Approximate reading time: 20 min
So, I have been thinking a lot about The Law of Attraction these last couple of weeks and trying to formulate what I really think about it.
On Sunday while doing my online yoga, this ‘unwritten post’ was swimming relentlessly around in my head.
(I do realise I am supposed to be all ZEN-like and simply focus on my breathing-
but alas I have yet to achieve that.)
I finished yoga and went to search through my posts to see what I had already written about the law of attraction ……and low and behold …
What DID I find?
A whole unfinished, unpublished post that I wrote in August 2023, that was pretty much word for word what I have been mulling over these last couple of weeks.
I am currently on school holiday for 5 weeks.
I know, I know…I’m always on holiday 😉
(Don’t get too jealous please I will still need to find about £1000 worth of work during the holidays to break even at the end of this month.)
So my manifesting powers are on FULL steam at the moment:-)
That’s £200 a week!
Watch this space!
I can do it! 😉
I must admit I don’t really stress about money
(That much)
these days. I have spent a good ten years working on my relationship with money. I haven’t quite got myself to the “Money flows to me in abundance‘ status….” but I have got myself to a place where I feel reasonably well covered in most circumstances, which is good enough for me. Frankly, I feel like I spent way too much of my early life worrying about my financial situation and I am immensely grateful that I don’t still live in that head space.
Just to give you an example….
A few weeks ago I got a £900 bill in the post that I had not been expecting.
I barely even flinched.
I phoned the company.
I set up a payment plan and then I got on with my life.
I would not have been able to be so calm and relaxed about that a couple of years ago.
These days I feel like I have a little voice chanting continually in my head
“Money comes, money goes”
which affords me way more confidence in my own ‘bounce-back’ ability.
I know I make a lot of jokes about my manifestation powers 😉
I am beginning to wonder if my quiet ‘mocking‘ isn’t a rather passive-aggressive way of venting out my inner frustrations on this matter.
(We shall see if the mocking stops once the truth has been revealed!)
About 10 years ago I was an AVID fan of The Law of Attraction and
(…..much to the amusement of my family)
In 2008 when I was the ripe ‘old’ single age of 33 I read ‘The Secret’
(The quintessential LAW of ATTRACTION bible!)
I informed my Aunt, very confidently, that I was going to be married by 2010!
(It was in the bag)
My man was coming!
For Christmas that year my aunt gave me a snow globe with ….
GAYLE WILL BE MARRIED BY 2010
written underneath it.
It was meant to be a joke….
but DAM I loved that snow globe.
Every night before I went to sleep, I would shake it vigorously while I reminded myself of my upcoming nuptials.
2010 was the YEAR!!!
One night while enthusiastically performing my ‘manifestation ritual‘
my precious snow globe slipped out of my hand, went flying across the room, hit the wall and smashed into a thousand tiny, itsy-bitsy, little pieces.
(It was a tragic day I tell you)
2010 came and rather than finding that man who was going to love, support and cherish me, I lost the only man who had ever loved, supported and cherished me, my wonderful father.
In 2012, a new close friend introduced me to Abraham Hicks who is undoubtedly one of the most influential teachers of the Law of Attraction. For those of you who don’t know anything about Abraham Hicks I will give you a brief introduction:
(copied and pasted from Wikepedia)
Esther Hicks is an American inspirational speaker, channeler, and author. Hicks claims she channels a collective consciousness she calls “Abraham”. She has co-written nine books with her husband Jerry Hicks, presented numerous workshops on the law of attraction with Abraham-Hicks Publications and appeared in the original version of the 2006 film The Secret.
(I know, I know…it all sounds a little bit woowooo!!!)
As someone who had been brought up as a Christian listening to this was possibly the WORST thing I could EVER do. I even lost my oldest, friend who I had met when I was 6 years old, as a result of this. She was convinced I was being deceived by the devil and she told me in no uncertain terms I needed to stop.
Needless to say…I did not.
(It was the beginning of me being so very tired of listening to other people tell me what I needed to do with my life.)
I absolutely loved listening to Abraham.
Every morning while I was getting dressed I would listen to them on utube.
Anytime I had an issue or a problem, I couldn’t see my way around, I’d go online to see what their take would be.
They were funny, they felt non-judgemental, they encouraged me to love myself and to realise that I had the power to change my life. For the first time EVER I felt encouraged to embrace MY own spiritual beliefs and they were the final stepping stone in helping me to let go of that dreaded fear of hell I had carried around my whole life.
I embraced their teachings wholeheartedly and I still attribute a lot of my growth in certain areas of my life to what I learnt from them.
In many ways, I think they became the loving supportive internal mother that I so desperately needed and they imbued me with this intoxicating feeling of hope that
(Those words, so vividly, infused into so many of my earlier blog posts.)
I took on board everything that they taught about finding ‘your person.’
That went something like this:
- When you feel better about yourself and your life, then your vibration changes.
- When your vibration changes then your point of attraction changes.
- When your point of attraction changes then you are more likely to attract the person that is right for you.
I mean hell… it’s all pretty dam good advice and I completely drank the entire bottle of The Law of Attraction Coolaid.
