Hello all.

I've been having a problem telling the difference between "acting as though the thing I want has already manifested" and what Wattles warns about in his sections on the improper use of the will, "trying to coerse god".

Tonight, for example. I have been concentrating on having a full house for my show all week. Holding the image of it--thanking god and the universe for it--treating it as though it were a certain thing. At about 7:45, fifteen minutes before house closed, I saw that I had three people in the house. I continued thinking, "thank you for the full house" . . . but a part of me was feeling down, perhaps a bit hard and bitter. Then another part swooped in and accused the part that was feeling doubt, saying, "that's the reason why this is happening--I don't believe fully." or "this is happening because I'm trying to coerse god--I'm fighting reality--three people have manifested, and perhaps that's the fullest house I'll get tonight."

These feelings remind me of something I've seen somewhere else. I've attended church with the Unitarian Universalists, many of whom are current or former Jewish people who needed a religion that could make sense out of the Holocaust. There is a part of much New Age philosophy (and many mainstream religions, as well) that states "You create your own reality." This leads to people thinking, "if only I had done "x", this terrible calamity wouldn't have happened." It makes sense on the small scale, but when seen in large blazing letters--with something like the Holocaust, for example--the fault seems clear. Surely you wouldn't blame a Holocaust victim's negative thinking for bringing on the torture he or she endured. I don't mean to be argumentative here. (And I'm sorry if I'm opening up any scary stuff for anybody. I don't do it lightly, but because the example truly demands an answer, and it all seems to be connected inseperably in my mind.) I do think that Mr. Wattles is right. But I find a similar objection screaming out in me: isn't it blaming the victim, and unfair and non-compassionate, to say that a person brings on their own suffering? Seen from one perspective, it's empowering and is a necessary first step for a person changing their situation. But seen from a different perspective, one that I'm having a difficult time ignoring, isn't saying that all goodness could come to everyone, if only they had more faith, a bit of a cop out? An insult to those suffering?

I don't know if I should even post this. I don't mean to dwell in negativity here. I could use some insight, though, so I think I will.

Peace.

Ilana

I've believed we create our own reality for a long time and have wondered about the same thing you described. It really doesn't seem fair to put the blame on the person who is suffering for having created their own predicament. But perhaps we are looking at it the wrong way if we see it as blame.

We are all learning to create our reality in the way we want it. As Mr. Wattles has described the correct process, it takes a great deal of diligence of thought. Maybe we don't fully create our own reality until we become very advanced in thought, but drift along in the reality others have created because our own desires are "too vague and unfocused." Mostly I would guess that before we can create with any strength, we create mostly from unconscious concepts that we've been taught or else learned through some experience we may have even forgotten. So there is no blame.

I too, like you, face the dilemma of not wanting to "coerce God" as you put it, because I know that won't work. We have to "turn the matter over to a Higher Power" and watch our thoughts so that we don't thwart the process. Maybe it's like riding a bike; we'll keep falling down until we find just the right balance of impressing our desires and then letting go.

I've found in the past that the most effective way for me to realize some desire is to write down exactly what I want and then read it over for about ten days--without naming the time that the wish will come true. One time that I did this, I described an apartment I wanted to rent, the city, and even the street it would be on. When an acquaintance phoned and told me about a rare vacancy in their building, it was just what I wanted. But it was also about a year or two later. However, it was almost exactly what I had described, even to the number of rooms and color of carpet that I had written down. Except for one detail--it had only one bathroom, not two. But the landlord as he was renting it to me, without even knowing what I had wanted, felt impelled to mention that he had another building up the street where he had an apartment with two baths, and that maybe I should look at that first. I did, but the first one was much more desirable.

The key here, I think, was that I had asked that I find the apartment at the right time and place for me. I wonder if I would have found it if I had asked to find it immediately. Maybe I would have, who knows.

