for sure – but nothing truly improbable happened at any step of the way. In fact, while they claim they manifested a Lamborghini, the majority of the world would see it as simply buying a Lamborghini. Try and get the same people to manifest a lottery win, and see what happens. They simply will not have the consciousness to produce anything so improbable.

Most Law of Attraction teachers are aware of the need for high consciousness, and correctly point to it as being the missing link that causes many attempted manifestations to fail. The trouble is, they then claim to be able to remedy it in the course of a five minute YouTube video. One teacher claims all you need to do is a morning ritual of yoga and meditation, then immediately following you’ll be in such a state of high-vibration that everything you visualise will come true. This may be true for a small monetary windfall or some other trifle, but it will not give the life-changing results such teachers tend to promise.  Another YouTube guru claims that all she has to do to raise her vibration is indulge in a weekly champagne and bubble bath ritual with some of her favourite magazines.

However, the reality doesn’t lend itself to YouTube click bait. Raising your consciousness to the point where you can successfully manifest big, improbable things is the result of much hard work and dedication. Instinctively I want to say that it’s the work of a lifetime, however it does not have to be the long, gruelling process that phrase implies. But there are no shortcuts.

And yes, the person in such an advanced state of consciousness could simply turn on the Lamborghini tap and attract as many of them as he wished – because he would be above the temptations of vanity that souls in lower levels of consciousness are prey to. In other words, he would not be transgressing the Law of Growth by doing so. But a person in such an enlightened state would instinctively see a Lamborghini as a useless distraction, and would almost never want such a thing – unless there were a very specific, unique purpose for it. So now we see that there truly are no limitations other than our level of consciousness – but as we ascend up the scale, our thoughts and desires become so intimately connected with the Universal Mind that whatever vain fancies we now suppose would give us happiness, would cease to entice us at all.

In part 3 I will discuss the higher spiritual uses for the Law of Attraction, and how misuse of the law creates suffering.

Abundance vs. avarice, or why money sometimes really is the root of all evil

Posted on by James Rowse in Blog, Philosophy and Spirituality

How many times have you heard some sparkly-toothed new age guru step off his private helicopter into a packed-out stadium and declare that “money is spiritual”? Or how many times have you heard that age-old nugget of wisdom “money is the root of all evil” trampled and spat on by some new age “gospel of prosperity” hawker?

One of the sacred dogmas of the New Thought movement is that money is a fundamentally positive commodity, which – exactly like health – we should all strive to obtain as much of as we possibly can. It was inevitable that eventually there would be a reaction against the sometimes excessive aestheticism of Christianity and other belief systems – however, by categorically rejecting the idea that there should be any sort of limits on our pursuit of wealth short of outright dishonesty, it appears that our views on money have gone from one extreme to the other.

Firstly, money is not spiritual. Prayer is spiritual. Works of charity are spiritual. Meditation is spiritual. Mindfulness is spiritual. All of these things raise a person’s consciousness and lay the foundations for further spiritual ascension, when they are undertaken with the correct dispositions. Money does neither of these things. Taken purely of itself, it is completely neutral – it can be used for either good or bad. However, money has a strong tendency to inflame desires and distract from the spiritual path.

The spiritual man seeks his happiness by seeking to raise his consciousness, by loving others, meditating on the good, contemplating beauty and finding inner stillness. When deeply cultivated, all of these things lead the soul to a place of unassailable peace and enlightenment where temporal and physical matters are of virtually no concern next to the greater truths of eternity.

Conversely, the man with access to great wealth will almost always follow his weak human nature by seeking the more easily accessible and tangible route of physical pleasure. However, because we are spiritual beings, nothing on Earth short of spiritual ascension can possibly satisfy our deep-seated desires to be reabsorbed into our true spiritual natures. A soul who uses physical pleasure to satisfy what is really a spiritual desire will find the desire insatiable – and as the enjoyment of existing pleasures fade with repetition, a gradual desire for more and greater physical pleasure will result.

Hence, we see the plain truth of the ancient phrase (which is taken from 1 Timothy 6:10), when it is rendered correctly: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” The correct phrase clearly implies that money itself is neutral, but the love of it has the tendency to cause great harm to ourselves and others. Love of money leads to love of luxury, which leads to the supplanting of spiritual desires with physical indulgences.

Just like money, food is also a neutral commodity and is even necessary for life. In fact, food is actually good for us if it’s healthy – but stuff yourself silly with it and even a wholly organic, macrobiotic diet becomes poisonous to the body. Hence, food is necessary and even good; but it must be consumed in accordance with the principles of the natural order. Money is no different in this regard.  Hence loving money is toxic to the spiritual path. On the other hand, loving the spiritual path and having money – well, that’s an entirely different bucket of fish! But it’s a crucial distinction that seems to be missing in the New Thought attitude towards wealth.