I realised that I was the only person standing in the way of me finding my life’s partner and I was going to do EVERYTHING to change that!
I had Abraham Hicks quotes ringing in my ears for, roughly, about 8 years.
Got it!
Gonna do it!!
This shit was gonna happen!!!
I stayed a loyal follower.
I dated 5 men during those years, 4 of them were lovely the last one was a toxic maniac who opened my eyes so VERY clearly to narcissism.
I eventually decided to leave South Africa and return to London.
(My man, very clearly, wasn’t in South Africa!;-)
I have to admit 2019 was a considerably awesome year …I felt my time was near….I had done my grieving for my parents and Anna’s death
(Ummm no – not even close)
and life was pretty dam fucking amazing!
I was going to meetups every single weekend…..I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking, I was happy, I was content….I was living the single girl’s dream life:-)
No, I hadn’t met my man….
but I had kept the faith!!!
2020 Here I come!!!
The only way was UP!
RANDOM INFO:
You know how you often hear people say stuff like …..
“Ahhh you know, I wrote a letter to my future husband”
and the next week I met him!
I was going to do one better than that!
In December 2019 I started writing my future husband his very own journal.
Yes, you heard me right….the oh-so-exciting ins and outs of Gayle’s daily life….filled with photos of me from when I was still young and reasonably hot.
(At the rate he was going I was worried he would miss it ALL!!!!)
I managed to keep it up for an entire year.
It wasn’t a depressing journal mind you…..
(Good Lordy, Nooooooo)
(With huge gaps in between because frankly, 2020 ended up being a pretty fucking awful year for most of the world)
But NO…..ONLY the good positive parts were allowed in THAT journal…..
that was my very special ‘husband manifestation journal!’
I had planned on presenting it to my husband as a wedding gift.
P.S If my future husband ever reads this…..
I am deeply sorry that I ruined the surprise but in my defence…
You took waaaaay too long….
plus I pretty much suck at keeping secrets!
(PPS Look on the bright side, at least now you can put in a request for a set of golf clubs instead-
They will be a lot less cringe-worthy)
So I spent a whole year working on my manifestation powers.
Focusing on the positives, working on myself, trying desperately to love myself
(even though I had NOOOOOOO idea what that really meant)
Nada.
Nothing
Zilch
Still single
So yes, after spending 16-plus years of trying to manifest a husband and a child…..
My faith in the power of manifestation has dwindled somewhat.
I’m not exactly sure when my love affair with Abraham Hicks ended…but it was a gradual process culminating with a couple of incidents. The most notable one that stands out in my mind was a recording I listened to of Abraham talking to a woman in her late 30’s/40’s who was single.
This articulate, warm and friendly woman came onto the stage and spoke about how she had applied so many of Abraham’s principles and how she had seen such a huge turnaround in her life. She reported that she had finally got her dream job, she felt like her friendships were improving and, on the whole, she felt happier and calmer than she had ever felt in years. She couldn’t stress enough just how grateful she was for all she had learnt from Abraham.
BUT
of course, there was one aspect of her life she said she just couldn’t seem to ‘get right’…..and that was
finding a life partner.
She had been single for some INSANE amount of time, I think something like 8 years.
(Says she, who will have been single for 7 years in February)
She stressed how she had spent so much time working on herself and her thoughts
….but she was still single ……
why wasnt it working?
I KNOW right!!!!!
WTF is up with THAT ABRAHAM?
What hit me about this woman, was that this wasn’t some 20-year-old Twinkie moaning about being single and desperately needing to hook into someone to feel complete. This was a mature woman who had clearly done a lot of work on herself. She had taken the time out of dating to heal and get to know herself. She had built up a successful life and essentially she had done her homework.
She was a woman staring, hopelessly into her ‘vibrational vortex‘ as she watched the door to her fertility slowly eaking closed.
Abraham gave her the usual talk that all people, who are single and ask this question, seem to get while making everyone in the room laugh.
(Isn’t it funny how you humans always get so stuck on wanting to find love!)
“You have to prepare yourself vibrationally for what you really want.
You need to accept that your ideal relationship has already been carved out for you.
It’s already in your vibrational vortex all you need to do is allow the space for what’s already there, (waiting for you)…to flow to you.
Find your joy in the ‘wanting of it’ and don’t allow your doubt to take you downstream….”
It honestly feels like this poor woman’s words back to Abraham will
forever
be etched into my soul.
She very quietly said:
“That’s what you said to me 5 years ago”
I felt absolutely and utterly heartbroken for her.
I felt her pain.
I felt her internal shame.
She was me!
The question swimming around our heads was exactly the same:
In a world full of people that somehow manage to find love….
I don’t know, something snapped in me that day.
I just didn’t want to drink the cool-aid ANYMORE.
What used to feel like non-judgement suddenly felt a lot like judgement….
When you’re able to banish all that doubt….
When you’re able to reign in all that negative emotion.…
When you’re able to raise your vibration and get out of your own way….
Then and only then
will you be rewarded with the love that you have always desired.
It just all seemed too…..um… simplistic to me.
