With the Universe, or Against Ourselves?

This is a short, to-the-point affirmation from Abraham-Hicks, which in its brevity encapsulates the entire idea of the Law of Attraction:

Your Inner Being is always guiding you toward what you are wanting. It is never protecting you from something else.

 —Abraham

 Excerpted from the workshop in Philadelphia, PA on April 14, 1998

Abraham’s Law of Attraction states that whatever we give our attention to, whatever we concentrate on, is brought to us by the Universe.  This sounds great, right?  I mean, how much easier could anything be, than to think about what we want, and then receive it?

Like anything else in life, though, this principle is not quite as one-sided as it seems.  Abraham doesn’t make any distinction, when considering that which we want.  If we want happiness, the Universe provides happiness in abundance.  But if we want unhappiness, as evidenced by the amount of time we spend being unhappy, and thinking unpleasant thoughts, the Universe can just as easily bring misery in abundance as well.

Look at that a little more carefully, for a moment.  Wanting to avoid sadness is not enough — whether we say that we don’t want misery, or if we spend all of our time feeling that unhappiness, the Universe responds in the same way.  You are concentrating on misery — I’ll show you misery.  Seems simplistic, and it is — if we spend our time thinking of how unfair life is, or of how sad or picked upon we are, we ask for more of the same feelings, even when we don’t feel like we are asking for anything.

We do ourselves no favors by wishing or hoping or concentrating on being protected from misery.  All the Universe hears in that sentence is “misery.”  In much the same way, our subconscious minds do not hear negatives.  According to Tami Jackson, of examiner.com:

If the Bible had been written by the same company that manufactured our brains, then the Ten Commandments would have been written with much more positive directives. That is, considering the biology and neuroscience for how we think….For sake of demonstration, let me put it this way: “You shall not ponder chewy chocolate chip cookies or desire to eat one, no matter how delicious they smell, coming hot from the oven!”

Now. Stop to think. What did you just do? You just imagined cookies. Didn’t you! (Thanks to ignoring my commandment. I will now have to tell my minions to stoke the Hell fires for your sake.)

THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND KNOWS NO BOUNDARIES and cannot hear negative words.

Simply replace the words subconscious mind with the word Universe, and you’ve described the situation in which we find ourselves, in relation to the Universe’s ability to fulfill our desires.

So how do we avoid this trap?  The process is very simple:  think positively.  Do not ask to be protected from sadness; ask instead to be given happiness.  If life has us down, the trick is to find something to feel positive about.  It might be something as simple as, “I remembered to brush my teeth today,” or “I like the choice of clothing I made this morning.”  We need not find something mind-bending on which to concentrate — anything that makes us feel good is enough of a start.  If we hold onto this positive feeling, and remind ourselves throughout the day of the simplicity of our happy thought, we will find that much easier the process of repeating and increasing our good feeling the next day.

The bottom line is, we must put aside any thoughts or feelings of negativity, and embrace the positive future available to us, in cooperation with the Universe and its workings.