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archetypal energy, archetypes and manifestation, shadow work

Manifestation and the Law Of Attraction: Overcome Limiting Beliefs With Shadow Work

How can you create reality using the power of the mind?

When you think about it, this is what we do all the time. Every single thing on the planet started as an idea in someone’s mind, so to that extent, manifesting a better relationship, or greater prosperity, or indeed material goods like a new car or a new house, is no different.

Where the process of manifestation differs from the conventional way of turning an idea into reality is that you bring the universe onside. In other words, you get the universe to help you, so that you are not working on manifestation of your desires alone.

A lot of people find it difficult to understand that we are actually talking here about a cooperative process. It’s something that has been described as “co-creation”, and that’s a very good way of putting it.

You see, the universe is programmed, or if you prefer the term, “determined” to operate in accordance with set of universal laws. Some of these are all about manifesting reality at the request of the human mind. Now, having said that, it is not as simple as just wishing for something.

This implies that the human mind has the ability to connect with universal consciousness or energy – which some people prefer to call God. This is a fact which might be debatable or questionable for you, but is actually a reality. However, you may be feeling some doubt, and that is precisely the point. You cannot doubt, or it will not work. You must have faith, and total belief in what you are trying to do. And this requires an absence of doubt and a presence of certainty.

You’ve probably experienced this in part when you’ve had the sudden and unexpected awareness of friend who then immediately calls you on the telephone. This is a simple example, but a very poignant one, of the principle at work here, which is that the human mind can contact a vast database – for want of a better way of putting it – of universal intelligence.

It’s essentially that ability to connect with something bigger than ourselves that is the controlling factor in manifestation of anything, and it’s that ability to connect with something bigger than ourselves which allows you to manifest what you want.

Faith and absence of doubt

There is a school of psychtherapy called shadow wok which can be very helpful in establishing an abesnce of doubt and presence of certain faith. This is because shadow work is based on the archetypal model of the human personality: the Magician archetype is the anxious Risk Manager, who guards against disappointment by ensuring your defences are maintained aginst the unknown. The Sovereign – King or Queen archetype – allows you to stand in faith, in the cosmic energy of both sky above and earth below, so that you know you have the power to get what you desire from the universe. The Warrior archetype allows you to strive for a desired outcome, and the Lover allows you to achieve it in a compassionate way. It also allows you to connect with the world beyond your mind.

More than anything, shadow work can help you overcome limiting beliefs – that is to say, the beliefs you hold about yourself which stop you achieveing success at manifestation.

To overcome limiting beliefs through shadow work, you can follow these steps:

  • Identify your limiting beliefs: Start by identifying the beliefs that are holding you back in life. These beliefs may be conscious or unconscious, so take the time to reflect on your thoughts and feelings to uncover them.
  • Acknowledge your shadow self: Shadow work involves acknowledging and embracing the parts of yourself that you may have repressed or denied. This can be challenging, but it is necessary to overcome your limiting beliefs.
  • Practice self-compassion: Be kind and gentle with yourself as you explore your shadow self. Remember that everyone has flaws and imperfections, and it’s okay to make mistakes.
  • Challenge your beliefs: Once you have identified your limiting beliefs, challenge them. Ask yourself if they are true or if they are simply a product of your conditioning or past experiences.
  • Reframe your beliefs: Replace your limiting beliefs with empowering beliefs. For example, if you believe that you’re not smart enough to succeed, reframe this belief by telling yourself that you are capable of learning and growing.
  • Take action: Finally, take action to reinforce your new beliefs. This may involve stepping out of your comfort zone and taking risks, but it’s important to remember that growth and change require effort and commitment.

Shadow work can be a powerful tool for overcoming limiting beliefs and transforming your life. With practice and perseverance, you can learn to embrace your shadow self and develop empowering beliefs that will help you reach your full potential.

A lot of people would accept the idea of connection between human mind and the universal consciousness or intelligence (to remind you, what some people call God), but want to know how on earth this can be explained in rational terms.

My answer to that is that there are no rational aspects to this, it’s a fact of life, and it’s something that we need to accept on trust. This is the act of faith: that you might need to believe in God or Goddess and their ability to manifest reality.

But interestingly enough, recently quantum physics has begun to provide some clues as to how it might be possible for thought waves to impact on some energetic principle in the universe which is responsible for the appearance of material goods and objects and events in our universe.

I’m not going to go into the quantum physics of the Law of Attraction and manifestation here, because it’s far too complicated, and if you are sufficiently enlightened to believe in reality of manifestation as an act of faith, you won’t really be interested in the explanation that quantum physics can provide: you’ll be more interested in the experience of manifestation.

In essence, though the important thing to keep in mind is that the universe is ready and willing to give you what you want. Using the law of attraction to manifest reality, to co-create your life, that is to say co-create in association with the universe, isn’t difficult. If you experience doubt or disbelief, then do some shadow work to eradicate the doubts and fears from your mind. As I said, shadow work is based on arhcetypal energies. These are all explained in this book (UK version here).

Perhaps that’s the surprising part, the part of the equation which makes it so difficult for people to believe manifestation is a reality!

You might be wondering what the requirements are for a successful manifestation. The answer is – something surprisingly simple!

First of all, as you might guess from what I’ve written above, you need to have faith – absolute faith that the universe will respond to your demands as and when you make them.

Second, you need to have conviction, firm belief, that what you’re trying to achieve is possible for you. It’s no use attempting to get something that you see somebody else, who may be more intelligent or more enlightened or more skilled than you, manifesting or  creating in their life.

This is a personal process, one which needs to be adapted to your particular level of personal development and spiritual evolution.

And then of course, in addition to all of this, you do need to take some kind of action. It is here perhaps where we meet the biggest obstacle to most people’s experience of manifestation.

They may not know what kind of action to take, or they may not have the confidence to take action that will drive them in the direction of their desired objectives.

Yet, in a sense, you don’t need to take massive action, or stretch yourself to take big steps toward your goal – you only need to make small steps that move you in the general direction in which you want to go.

It goes without saying, I think, that if you are seriously trying to do this, then your motivation has to be sufficiently intense and serious to provide the universe with a good enough reason to help you achieve what it is you’re trying to manifest or creating your life.