I had sooooo many unanswered questions that just couldn’t be swept away under the
‘Vibration Rug‘ away anymore…
Surely there HAD to be more to why I was STILL struggling to love myself?
Surely there HAD to be a reason,
I was so anxious in relationships.
Why wasn’t there ANY room in this theory for basic timing?
Maybe my person wasn’t quite ready for me yet?
Honestly, I felt utterly
EXHAUSTED
of trying to manifest my life into being,
of trying to have a positive vibration
of trying, trying, trying….to get it right.
As my anxiety started to increase,
this all-consuming anger and bitterness was rising up in me…
until one day I heard a little inner voice say:
“Why don’t you write a poem?”
And so I did.
My over-emotional, exasperated, sometimes enraged poems.
My
‘Soooo-way-out-of-the-positive-vortex‘
poems.
I wanted to be authentic – angry emotions and all.
I wanted to be kind to myself.
I wanted to let go of this rose-coloured view of the world and get real.
I wanted to stop kidding myself that life made sense and that good things come to good people.
I wanted to drop the ridiculous belief that everything ALWAYS works out for me…..
because quite frankly it doesn’t!
Nope, life is chaos.
Bad things happen to good people every day!
Life can be hard, and emotional and shit goes wrong no matter who you are!
(All we can do is train ourselves at ‘handling’ it better.)
Nope. Isn’t that just a little bit delusional and grandiose?
I mean think about it.
One of the reasons that the ‘terrible twos’ can be such a difficult age is because that is the age that toddlers start to learn that the world doesn’t revolve around them. They are essentially learning that
‘No, you can’t always have what you want.”
And they don’t like it….so many of them will throw tantrums.
Healthy, secure parents realise this about their little minions, they are able to stay calm and ride the tantrum out without getting angry with the child or simply giving in to them.
That child then grows up to be a healthy well-adapted human being who has reasonable expectations of what the world owes him or her.
(NOTHING – The world owes us NOTHING!)
Part of being an adult is learning to accept you can’t always have everything you want.
Why weren’t people being encouraged to look at their childhoods, where was the much-needed understanding and compassion about our attachment strategies and how these strategies played such a vital role in keeping us emotionally safe?
(Which very often means keeping so many of us single.)
It started to frustrate me how Abraham continually shut people down from talking, encouraging them to “step out of their own stories”
“To let go of the narrative that they had created for their own lives.”
Why?
We are all beautiful, intelligent creative beings creating our own life stories.
Our stories are interfused with our pain, our disappointment, our happiness our joy….
our stories are made up of those life experiences that can teach us and help us grow into the unique and amazingly complicated human beings that we all are.
EVERYTHING helps us grow.
Even the so-called ‘bad’ shit….so why are we trying so hard to continually avoid it?
My true healing began when I started to finally embrace and share my own story.
It has been a very interesting process writing this post these last two weeks. I’ll admit it feels almost sacrilegious to critique something so harshly that has, in many ways, helped me so much. It’s hard to get my head around how something that used to give me so much joy and happiness, now causes so much discomfort. I have been listening to Abraham Hicks videos to get quotes and I have found it to be incredibly difficult and upsetting at times. I often feel my chest closing up….as I hear people being encouraged, over and over again to ignore their current reality and just focus on the positive. It angers me how they describe people who don’t get Abraham’s teachings as “baby souls”….as if people who listen to them are part of some exclusive club that so many people will just never understand. It shames me that I used to feel so intoxicated by their words, that I used to love being part of ‘that club’. All I am left thinking now is how do those words create compassion, love and understanding for people on different life journeys.
Doesn’t that just create more division, in a world that is already so divided?
It’s been hard processing all these conflicting emotions….
(How do I not throw the baby out with the bathwater?)
On the one hand, I can embrace the good that has come from these ‘Law of Attraction teachings.‘ I can be grateful for all that I have learnt and how it has helped me to stay focused on my dreams. I do wholeheartedly believe that our thoughts are powerful as they directly influence the way we act.
There is such simplicity and truth in the statement:
When you smile the world smiles with you.
On the other hand, I can also see first-hand the hurt, frustration and confusion that following this belief system for so long has brought up in me.
I definitely don’t believe our thoughts have some ‘magical vibrational power‘ that attracts good or bad things into our lives.
I can see the danger of trying to shut our ‘negative’ thoughts down and giving them too much responsibility in life.
They are just thoughts
I have so much more to say on this topic…I feel like the last couple of months I have slowly been trying to untangle this belief system from my mind…..but that’s another post, for another day.
So to end off, finally,
this is where I find myself now….
I might not have met or manifested my husband in 2010….
but I started this blog which essentially kickstarted this journey of discovering myself….
I might not have had the experience of loving my own child…..
but I have certainly had enough time to learn how to love and be compassionate with all my own inner child/children.
Umm…I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
(I have no idea…..)
but I love the path that I am on.
I love being more open and accepting that
SHIT happens.
Life is messy.
AND I love writing about it ALL!
The best part, for me, is how this journey has ultimately lead me to learning about The Attachment theory….
Next year I will be doing my master’s dissertation on
“The role attachment plays in keeping women single.”
It’s kind of exciting knowing that there is still so much more to explore.
