I was recently asked this question on a ‘help forum’…

“Apart from Affirmations, please give me a good spiriitual method I can use (which has immediate effect) to attract things into my life. Thanks”

I thought my answer would be of interest to readers of this blog…

From my perspective there is no ‘magic’ to be found in the rather superficial promises of books like the Secret and Cosmic Ordering. What his there, hidden beneath layers of over generalised and sometimes vacuous New Age babble is some very sound psychology which, in effect, relates to everything I understand about the inner workings of “real magic”.

It was Goethe, the poet and playwright, who said that once the mind is set on a clear course of action the universe conspires to make it happen.

There is more than a grain of truth in this.

“Attention flows where emotion Goes” is something I say to many of my students on the Transforming Minds workshops and this is really the case.

If you have an emotional link to something, anything, that is where your attention will flow. If you direct your attention towards a specific thing then it is very likely that your unconscious mind will start to process information and ideas about it.

I am sure everyone has had the experience of buying a new (to them) car. Almost as soon as the car is purchased you start ‘noticing’ more cars of the same type and colour on the road! This is not because the universe is trying to wind-you-up, it is because your unconscious mind starts noticing things that are important to you.

The same thing happens when you ‘want’ or ‘need’ a new household appliance, suddenly you start to see ‘adverts’ and ‘notices’ for these things. It’s not that these notices and ‘ads’ have juts appeared, it is because you now notice them!

Now, back to attracting things into your life.

Thinking about what you are missing, or what you don’t want, is actually self-defeating. It remonds you of the problem, or the negative situation. In some ways you are consciously asking the unconscious mind to remind you of and find more things, that are depressing you!

Shifting your emotional focus to what you want and creatively visualising ‘how’ your life ‘will’ be different ‘when’ these changes have been made is, in essence what The Secret et al promote, but without the psuedo-spiritual baggage.

The idea of anything having an immediate effect is also a little ‘one dimensional’ in its assumption. Every moment we are alive we experience the world. How we respond to those experiences depends largely upon our internal attitudes, values, beliefs and emotional ‘states’.

Every action in the ‘now’ moves you along towards your ‘future’ – so in essence you are always making choices about tomorrow.

Since most of the day-to-day processing we undertake as people is unconscious then we rarely, if ever, take the time and the effort to make conscious choices. Our unconscious mind presents ‘options’ which we consciously weigh-up as our the only choices (or the dilemma). Our uncosncious mind uses our deep seated attitude-value-belief system to pre-process every option open to us and hence creates limited behavioural responses to our awareness.

To change your perspective you have to work on changing your mind!

So much of this is beyond the scope of the quick answer I think you wanted, so in summary, here’s a set of ideas which come from the Mind Alignment – Transformational Reading – Transforming Minds programme (Google it if you’re interested).

Have a VERY SPECIFC outcome in mind.

What do you want to attract into your life?

Visualise how your life will be differen WHEN you have attracted these things.

Create a compelling mind-movie of the future you want, with sound effects, big colourful pictures and positive, motivational dialogues.

Ask yourself if your REALLY want this future.

So many people ‘wish’ for a thing without running it through their value-attitude ‘filters’. This means that the ‘idea’ sounds good in some distant, abstract sense, but actually is not a good fit with who you really are and really want to be. Hence you start sabbotaging your own efforts to move towards the illusion you think you want.

Ask yourself to WRITE down a list of CLEAR ACTIONS you can take to move you towards your future.

Change your behaviour to match the kind if behaviours that you saw yourself engaging in in your movie. Start to walk your dream by acting ‘as if’ you had already achieved it. In essence you are ‘trying on’ the future skin you will be wearing to ensure it fits comfortably.

Keep your GOAL in mind.

This means you underplay anything which reminds you that you are a long way from what you want and celebrate eevery single thing that takes you closer.

Now if you are still reading this, I congratulate you since I have avoided giving you the specific answer you wanted.

You asked for a ‘good spiritual method’ and I have focused on some psychological aspects of making changes in your life.

I think you cannot divorce the spirtual from the practical; the rational from the mystical (hence I call myself a Rational Mystic). All magicians (and yes I do mean that in the spiritual-mystical sense) recognise the importance of ‘right thought and right action’ and creating a link between the inner-focus of ‘mind’ (the intention behind the magic) and the outer focus of ‘behaviour’ (the rituals, spell casting, visualisation techniques used).

In recent years the New Age movement has spawned some very single minded ideas about ‘magic’ and promoted the quaint and infantile notion that ‘spells can be cast’ to ‘make things happen’. Hence all personal responsibility for change is abdicated to the tides of some kind of spiritual wish-master whose sole aim is to respond to the buring of candles; the half-hearted visulisations of those seeking a quick-fix to a complex problem; the ‘orders’ of groups of people who seemed to suggest that the Cosmos bends to their whim.

The late Alex Saunders, one of the key people in the revival of the Witchcaft Tradition in the UK, said to me once…

“Casting spells and using magic is hard work, its nearly always easier to go out and do something practical to move you towards your goal.”

He said this in response to the notion that folks could ‘cast spells’ to bring ‘love’, or ‘money’ or ‘fortune’.

Of course the process of performing a magical ritual does have an effect IF that ritual is prepared correctly – that means on both a mundane and spiritual level.

To ‘cast a spell’ to bring ‘love’ and then sit at home waiting for it to work is nonesense. Of course use the ‘spell’, but use it as a motivator to change what you do, where you go, who you meet so that ‘love’ has a chance to find you.

As Alex said to me, and I am paraphrasing…

Casting a spell to bring money and fortune and then not getting off your backside to find work is a futile exercise.

Magic and Spiritual methods are part and parcel of a process which can bring ‘positive change’ – but you as a living, breathing, thinking, caring, motivated person has to actively engage in that change.

Alan