Create a New Reality: Move Beyond Law of Attraction Theory

Can’t put down read, so amazing, would recommend.

"The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” - Albert EinsteinWe are not what we think, we think what we are. Our reality formed from projections of deeply held beliefs, an internal locus of control creates our moment by moment experiences. This is truth of our life as presented in Nanci's latest publication 'Create a New Reality'.Nanci intends this book as a corrective to the ubiquitous Law of Attraction theories that have come to permeate new age and spiritual literature. We are invited to consider just how effectual these theories are, and critically examine the logic underlying LoA.Key Point 1: We manifest beliefs – not thoughts!Immediately we are presented with a sharp deviation from the fundamental precept behind LoA. And this has some implications. We can’t for instance simply chant affirmations and expect results. More work is needed! We have to identify deeply held beliefs, many of which might be subconscious, and then somehow change them! This seems almost as difficult as arbitrarily deciding to prefer the taste of tea over the taste of coffee. A free lunch this isn’t!A common impediment for many people, I believe, is changing beliefs regarding the fundamental nature of reality and our relationship to it. Every second of every day our senses condition us to believe we live in a world composed of discrete physical objects occupying a three dimensional space, the dynamic nature of which is governed by physical forces. This false narrative keeps societal beliefs firmly entrenched in out-dated 18th century Newtonian physics. Contemporary theoretical physics tells a completely different story: There is no physical matter, no literal physical forces, and no time and space. The world we apprehend is in reality nothing more than energy masquerading as physical stuff, essentially energy calmed down to a lower vibrational frequency, forming an energy density we perceive in the form of physical objects. Not only that, there are no literal physical forces. The underlying processes giving rise to what we perceive as forces have no literal ‘push/pull’ quality about them. Gravity for instance arises from the tendency of objects to follow geodesic trajectories (paths of shortest distance through non-Euclidean spacetime) an obscure geometric property of spacetime rather than a physical force. And neuroscience now recognizes the flow of time as a cognitive construct, whilst the theory of relativity dispenses with the notion of time and space as being objective realities at all.To sum up, the universe is all smoke and mirrors, essentially configurations (for lack of a better term) of energy in a state of flux. Our reality is probably more closely akin to the Matrix movies (which should be understood as a metaphor rather than literal) than the world intuited via our five limited human senses.These ideas are important, as anyone basing their conception of reality on what their senses tell them will struggle to make the requisite changes of perspective required for successful manifesting. Which leads neatly to the next key point.Key point 2: Intention is the single most vital component of successful manifesting.Intention is the firm expectation of getting the desired result, and pivotal to this is the belief that one has the inherent power to actually create these changes. Moreover, manifesting will likely be confined to trivial results unless one believes in what humans would regard as ‘miracles’. Armed with a more sophisticated idea of how the universe works, as detailed above, the idea of ‘miracles’ is actually quite mundane (from an ontological rather than pragmatic point of view). Viewing the universe as a sea of energy in a state of flux precipitates the idea of energy manipulation, some forms of which would naturally translate into human miracles. When viewed correctly it is clear that the universe does not contain definite physical laws that are metaphysically immutable. They are highly malleable, and ripe for manipulation.(Strictly speaking there are two components to manifesting – attention and intention, of which intention is the more important. It seems however that attention is inbuilt into intention, as it is hard to see how someone could intend a result without at the same time giving it attention. So as far as I can see, just intend and you should be fine.)Key Point 3: Law of Attraction Theories are BS.I nearly skipped over chapter 4, entitled Law of Attraction Theories, owing to the fact that I regard such ideas as nonsense, and largely regard the people associated with peddling such codswallop as snake oil salesman (probably a bit unfair as I’m sure some are sincere, albeit misguided), so thought this chapter would be preaching to the converted in my case. However I resisted the temptation to skip one chapter ahead and read it anyway, thankfully finding it to be highly informative