Perhaps the expression “a good enough reason” is the wrong way of putting it; the universe doesn’t require justification for your desires – it will manifest whatever you want, provided you apply sufficient emotional energy to the process of doing so. When those criteria are met, the universe is at your disposal, and you can have whatever you want!

Because we are all brought up in a society where there is an ethic of “you must work hard to achieve anything”, some people find it hard to believe that manifestation is real, and they give up trying as soon as the first disappointment hits them.

(Which generally means the first time they fail to manifest something they are trying to get hold of – a failure which is often caused by a lack of emotional energy or desire, and sometimes by simply not applying the techniques consistently.)

Another source of disappointment is when the universe produces something that a person hasn’t asked for, something which turns out not to suit them in the longer term.

I’ve always seen this is an aspect of spiritual evolution: that the universe can sometimes give you things which are not what you really need or desire, almost as a kind of spiritual lesson which is intended to help you understand that the best reason for manifesting anything is because it feeds your soul, that it is, in fact, your “soul purpose”.

Think of this, if you can, as a test by the universe, something designed to check if you’re really serious about overcoming the obstacles to manifesting reality in the way you would like to experience it in your life.

Video – art of manifesting

archetypes and manifestation

The Archetypes and Manifestation

In the next series of posts, we are going to look at why manifestation often fails to work for people.

We’ve all read the information, and we all know the theory – but somehow the results we want still continue to elude us. I recall that the leader on a Silva Mind Control course, many years ago, kept repeating one thing about manifestation (though the course did not label creative energy in that way) which stuck in my mind. This was what he said: you must absolutely believe,  without a shred of doubt, that you can (and will) get what you want. Otherwise it will not work.

And herein lies the key to most people’s failure to manifest what they want: at some level, they do not actually believe that they will get what they want.

Now, it is interesting to consider what that might mean. Most of us believe manifestation works – we aren’t trying it out of desperation, or out of some mere whim. But we may not believe that we will get what we are trying to get – and, yes, this will stop the manifesting energy dead in its tracks.

A lot of people try to generate prosperity through manifestation. That serves as a great example of what we are talking about. Money is such an issue in our society – we all hold many unhelpful or destructive beliefs about money and our relationship to it. Truth is, most of think we are, at some deep level out of awareness, not worthy or good enough. This is reflected in our financial status – in our society, money is a direct reflection of how worthwhile we believe we are.

The importance of self-belief in manifestation

And so, to understand the failure of manifestation, we need to examine how these deep-seated beliefs about ourselves develop. We need to examine how they are held in the unconscious mind. And we need to understand what we can do about them, and how we can change them,  so that we really can manifest what we want. To understand how this works, we need to understand several simple yet profound concepts about the human personality. These concepts are archetypes. shadow, and shadow work.

In the next few posts we will look at all of these issues so that by the end of the series, you have a grasp of how you are effectively stopping yourself from manifesting, and what you can do about it. We begin by examining the concept of the human archetypes.

Archetypes

Video – archetypes

We look like separate individuals, each of us walking around in our own body. Despite this appearance of separation we have more in common than we realize, including some primal genetic patterns known as “archetypes”, which are laid down deep in our unconscious minds. Take an example: if I say the word Warrior, you instantly know what I mean. And the same is true if I speak of a Magician or a King, or a Father or a Mother. These are all human archetypes, and while they can vary in detail, the basic values and qualities they embody are similar.

And no wonder. We are all human, and we share the same genetic inheritance. Sure, we differ in physical appearance, but essentially our genetic inheritance is one and the same: human. So no wonder that we all instinctively understand the idea of human archetypes. Whether these archetypes are male and female, young or old, we intuitively know what they are, how they operate, and what role they play in our lives.

Nowadays most people see archetypes as being stored in the unconscious mind rather like permanent programs etched into the memory of a computer chip. The unconscious seems to have unlimited storage capacity, holding not just our archetypal programming but perhaps also a memory of every event that’s ever happened to us. It also holds all the basic biological “programs” we need to stay alive including those which control digestion, respiration, circulation of the blood, and the chemical balance in our tissues, among many others.

Video – archetypes and manifestation

So what do archetypes actually do for us? Perhaps it’s most useful to think of them as genetically determined programs which can control various aspects of our personality and shape the way we express ourselves in the world. The exact way in which a particular archetype will be expressed in each of us will be influenced by our individual experience of life and the culture in which we live.

Over the years, different psychologists have come up with different names for human archetypes. Some of them we would all recognize: to take another example, we all intuitively know what is meant when we hear of the female archetype of the Mother. If you pause for  a moment to consider what the word “Mother” means to you, you’ll most likely have conjured up your version of the Mother archetype in your mind.

Equally, you probably also have a sense of what the Wise Elder archetype might mean in a man or a woman. And you will certainly know how a King or Queen archetype might look.

The important point about these archetypes is that they’re common to all humanity. They’re like an internal foundation upon which every man and every woman builds their own particular experience of life. To make the point again, the way in which each archetype finds its expression in an individual man or woman will be shaped by what they learn for themselves, what they learned about life from their parents, and influences from their cultural background.

Although there are many different archetypes which describe aspects of human experience, there are four fundamental  archetypes which embody the most important parts of our personalities with extraordinary precision.

These four archetypes are the Sovereign (the King or Queen), the Warrior, the Magician, and the Lover. Many writers have adapted those names and come up with words they believe are more representative of the energy in each archetype. For example:

Sovereign = Heart Centred Leader, Chieftain, Chairman, Elder

Warrior    = Action Taker, Worker

Magician  = Transformer, Thinker, Wise Man or Woman, Sage

Lover       = Lover, Sensor, Feeler, Connector

All of these names are useful to represent the main areas of our personality. But whatever you call them, these archetypes exist within each one of us almost like different individuals. Certainly they are separate and distinct areas of your personality and each of them carries a particular energy.

And this is where the concept of archetypes becomes very useful in working with the behaviours that you want to change. In my work with men and women, the most common questions I’m asked, one way or another, are “Why am I behaving this way?” “Why do I feel like this?” and “What can I do to change the way I think, feel, and behave?”

The answer is – start by looking at how you express each of these archetypes. When you do this it becomes easy to see why you’re behaving in a certain way and, more importantly, it’s much easier to change unhelpful or unwanted behaviours into something that really supports you in your life and in the world.

