Hi,
This is Guy Finley,
And we're going to look at how there is within us a part of us that is actually attracted to stressful situations.
We may want to deny that,
But if we're honest with ourselves,
Where does our mind go?
To what are we drawn in any particular moment where something isn't the way we want it to be?
We are drawn to think about that condition and then try to resolve it from the same level of our consciousness that went to visit that place that when we get there makes us sick.
So to begin with,
It might be helpful to visualize how a landslide,
For instance,
Gets underway.
Imagining this together,
Which we will for a moment,
Will be valuable because we'll start to see there is always one movement,
Or if you will,
Suddenly one loose rock that sets the mountainside into motion.
And so too is there always one definitive moment that starts the stress ball to roll.
This moment that signals the onset of our stress,
Along with the cascading self-conflict that it causes,
Operates under the Law of Attraction.
To give ourselves a good idea of how these invisible laws of attraction work,
Not just around us but within us as well,
Let's look first at a more common expression that we see in our natural world.
Just as the Earth's gravity keeps us from floating off into space,
The attractive power of the Moon,
Its own gravity,
Pulls on our oceans producing what we know as tides.
We can't see these forces themselves,
But we are witnesses to their effects.
Likewise,
We know that a dolphin is attracted to the open seas,
As surely as we can see how a moth,
For instance,
Is drawn to the circle of light.
And it's just observably true that birds of a feather flock together,
Or that we do tend to assemble with those we resemble.
These are all laws of attraction that apply to the more subtle worlds within us.
Here their invisible influences operate tirelessly in the unseen regions of our own mental and emotional lives.
Literally conducting our movements as surely as two magnets are drawn to one another or repelled from each other depending upon which way their poles are facing.
It will be helpful for your study of this principle if you consider,
For a moment anyway,
How this particular force of attraction influences your ways and days.
I mean,
Aren't some of us attracted to lose ourselves in the starry endlessness of a clear summer night sky,
While others are drawn to gaze for hours on end into the flames of a campfire or a winter's night fireplace?
And then there are those parts of people that are fascinated by disasters,
That by a strange attraction are drawn to dwell upon global or personal tragedies which,
As inescapable for them as is the moon from the earth's gravitational forces,
Holds them in that terrible wake.
These small examples reveal one level of the law of attraction at work in our lives.
But we have to delve deeper.
We have to look into the still uncharted realms of our own mind and heart,
Where there exists parts within every last one of us that are drawn to seek out relationships with thoughts that are self-wrecking.
For instance,
When we become transfixed by our own troubles,
Turning the image of some stress-producing picture over and over in our mind,
What do you think is going on?
Nothing is making us deliberate on those dark moments.
And who hasn't found him or herself drawn into an argument where the antagonistic voice in our head is nothing other than our very own thoughts acting out the role of the one that we resist or resent?
As these particular birds of a feather,
For lack of better words,
These self-victimizing thoughts and feelings flock together in one's unaware mind,
This continual process eventually gives shape to a form of a psychic pathway,
A rut,
If you will,
Of the mental order that ultimately expresses itself like this.
In any psychologically challenging,
Stressful moment,
Not only is the direction we will turn to meet it already carved out for us,
But what we will meet that moment with,
Meaning what parts of ourselves are going to take the lead,
Those are also reached automatically.
So that in a very real sense,
If we can see it together,
Our choices are made for us even before we know what they are.
For example,
Maybe someone makes a cutting remark toward you,
Or some pending news comes along concerning a possible loss of one nature or another.
I mean,
Doesn't it feel in these unwanted moments as though we are suddenly caught in a kind of gravitational field,
As if something is literally pulling on us from within us,
Compelling us to seek out that part of ourselves best able to consider what now must be done with our new condition.
That all seems natural,
Yet it is this exact interior moment,
Operating under the law of attraction that is the real event responsible for the onset of the stress that we experience in those moments.
In and of themselves,
Our stressful,
Scary moments are powerless.
They have no authority to punish us at all,
Any more than some make believe monster on a movie screen can leap from the screen and do something to us in our chairs as we sit there.
For just as we must give ourselves over to the reality of that motion picture before we feel the fear it intends to raise in us,
The same provisio holds true when it comes to our own stressed moments.
Before these familiar shaking feelings and their aching can begin,
We must somehow be tricked into believing that what we are being given to see as the reality of our life is,
Indeed,
All there is to see about our life in that moment.
And we're going to discover in the next session that not only is that untrue,
But the more clearly we can see how we're being deceived,
The nearer we will become to being stress free.
I'll see you in the next session.
