If you’re reading this, you might be familiar with the work of Abraham Hicks or, “The Secret.” You may already believe it’s possible to manifest the life of your dreams using your thoughts and emotions. In fact, if you’ve read about the law of attraction before you might have seen some immediate results. You may have thought, “Finally, I’ve found the golden ticket to all those great things I desire,” and, “Well it’s smooth sailing from here!” Why not? Great things can just appear in your reality. Yet, when you inevitably manifest confusion or challenging circumstances, you either give up or persevere.

Click here to read more about the Law of Attraction Instruction Manual.

I’m just about to go to Costa Rica, a long time dream of mine and I have a mixed bag of feelings and vibrations about it. On the one hand I’m vibrant and excited and anticipating of the wonderful time I will have, and on the other I’m in a sort of pensive mood. Which has me asking, why does one go on vacation? What does vacation even mean in a law of attraction world?

I’ve written about this before in the concept of escape vs. a calling, but I’d like to hit it in a wholly different way. I’d like to think about how the public at large and how I personally think of vacationing.

Western society defines a vacation as literally a break from the norm to relax and indulge in pleasurable leisure activities. It’s both a solid thing, like a two week trip to Costa Rica, and an emotional thing, like a vacation from the idea or construct of your life.

It’s like an escape with a mutually agreed upon begin and end date with an assumption that once you return, everything will go back to normal. But this falls apart if you believe that you don’t really want anything to go back to normal.

For me, a vacation is more like a vacation into my future reality. I don’t think of it as this separate thing, but merely a part of my life that will happen more and more in the future, but for now it exists in this bubble. I think of it more like a preview of things to come, rather than a tangent from the normal. It’s more like a focused time of vibrational tone setting in order to manifest a more desires normalcy. It’s not separate from my normal life. In fact, like how the fringe of a subject often times replaces the mainstream (called a dialectical relationship), I think of the vacations of my life slowly but surely replacing the mainstream of my life.

This isn’t to say that I assume that my life will always resemble the form of a vacation (hanging out on the beach on doing cool excursions), more that my life will increasingly resemble the emotional content of a vacation. So a vacation then is placeholder for desired emotions that are contingent on that circumstance taking place. Put this way a vacation isn’t a fantastic concept at all (since it holds those emotions in a specific condition), but it may be the only starting place for my western trained mind. If you aren’t willing to accept that you deserve this kind of reality in a consistent way (and must settle for this emotional reality once or twice a year) then a vacation might be the best you can do at your current vibrational altitiude.

Taking it home with you

If the purpose of a vacation is to live in an idealized way for a short amount of time, then carrying out that purpose must be the act of practicing the wonderful emotional experience of being on vacation unconditionally. A vacation is the embodiment of the vortex inside of a life full of contrast. Therefore, in order to transcend that construct, the power must be taken away from the vacation entirely. Rather than make your vacation not stand out (the way it should), this will give you the power to create those feelings at home in your normal routine. As long as you can only experience your wildness on vacation, you will have to settle for your boring self at home. Screw that.

We live in a world that worships the weekend, because that’s when we can unleash from the shackles of our day to day job and just really let loose. If that means dancing or adventuring, or just taking in a good book, it means that you get to indulge in the things you want anyway. But, need I remind you that, these are the things and experiences that life is about.

So what is the point of a vacation? Currently, it’s a starting point for vibrational expansion. It signifies discovery, exhilaration, novelty, variety, warmth, comfort, relaxation, and so much more. At best, a vacation is a time where you declare that you remember who you are and why you are here, and allow yourself to have new delightful, surprising, and intensely satisfying experiences. At worst, it becomes a beautiful prison for those experiences.

What is this vacation for me? It’s a culmination of many things. It will be my 30th birthday, and it will contain experiences such as scuba diving that I’ve always wanted to have. It will also contain sensory pleasures such as warm water that soothe and envelope me deep into my soul. But with those signifiers carries an even deeper meaning. This vacation is commitment to free my mind from vacations. It’s a commitment to the idea that life itself is one long complex, gorgeous, and moving vacation.

I know too much now. I know that life was meant to be this way. That a vacation is simply the manifestation of this point in my life – an oasis amongst the slowly changing contrast. An oasis signifying a rising continent. That life will increasingly feel like it’s own vacation. The work of the law of attraction is remembering this, and seeing that rise for the glorious unfolding that it is.