and a quite entertaining read. Nanci kind of takes the p--s out of the Law of Attraction theory, but in a playful and relatively inoffensive way. I do think even the most ardent proponents of LoA might find it difficult to argue against the brute force logic of Nanci’s arguments in this chapter.I would say that although LoA doesn’t appeal to my logical brain, I would nonetheless love to magically conjure up piles of cash at will, or manifest a svelte muscular body women would clamour for (oh I already did that one). So why precisely does manifesting not work this way? Primarily because it has to fit in with the reason we chose our current incarnation in the first place. But can’t we change our goals halfway through an incarnation? For instance, I think it would be instructive to see how my behaviour might change if I were to suddenly become stinking rich. Would I continue to leave a fine upstanding life or descend into debauchery and over-indulgence? Surely this is a fine spiritual topic of study! Unfortunately this also requires the cooperation of my higher self (the bit of me still sitting up there comfortably in the light) and he hasn’t got back to me on this one yet. So Plan B – since this is a collective manifestation how about manifesting by proxy. Convince enough people I am already wealthy and their deeply held beliefs might manifest the wealth for me. Alas, Nanci’s reply to a reader (me) indicates this will never work. Plan C – dupe my higher self into believing that acquiring vast wealth will further my current spiritual mission (whatever that is). I fear in practise this might be somewhat tricky however.Key point 4: Mental visualizations and human emotions are generally ineffectual.This might surprise many, and could explain why my visualizations of Trump suddenly vanishing into a wormhole haven’t come to fruition yet. The basic idea here is to clear one’s mind of all contents which originate from the biological human part. What is left, by default, is the LB soul. That is when manifesting is at its most potent. If one attempts to manifest whilst the human is in the way, the signal tends to get jammed, or there is crosstalk or something. So clear your mind, hold the intention to manifest whatever it is you want in your mind (without articulation) and voila – your manifestation should manifest. But not necessarily immediately.To sum up, the primary potential limiting factor is self-doubt, as this will naturally result in a lack of intention (expectation) the vital ingredient of successful manifesting. Basically, if one isn’t pretty confident of getting what they want, they probably won’t get what they want. And this makes it hard for natural born agnostics such as myself. On balance of probability I believe I can manifest, but how do I upgrade to beyond reasonable doubt?This is part of a more fundamental problem. All empirical knowledge (and by empirical I mean knowledge regarding the external world as opposed to such things as mathematical knowledge where one specifies a set of axioms and uses a process of logical deduction to derive subsequent theorems) can always be incorrect – at least in principle. This even applies to things which seem just obviously true. For instance, despite the overwhelming evidence to support things such as anthropogenic climate change, the holocaust, biological evolution, the moon landings, and the Earth not being flat, there are people around who doubt the reality of each of these things (just to be clear I am not saying these people are being reasonable, but their doubt is largely made possible by virtue of the fact that empirical facts are virtually impossible to prove conclusively, as one can always conjure up alternative explanations that are logically possible, however unlikely sounding). And if this is true of physical reality then how much more so is it true of metaphysical reality?What is the requisite confidence level required for effective manifesting? I doubt if anyone is deep down 100% confident they will manifest what they want, but how about 75%? Is that enough? Would 50% do the job? Is there a lower threshold beyond which manifesting becomes completely ineffectual? Nanci doesn’t say, so I don’t know the answer to this. She has however suggested that one could incrementally build up one’s confidence levels by manifesting small things, observing the result, and doing it over and over with a view to beefing up ones confidence each time one observes a positive result. This technique however overlooks the difficulty of performing the initial manifestations before confidence has been built up. But there is a deeper problem. The biggest coincidence of all would be if there were no coincidences. And the second biggest coincidence of all would be if there were no huge coincidences bordering on the miraculous. This is simply dictated by how the laws of probability naturally play out. So even if one acquires a result after intending one, how does one know this isn’t