 

Reproduced with kind permission of the author from https://www.amazon.com/Warrior-Magician-Lover-King-development/dp/1722820896/ 

attracting money

Making Money From What You Love

Thomas Kinkade was an American artist who died in 2012, but his work continues to generate millions of dollars in print sales. In fact he was undoubtedly one of the wealthiest artists of the modern era – and certainly one of the most collected.

Sure, his work has come in for a lot of criticism from highbrow art critics, who call it “sentimental” – and that’s one of the kindest comments! Fact is, however, Kinkade spent his entire life doing what he wanted, and he made loads of money doing it.

The Kinkade website, which continues to sell prints of his work, makes it clear that Thomas knew from an early age that painting was his calling, his right livelihood.

All through his life, he painted the way he liked – and people loved it! Breaking the bounds of convention he was able to use the income from his paintings to support many charitable causes and promote his Christian faith.

All because no-one ever told him how it “should” be done!

One critic on Wikipedia observes: “Looking just at the paintings themselves it is obvious that they are technically competent. Kinkade’s genius, however, is in his capacity to identify and fulfill the needs and desires of his target audience – he cites his mother as a key influence and archetypal audience – and to couple this with savvy marketing.”

So what can we learn from Thomas Kinkade? The power of deep self-belief, a belief that overcomes all criticism and obstacles? Maybe. Or perhaps he never believed he was unlikely to make money from his craft. Perhaps he ignored the nay-sayers, the doubters, and the critics, of whom there would, I am sure, have been plenty.

In any event, Thomas was pursuing his own dream, his own calling, his own passion. That alone may have been all the fuel he needed.

He was a man who doesn’t seem to have regarded fame and fortune as motivation. His motivation seems to have been the simple act of painting in a heartfelt way. He was putting onto the canvas in front of him the natural wonders and images of the world which moved him most.

It was this dedication and single-minded focus that made Thomas Kinkade, “a simple boy with a brush from the small country town of Placerville, California”, the most collected living artist of his time – and one of the richest too!

And if he’d been discouraged by the criticism of highbrow art critics, would he have persisted? Who knows?

My guess is that Thomas didn’t have any limiting beliefs about his capacity to succeed. He simply had faith in his ability to spread his own particular Christian message by means of his painting. And that self belief, that passion, that purpose, ultimately helped him to make millions of dollars – easily, with no struggle whatsoever.

And finally, consider the story of JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels.

Her compelling series of books, the films made from them, and her other income derived from sharing Harry’s antics with us has made her the richest women in the world, and at one time the richest author in history. What kind of experience did she have while she was writing the books?

According to JK Rowling herself, “An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless … By every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.”

What does it take to take control of a situation like this and become such a successful author? A clear vision, certainly – in this case the image of the story of Harry Potter, the teenage wizard, who seems to have been fully formed in JK Rowling’s imagination on a train journey from London to Manchester.

And a strong desire, for sure. On her website biography, you find these words: Jo wanted to be a writer from an early age. She wrote her first book at the age of six – a story about a rabbit, called ‘Rabbit’. At just eleven, she wrote her first novel – about seven cursed diamonds and the people who owned them.

But her first Harry Potter book was rejected a number of times. In an interview, when asked what kept her going, JK said: “That’s such a good question because you know I was not confident then at all. But I wanted it so badly, I wasn’t going to give up. And I don’t think I’ve ever felt, before or since, anything like the elation of realising I was going to be published.”

This is the power of intense desire, supported perhaps by an absence of limiting beliefs which might have got in the way. Would she have continued writing without having intense belief in herself, without believing that one day she would be published? Of course not.

JK Rowling had a young daughter and was living on welfare in Britain while she wrote the books. So perhaps we have a clue to her deepest motivation in something she wrote on her website.

She wrote that the very best thing her wealth has given her is the absence of worry. “I have not forgotten what it feels like to worry whether you’ll have enough money to pay the bills. Not to have to think about that anymore is the biggest luxury in the world.”

archetypes and manifestation, shadow work

How Your Shadow Side Holds You Back (and What You Can Do About It)

What stops you manifesting?

The answer is your shadow. Those beliefs, thoughts, feelings and energies which you are not consciously aware of, but which exist in your mind at some deep level. 

For example: “I don’t deserve it.” “I’m not worthy.” “I’m not clever enough to make money.” “No-one will ever love me.” “Life is a struggle.” “This isn’t for the likes of us.” And so on. 

These are the beliefs which each and every one of us holds unconsciously. They are the beliefs which we form in childhood due to what we learn about ourselves as we grow up. (Some people think they can be transmitted culturally, or even genetically. The latter is part of the science of epigenetics.)

And because these beliefs are held in the unconscious, we are not even aware of them. But they control every aspect of our lives, and direct us outside of our awareness to achieve or manifest certain outcomes – or not, depending on whether those beliefs are positive or negative.

But while some people succeed in manifesting money, and success of this kind appear to follow them wherever they go, others are driven by a poverty consciousness. And for these people, accessing these “core beliefs” held in shadow and changing them are essential before they stand any chance of manifesting success and achievement.

These shadow beliefs are what we conventionally think of as the result of childhood emotional woundings, which in turn are the product of the inhibition or repression of different archetypal energies. It’s important to understand the role of shadow held in the unconscious in blocking manifestation. 

Beyond this, it is a simple fact that lack of achievement for dysfunctionality in any area of life is probably the product of a shadow belief system. Suppose, for example, that  you carry a belief that you cannot get what you want. (This is, by the way, very common in society today.) We would regard this as a Warrior wound. In other words, for some reason your Warrior archetypal energy is blocked. ( Read about this here.)

Or you might simply believe you are not good enough to receive financial abundance. This could be a King or Sovereign archetypal wound. (Read about this here.)

Video – The King Archetype

In all such cases, the solution is to do some shadow work. Get the help of a facilitator trained in shadow work and find a way to take the energy out of your unconscious and make it conscious. 

Then you open up whatever you’ve hidden away, out of sight if not out of mind. And then you can transform it into something more useful and helpful that serves you better in your life today.

It’s an approach that takes the parts of yourself you stuffed away as a child out of your shadow and brings them back into the light. And it honours them, heals or transforms them if necessary, makes them into a positive and helpful part of you, and finally integrates them into the essence of who you are today.

