I had this interesting experience over the weekend. I was emailing back and forth with a friend who I hadn’t talked to in a long time and was telling her how happy I am and how it seems that almost everything in my life right now is going amazingly well. An hour later I was dragging, struggling to muster the energy to drag myself out the door and into the world to accomplish the tasks I had set for that day. I remember thinking to myself, how can this be? How can I have found and committed myself to my true path and *still* struggle with finding the energy to do the things I need to do?
Like many people in the neo-pagan/alternative spirituality movement, as a matter of course I believe in the Law of Attraction (that the Universe responds in kind to the energies you send out via your outlook on life—for example, people who see their life as full of prosperity tend to become prosperous while people who see themselves as struggling always seem to be facing an uphill battle). However, I believe that the way the Law of Attraction is frequently presented in this modern time is problematic. Too often people start engaging with Law of Attraction material expecting easy success and quick rewards. In fact, especially in the earliest stages, changing one’s life and finding happiness and fulfillment is a lot of work, because the equal and opposite principle to the Law of Attraction is the Law of Inertia.
Physics teaches us that an object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. This principle is as true on the psychic plane as it is on the physical plane. It takes work to get out of a rut of apathy, constant attention to uproot the weeds of negativity, and a strong will to prevent a return to “business as usual.” Physics also teaches us that systems resist changes in energy. This means that while you as an individual are working to change your attitudes and attractions, the energy of your community—your friends and family, your neighbors, your city, your country—opposes that change on principle. Think of yourself as a match trying to light a fire. If the wood is damp and there is no tinder, you have to overcome a whole lot of resistance in order to succeed.
Keep in mind that while the US Declaration of Independence declared our unalienable rights to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” our society actually takes as axiomatic Locke’s earlier statement that humanity’s unalienable rights are to “Life, Liberty, and Property.” We’ve been taught not to be “happy” but rather to be “successful.” That’s a lot of baggage, both personal and communal, that we have to get rid of as we move toward our paths of true fulfillment. So don’t expect easy successes and immediate total gratification. Instead seek out the moments of connection, focus on those sparks of pure joy, and nurture them against the overwhelming sense that “nothing can be done.” Eventually those sparks will catch and the momentum will turn in our favor.
