Law of Attraction is not about reaching for joy

When you listen or read, Law of Attraction material, it feels as if the gurus are telling us that success in life with the money that we want, the health, the relationship, the self-worth - all will come to us only if we can get to a place of joy and then stay there for ever.

Should we dare to fall off that lofty place of joy on the emotional scale, then we would put at risk everything that we have.
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That is not my personal truth. I don't think anyone can get to a place of everlasting joy. Here's why:

Satisfaction, not joy. The aim of all the work that we are doing is satisfaction, not joy. Because satisfaction is consistent. Joy is transient.
 
Satisfaction is a place where we can hang out all the time. Joy is a place that we go from time to time. And that’s actually what makes being joyful such a wonderful feeling. If you were joyful all the time, then you would not feel it. Just like after you drive by a billboard a couple of times, it becomes invisible. You just don’t pay attention anymore until they put something new on it. And that’s exactly the way we are.

​And you know what? Lower vibrations work the same way. For a lot of us (and certainly this was the case for me) we become so used to things not working out for us, that when more and more things don’t work out for us, we just keep going the same way. We act as if life is supposed to be that way. There are so many people who say “that’s just life, you can’t expect good things to happen all the time, that’s just not how life works”. And we absorb that. We let that belief sink in. And then we do nothing.

You see, that’s the problem. We do nothing to reach for more when we get used to being in a negative place. We just accept that that’s our lot and we have no control over it, and we never express an eagerness for more.
 
In fact, a lot of times we’re taught that. Our parents tell us “you can’t have everything you ask for!”. And even though the 6-year-old you or the 10-year-old you is saying “I can! Why can’t I?”, it doesn’t seem seem true to you. It doesn’t seem to you that that’s how things are to be.
 
So you see, getting used to being in a negative place, lower down on the emotional scale, is not good for us. Because it takes away the eagerness for going up the emotional scale, for finding the tools and practicing the processes that help us to do that.
 
So, satisfied where I am and eager for more. That is a wonderful mantra. It’s a wonderful thing to remind ourselves of because we want the reminder that we want to reach for satisfaction. And once we are satisfied, that doesn’t mean we stop wanting. It means that we are always eager for more. But we are not attached to more. We are eager because we trust the ability of the universe to bring us more and more wonderful things. But we don’t get attached anymore. And the reason we don’t get attached is that we’re quite happy where we are. So there’s no desperation to change where we are.
 
So we give birth to desires, and we have fun giving birth to those desires, without digging our heels in and saying “this is what I want and this is the only thing that I want”.
 
It reminds me of a dream that I had a long time ago that I wrote about in the book Thrive. I dreamed that I was in a circular room with lots of doors. I ignored all the doors except for this one particular yellow door, because I knew somehow that there was a wonderful treasure behind that door. So, I tried the door and it would not open. I pushed it and pulled it and put all my strength into it. The door would not budge.
 
In the end, I gave up and I sat on the floor with my back against the door. And then I noticed, there were so many other doors. I wondered what was behind those doors. So I tried another door and it led into a corridor. Then I tried another door and it led into the same corridor. All the doors led into the same corridor. I wasted so much time tugging and pulling and pushing that one yellow door, when all I had to do was stop pushing at that one door and try a different door.
 
But I didn’t for the longest time, not until I gave up. Because I thought that was the right door. What I didn’t know was, that the universe had tens of other doors in the same room, and I could have tried any one of those tens of different doors, and the universe would have led me to the treasure where I wanted to go.
 
I don’t dream often, but I did dream that, and that dream has become my anchor. Whenever I think about something and I say, “oh, this is how it should unfold, this is how I want it to happen”; I remember my dream and I stop myself. And I say, “there might be other ways that I can’t see just now, and I’m okay to let go of control and allow the universe to lead me”.
 
That’s how you develop a lack of attachment. Because you know that what you’ve asked for is there, and that the universe is always, always and always leading you toward that.
 
I’m excited to hear back from you, your stories of how things unfolded for you once you gave up attachment; once you gave up control. Giving up attachment is the same thing as giving up control. A lot of us stubborn folks learn to be stubborn because we don’t want to be controlled by our parents or our teachers or our friends or anyone else. So we habitually want for things to go our way and we refuse to give up that control. But you can’t be stubborn with the universe, because that’s not how the universe yields the things that you want. With the universe you have to let go of control and allow the universe to show you the way to all the things that you want.
 
Much love and appreciation,
​Zehra