There are many names for this approach: “Healing The Shadow”, “Emotional Process Work”, and “Shadow Work”, for example. But whatever you call it, this is all about getting your sabotaging, holding-back, limiting and now generally unhelpful parts out of shadow. And it’s also about giving you control over them so you can access their energy in a helpful form. In short, these techniques can make your shadow energy available to you in a healthy, emotionally mature way to use in your life today. And if that sounds exciting, so it should!

You’ll discover how to step into your power. You’ll become more emotionally mature, stronger, more independent, more balanced, and better able to give and receive love.

You’ll be better able to set healthy boundaries and you’ll become a stronger and more powerful leader in your life. You’ll develop the strength and will to get things done more effectively, think more clearly, and stop making harsh judgments about yourself and others.

You’ll develop a much easier relationship with love so you can give and receive genuine love freely. In fact just about every other problem that you have in your interactions with other human beings will become more and more manageable and simply melt away over time.

Perhaps you think that sounds too good to be true. But just for a moment imagine how your life might look right now if you’d enjoyed an ideal childhood in which your needs were fully met. A childhood throughout which you were loved and supported unconditionally and where you were allowed to express your personality exactly as you wished. A childhood in which you could grow to embrace all your qualities and values and learn how to manage all the emotional energies within your personality.

Imagine what your life would now be like if you’d had the opportunity to fully access every part of your psyche rather than having to use your energy in repressing parts of yourself that were unwanted or unsafe to express for some reason in your childhood. Do you think that might have made a difference to your life? Yes?

You are absolutely right; your life would most likely have been very different. Now you can bring those changes to life anyway. Through Emotional Process Work, Healing the Shadow, Shadow Work – call it what you may – you can fully grow into your true self, overcome the blocks of emotional development which have held you back until now, and heal your emotional wounds. And you can do this no matter what stage of life you have reached. (Best of all, and most powerfully, of course, is to actually study the art of shadow work facilitation yourself and qualify as a practitioner.)

What’s even better is that this approach is equally effective for all of us, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin or any other characteristic which appears to separate us. For when we say that in our workshops and one-to-one consultations, “All of you is welcome here”, we really mean it. And we mean it because our work focuses on the one thing we all have in common – our humanity.  

archetypes and manifestation, the shadow and shadow repression

The Shadow and Manifestation

The Shadow

Where there are archetypes there is also shadow. Your shadow is the part of your unconscious where you put all of the energies, emotions, thoughts, feelings and behaviours that for one reason or another were not acceptable when you were a child. Not acceptable, that is, either to you or to the people around you. And shadow work is, unsurprisingly, the act of exploring the shadow.

Robert Bly described how a child is born into the world with a 360 degree personality – an all-round, complete, whole personality. As Alice Miller put it, this is the child’s gift to the world: he arrives in the world “trailing clouds of glory”. Fortunate indeed is the child who discovers a world which welcomes his wholeness and glory, the gift of himself just as he is.

Many, perhaps most, children do not. Instead they soon discover their parents do not want the gift they have to offer, at least not in the form on offer. Their parents wanted something different. A boy rather than a girl, or a girl rather than a boy. A quiet baby or a compliant child. A “good” boy or a “feisty” girl. An amenable child, not a defiant, angry one. A placid child, not a needy, demanding one.

And so a child soon learns which parts of himself need to be suppressed for maximum love to be bestowed upon him; and the parts which are not wanted by the world or the people in it usually get shoved forcibly into the child’s unconscious, into what Robert Bly aptly termed the “Shadow Bag”.

This attempt to suppress those parts of his energy which are not acceptable to the all-powerful adults, siblings, or peers in his world can massively impact every aspect of a child’s later life. So much so that one day he (or she) may well arrive at the door of a counsellor or psychotherapist’s consulting room. He may be looking for help as he tries to find the parts of himself that he senses are missing, or he may be wondering why he constantly experiences unhelpful and repetitive patterns in his life. In short, he wants to know what is in his shadow.

Talking therapies can, without doubt, be a great introduction to self-development work. Yet there is often a point where deeper work is called for, and this may be where the pursuit of one’s true self could be made easier by consulting a man or woman trained in a self-development system such as Emotional Process Work, Healing The Shadow, or Shadow Work. Men and women so trained (see this for details of how that training takes place) can help you explore your shadow and reincorporate the energy it contains into your whole being in a healthy and useful way.

The shadow and manifestation

A shadow work facilitator or “Magician” understands how and why things are put into shadow in the first place, and knows how to get them out again. With this training, the coach, counsellor or therapist will be better able to get the repressed material out of shadow and integrated back where it belongs, in its owner’s consciousness. 

Later in this website we’ll take apart the shadow and look at it from the inside out. For the moment it’s convenient to simply think of it as  made up of the parts of yourself you attempted to hide, repress and deny as a child. And although the word shadow conjures up darkness, let’s not forget that many positive energies are repressed as well.

To take a simple example, children often repress their power, their magnificence, and their glory. These are all qualities that make them stand out and shine in the world – or at least, qualities that could make them stand out and shine in the world if they were supported emotionally in their growth through life.

The problem is that our culture can be very hostile to Sovereign energy, particularly in children. The unthinking small-mindedness of parents, other adults, siblings, teachers and friends doesn’t necessarily encourage children to show themselves in all their glory. So into the shadow bag goes a child’s “golden” qualities as well as his “darker” energies (all of which are a natural part of being human, remember).

There’s a big problem here. What you put into shadow doesn’t lose its energy – far from it. Imagine a child who puts his anger into shadow because his parents don’t like that particular energy in their little boy. Think of a child who suppresses his tears and pain because Dad doesn’t like his little boy crying; in fact Dad thinks it shows the boy is a sissy, and somehow the boy knows that, even though Dad may not explicitly say it. The message always gets through somehow. Regrettably, many times the message couldn’t be clearer, for the child is directly told, harshly and cruelly, about his inadequacies and shortcomings. (This is the foundation of child abuse, a strange aspect of human behaviour which has pervaded society through the ages.)

And so to please his all-powerful parents, on whom the child knows his survival depends, the child may well repress his anger, sadness and weakness – or any other quality his parents don’t accept or approve of.