one of the coincidences demanded by the laws of probability? These laws have to be satisfied one way of another, whether it is by someone sinking in a boat after dreaming of it the night before, or someone getting a desired result as a matter of happenstance rather than manifesting.Just to be clear, I am not dissing Nanci’s reasonable suggestion of incremental manifesting. I am merely highlighting the inherent difficulty of successful manifesting for someone who has a natural inclination for agnosticism, such as myself.This is allegedly Nanci’s final book. I have read all of them. So what has been learnt? What are the key takeaways? What are the residual concerns?Nanci is acutely aware of how difficult it is for people to relate to human suffering, a seemingly pointless and heartbreaking artefact of the world we live in, and accordingly says much to address this issue. Is there any comforting news on this front? Well for many I suspect there is, but personally I still struggle with this one. Noteworthy was a recent radio interview where the author revealed whilst in the light she had the initial difficulty of getting her head around the fact that Source finds ‘traumatic’ events ‘interesting’. This is significant, since one is sometimes left with the impression that understanding and internalizing the spiritual information contained in Nanci’s books is tantamount to being able to accept these tough spiritual truths. I found a modicum of comfort in the fact that even from an elevated perspective level Nanci had difficulty in getting her head around some of the things I also struggle with down here. So perhaps it is not that I have failed to assimilate the relevant concepts in Nanci’s books, but that it is genuinely difficult to understand the seemingly offhand and casual way Source views human suffering. I would be tempted to suggest Source comes down here and see how he likes it, but apparently he already has, via us.Another long standing issue I have concerns the fact that human animals die. In a recent radio interview Nanci answered an email question from a listener (me) specifically addressing this issue. She stated that the confusion was due to the listener taking things too literally, and not allowing for the fact that she is putting imperfect words to ineffable concepts in an effort to convey some kind of crude meaning pitched at the human level of understanding. The reality, however, is right from the outset I considered the possibility the author was using terms such as ‘death’ and ‘human animal’ in some metaphorical sense. Until Nanci’s prior publication Answers from the Afterlife I had no way knowing whether or not this was the case. But in this book Nanci states “Their [humans] consciousness and awareness terminate at death.” I can understand the usage of the words ‘death’ and ‘human animal’ in some kind of metaphorical sense, but the idea that words such as ‘consciousness’, ‘awareness’ and ‘terminate’ are being used in a metaphorical sense is different. To compound this, it also appears that Nanci talks to her human host and comforts her in an effort to mitigate her suffering when she is traumatized. But isn’t this equivalent to saying ‘Well it is of concern if my human host is suffering, but does not matter if she ultimately perishes since she is not real to begin with.’ I can understand my continued confusion of this one.Something which I think most people have difficulties with is the concept of evil. I totally get this, but the concept of ‘evil’ can be deconstructed to death using philosophical arguments. It turns out that ‘evil’ is a somewhat empty concept. It has semantic meaning of course, but in terms of having the substantial meaning we commonly attribute to it, it doesn’t, and dissolves away when subjected to increasingly closer scrutiny. Please don’t misunderstand me, I am not condoning bad behaviour, merely acknowledging that on a purely intellectual level ‘evil’ is a somewhat nebulous concept with no real substantial content behind it. But going back to semantics, could we reasonably define ‘evil’ as failing to veto actions which hurt others, irrespective of where that urge to act originates? Nanci claims that LBs are incapable of evil, and that all evil actions result from animal behaviour, normally from the playing out of some survival instinct. So in other words an LB can always claim ‘the animal made me do it’. It seems unreasonable to say that LBs commit evil when you consider that in isolation they are incapable of evil, and have to be coupled with a troublesome human for evil to take place. But they often fail to veto actions which cause great harm to others. So is this not evil? This dichotomy has a similar effect on me as Rubin’s Vase, causing me to flit back and forth between perspectives. It all depends which way you look at it.Nanci consistently describes science as being the quintessential example of ‘in the box’ thinking. As a former undergraduate in engineering/science I