Virtually all major religious teaching and most enduring philosophical teaching holds these truths. We are of the stars, but we are temporarily confined to Earth; exiles seeking our way home. Living lives of excessive indulgence or comfort binds us to the Earth plane and inhibits our soul’s ascent into higher levels of spiritual understanding.  Buddha taught that desire equals suffering.  The Tao Te Ching teaches moderation, non-striving and living beyond worldly pleasures.  Christ’s words about riches are well known and perfectly plain, despite being subject to so many deliberate misinterpretations.

“Amen, I say to you, that a rich man shall hardly enter in the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you: it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 19:23-24). See also Mark 10:24-25, Luke 18:24-25.

“Lay not up to yourselves treasures on Earth, where the rust, and moth consume, and where thieves break through, and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through, nor steal. For where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also.” (Matt 6:19-21).

Reading some of the early New Thought tomes like Wallace D. Wattles’ Science of Getting Rich, you get a sense of where this all came from.

“Increase is what all men and all women are seeking; it is the urge of the Formless Intelligence within them, seeking fuller expression. The desire for increase is inherent in all nature; it is the fundamental impulse of the universe. All human activities are based on the desire for increase; people are seeking more food, more clothes, better shelter, more luxury, more beauty, more knowledge, more pleasure – increase in something, more life.

Every living thing is under this necessity for continuous advancement; where increase of life ceases, dissolution and death set in at once. Man instinctively knows this, and hence he is forever seeking more. This law of perpetual increase is set forth by Jesus in the parable of the talents; only those who gain more retain any; from him who hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

The normal desire for increased wealth is not an evil or a reprehensible thing; it is simply the desire for more abundant life; it is aspiration. And because it is the deepest instinct of their natures, all men and women are attracted to him who can give them more of the means of life.”

This is a simplistic, nay an animalistic doctrine that denies the basic knowledge that not all human desires are healthy, and misses the deeper spiritual understanding of the parable of the talents – rendering it as a purely material tale.

The desire for abundance is a natural human inclination, for sure – but so is revenge and lust for power. The canon of great thought holds that no human desire is to be indulged without some degree of tempering – and in fact, some human desires ought to be utterly repudiated. Thus, the desire for food should only be indulged to the point of satiety, not further. The desire for power should only be indulged with the intention of helping others to better their lot. The desire for reproduction should either be confined to marriage or at least not indulged to the point of promiscuity. And the desire for comfort and wealth ought to be indulged only to the point that we don’t become attached to them.

And therein lies the rather sticky key to this all – it’s perfectly spiritual to live in a twelve bedroom mansion, as long as you’d be just as happy living in a rented attic. If you don’t detach yourself first, you’ll find material diversions taking the place of spiritual aspirations. Or worse, if your material possessions are somehow taken away from you, you won’t have the spiritual foundation to accept it with resignation.

Please be assured that this is not a dig at any particular person, nor a mass dig at all wealthy new agers. All the obvious suspects currently being evoked in my readers’ minds may be completely detached from all their vast wealth, for all I know – I have no right to judge otherwise. I am merely pointing out the pitfalls of having wealth without first detaching ourselves from it.

Of course, I’ve been dealing so far with the extremes of this matter. Readers with simpler needs might currently be thinking: “What about me? Is it too much to ask that I earn a bit extra to cover my car loan and not be struggling to put food on the table?”

Of course it isn’t. Such readers may simply wish to consider whether they’re going about it in the most spiritual way. Christ tackles this question directly in the sermon on the mount, where he says:

“Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on.  Is not the life more than the meat: and the body more than the garments?  Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly father feeds them.  Are you not of much more value than they?”  “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.”  (Matt 6:25-26  and 33).

In other words, by making our spiritual development our number one priority, we learn to trust in the providence of the universe. The money may come as an unexpected windfall or promotion, or it may come as the result of some inspiration to undertake a particular business transaction or start our own company. By seeking spiritual things first, we allow the universe to take the reins with full faith and trust that all our needs will be supplied in one way or another.

The soul that is always seeking new ways to make money at the expense of spiritual development – and who is always hoarding it when he does make it – is actually demonstrating the true meaning of the scarcity mindset. This soul is essentially saying “the universe has limited supply, so I need to grab as much as I can and stockpile it before it runs out – make hay while the sun shines!”

Paradoxically, people in this mindset may eventually find themselves in complete financial ruin – thus explaining the odd but common situation of millionaires who go bankrupt. On the other hand, those who truly resign themselves to the providence of the universe often find themselves at the thoroughly comfortable end of moderate living. In this situation, all basic needs are met and many additional “wants” are supplied but spiritual progress is not weighed down by the attachment to luxury and indulgence.

The truly spiritual soul is at peace, and knows that the universe will always supply for his needs. He does not need to chase money because he knows there is no lack of supply – whenever the money is needed, it will come. He freely gives, because he knows the universe will repay him many times over for his charity.

This, my friends, is the true abundance mindset.