But putting these feelings and behaviours out of sight and out of mind into the unconscious mind, into the shadow bag, doesn’t take their energy away: in fact their energy can intensify. They are a part of who the child is and they continue to be energetically supported by his psyche. The question is, how do you look at what’s in your shadow – and how do you take repressed thoughts and feelings out of shadow and own them again?

Over time this energy may grow to a level where it can’t be contained any longer by unconscious repression. Then it may emerge unexpectedly and uncontrollably in a distorted form. This is almost always unhelpful or even downright destructive to the child or the adult man whom the child has become.

These shadow energies can make us behave in ways that cause difficulties in our relationships. Shadow energies make us do things which cause embarrassment and shame. They often lead to low self-esteem and self-criticism. They may manifest as strong emotions: anxiety, guilt, depression, shame, rage, jealousy, sadness, and so on. They are irrational. They make us say things we regret and which destroy harmony and goodness in our relationships. We do not understand what comes out of our shadow, and no matter how much we try to control it, nothing ever seems to change. 

The point about shadow energies is that they’re out of our awareness (it’s dark in that shadow bag!) and when they emerge into the light they often do so unexpectedly and unhelpfully. They get in the way of us expressing who we are, getting what we want, telling others what we expect and desire, and expressing our needs. To put it another way, shadow energies stop us being who we truly are.

Our shadow can prevent us from getting into relationships or ruin existing relationships. It can keep us lost in a cycle of addiction, unable to stop self-defeating behaviours. Shadow makes people compulsively behave in ways which are harmful to them and seek out things which are destructive to them, and it all happens in a way they can’t understand and which makes no rational sense.

In fact your shadow lies behind every dysfunctional, unhelpful, unexpected and unwanted thought, feeling and behaviour you’ve ever brought into the world.

law of attraction, law of attraction and shadow work

The Law of Attraction

Video – Law of Attraction

As we are a natural part of god, it looks as if a “divine” part of our souls is able to make our desired objectives a physical reality. Sure  enough… this is true…. but what a simplistic way of looking at manifestation by means of the law of attraction!

Only when you consider these theories deeply and seriously will you see that the complete world surrounding you in this, and in every, moment must be the result of your thinking – your ideas and beliefs, your goals and your aspirations.

For example, when it seems you are struggling financially, that can only be because at some level of the unconscious mind you hold a deep seated belief about just how little wealth you can bring into your life or how utterly worthless you are – or something along those lines.

Want a relationship? (Don’t we all!) Well, if you are not in a intimate and rewarding one to one relationship, but want to be so connected, then deep in your subconscious mind you will probably have a belief about how unlikable, unlovable, how unattractive, you are to a possible partner.

This means, as I’m certain you can accept, that what you see around you is all the product of your deeply held beliefs about the qualities (or lack of them) which you possess and exemplify.

And so, as I am sure you have guessed, this means that for you to make the laws of attraction and creation operate in your favor, your most intense feelings need to be totally aligned with the objective you’re trying to achieve, to manifest, to create in your world.

If, for example, you happen to believe that you simply come from a poor history and that lack of wealth is your unavoidable destiny, there is just no logic at all in attempting to manifest wealth, because you will fail! (At least until you have amended those negative shadow belief systems!)

Men and women often ask how they can be certain that their belief systems are in line with their desires.

To put it differently, they want to know how they can know if they are operating from deep seated and yet wholly unconscious beliefs that will prevent them from attaining their objectives.

The simplest and most empowering method of discovering the truth about this deeply puzzling questions is to do some shadow work. This enables you to imagine in your mind’s eye how you might feel if you were to achieve the outcome which you have set yourself.

For instance, maybe you want to have three hundred dollars in your savings account in six weeks’ time? OK, so relax in some private, quiet space, and visualize how it would feel if you had that – imagine the experience, feel the experience. Your bodily and emotional response will immediately reveal whether or not you genuinely believe that this financial outcome is possible. If not, you need to do some work on your shadow beliefs. This is called, unsurprisingly, shadow work. You can find a good shadow work facilitator in the UK or USA, and many other countries in the world today.

In reality, you will learn at once whether this is a realistic goal for you. If it isn’t, then you have to amend your objective until it feels completely believable. And even though belief is an unavoidable and entirely mandatory part of the rule for manifestation, there are some other components.

Another significant component of creating your physical reality is to feel some “burning” desire. Unless you really, truly, deeply, want to change your life in the way you have set out your goals and targets, and you understand why you want to do this, you are not very likely to succeed in manifesting the changes you are thinking about.

Those adults who have acquired significant success in some special area of life practically always report that they were passionate about what they are doing. And even assuming you possess total faith, and ardent desire, you still have to add two more parts to the mix to make the law of creation operate for you.

The first of those is anticipation – or expectation….. Often people don’t get the difference between what I call expectancy (also called expectation) and belief. To help you see what this really means, think of this: I may believe it is possible to somehow get a hundred million bucks in my bank account before the end of the year –  BUT I don’t truly expect that to happen!

Which means the quality of expectation is a measure of your desire to achieve your goal and your true motivation, a measure, let it be said, of what you are prepared to do to achieve your aims. But you have to believe whole-heartedly in your desired outcome being achievable. And you must desire, really, really desire, your objective. Only then will you have the power to attract a new reality. And then you can join the ranks of successful manifesters.

And the fourth element or component of this manifestation technique is taking action.

Somehow the cosmic Laws of attraction appear to be more responsive to intense emotion and will also react more effectively and rapidly to those men and women who step up to take action to achieve their desired outcome. This really doesn’t have to be the massive action recommended by Tony Robbins. You don’t have to try and move mountains in your work.

But a lot of experts who really know about manifestation techniques will say exactly the same thing: that it is necessary to take some action that will help you progress or move you in the general (or even specific) direction of your goal. And, indeed, if you find there is some challenge that seems insurmountable, and is interfering with your manifestation, then the only option open to you is to persist with what you are doing and continue on the path which opens out before you.

Video – the Great Mystery

It is perhaps as though the entity or energy we call God (or some of us call the Great Mystery) wants to have some proof that you are genuinely interested in keeping your commitment, your aspiration, to getting some desired outcome. Perhaps all of that may sound like  a major task, but it isn’t as arduous as you think! You have to merely visualize or imagine your goals for around twenty minutes each day and take at least one or two small steps every day which you believe will move you in the direction that will bring you to your objectives.