would have to emphatically agree. People often describe theories such as quantum mechanics as being merely a mathematical formalism for performing a calculus rather than a worldview, and contrast it to the more intuitive Newtonian physics, which does allegedly have an associated worldview, namely the world we directly observe. Such people are half right. Neither theory has a legitimate worldview. The mathematical entities in both theories (and indeed in all theoretical physics theories) are mere proxies for some behavioural aspects of reality, and are not the physical entities in and off themselves (the only difference with Newtonian mechanics is that there is a one-to-correspondence between the elements of reality directly observed and the mathematical entities). The only meaningful statement we can make about the ontological nature of say energy (as opposed to its behavioural characteristics) is that it is non-physical. End of. Nothing more meaningful can be said of it. This can be generalized to everything else, quantum fields, Higgs bosoms, photons and so on. They are labels which strictly refer to mathematical constructs which hold useful roles for describing certain behavioural aspects of reality. It is always important to make the sharp distinction between having knowledge of the behaviour of something and knowing what that something actually is. There is a clear delineation between these two things. Also it is only behaviour within the limited context of human experience. As majestic and far reaching as all our science appears to be, it could scarcely be described as even capturing a snapshot of ultimate reality. We are not even scratching the surface truth be known.Nanci expresses the view throughout her books that biological evolution is a fact. Of some concern to me is that ‘survival of the fittest’ is frequently misunderstood by the public at large, usually taken to meaning ‘strongest, faster, most cunning’ etc. Survival of the fittest certainly does include these things but in general has a much broader and richer meaning. Also, symbiosis and synergy are overwhelmingly the predominant driving forces throughout the natural world. Indeed, it must be remembered that every multi-cellular living organism is literally a colony of a vast number of cells (basic units of life) working harmoniously together for a common purpose, transcending the individual existences and welfare of the constituent cells. Indeed life would never even have got started if the primordial biological warfare depicted in the highly polemic (and scientifically inaccurate) ‘Selfish Gene’ really happened.It is very apparent to me, from reading both Nanci’s NDE account and many others, that Source (god) does not possess what we would describe as a proper moral code. In fact Source literally lacks the attribute of discernment. Fair enough. Source can only act in accordance with its inherent nature, as with any other being or entity. But as the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre so elegantly stated “We are condemned to be free”. If we so choose, we can create a society which more closely reflects most peoples’ desire to live in a peaceful and harmonious world. We do not need Source’s permission for that, much less its approval. Sure, we will likely never create any kind of utopia, hold hands, and sing Kum Ba Yah, but surely we can do better than this!I have detailed some concerns and reservations but it would be remiss of me not to also mention the positives. One day about eight years ago I stumbled across an NDE account on the NDERF website which totally blew my mind, and my thinking has never been the same since. This NDEer was coming up with radical stuff, such as ‘we are all part of one entity’ and ‘we create reality’. The NDEer was Nanci Danison, and I ended up buying all her books (all of which I have reviewed here on Amazon). I am not what you would call a spiritual person. My only acquaintance with NDEs prior to this was Anita Moorjani’s account, and since that time I have read Natalie Sudman, the author of ‘Application of Impossible Things’. I am so convinced of the authenticity of Nanci’s account that I have, for a long time now, stopped looking at any other source for spiritual enlightenment and reassurance. I simply buy the next Backwards book as it comes out (although I guess that’s come to an end) and read the latest newsletter. The overall effect on me is both good and some bad, but without question the effect has been profound and transformative, and probably lifelong.So what’s the overriding takeaway from Nanci’s series of books? “Love is all that matters”? Maybe. But there is something else to keep in mind which is possibly of even more profound importance: If you are in the light and find yourself about to merge with Source, whatever you do don’t say “Somebody ought to tell those people………”“You do not need any more strength. You need only to realize how strong you already are.” ― Vironika Tugaleva