What’s one thing that you would do more of if you were on vacation? How could you do just a little bit of that now?

Money tends to be something that’s very polarizing, energy wise. What I mean by this is that if you have money, you have lots of it. If you don’t, you barely struggle to get it. And if you are in neither of these positions, you tend to be caught right in the middle , having just barely enough to get by and maybe have one little thing for yourself here or there. Moreover, money is something you deal with every day or multiple times a day, so it’s something that you likely have some pretty entrenched beliefs about, no matter what they are. Remember, beliefs are just thoughts you keep thinking.

So then Abraham comes along and says something like this:

“And then the idea of a Universe of never-ending abundance some-how came to me—another simple thought that I adopted, and adapted, that changed my life, and the lives of those who may have been influenced by my example, in a very dramatic way. My new premise was: “When I buy a series of luxury vehicles, I am creating jobs and redistributing money in a luxurious way. In other words, when I purchase an expensive vehicle, I create work for—and re-distribute dollars to—thousands of persons who made the vehicle possible.”

Yeah, I have trouble coming to terms with all the luxury vehicles I buy as well. I’m using very pointed sarcasm here to , um, make a point: My point of attraction around money is currently about halfway to really believing this. This is because buying a luxury vehicle is not yet the next logical step in my physical reality.

However, there is something that is coming up that perfectly mirrors this. I’m about to go on a trip to Costa Rica. I’m going to celebrate my 30th birthday with the longest vacation I’ve ever taken, and I’m terrified. Why? Because, a certain amount of luxury is out of my comfort zone. The first sentence in the last paragraph was an expression of my discomfort over the idea of owning a luxury car.

When you think of stepping outside your comfort zone, you usually think of doing something risky, like bungee jumping or public speaking. Yet, a luxurious experience like going on a cruise to the Virgin Islands, owning a Tesla, or receiving an Evian Bath (a bath of 1,000 bottles of French mineral water – yes this really exists) can actually make you uncomfortable. Put differently, something which has a sole purpose to make you more comfortable can actually make you uncomfortable.

Weird huh?

So we go back to this concept of never ending abundance. If you believe that abundance is infinite, then you also have to believe that any amount of abundance is something that you are perfectly comfortable with. If you don’t, then you are actually blocking the flow of abundance to you. Sounds scary, doesn’t it?

If this resonates with you, what exactly is uncomfortable about that luxury experience that you really want to have? You might say things like, “I can’t afford it,” “I don’t deserve it,” or, “No one should have that kind of luxury.” These are all reasonable things to say, but they won’t get you any closer to that experience that you want. You probably already know this, but it doesn’t change the fact of your gut emotional reaction. The thing is, that gut emotional reaction is the signifier that there is discord between what you’re vibrating and what you want. Those kinds of thoughts are just manifestations of the feeling of your lack of alignment.

So how do you get comfortable with the idea of having luxury? How do you get aligned with it?

Refer back to the quote above. Esther found a huge piece for herself when she realized that she was benefiting others by buying a luxury car. Not only was she allowing more abundance into her life, she was raising the potential for abundance to flow into other people’s lives. Here though is where reading this can be misinterpreted. This is what worked for Esther, and this brings light to the huge difference between reading a book and listening to a hundred different applications of processes based on a person’s unique set of challenges.

Understanding your unique relationship to luxury

The thought that, “People benefit from me allowing my abundance,” is a great one, but it’s not necessarily the one for you right now. You may be practicing any number of chronic abundance- quelling thoughts like, “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” “To make more money I need to put in more work that I don’t want to do,” or even, “Making money isn’t spiritual.”

Rather than focusing on those though, I’d like to give you something to start thinking about your relationship to wealth and opulence in a more positive way.

The universe is infinite and there is infinite abundance for each one of us. If you can get comfortable enough to dip your toe in that belief, then what follows is: You have the ability to be, do, or have whatever you want. You may already feel uncomfortable with the idea of having so much power, but bear with me.

Have you ever felt uncomfortable with something and then gained comfort in it? Did you feel like a master the first time you drove a car, or learned how to cook something new? When you understand that the luxury that seems to only exist for the few is simply another version of this process, you take away the seemingly infinite power that wealth has over your mind.