If you are willing to do these simple things, and you possess complete faith in your capacity to achieve your outcome, (which assumes your desire to manifest is intense), and also assumes that your expectancy is not only positive, but strong and persistent, you’ll find the law of attraction is the simplest way of getting what you want.

manifestation, manifestation and shadow work

Manifestation, The Secret, and The Shadow

One of the key exponents of the power of manifestation and the Law of Attraction in everyday life is of Rhonda Byrne, who both produced the film The Secret and wrote the book of The Secret back in 2006 / 2007.

These were works which led to a vast, perhaps even exponential, increase in people’s interest in the Law of Attraction and manifestation in everyday life.

One of the more interesting questions is whether or not those two works have actually in any way influenced the number of people who are able to succeed at manifesting their destiny and a ability to consciously create the world around them.

My guess is that that probably hasn’t happened. The Secret was a good exposition of several experts talking about how the Law of Attraction and conscious creation actually work. Unfortunately, there were not many practical instructions or techniques which people could take away and use to consciously create their own destiny.

Suppose, for example, that you are a man who wanted to manifest money and you went to The Secret to find out how you might go about manifesting it.

I’m very much afraid that you wouldn’t find much help there! What you would find is a series of general instructions about what you could do to improve the quality of your life, but very few practical tips that could transform the theory of manifestation & conscious creation into a real way of changing this particularly important area of your life.

Law of Attraction – Visualization

But there’s no reason why The Secret, and the Law of Attraction ideas about manifestation which lie behind it, couldn’t be used in this way.

What I’d like to do is try and give you practical program which you can use to change your physical reality in a very important way. The secret is a combination of desire, belief and expectancy.  Lack of wealth is the most common deficiency among people, and it’s the one that men have most difficulty in finding a remedy for – chiefly because they are embarrassed about seeking help.

So obviously any way in which men can find a way of dealing with this problem, whether by conscious creation, or by finding someone who can help them with it, is going to be advantageous to the well-being of not only the men themselves but the partners with whom they are in relationship.

So the first thing you have to do is make a very clear intention to change your financial state. That is to say, you have to decide exactly what you want to achieve, and what is your desired outcome, in fact.

Having made that clear decision, the next step in the process is to find a technique you can use to improve your wealth generating skill. A good place to start is with The Millionaire Fast Lane. Now, note that you have to follow the instructions in this book very carefully, because it is a practical manual and it needs you to be serious about what you are doing!

And when you’re following the instructions, you need to use the visualization techniques and the affirmation techniques that are set out in any form of conscious creation program.

Now, it’s really important that you expect improvements to occur, because without expectation, you will definitely find results of the technique variable.

The key formula is

  • Really wanting something.
  • Then finding a formula or action plan by which you can manifest it.
  • Then expecting results to happen, and backing this up with the visualization of your desired outcome to reinforce the reality of that in your mind. (“As if” it actually existed in your life right now.)
  • These are all essential techniques that you can very easily use both alone and together with your partner to manifest the reality of much better performance an achievement in all areas of your life.

Several people I know have improved their wealth performance from just a few tens of thousands a year to hundreds of thousands. This is the whole object of the exercise of conscious creation!

However, there is a problem here. If you don’t believe you can have what you want, you will fail. If you don’t desire it intensely enough, you will fail. And if you don’t expect to get it, you will fail.

But why, you may say, would any of these things apply?

In a word – because of your shadow. The part of yourself which you hide repress and deny. The part of you that actually governs your life. You see, down in your unconscious are many false beliefs about you and your place in the world. they come from what you learnt about yourself during childhood. Did you, for example, pick up a belief that you were destined to be poor? Or that you weren’t worthy of much? Or that you were in fact worthless? These shadow beliefs get in the way of the unconscious mind producing wealth and success, because they have been there for so long and they are so much stronger than your conscious intention. You need to change these fundamental, unconscious shadow beliefs about yourself before you can achieve anything in the world. And how is that done? Simply, with shadow work sessions, tools and techniques.

To explore what this means in practice, you need to consult with a good shadow work facilitator who can help you overcome the difficulties of the past and reach a position of greater self-confidence and personal power. Only then will the Law Of Attraction begin to work consistently for you.

Certainly I do know that combining the Law of Attraction and manifestation is an unusual set of techniques to use for wealth creation, but then – isn’t that exactly the point about this technique?

That by extending the boundaries of what you know, and going beyond what is known to others, you can find yourself in a place where you’re manifesting much greater wealth, more self-confidence, and great self-esteem – all of which can only help your relationship!

how to increase manifestation success

Making Your Intentions Manifest

Steve Pavlina has written quite a bit about the Law of Attraction on his blog, and some of his material makes interesting reading. In particular, what he says about the number one mistake people make when using the Law of Attraction.

Why The Law of Attraction Fails

This seems to be, in Steve’s opinion, all about intention.

He refers to two components of intention: first of all, the content. Second, the energy you bring to it.

Obviously, the content is simply information. It’s about what you have decided you want.

This might be, for example, a new career, a better relationship, or a specific amount of money.

But what about the energy, the second part of your intention?

Generally speaking when you read about Law of Attraction, it’s described as emotion. Often strong emotion. People talk about the need for passion, or gratitude. And they seem to imply that these are the kind of strong emotions which can send your intention out into the universe.

Steve Pavlina, however, says that the feelings or emotions you have are a result of the energy you bring to your intention.

It’s an interesting viewpoint, and one we should consider.

Before we do that however, we’ll just review what Steve has to say about the experience of failure when trying to manifest using Law of Attraction principles.

There’s no question that lots of people fail to get anything when they use the Law of Attraction. And a lot of people seem to use techniques that don’t work over and over again.

Others try it once and give up when their desires fail to manifest.

And plenty of people don’t even try, but just dismiss the Law of Attraction as nonsense right from the start.

All of these approaches are flawed.

The basic problem when Law Of Attraction doesn’t work seems to be that people aren’t energizing their intention correctly.

In other words, people think an idea (the content of their intention) is a complete intention.

But the truth is that energy is also an essential component of every intention.

This isn’t surprising, because if you think about it, anything in the world that changes form, or moves from one place to another, requires some form of energy to make the change happen.

Similarly, any manifestation using the Law of Attraction requires energy.

Now it’s absolutely true that most people who talk about law of attraction say that the strong emotions you bring to your intention are what makes your desires manifest.

