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.