What if we talk about the Law of Attention versus the Law of Attraction. This is maybe a subtle shift. It feels really profound to me though. So first of all, what am I talking about?
The first time I heard about Law of Attention, it was explained to me like this: The Law of Attraction is “I’m an energetic being. I’m vibrating a certain way and so I’m going to attract things that are vibrating similarly to me.” That’s the law of attraction. That makes sense.
The Law of Attention is, if there are 360 degrees of things to pay attention to, and I can’t pay attention to all of them at once, I’m going to focus and filter for certain things. Those are the things I’m paying attention to. Those are the things that are going to be in my field of perception, the things that I (appear to be) manifesting. And this is the Law of Attention.
Resistance. Resistance is one of those things we all have, whether we like it or not.
It doesn’t feel great, and gets in the way of doing things in life, so we vilify it. The general idea is that we need to get rid of it, and if we don’t we’re doomed to have it forever, because ‘resistance persists.’
But why is resistance here in the first place? Maybe I’m resisting walking up stairs, because I’m afraid of falling down. We might feel like it’s stupid thing to resist this, but here’s the thing: your resistance protecting you.
This may seem a little crazy, so let’s think about this for a second. Why would we resist walking upstairs? Why is this fear here at all?
Maybe when I was a little kid, I was walking upstairs and I fell down and I had a really big, very scary fall. Ever after I resist walking upstairs. Why? Because I’m protecting myself from that dangerous situation. I know from personal experience, from a banged up body, even broken bones, that walking upstairs is not safe, so, now I have this layer of resistance to walking upstairs.
Here’s the key take-away: your resistance isn’t some stupid or random thing you do. It’s actually part of a trauma, and it’s here to protect you. Your resistance is keeping you safe from what you know has been a dangerous situation.
Resistance isn’t random. It’s part of the package. We can think of resistance like the outer layer of an onion, the outer layer of trauma.
If you want to get rid of your resistance, you need to treat it like healing trauma. First of all, you need to feel really safe. You need to feel safer than you felt when you created it, when you fell.
What do I mean by that? I mean, you’re going to continue to protect yourself from danger, you’re going to keep resisting danger, until you feel safe from that danger.
After all, you weren’t feeling safe when it happened originally, so do you feel safe enough now?
How to achieve the level of safety needed to heal resistance?
Your feeling of safety needs to feel bigger, stronger than your feeling of resistance. I like to think of safety like a container… my safety container needs to be bigger than the resistance. I want my safety to feel big enough that the resistance can rest inside of it, like my safety can hold the resistance in it’s arms. The safety becomes a nest for the resistance to rest in.
Being in a safe space physically, mentally and emotionally is key. Being by yourself out in nature or in your bedroom may feel safe enough if the original trauma was fairly small. If not, being with a trusted friend or healer who can hold space can be really helpful. You can create a safer container together, a more secure nest to rest in. This is why really scary traumas benefit from working with someone else – of course, whom you trust.
How to heal the resistance?
Healing the resistance is just like healing the layers underneath…
First create a physical and mentally-emotionally safe space. Your safety nest. Then, invite the resistance to be here. When I’m working alone, I like to simply imagine whatever I’m resistant to, like walking up stairs. Start feeling the resistance, feeling the fear of walking up stairs. As you start feeling the fear of walking up stairs your system will check, “Am I safe enough to feel into this now?” If not, you won’t get very far, and it’s best to stop here. Trust your self. If you’re not ready, this won’t help. If yes, the feeling of fear will break out of it’s shell and intensify. It will spread it’s wings and let you feel just how big it is. Keep containing it, staying bigger than the fear, and eventually, the fear will dissipate. If you stay even longer, other layers of the onion, the underlying layers of trauma will surface, and you can lean into those as well using the same steps.
It’s worth repeating that I do this a lot for myself, and if at any point I don’t feel safe enough, if the fear feels bigger than me and my safety nest, I stop immediately. I resource myself, calm down if necessary, and go find a friend or healer to help.
The key takeaway here is that resistance actually here to help you. It’s protecting you from something.
If you treat it like it’s not important, like it’s silly and it should just go away, you’re going to have a really hard time healing it. Resistance needs your love and care just as much as your trauma, and if you want it to go away then create safety. Get bigger than your resistance. Create a beautiful container so that your resistance can break out of it’s shell, spread it’s wings, share it’s wisdom and fly away away from the nest.
Your resistance is not your enemy. It’s your wisdom cloaked in feathers of protective fear. Honor it, and it will honor you.
Ah, those inner voices that bully us into submission… like the inner critic that says, “You’re stupid for being worried! There’s nothing to worry about!” Those voices are really challenging to deal with and I feel like sometimes we don’t realize that they are actually part of the package that needs healing… Yes, the parts of us that are worried unnecessarily need healing, but so does the critic! And that can be tricky to realize when the critic sounds so reasonable…
Boundaries… being able to say No and Yes at the right times. Someone recently brought up the idea of the Sacred Yes and the Sacred No as a way of relating to setting boundaries. This is a beautiful concept!
Have you ever experienced an internal transformation so big, so dramatic that you didn’t know what you were changing into? You’re doing your self-development work and suddenly the future just looked blank? You had no idea what was going to happen?
That’s really scary because of course. We want to know what’s on the other side of change. We want to know if there are lions and tigers over there! We want to know what we’re going to need in order to feel safe and comfortable on the other side!
If we can’t see what’s going to happen, if the future looks blank, it’s really hard to quiet down those frightened voices in our head.
Recently, many people have mentioned to me their desire to forgive someone. I love this desire to lean-in and clear pain from our lives. This is a great way to evolve as a species. So, here is a practice I find hugely powerful for doing just that.
How often have younot saidanythingwhen you’re upset? Holding it in, doing your best to keep the peace? And then those times when you do say something, the other person gets upset in response!
Ouch! Now you’re uncomfortable and they’re uncomfortable, too. Argh!
This means that not only do we need to get better at expressing our own emotions, but we also have to get better at handling those of others. As if the first was not hard enough!
Identify as introverted? What if you’re not introverted, you’ve just outgrown the social malaise: societies general state of poor emotional health and lack of development?
Sure, some of us are truly introverts, we really do prefer to be by ourselves, but I would argue that if we really are a social species, essentially herd animals that are wired to need each other then introversion will be very rare… and it isn’t. I know quite a few introverts. In fact, most of my friends identify on the introvert end of the social scale, no matter what age.
Maybe humans not actually as socially inclined as we like to think, or maybe our society is so sick that it’s just not comfortable to be in.
We’re moving this weekend, and, as usual, I’ve taken the opportunity to manifest an even more beautiful home. Yay!
Somehow, magically, this always works.
I’ve moved a lot, and I know that if I’m patient, stay in the orbit of grateful and allow myself to expand, I will find an even more amazing home than the one before.
By now, I mostly trust the process, but it can be hard to orbit grateful and allow expansion – because life always throws spanners in the works.
Sometimes big ones. The question seems to be, how big do I want to get?