But, like I said, Steve Pavlina’s view is that the emotion you feel is the result of the  thought energy you bring to your intention.

He reminds us how children bring energy to their desire for something they want. They ask for it, they jump up and down, and they’ll drive everyone crazy expressing their desires. And generally, they don’t give up very easily.

Now is that just thought energy, or is it emotion? Certainly when a child manifests what it wants (usually because somebody gets it for them) they feel strong emotion – gratitude, joy or happiness. (Or maybe disappointment if the wrong thing’s manifested.)

So have we really all got it wrong? Are our emotions not the fuel for manifestation, but simply the product of the energy we need to bring to the process?

Well! It looks like an important question, doesn’t it?

If everyone out there talking about the Law of Attraction who is telling you that you need to bring emotional energy to your intention, and they are wrong, we need to know!

Currently we’re all trying to feel gratitude and happiness by visualizing outcomes before they’ve happened. If this is wrong, yes, we really need to know!

Steve’s explanation is that you get energy into your intention by using the concept of increased thought energy.

He makes the point that a thought like “I feel joy” doesn’t necessarily hold any emotional energy or fuel.

But if you close your eyes, and smile, perhaps move around a bit, sing a happy song, that kind of thing, you immediately begin to feel the emotion of joy. In short, it’s possible to add energy to a thought process to make it more intense. You can try this for yourself.

You can try this for yourself.  Read Steve’s article by clicking on the link. And you can read the first part of his article here stevepavlina.com.

In summary, Steve’s suggesting that an intense emotion like passion does not fuel or motivate action or manifestation.

Passion, he says, isn’t the real source of drive and motivation, but merely a by-product of high levels of thought energy.

To put this another way, the ultimate cause of manifestation using the Law of Attraction is always the original intention.

When it’s backed up by high levels of energy, that is to say high levels of thought energy, you will experience more intense emotional feelings.

When these intense feelings are mixed with direct action, as well as the art of passive manifesting (asking and letting go of expectation), manifestation is simple and easy.

What does this mean in practice?

I think it means that if you hold low-energy thoughts, even with great content, they will manifest virtually nothing.

That’s perhaps one reason why affirmations are sometimes not very successful: they hold great content, but there’s no energy behind them.

On the other hand, if you hold thoughts with poor content and high energy, you feel a surge of motivation and passion which leads you to pursue them as goals. You probably recognize both these possibilities for yourself.

And very interestingly, when you hold a powerful intention that is loaded with lots of thought energy, other people can begin to pick it up and respond to it long before physical manifestation of your intention has taken place.

Finally, it’s worth reading what Steve says about developing the skill of directing energy flow. It isn’t something that happens overnight. But instant results are probably what most people who hear about the Law of Attraction expect and want to happen.

Like anything else, to make Law of Attraction work, and to learn the techniques that will allow you to manifest whatever you desire, you have to develop your skill at creating and sustaining energy flow.

manifesting love

Getting Your Ideal Relationship

You may be wondering how to go about creating a loving relationship, a connection which really serves you.

This is just one aspect of creating the life you want by using manifestation and Law of Attraction. And I assume you wouldn’t be here reading this if you didn’t believe manifestation is a reality?

So let’s cut to the chase with two simple facts:

You are the person who is ultimately responsible for everything that happens to you.

You are the person who is in charge of your life.

In practical terms this means you can have anything you want, you can be anything you want, and you can do anything you want.

There is, regrettably, just one small problem: you have to believe in the possibility of the manifestation of whatever you’re thinking about.

And to do that, you must rid yourself of limiting beliefs and employ the right reality-creation techniques.

Here’s a brief summary of the steps necessary for you to get your desired outcome, be it a loving relationship or abundance and prosperity.

One: Show Continuing Commitment To Your Objective

In my experience, one of the biggest reasons why people fail to manifest the thing they say they want is because after a few days of visualization or meditation, they forget about it.

They are too distracted by the events of everyday life, or their passion for what they claim they want is simply not intense enough to sustain the connection between their wish for change and their desired outcome.

That’s true of all areas of life – money, love, abundance, prosperity, even happiness.

But commitment is absolutely essential. You see, when you commit to a goal and you stay committed to it, the chances of you achieving it improve massively.

That’s especially true for love. So why do people not find it easy to commit for the long term to their desired outcome of finding love?

Mostly, I suspect, because they don’t want to feel let down, or to be let down. Mostly, I suspect, because they’re scared that their happiness really does depend on finding the right relationship. (And, of course, they may not get it.)

Which is ironic really, because committing to a loving relationship, and maintaining that commitment until it manifests, is the one thing that really will make you happy and joyous.

When you commit completely, which means in effect making sure that you hold onto your goal and you work towards it every single day of your life, your chances of success are guaranteed. 

Two: Make Sure You Know What You Want

Of course there is another side to this.

To commit to anything, to be able to manifest, you absolutely need to know what you want.

Some experts on manifestation say you need to visualize every single detail of your objective, so that your mind has a clear vision of what you’re trying to achieve.

Yet at the same time, other writers on the subject of manifestation and the law of attraction will tell you equally clearly that visualizing specific detail is wrong because this reduces the chance of the universe manifesting what you want through synchronicity and coincidence.

The explanation of this apparent paradox lies in a simple twist – you need to focus on what you will feel when you find the person you’re looking for.

So ask yourself what qualities would make you happy, committed, loving. Ask yourself what you would respect in a partner and what qualities you would want in them.

Then, using these, you can summon up a sense, an image, a visualized picture even, of the partner you want.

This way, you’re not attached to the specific details of size, eye colour, hair color, weight, body shape or anything else.

What you’re attached to is the state of mind that you want to experience through meeting your partner and having a loving relationship with them.

This also has the advantage that you’re not trying to do this for the sake of someone else – you are doing it clearly and specifically for your own advantage, for your own benefit, for your own good.

Three: Embody The Qualities You Want To Find In Somebody Else

It follows, doesn’t it, that if you want to meet a loving person, then you have to embody the quality of a loving nature yourself?

Indeed, it could be argued that if you’re trying to meet a partner who is loving, respectful, has high moral values, is relaxed and authentic, let’s say for the sake of argument, then surely you have to embody these values yourself?

