Beyond the Law of Attraction

Frank M. Wanderer Ph.D, Contributor
Waking Times

Is there an universal law, the Law of Attraction, which says that everybody has the ability to attract things with his thoughts and intentions. According to this, if our thoughts are negative, we will attract bad things, and if our thoughts are positive, we will attract good things. The question may arise – is this law truly universal? What could be beyond the Law of Attraction?

The Promise of the Master Key

This passage is from the brochure of Law of Attraction course:

“For everybody who wants to do something about improving his/her life, the best news is that it is possible to achieve what he/she really wants at any time. The choice is solely up to us. Anybody is able to do it by learning and practising the appropriate method. I would like you to imagine a large iron gate. It is a heavy gate, difficult to open. It keeps you where you do not want to be at all. It seems, however, that one day the gate will open up, and when it happens, you may experience freedom that you have so far been able to read only. In your dreams you live where you want to be, you can empty the goblet of joys to the bottom, you may draw the income that you believe you honestly deserve, that is, you can live the way you would like to! The course offers you a chance; let us open that gate together, and once we have done that, a new world, full of possibilities and promises will open up for you. You will receive an answer to your question why so far you have not lived in the wealth you know so well that you deserve.”

Our whole life is a rush. We chase our desires and unfulfilled dreams. We are attracted by money, power, prestige, a wholesome, happy life. All this lies there hidden behind the powerful iron gate that is towering in front of us. But now we are given the master key, with which we achieve all our goals, because we will be able to open the iron gate. By the masterful use of the law of attraction we will be able to achieve everything that we have been longing for so far, everything we desire will be lying at our feet.

We suggest, however, that we should consider the following, before we would hasten to insert our master key into the lock of the iron gate:

Why do we need to rush after all those things at all?

Is really freedom, a new world full of promises, waiting for us behind the iron gate?

We Are Rushing – But to Where?

What may lurk behind this life-long rush? What makes us live constantly under the spell of our goals?

Spurred by our ambitions, we pursue various goals all through our lives. We aspire for something all the time, we always want to achieve something. This restless rush is instigated by our fear that we are still not what we want to be. We are never satisfied, we always want something else, we would like to be better, more beautiful, richer than we are at present.

Everybody nurtures an idealized image of what he/she would like to be like. The mind projects this idealized image into the future, and reveals the way leading to it. But this image requires a constant rush, stress, anxiety and worry in our life, as nothing is free, we have to struggle to achieve our goals. And now here is the master key for us to use, it will eliminate all anxiety, put an end to the restless rush. The law of attraction gives that to us.

But even if we use the master key and implement the idealized image of ourself, the sense of satisfaction does not last very long, as there are so many other goals in life, so we set up another objective, even more ambitious, as there are so many fields of life where we have not been very successful.

That is how we pursue our goals until death, when we realize how meaningless the whole thing has been. But why are these goals meaningless, we begin to protest immediately. The protest is caused by the vary nature of the forms and shapes, as in their world every form and shape is subject to permanent change, birth and death. Whatever we attract to us with the master key, we are going to lose it, as everybody departs from this world empty-handed, all those who pursue their goals, live in the spell of past and future.

During our spiritual journey we must recognize this process, and we must realize that we no longer need to become something new, as we are all in possession of all the qualities that we have been pursuing so far in our dreams. All we need to do is to shift our alert, conscious attention from the edge (Ego) to the center (Witnessing Presence).

What is Awaiting Behind the Gate?

That may not even be the right question; the right question is more likely that “Why do we need a gate at all?”  Who created it, and who prevents us from reaching the things that are so important for us, e. g. freedom?

A glance at our rush reveals that there is the intention of becoming something else behind it. The idea that we need to become something else than what we are is, however, not our own. We did not invent it, it was handed down to us in the society we were born into.

Our parents and later various teachers did not accept us the way we were. From the earliest times, they try to shape us to match their expectations and those of the entire society.

In order to match us into their molding forms, our parents and teachers created the heavy iron gate, and kept us away from everything that, in our infantile life, did not match their expectations.

That is how in the course of years we become mere imitations instead of independent human beings. That is how the liberty of developing our individuality according to our own rules is taken away from us.

And now, with the master key of the law of attraction, the iron gate is opened, and we may regain our lost freedom. We take a deep breath and believe that the whole world has opened up for us, we have possibilities that we have only been dreaming of previously.

The question is, what we can do with the freedom? Alas, the general experience is that most Wanderers begin to use that freedom as imitations only, for purposes our parents and teachers used to believe was freedom. In this way, we attract to us everything that was previously in short supply to us: money, power and a variety of entertainment. We achieve the goals we have been pursuing so far.

But this route, as we have seen before, leads us at best to the recognition of the futility of this freedom. Only the realization of the senselessness of the daily struggle in the world of the shapes and forms brings us real freedom, which is the freedom of the termination of identification with shapes and forms.

The Real Master Key

Once we have realized that the master key and the iron gate are not real, what can we do? How can we find truth? Is there a real master key at all, to open the gate of Reality?

Yes, that master key does exist, and it is identical with our real state of existence. This is the state of Pure Consciousness, free of identifications, the state of the Witnessing Presence.

The glue that lulls that Pure Consciousness and binds it to the shapes and forms is the activity of the mind. The mind judges and categorizes everybody and everything, dividing them into good, bad and neutral categories. If we condemn or like something or someone, we have identified with our opinion and the emotions coming with it. When we find something neutral, we put it in the ”it might come in handy later” box, which is also a way of identification.

In the state of Witnessing Presence, when we are contemplators, we are free of the desire to identify with thoughts and emotions. We no longer judge things, we no longer categorize, and do not struggle against thought and emotions. Instead, we observe them as witnesses when they appear, stay there for a while and then finally vanish. They do the dance of the forms and shapes in the space of Consciousness that is in fact we are ourselves.

This is the master key that opens up all locks!

About the author

Frank M. Wanderer Ph.D. is a professor of psychology, a consciousness researcher and writer. Frank is the author of the books The Flames of Alertness: Discover the Power of Consciousness!, The Biggest Obstacle to Enlightenment: How to Escape from the Prison of Mind Games? andseveral books on consciousness. With a lifelong interest in the mystery of human existence, Frank’s work is to help others wake up from identification with our personal history and the illusory world of the forms and shapes, and to find our identity in what he calls “the Miracle”, the mystery of the Consciousness.

You can also follow his blog HERE

[Excerpted from the book: Frank M. Wanderer & Ervin K. Kery: The Surprising Truth: Yourself as You’ve Never Seen it Before]

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