The Subconscious Mind and the Law of Attraction
by Yvonne Ellis
Since Oprah aired her programs on “The Secret” and the Law of Attraction, most people have at least heard of the Law of Attraction and have some understanding of what it means. Simply put, the law of attraction means energy attracts like energy. You may also have heard it expressed as “like attracts like’, “that which is like unto itself is drawn” and even “thoughts become things”.
The law of attraction, like all the universal laws, operates whether you are aware of it or not, or believe it or not. The often-used terms “what you focus on grows”, “careful what you wish for (cause you just might get it)”, “birds of a feather flock together” and “you can’t get enough of what you don’t want” are all examples of ways that we describe the law of attraction in action.
Every minute of every day, your thoughts and feelings are creating vibrations which are constantly broadcast to, and received, by the universe. This activates the law of attraction which then matches your vibrations and attracts to you similar vibrations in the form of people, things and situations in your life. In other words you are always creating your life through your thoughts and feelings. The conditions in your life, whether they are what you want or not, are always a match to your dominant vibrations.
So, the question becomes - if your life is not how you would wish it to be, how do you change it? And the answer most often given by law of attraction and personal development teachers is a simple one - change your thoughts.
Simple - yes, but not easy. Here’s why.
Somewhere between 94 - 98% of all thoughts are subconscious, that is, below or out of conscious awareness which means that only 2 – 6% of your thoughts are ever conscious. We’re so used to not paying attention to our thoughts that most of the time we’re not even aware that we have any.
However, if you stop and pay attention, you will probably notice that there is an almost constant chatter going on in your head. If you’ve ever tried to meditate you’ve probably experienced just how inane and irrelevant much of that chatter is and just how difficult it can be to still the mind enough to silence it. Meditators often call this phenomenon "monkey mind" as thoughts seem to jump around from subject to subject like a monkey.
The law of attraction responds to ALL of your thoughts, those you are aware of, and those you are not. The mind is absolutely amazing. The subconscious mind is like a faithful servant, looking after all the automatic processes in the body that you are not consciously aware of like breathing, digestion, heat regulation, elimination, contracting and relaxing muscles to produce movement and so on. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to learn to walk if we consciously had to contract and relax each muscle at exactly the right time? Impossible.
The subconscious also contains all your beliefs, values and old programming that may or may not be relevant to your life today. When you are not consciously directing your thoughts, which is 94 – 98% of the time, the subconscious takes over and replays all the old stuff in its files. Its job is to maintain the status quo. Scientists have shown that upwards of 90% of the thoughts that you think today will be the same as the thoughts you had yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. Which most likely means that the life you are creating tomorrow will be exactly the same as today.
So, if you want to change your life, you must change not only your conscious thoughts, but also any subconscious programming that may be in conflict with your desire. For example, if you want to lose weight and affirm to yourself “I am slim and sexy”, but your subconscious is running an old program that says “I’m fat and always will be” or something similar then the law of attraction will bring you more of being fat since the subconscious is running its program far more often and with more emotional intensity than your conscious affirmations or visualisation (and that’s assuming your feelings are even congruent with your affirmation).
Old subconscious programming can be changed and in our next article & newsletter we will explore some of the tools available to help you change and/or disable old, disempowering programs and replace them with more empowering alternatives.
Yvonne Ellis is one of the authors of www.AttractLikeMagic.com Article is also available for viewing on EzineArticles.com |