When you meet and find yourself attracted to somebody who has opposite qualities and values to you, it’s almost certainly because you’re trying to complete some incomplete Gestalt, a residue from your emotional history.

Most people, regrettably, don’t focus on the need to embody the inequalities that they’re looking for in their partner.

Instead, they look for somebody who can serve as a means of psychological completion of themselves. So for you, for example, this might mean looking for the quality you believe is missing in you by trying to find someone else who has it.

This is why it’s absolutely essential to do your own work, that is to say your psychological and emotional development work, to make yourself into the person who you truly want to be.

You stand a much better chance of meeting your ideal soulmate when you’re not searching for some missing part of yourself in someone else.

Four: Know That The Love You Want Is In Your Life Even Before Your Soulmate Arrives

Perhaps for most people this is the really challenging step – to feel the results of their manifestation before it’s arrived.

Ask yourself this question as an example of the principle at work: if you are feeling depressed, would you expect to attract a joyous, loving partner?

The answer is obvious, isn’t it?

You can’t use a relationship to make you complete. What you can do is manifest an ideal partner so you can experience joy and love.

Intentionally using other people to make yourself feel “whole” is a recipe for disaster. You might learn something from it, you might even heal some emotional wounds, but believe me, this is not the way you’re going to meet your soulmate.

In fact, this is true for every area of life:  if you want to create the life you want, then you need to embody those qualities in yourself, so that the world starts to experience you in that way. Then you will attract and manifest people, circumstances and events which mirror those qualities.

So you need to believe in yourself, you need to love yourself, and you need to be self-sufficient.

When you have those qualities, even to a slight degree, you can move into an emotional space where you can meet your soulmate.

But here’s the important thing: even if you’re not in that place, you can still use Law of Attraction and principles of manifestation to find a relationship which satisfies you and fulfils you for now. 

But keep in mind the fact you may be challenged by this relationship, for its purpose may only be to help you learn and grow sufficiently to move on to the next level of your own evolution.

how to increase manifestation success

Relinquish Your Will And Let The Universe Do Its Work

Heather Strang, spiritual teacher and author, writes about manifestation on Huffington Post.

She starts up by amusingly telling us how often she wanted “something” really, really badly – and that could be anything from a car, new job, loads of cash to a skinny body (and a lot more besides).

In other words, she was trying to manifest using Law of Attraction. And her vision of manifestation was to go to full throttle – to hustle, to follow leads, to network, to use all of the strategies she could think of.

And like all of us, she found that sometimes her manifestation worked, and sometimes it didn’t.

When the Law Of Attraction came up with the good, she felt there was magic happening, and when it didn’t, it seemed like… well, you probably know exactly how that feels.

After all, you’ve been trying to manifest things for ages now, and probably one of the reasons you’re reading this blog is because you haven’t succeeded in the way you would like.

Heather says something we can all relate to: sometimes it worked like magic, and sometimes no matter what she did, the thing she desired just didn’t appear in her life.

In fact, the opposite would happen: often things that she didn’t want, or things which were poor forms of what she was trying to get, would appear in her life.

And like all of us, she felt dejected and irritated that her manifestation was failing. Strangely enough, the tantrums she went into “from her inner 13-year-old” didn’t help matters at all – because, funnily enough, the universe didn’t respond by giving her what she wants.

Strange that.

However, there is something interesting in her observation about anger: high levels of energy, whether positive or negative, can really help to manifest something.

Therefore, if the energy she was displaying in a 13-year-old temper tantrum had been directed correctly it may well have manifested what she wanted!

Anyway, what she was doing didn’t work for Heather so, as all of us have done, she retreated into herself, stopped relying on the power of the universe to give her what she wanted, and became self-centred and self-reliant.

In essence, she was saying to herself something which I suspect all of us have said at one point another when our manifestation has not been going well: if she cared enough about something she assumed it would show up, and if it didn’t show up then she’d forget about it or assume something even more fantastic was on the horizon.

But what was interesting to her was that when she did that, the object of her desire often did show up – or something even more fantastic made its appearance!

Now this is really interesting, because it raises a question: as Heather herself asks, had these better things manifested because she’d raised her vibration to a level that was aligned with what she wanted?

Or were they in fact appearing at this point in time because the universe had decided this was the right moment for her to have it?

Or perhaps, as Heather Strang suggests, the manifestation by use of Law of Attraction was more to do with the very obvious fact that at this point she’d surrendered to the will of the Universe, God, Cosmic Consciousness or Universal intelligence?

You see, she makes a very valuable point in suggesting that when people are working really hard to try and make something manifest into the real world, it simply can’t happen.

Now, either you believe that or you don’t, because there is no logical explanation or scientific explanation for it, but it is an interesting idea.

What Heather suggests is that the very energy of wanting something really, really badly actually takes it further and further away from us.

Whereas if you accept the principal of allowing it to come in its own time, surrendering to the universe, then somehow you really do allow the universe to manifest what you desire much more freely.

She puts it like this: manifestation is an awesome gift that comes along with the human condition, but what we have to do is to let go – to be able to send whatever you are requesting, whatever it is that you want, out into the universe, but at the same time to be able to let it go.

In effect, this is a surrendering, a relinquishing of control, a surrendering to the power of the universe – which will then do everything necessary to manifest what you desire.

Perhaps that is the true meaning of the law of attraction?

As Heather points out, Marianne Williamson has made the observation that surrendering to God is really all about surrendering to a universe which already knows what it’s doing.

The absence of control, and the allowing of things to fall into their natural order, works much better, because the power that is greater than ourselves (god, the universe, the law of attraction, call it what you may) will take over, and will do a much better job than we could ever have done.

At its root, this is a matter of trust. It’s a matter of trust in the power of the universe, the power which is capable of holding galaxies together – and which can, we may therefore assume, handle the circumstances of our comparatively insignificant little lives.

So there you go.

You are a powerful being, but your power is partly derived from the fact that you’re a human in a universe that is infinitely powerful, that you are in fact part of that universe, and that being part of it gives you access to the universal power.

Oddly enough, though, one of the greatest powers you possess is being able to relinquish control and surrender your will.

You will observe that to do this requires a combination of various qualities which we’re talking about on this website: the desire to have something which motivates you to take action, the belief that the universe can provide it, the expectancy that you will get it, and the faith that everything will work if only you leave the universe to its own design.