Lets start simple.

What is one thing that feels luxurious in your life that is reachable? Do you like to eat dark chocolate? Do you like to sit out in the sun in nature? Do you like to get massages? How about a dip in a hot tub?

Pick something in your life that won’t hurt your finances and is something you can do in the near future. Ideally, something repeatable. If you like to visualize, then visualize yourself doing this thing during your normal visualization time and picture yourself really enjoying it. Feel the warmth and the comfort and the security of that thing you like to do. When you choose to actually do it, feel how wonderful it feels to be opulent in that moment. To really get comfortable taking care of yourself in this way, make it a weekly, or even daily, thing. You are worth it, and by doing this, you will feel that feeling deep inside your core more and more.

Me? I’m going to Costa Rica (Rich Coast?) and will be practicing these feelings as often as I can before, during, and after. Hopefully I can get less terrified. See, I just moved my vibration up in relationship to it a little bit.

What if you really can’t afford it?

I understand and I know how frustrating it is to read something like this if you just don’t have the scratch. So here’s an alternate exercise. Next time you buy something that’s a “guilty pleasure”, reframe it in your mind like a luxury. I just went to a fast food restaurant the other day, something I don’t do too often, but I love the taste of their fries. This fast food restaurant also now carries Cinnabon, my absolute most favorite dessert. So I got a 4 piece of that.

For you it could be anything. Do you like buying lotto tickets, dark chocolate with sea salt, or that magazine that’s trashy but you really love? First of all, these things aren’t guilty, they are luxurious. Think of them that way. If you need a prompt, think, “I’m buying this because it’s a luxury I can afford in my life.” This will get you in the habit of recognizing where luxury already exists in your life. And it doesn’t have to be an object-based understanding. One of the great luxuries you have is time.

But, if you’re the kind of straight-laced, non-candy-eating, psycho who never has fun in life, I don’t know what to say to you.

What is one luxurious thing you do now? What about one you want to do?

The brain is a powerful tool, but we sometimes give it too much credit in the creation of our reality. Consider this quote:

“In this relationships book, Abraham* focuses the light of their Broader Perspective to reveal a wide array of flawed premises (which most of us are living by) relative to our varied relationships. And as you come upon those false-premise segments (“false,” relative to the natural Laws of the Universe), if you will superimpose Abraham’s perspective over your personal life experience (known only by you), and if you see room for improvement in your life, you will have the opportunity to shift your life—from as good as it is, right now, to whatever you perceive as a better-feeling experience.”

Flawed premises are really really important to understand, because your mind is somewhat of a closed system. I’ll get to the “somewhat” in a second.

Firstly, your brain is what’s interpreting the information around you, so if you are operating on a flawed premise, then you won’t be able to succeed at getting what you want. More importantly, you won’t be able to fix the thing that is causing you to not get what you want, because you won’t know it even exists.

There are so many examples of flawed premises. They generally translate to false beliefs and, to explain this in the law of attraction sense, this means that they have a lot of momentum. If you know that belief is just a thought that you keep thinking, then by the time a thought becomes a belief, it has a lot of momentum behind it (i.e. you have thought it a lot in your life.) If something has momentum you can’t immediately stop it. So, even if you do have the clarity to recognize a false belief, like “Money takes my hard work to create,” you won’t be able to just up and change your belief. This is because, to use an Abraham metaphor, you can’t immediately reverse the direction of a train travelling 100mph west so that it’s a train travelling 100mph east. Instead of reversing the direction, trying to force it the other way will only give it more power. Yes, you will inadvertently cause the train to travel faster. Not only that, but you will also inadvertenly give more power to other false premises like, “I can’t create my reality,” and, “I’m no good at this.”

Whew, this is a lot of doom and gloom. So now I get the part where your brain is “somewhat” a closed system. The thing that actually made Abraham the least accessible to me was the mythology behind it. The whole, “You are an extension of source energy who has come into this physical body to experience contrast,” business. But now I realize, at the risk of sounding like a zealot, that at least trying out believing this is really important.

Why?

