THE LAW OF ACCESS
“Hello...Devoured your book. I believe that I may overcome my addiction to avoiding discomfort. I am one of the retards who has spent obscene money on teachers on a tradesmens salary. Not going to cry about it but am going to kick the noxious habit. Still have some law of attraction monkey riding my back. Problem is that some of it makes logical sense. If I’m appreciative and grateful, life just goes smoother. Parsing out the barley from the bear shit . Thank you so much for your book Shiv.”
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I hear you about the law of attraction stuff...
Some things are meant to be art but when they are marketed as a science they become horseshit. There’s an art to living in a way that flows - and, in my experience, inner resistance does tend to attract outer resistance and vice versa. Making a theory out of this kind of stuff is problematic and can become pseudoscience. Best to just feel life in your bones and trust your gut to do the right thing.
The problem with Law of Attraction type teachings, in addition to the fact that they make unfounded claims about how the universe works and how it can be controlled, is that they promote abundance as a “state”. It’s all about how to manifest a state of abundance in your life. Abundant wealth, abundant love, abundant fame, abundant passion.
Abundance is not a state. It is a mindset.
Similarly, lack is not a state. It is a mindset.
An abundance-based mindset results when your awareness is focused on what you have. No matter how much or how little that is. When awareness is oriented towards appreciation of what one possesses or experiences, then the overall attitude towards living becomes one of gratitude and contentment.
A lack-based mindset on the other hand comes from focusing on what you are missing. No matter who you are and no matter how many resources you have at your disposal - the total set of what you don’t have is always going to overshadow the set of what you do. There is simply no comparison. You could ALWAYS have “more” or “better”.
Awareness can shift between these two mindsets, in any given moment. The circumstances and social influences around you often have the power to draw attention enough to cause such a shift.
Things like reading the news, politics at the workplace , browsing social media, fluctuating stock markets, daily covid case numbers - most of our sociocultural interactions tend to induce a lack-based mindset within people. Consumerism, mass media, marketing, politics - these are all predicated upon a fundamental model of keeping people in a persistent state of lack which subsequently fuels their need for consumption. More products, more tech, more services, more oil, more wealth, more novel experiences, more solutions to solve the world’s problems.
On the other hand, things like hiking in the woods, fishing, mountain climbing, camping, swimming in the sea, gardening - activities spent immersed within nature, are geared to induce an abundance-based mindset. Any time spent in nature, immediately reveals how diverse and plentiful the natural world is.
When you shift from lack to abundance - there is a natural shift in your energy from fear to gratitude.
Your state of mind shifts from closed to open.
Your perspective shifts from narrow to broad.
When your energy shifts, everything shifts - thoughts, words, body language, vibe and, thereby, actions.
As a result, how you impact your environment also shifts. How people respond to you shifts. How events unfold in your life shifts.
For every variable you can consciously control in the environment, there are 100 variables that are out of your control. The only way to influence those “unseen” variables is to shift the frequency at which you operate.
You could think of it as fishing with a spear versus fishing with a net.
No matter how skilled you are at spear-fishing the only fish you can hope to catch, even if your aim is true, are the fish you can SEE.
But when you use a fishing net, that net drops deep into the water and will yield a catch of fish that swim at depths far out of your range of sight.
The narrow-focused mind is a spear. And the open-accepting mind is the net.
We have been conditioned by society into a habit of perpetually perceiving problems within our environment and seeking solutions to them. What we call the “daily news” is really a daily cataloguing of problems that occur on a global scale and a discussion of what solutions can be proposed to such problems. In other words, our perception of these problems runs only “surface deep”. And our solutions to these problems are equally limited to what we are able to see from our limited view of the surface.
We are a society of spear-fishermen and women perpetually scanning the surface level at which our lives unfold with neither an awareness of, nor any access to, what lies within the deep.
And that is because we have become conditioned to operate according to a lack-based mindset. As a result, our minds are consistently narrowed and incapable of penetrating life any deeper than the level at which we perceive it.
“No problem can be solved at the same level of consciousness that created it”, is a quote attributed to legendary physicist Albert Einstein. Which means, problems that occur on the surface cannot be resolved on the surface. They require the human mind to expand instead of contract, to broaden instead of narrow, to deepen instead of remain stranded in the shallows.
This is especially challenging in events and scenarios which instill uncertainty and fear within us. At times of war, economic uncertainty or pandemic - when truly novel and creative solutions are needed, all we seem to be presented with are the same old formulaic solutions that break down and fail - time and again. This is because fear makes us purely reactive. It makes us hyper-focus on a limited set of visible variables and remain oblivious to the hundreds of unseen factors that more fundamentally shape the events and circumstances we are encountering.
At times of great crisis and uncertainty- the most powerful tool we have at our disposal is WISDOM, not information.
Because information relies on a limited pool of facts, whereas wisdom feels into the very pulse of the moment. And it is from here that inspired action emerges.
Spear fishing in placid waters is challenging enough, but it is nearly impossible to do in stormy, choppy waters where visibility is greatly reduced. Yet, fishing nets that sink deep are able to find fish even in such circumstances, because the deeper one goes the calmer the waters are.
The Law of Attraction isn’t really about “attraction” at all. It is about ACCESS.
The Law of Attraction doesn’t result in abundance, it BEGINS with abundance.
An abundance-based mindset is congruent with a still and contented heart, an open mind and a free and willing spirit.
Stillness of heart, openness of mind and freedom of spirit act as the fishing net delving deeply into each moment- they allow us to ACCESS and influence variables within our lives that we cannot directly see, feel or touch - but we can otherwise SENSE.
This intuitive faculty of sensing deeply into the moment and feeling the pulse of life is wisdom.
And those who develop the capacity to operate from a place of wisdom manifest creative solutions to life’s problems.
These creative solutions translate into fortunate life circumstances that further highlight and enhance the abundance already present in our lives.
It is a feedback cycle that begins and ends with abundance.
There’s an old saying that goes:
“Fortune favors the brave.”
I have found this to be unwaveringly true in my own experience.
For it takes great courage to live with an openness of mind, a contentment of heart and a freedom of spirit in a society fundamentally geared to keep us wanting, seeking and craving for more.
Shiv Shungupta
