Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
The law of attraction is a powerful philosophy that states that whatever thoughts you visualize, you attract and receive them. In other words, if you think positive, you receive positive experiences and vice versa. If you have seen people who worry about almost everything, you will never find them relieved, as their worries mostly turn into reality. It’s because they keep giving impetus to negative energy. People who are positive and accept challenges head-on somehow find a way to overcome those challenges and reflect positivity. Spirituality, on the other hand, implies being connected to a higher power and finding peace and contentment in something higher than materialistic things. Mindfulness is one of the techniques to cultivate spirituality; it focuses on the here-and-now state of mind and improves awareness. Spirituality enhances your emotional well-being by opening your eyes to your thoughts and feelings without judging them.
How Effective is the Law of Attraction?
The law of attraction works even without your awareness. Your mind tends to think about what it wants and the universe brings it closer to you. Unfortunately, many of us give more importance to negativity in our lives, and that brings us more stress, anxiety and misery. But people who know how to use the law, attract success, happiness and good health in their lives. So, is this law just about nurturing positive thoughts? Well, if you feel just thinking positive is enough, that’s not the law. The law of attraction requires that you think and act on your positive intention, and only then will positive things be attracted to your life. Idleness can never lead to an ideal situation in your life.
Connection With Spirituality
Spirituality makes you believe in a higher power, integrates the components of your instincts, and interconnects them with external factors. The spirituality concept puts the spirit or soul on a higher pedestal than the material body. It teaches us to lead a life with no expectations and find joy within. People have their own unique ways to experience spirituality. While some find it in their daily work, some find it in worship and others may experience it via wisdom. “Everyone is made up of the spirit. It is the spirit in you that is speaking, which understands, which is perceiving and communicating, etc. Everything is being done by the spirit. Honoring this is spirituality.”
Here is how we can connect the dots from spirituality to the law of attraction
The law of attraction insists you consciously send a positive message to the universe and receive positive results. Spirituality too believes in emotional well-being and moving forward with hope and optimism. Hence, both concepts (law of attraction and spirituality) focus on having a positive outlook on life.
The law of attraction reveals that the kind of energy we put into the world, reflects back in our daily situations in life. Our relationships and circles consist of people we attract and who are very much like us. While spirituality enhances our thought process through mindfulness, it also brings us closer to people who believe in spirituality. That’s why you find many being attracted to spiritual groups and activities (that connect one to the soul).
The law of attraction and spirituality both advocate the importance of mindfulness, good health and meditation. The moment you focus on your conscience and soul, you realize the abundance of life. You can then direct your thoughts positively and embrace your present the way it is.
The law of attraction and spirituality both help us with techniques to manage our stress and anxiety in a better way. We look into our situations without prejudice and effectively find solutions to resolve them.
The law of attraction and spirituality both advocate toning down the negative aspects of life and believing that only good things will happen. That empowers you to transform your situations through positive energy and leads to positive outcomes.
Two Sides of A Coin
While the law of attraction comes with the idea of manifestation, spirituality reverberates the same idea with a different approach. In both ways, you can visualize a new reality, take more risks, and accomplish your goals. All of it happens without creating a plethora of frustration, stress, and anxiety. You appear more energetic, focused, and purpose driven.
The law of attraction and spirituality both come with a pitfall, if not viewed from a broader perspective. Where one can make you blame yourself for the negative consequences of your life (which you may have no control over), the other may push you into dogma and seclusion, ignoring others’ ways and views. What you must remember is that every other person is like you, finding the purpose of life and connecting the dots in his own way. The more you peek into yourself, and practice compassion and care for all beings, the more enlightened you become. “The knowledge that unites love and wisdom, that uplifts the spirit is spirituality. The knowledge which gives you a broad vision and a big heart is spirituality.”
Osho
Love and The Law Of Attraction
Only a loving person — one who is already loving — can find the right partner.
This is my observation: if you are unhappy you will find somebody who is unhappy. Unhappy people are attracted towards unhappy people. And it is good, it is natural. It is good that the unhappy people are not attracted towards happy people; otherwise they would destroy their happiness. It is perfectly okay.
Only happy people are attracted towards happy people.
The same attracts the same. Intelligent people are attracted towards intelligent people; stupid people are attracted towards stupid people.
You meet people of the same plane. So the first thing to remember is: a relationship is bound to be bitter if it has grown out of unhappiness. First be happy, be joyful, be celebrating, and then you will find some other soul celebrating and there will be a meeting of two dancing souls and a great dance will arise out of it.
The need to be loved is childish, immature. The need to love is mature.
Don’t ask for a relationship out of loneliness, no. Then you are moving in a wrong direction. Then the other will be used as a means and the other will use you as a means. And nobody wants to be used as a means! Every single individual is an end unto himself. It is immoral to use anybody as a means.
First learn how to be alone. Meditation is a way of being alone.
If you can be happy when you are alone, you have learned the secret of being happy. Now you can be happy together. If you are happy, then you have something to share, to give. And when you give you get; it is not the other way. Then a need arises to love somebody.
Ordinarily the need is to be loved by somebody. It is a wrong need. It is a childish need; you are not mature. It is a child’s attitude.
A child is born. Of course, the child cannot love the mother; he does not know what love is and he does not know who is the mother and who is the father. He is totally helpless. His being is still to be integrated; he is not one piece; he is not together yet. He is just a possibility. The mother has to love, the father has to love, the family has to shower love on the child. Now he learns one thing: that everybody has to love him. He never learns that he has to love. Now the child will grow, and if he remains stuck with this attitude that everybody has to love him, he will suffer his whole life. His body has grown, but his mind has remained immature.
A mature person is one who comes to know the other need: that now I have to love somebody. The need to be loved is childish, immature. The need to love is mature. And when you are ready to love somebody, a beautiful relationship will arise; otherwise not.
“Is it possible for two people in a relationship to be bad for each other?” Yes, that’s what is happening all over the world. To be good is very difficult. You are not good even to yourself. How can you be good to somebody else?
You don’t even love yourself! How can you love somebody else? Love yourself, be good to yourself.
Your so-called religious saints have been teaching you never to love yourself, never to be good to yourself. Be hard on yourself! They have been teaching you be soft towards others and hard towards yourself. This is absurd.
I teach you that the first and foremost thing is to be loving towards yourself. Don’t be hard; be soft. Care about yourself. Learn how to forgive yourself — again and again and again — seven times, seventy-seven times, seven hundred seventy-seven times. Learn how to forgive yourself. Don’t be hard; don’t be antagonistic towards yourself. Then you will flower.
In that flowering you will attract some other flower. It is natural. Stones attract stones; flowers attract flowers. Then there is a relationship which has grace, which has beauty, which has a benediction in it. If you can find such a relationship, your relationship will grow into prayer;your love will become an ecstasy and through love you will know what the divine is.