I’m going to put my logic hat on. If it’s true that your physical body is an extension of source energy and well being is your natural state, then your beliefs are not a closed system. In fact, you are the only one who gives power to our beliefs, and that’s by practicing them. So that means you have the power, not your beliefs. Sure, the more you practice something the more that thing becomes second nature, but in every moment you have the power to think just a little bit differently. Not radically different, not different in the Apple corporate slogan sense, but differently enough that you can slow down that train.

If well being is your natural state, then well being is always slowing down the train. Well being is as all pervasive as gravity. Your beliefs do not have as much power as you think they do. Have you ever seen a movie you hated and then later saw it again and loved it? You experienced thinking something different. Have you ever eaten a food that tasted great and then later you didn’t like it? Did you ever realize that you could take a better route to work? You experienced thinking differently about something.

This doesn’t mean that different is better, but if you have the awareness to know that you are practicing a belief that you don’t want, then why not try a different tweak on the belief? Your emotional guidance system will let you know if you like it or not.

In the above quote Esther says, “If you will superimpose Abraham’s perspective over your life experience,” then you will have the opportunity to shift these false premises. Note that she doesn’t say “change”. Superimposing that perspective is what causes the train to slow down.

How do you do that? Think generally.

The more general you think about something, the slower the momentum becomes. Abraham’s perspective is more general, more flowing, and unconditionally loving. Move towards (not shift into) thoughts like that, even if they feel silly. Does it feel silly to say, “I am an extension of source energy?” Instead, what about, “I may not know everything there is to know about this,” and, “I’d like to think I’m an open minded person,” and certainly, “I like the idea of well being as my natural state.” Why?

If well being is your natural state, there’s nothing for you to do. You already are fine, perfect, loving, activated, and pure. You already are like a crystal blue sea in the Caribbean. You may not feel that way, but when you do, you are just muddying up the water temporarily. You are actually in an ocean like that all the time, but you are powerful. You are so powerful that you can feel cold and dark in the middle of a bright sunny day. Don’t you like knowing that? Sometimes I hate knowing that, but more and more as I practice this general perspective of the world (and sometimes revert back), I find those beliefs that I thought I’d take with me to my grave slowly slipping away.

There is so much work to be done, but the work is what we’re here to do. And, “work” is not really the word. Instead, let’s call it, your “purpose driven practice.” Ok, so it’s a work in progress.

What beliefs have you gained clarity on, but you still can’t shake? What false premises are you operating on?

Morning is a powerful time. It sets the tone for your day, it’s full of possibility, and it’s a great excuse to stuff your face with cinnamon rolls. But it also has great vibrational power. By altering your morning bit by bit, you can begin to change your life in ways greater than the sum of your actions. Unless of course, your life is already awesome, which is the catch 22 of the law of attraction. Consider this quote:

“If you were already feeling good when you found this book, then by utilizing these materials, your life can now, by your de-liberate intention, spiral toward that which allows you to feel even better. However, if, in this moment, you are feeling less than good—or even if you think your life is as bad as it can possibly get—you can still learn perspectives here that can enable you to allow your life to begin to incrementally improve . . . or, you may be one of those rare ones who, from something you read here, receive a paradigm shift in your Beingness that somehow propels you from a long-term feeling of powerlessness, up into a fresh, long-term joyous alignment with your natural state of Well-Being. And once you reach that state, you will feel like a magnet, attracting to yourself everything—and every relationship—to which you are a Vibrational Match.”

Would if it could be this easy, Abraham. I included this whole passage because I wanted to show how different types of people respond when they discover the law of attraction. More often than not, people tend to simply filter the teachings through their current beliefs. Those who are already successful tend to spiral towards more success, whereas those who feel powerless don’t tend to receive a paradigm shift in their beingness. As a result, many people (including myself) reject the teachings, when in fact they simply attracted the teachings not working. Now that’s a mind f*ck.

As she’s stated at other times, you generally aren’t ready for a quantum leap. This concept has been something I’ve struggled with, since when I feel disempowered the only thing I want is a quantum leap into my dream life.

But the things I’ve thought and the person I’ve been have a momentum to them, so the main part of this quote where I’ve gained value is, “Learn perspectives here that can enable you to allow your life to incrementally improve.” Incremental improvement is what it’s all about – like a video game. If your goal was overnight success, this is kind of a let down.

