Freedom, The Secret, and The Law of Attraction, Part 1 of 2

What is energy?

People write about it all the time.

Energy is:

1. A source of power for our homes, businesses, cars, buses, trains, and planes
2. A way of describing a personal physical/emotional ability to take action (“I don’t have the energy to do this)
3. A fundamental building block of the universe (matter and energy)
4. A flow of some unknown power through us, which can be used to heal
5. An idea/metaphor/reality for describing how fully we are able to bring our potential to life

Scratching your heads over the last one?
Read on.

Have you heard of The Secret, and The Law of Attraction?
The Law of Attraction is focused on how you use imagination and emotion to bring a desired future to life.
(For background, see my articles on The Law of Attraction)

There’s something missing from the way that most people approach The Law of Attraction.

I just figured it out.

If I had to sum it up in one word: Freedom.

Let’s try an exercise.
Imagine right now that you have achieved your desires (whatever it is that you imagine being, doing, or having).

When you imagine your future, do you feel yourself opening up toward the world outside you, reaching out, feeling more expansive? Does your imagined future help you feel more free?

Or do you feel yourself closed up, or closing up, withdrawing from the world, trying to take whatever you can from the world or protect what you have? (Or do you feel kind of neutral, not reaching out, but not tightly closed.)

You can think of your opening or closing as a flow of energy. Whether you believe that some unseen energy actually flows freely or is constricted doesn’t matter here. Expansive and contracting energy flow is the perfect metaphor for the way that you’re relating to the world, and how you feel about what you desire.

A related pair of opposite beliefs:
Do you believe that the world is abundant, and that you maximize your possibilities when you interact with that world?

Or do you believe that the world is finite, and you have to grab as much as you can from everyone else?

I believe that the world is abundant, and that I can only discover the full measure of who I am through being open to the world. So for me, if I feel closed up or neutral when I imagine some future, there’s something wrong.

Sometimes, it might be that I’m just not paying attention, not doing a good job of imagining and feeling my future.

I think that we’re all trying to find ways to feel more free, and freedom is tied to opening up to the world.
I want to feel larger. I want to feel that I’m connected to the world around me.
We try to do this in so many ways – trying to be more, do more, or have more. All of these ways can take me beyond what I am now, reaching out to infinity.

Ok. Some of the ways that we try to pursue freedom are pretty lame.

But the desire for freedom, the desire for greatness, the desire to be more than I am is the essence of being human. I try to respect that urge in everyone, including myself, even if sometimes I try to get that sense of freedom in some trivial way.

(Read Freedom, The Secret, and The Law of Attraction, Part 2)