Rose

Hi Ilana and Rose,
Yes, I've been thinking along similar lines today so thought I'd throw in my thoughts.
Maybe it's not so much that people are to blame as they are following a subconscious bondage that does not allow them to see an alternative. If I think of my own life I was no different to the people who were victims in Germany. My own slavery and (living) death was to believe lies and not challenge them. I will give a specific example. After a couple of traumatic events in early adolescence my suspicion that I was a 'bad' person was confirmed when I embraced religion (Flavour not important) around 20 and was told my paintings (the thing I loved doing most) were evil and need to be destroyed. I allowed them to be burn't and did not touch a paint brush again. It so destroyed my confidence that I allowed others to direct my spiritual life to the point where I no longer cared to live. It was a long road back because the LIE was deeply embedded. I harboured this lie by trying to conceal it, most of all from myself. Last year I enrolled in art classes and am now painting up a storm. It is one of the most deeply restoring acts I have done. I think where I am going with this is that I could have walked into a gas chamber because I would I would have believed the lies Or because I felt helpless or powerlesss. If I am not doing the work of believing the truth then I am part of the lie machine, a cog in a system. It's not so much a matter of blaming the victim as seeing that without vision and faith all of us are in a similar condition just less dramatically than the example you've given. When people desert the truth on a massive scale then haulocasts happen. History tells us this is so and we see it around us. Mr Wattles tells us that there is another way and that if we apply ourselves we can know the truth and the truth will set us free( I seem to have heard that before...) Part of that truth is reclaiming our citizenship of another kingdom, co workers with the creative, intelligent stuff. We do this thru our visioning and if our old way of thinking rears its head a few times when we are trying well I think that's just a bit of a death rattle. I cant answer your question on filling the theatre because my own way of doing this varies a bit. I toss up what I would like to see happen, after I've thought it thru a bit to be sure I really want it but I allow that I don't know all the circumstances so after being really specific and clear I let go (sometimes I forget).
This seems to work. The strike rate is very good and, like Rose, I'm very flexible on timing.
When I think back to a number of disasters in my life I realise, with hindsight that I DID ask for them. Now I am very careful what I ask for because we do attract that which we are curious about...and I was VERY curious.
with you in spirit
Ann

The holocaust is one of the most extreme examples of the lessons we are learning here about our thoughts creating our experiences. Many Jews made a safe and timely exit. Thanx for bringing it up. You reminded me of a man I met when I was about 9 or 10 years old. He was the father of one of my school chums and during one of our numerous slumber parties at her house he told us children that he'd been a prisoner in one of the concentration camps and would we like to hear a tape recording he'd made of his experience there.
One of the main impressions was the absence of any bitterness, anger, hatred, or thoughts of revenge toward his captors. Now that I'm so imersed in our lessons another thing stands out so clearly and that is his vision, purpose, and faith. He clearly held in his mind a very clear vision of his future which included having a family. He also gave it up to a higher power and knew he didn't have to pull all the strings himself. What he did do is do everything he could every day to stay alive. I remember very clearly that he said he kept visualizing it in his mind over and over and over what his life would look like when the appearance around him did not look like that at all. His vision was the greater part of what kept him alive and he devoted most of his days and nights to it. It was 1959 when I heard this tape. That's about 13 years or so after his experience. He had a wonderful wife/lifepartner, two beautiful and healthy daughters, a very nice home, a good income, and he thoroughly was enjoying his life. He did go on to be a very wealthly man by the way.
I definately put him on my list of 10 ! ! !
I'm grateful that most of us don't have such extreeme circumstances. We can create a vision of what we want and then hold to it with purpose and faith while living in relative comfort now. Purpose and Faith -- Wattles sure puts those two words together often, doesn't he.
Much Joy and Success to us ALL ........dd

I love these discussion boards, because they really help me get my own thoughts together! Reading over the initial question and all the responses, the difference between "impressing our desires on the formless" and "coersing God" is the end product.

By clearly visualising all the details of what I expect and intend for my life, I am creating my own reality. If I spell out the details of how and when that is going to happen, I'm coersing God. The Universe/creative forces/formless subtance/God has a much larger view of things than we have. The "How" and the "When" are things we have to leave alone. The "what" -- the thing we expect, how we'll feel when we have it, how we will act with it, and respond to it -- those are the things we concentrate on to do our part to create or impress our thoughts on the formless.

The example of the Hollocoust (sp?) survivor and getting the apartment in the right location, ect, are great examples of this process. Neither person spelled out when they would get what they wanted. They just kept the end result in mind. Untiringly, unceasingly.

My experience is that I have numerous times when my faith and my belief that the end result is going to happen wavers. I've decided to let those thoughts flow, just noticing them and then letting them go. I don't believe there is any point or benefit to fighting those thoughts or doubts. I thank my subconscious for the thoughts and get back as soon as possible to the intension I'm holding and the faith that what I want is on its way.