The only way to gain improvement in something is to practice it. That’s the key with law of attraction. It’s a practice! This makes it seem like eating your vegetables (even though vegetables are delicious!) or doing some kind of chore. At first it can seem like that, but eventually you realize that this is the most important practice of your life.

I know I can sound kind of culty sometimes, but it’s true: Managing your vibrational set point is the most important practice of your life. Is it the most important thing in your life? Probably not, but it’s your most important practice because as you’ve probably heard a million times, “The energy output of one who is aligned is equal to millions who are not.” Practicing getting in alignment sounds more like studying under a meditation master than an actionable piece of advice, but it is very actionable. Not only that, but it’s something you can do daily that immediately benefits your life.

How does practicing alignment immediately benefit your life?

First of all, you feel good. Second of all, you begin to understand your power in little bits at a time. Third of all, you raise your vibrational set point more and more. To put it more finely, you reduce the resistance caused by your negative vibrations.

How can you practice alignment?

I could simply say, “By feeling good” and Abraham says, “By thinking the thoughts that make you feel the most good the most often.”

But, you might misunderstand that. If you try to feel good when you aren’t inherently feeling good, then you might create more resistance than you mean to, which will make you actually feel bad eventually.

By trying too hard to feel good, you might feel bad. This is often the mistake you make if you want a quantum leap right now and you think you just need to concentrate really hard on fluffy pillows and having that super high paying job.

Instead, what Abraham says is to pick an activity in your morning and just deliberately feel a little better while you are doing it. She recommends the segment intending process, the focus wheel process, and a book of positive aspects, to name a few. To start, pick an activity that she describes that resonates with you and do that in your morning routine.

Why your morning routine?

I think of a day like a repeating cycle. I know that’s obvious, but bear with me. You get up in the morning and you have routines. You go to the same kind of job and are subject to similar experiences. On your weekend you do different things but it often follows a similar rhythm. So, by incrementally increasing the quality of your routine, you increase the quality of your habitual life.

Note by this that I mean both increasing the quality of each activity incrementally and increasing the overall routine’s quality. By quality, I’m referring to emotional quality, not the price of your toothpaste.

What do I do?

I started with the focus wheel. I put it right after my shower and eating and before I went to work. It doesn’t matter what you choose to do, just that you deliberately feel better. This means that you choose a time to intend to feel better and then see how much better you feel. By putting it in your morning routine you 1. Are more likely to do it and 2. Make it much easier to continually do it.

The idea is to habitualize your incremental improvement, so then it becomes second nature to sit down and write or meditate, dance to your favorite music, or any small thing that makes you happy. Personally, meditation currently makes me more stressed out than happy, so I elect to write. By taking a few moments in your morning to do what makes you feel good you are staking a vibrational claim amongst whatever else you do. For that moment in time you proclaim that this time is for you and your joy. By doing this you don’t have to worry about the 68 second rule or getting in alignment; by doing something you enjoy doing, you are already there. This alignment will then expand over time because – it must.

In doing this, you’ll find it easier and easier to increase the emotional quality of other parts of your routine and easier to sustain that emotional quality throughout other unrelated tasks. By trying too hard in any individual moment to feel good, you create resistance. By building habits that systematically help you feel good, you put alignment on autopilot. Doing so will naturally build and sustain your momentum over time. Ideas will come to you more and more about how you could improve your morning, which will eventually lead to the rest of your day.

It’s not about being in alignment all the time. It’s about increasing the odds of you getting in alignment more frequently.

What simple thing could you do in a few minutes in the morning to live your joy?

On the surface, not much.

This article will explain why Abraham’s work is so highly actionable (even though that word is problematic), even when their writing can seem so esoteric. So here is the quote that we will be discussing.

“the basis of life is free-dom; the result of life is expansion—and the purpose of life is joy.”

This is one of the things I love about Abraham-Hicks work: Despite all the weird new-agey sounding stuff, the teachings are actually completely pragmatic. Take for example that little kernel of wisdom. Rather than seeing at as a bunch of gobbledygook, it’s actually highly functional. Let’s break it down.

First of all, it’s easy to understand, the sequence comes in a pleasing set of threes, and each statement leads to the other.

Continue reading →