Perhaps the "full house" is still coming. In fact I'm very sure it is! What else can you do to be preparing for it, while you are holding the vision in your mind? For example, I want a full coaching practice, however, I realise there are things I have to do to help make that happen. I have to get my name out there. I have to provide the reason for people to trust me and find me credible. I have to make and follow through on connecting with others. Above all, I have to make sure "I AM A COACH". I can't just form and hold a vision and expect the formless to drop it on me tomorrow. Sorry if that sounds harsh!

Don't let go of the end vision, keep doing what you can to "be the vision" and let the Universe decide how and when it will happen.

Blessings, Ruby

I sometimes think that I am trying tooooo hard to to make something happen, maybe this is what might be happening, I don't know, maybe we are trying to force a specific outcome, instead of having the faith that it will happen. Hard to do when we are being encouraged to visualise what we want, but I guess that is the "hard labour" Wattles talks about, or maybe it is our subconscious testing us. A confusing time.

I read a book a few years ago written by a concentration camp survivor, not sure if I can remember exactly but maybe someone else will know, it was by a Victor (or maybe Hugo) Frenkel or a similar name, and the title was something like "mans search for meaning (or purpose)". Anyway, a truly amazing account of survival and his observations on why some people did and some people did not survive, also how this man lived his life postively after the end of this nightmare.

Well worth a read, if your library or bookshop can find it, for inspiration on how people can be positive after such unimaginable atrocities have been forced upon them.

Denise

Ding, ding, ding bells have gone off in my mind. Your post has just made it all so clear.

VERY GRATEFUL
Regards Dina.

I truly believe we can create our own realities with our thoughts. What we often fail to take into account is that we live in a vast sea of other people also thinking and creating realities that sometimes bump into ours.

I envision it as a body of water with each of us making ripples. Sometimes the ripples clash so much that it makes waves and we get washed under, no matter what our own positive thoughts were focused toward. It is the common lot of humankind to be affected by the choices others make.

We each have free will. When we exercise it, it sometimes creates problems for others. I don't think we can say that they "asked" for it. Certainly those who suffered in the Holocaust did not in any way bring that about by their thoughts, or as some "punishment" for anything they might have done. What they experienced is a lesson for the rest of us, just as the lives of those who survived is a lesson to us as well. Sometimes the innocent must suffer so that the guilty can be exposed, brought to justice and punished.

I too have struggled with the idea of "coercing God". As I ponder what Mr. Wattles says, and measure it against the things I already feel to be true, I think I'm coercing God when I want the thinking stuff to produce exactly what I want in exactly the way I want it, on my schedule, according to MY specifications. I think this also shows a lack of faith.

On the other hand, if I hold a specific vision of what I want but with the faith that the universe will provide it to me in the way that is best for me, in the optimum time frame, then I leave God/the universe open to deliver something that may even be better than I can imagine.

Often what we fear occupies our minds. If we let our minds dwell on those things we are afraid of, they can be manifest just as surely as the positive things. I like what Mr. Wattles says:

quote:

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"Every hour and moment you spend in giving heed to doubts and fears, every hour you spend in worry, every hour in which your soul is possessed by unbelief, sets a current away from you in the whole domain of intelligent substance.

---

The more I "go with the flow", believing it will come to pass, the more things turn in my favor.

Hello Ilanalydia and all those who replied,

Having read the original post as well as all the replies, I was struct by the philosophical nature of the discussion. There is a very famous apparent contradiction in philosophy and it is that between pre-determinism and free will. It proceeds like this. If God knows every action and thought before, after and during its execution how can we profess to have free will?

The problem with philosophy and logic is that these can serve you as well as entangle you in a heap of barbed wire from which it becomes impossible to escape with the result that either despair or indifference ensues. Neither of these is good.

However there is a way out. Let us talk about universal laws. These are simply self-evident truths (irrespective of the degree of faith we as humans have in them). For example the most basic rules of arithmetic. We have no trouble swallowing these axioms because they lie within the realms of science. Our lives are touched by science in a very real way. You turn on the switch and the light comes on. You pick up the phone and hear the voice of someone thousands of miles away. The list is enormous.

I just like to ask a question here. Can you analyse yourself and enquire as to the degree of certainty in your mind that when you pick up the phone you will be able to hear the other person speak or that the sun will rise each morning? These universal laws that give to us our beloved technologies and the entire systems of planets and galaxies in our universe are no different in nature to those that govern our thoughts. So you see there is no conflict between free will and pre-determination. Free will is a universal law. God knowing our actions before, during and after its execution is no different from God knowing how a planet will behave when it is hurled into space.

Consider the laws of physics that govern inanimate matter. Do we ever ask the question "Why does a body continue in a constant state of motion unless compelled by a force to do otherwise"? The question is absurd. It just does. Its Newton's first law of motion. The entire universe obeys this and many other laws.

So now let us come to coercion and faith. First of all, coercing God is impossible. Can the oceans (behaviour of which is bound by universal laws) coerce God? No. Then how can we do it? The only thing that separates us humans from everything else is that we have all their attributes plus free will. To have this we need the power of thought, reasoning, love, compassion and so on. All the human things that we know and cherish.

The next question is this. If the above is true, are we devoid of responsibility? Is is true that we can be guilty of nothing? Unfortunately not. You see with free will, also comes (as mentioned earlier) love, compassion, caring and all the human things that sets us aside. We have to exercise all these wonderful things in the correct way. With love, comes also hate. With compassion also comes uncaring. With daring comes cowardice. Etc.

Now, a great many of our actions go against the universal laws. Every time you despair what you are saying is "God does not like me as much as the others". Everytime you verbally abuse someone what you are saying is "I wish God had not made that person". Every time you subscribe to any kind of doom and gloom what you are saying is "God hates us all and soon he will be rid of us". Nothing could be further from the truth. That God has nothing but good in his nature proceeds not from his acts of commission but from his acts of ommission. That is, the things he has not done. He could have made a very different world. One in which there was nothing but endless pain and suffering for everyone.

So where does all this leave us when we consider the pain and suffering faced by millions throughout our history. Ilanalydia mentions the holocaust of the second world war. This is equivalent to asking: "Why does God let bad things happen to people"? "Why is there so much injustice in the world"? The people who suffered in the second world war did NOT ask for it with their thoughts any more than a mother asks for her child to perish in the hands of cancer. The truth is that God will not suspend universal laws just because it will give Him bad publicity. He will suspend them only for very specific and most profound reasons. I suppose the name for this is a miracle.

Let me conclude by saying this. A person who does the will of God is a person who lovingly (not grudgingly) obeys the universal laws. These people will go far and achieve happiness.

My personal message to Ilanalydia is this. Please do not think about the holocaust. Do not go to places where it is remembered or mentioned. By doing so you are impressing negative thougts. Your subconscious mind is nurturing fear and doubt. As for your audience, consider the thing that actually happens. Only three people. George Michael sang for coins in train stations. You don't need me to give you endless examples of how people rose out of depts of depression to the heights of their dreams. Just remember that whatever happens, happens for a good reason. You may not see it straight away. In fact sometimes you see it years later or not at all.

Keep on with the exercises, be POSITIVE even under the most trying of situations. The universal laws will bring to you all that you desire.

One more thing. The people who died in the holocaust did not die in vain. Today, we look at this and many other examples in our recent history and take heed. These particular dark periods have caused many GOOD things to transpire. You must believe this.


A plethora of good wishes to one and all.


Yigit

Wow!

Thank you so much for your responses. It's all very helpful.

Ask, and you shall receive!

Victor Frankl has helped me put the question of the Holocaust into perspective. Along with novelist Milan Kundera, he's helped me recognize that events in our lives are neutral, and are entirely dependent on us as to their interpretation and meaning. It's like a precursor to Wattles. The past is what you make of it . . . Wattles goes the next step, and says that the present and future are creations that come to be from your mental state, as well.

I didn't mean to pull us away from our prescribed course--to trust in the system, and not worry about how or why it works--but I am grateful to have these nagging thoughts addressed. I have, until now, felt like I've been building elaborate houses, but where the ground itself was uncertain. Not only the new perspectives in your posts, but also the tone of peace that permeates your words was a great comfort.

Bright Blessings to you all.

Ilana

Hi All,
A child that sticks a fork into an electrical outlet and shocks them self, did in fact do it to them self! They did it out of ignorance, curiosity, ect... but, they are causative of their own injuries. Aknowledging this for the truth that it is, is not the same thing as blaming them. Blame is a uselless concept, its only real purpose is as a means of coercing some one through guilt, i.e. not the certain way. We do many things with out consciously intending or choosing to. Jews have a long and well documented history of seeing themselves as a persecuted people, i.e. victoms. When we give up seeing ourselves as victoms we will stop atracting that experience to us.
Here's to realeasing ourselves from blame and victomhood,
Dianne