Hi sdburns

Maybe you're on to something.

From your experience it makes sense.

But maybe I'm agreeing with you because it is consistent with another similar idea that occurred to me in the past.

I started believing that our consciousness is in-fact something that is already out there with or without us putting it out there.

In other words I feel that whenever we work with and within consciousness we are actually working within a pre-existing matrix of information that is expanding in its own accord or is somehow put there by somebody else other than us.

So I feel that when We stumble on a new idea or a new solution to a problem we are working on, we are stumbling on an organization of information that is similar to wandering in a new land that has never been explored, but all the "new discoveries" in this land are already in existence without us putting it there, and it is only something new the person that is "discovering" it for the first time.

But unlike a new land where the rate of change is slow, I believe that consciousness is a matrix of information that is expanding and changing at a much faster rate, already taking in to consideration all the possibilities of expression that is available depending on the available resources.

So from this perspective, when you really want to experience something, but the resources to experience that is not yet available, then that experience doesn't present itself no matter how hard you try to influence things in your favor.

Maybe there is a greater intelligence that denies the experience we desire until we have reached a stage of understanding where we are able to fully appreciate it, and when we are ready the opportunities come together in our favor.

OR maybe we are all sheep that are being manipulated from behind a veil of invisibility by another life form that was perhaps responsible for us being here in the first place, and this life form is simply playing at life through our experience, similar to the movie Avatar.

You would have noticed that so far I didn't really talk about the law of attraction.

I am doing that because our primary means of doing anything here on earth is NOT achieved by sitting quietly in prayer or focusing on what we want.

We all get out there and acquire the skills we need buy working with physical effort until the experience or the object of desired is finally in our possession.

Even the great churches, temples, and synagogues were built one brick at a time with great expense and effort, taking many years to complete.

Anything that is "Stuff" needs to be manufactured by someone before it is available for our desire.

We exist in a very physical world occupying very physical bodies that require very physical food and shelter and comfort, none of which will be available if the entire human population decides to do visualizing and no physical work.

And if we go about it without using the "visualizing" component (as we do for the most part) it seems that all opportunities fall under the umbrella of pure chance or random selection.

So, for example, if you are interested in living in an apartment that is close to a body of water and where the rent is affordable you will find that you will have to do a lot of research, talk to a lot of people, read a lot of ads, make a lot of calls, and visit many places with great inconvenience to your normal routine until you eventually settle for something that is close to what you wanted; And in most cases you settle for what you can put up with before time and money runs out.

After you make you decision you will find plenty of missed opportunities that were a better fit for what you were looking for but somehow you didn't randomly stumble upon that apartment during your search.

Now Visualization is NOT A SUBSTITUTE for all that hard work you had to go through to find the apartment.

When you are visualizing you still have to put forth the same effort you did in the past in looking for your apartment, AND the apartment that you are visualizing has to be available in the area that you are searching.

For example if you strongly visualize a penthouse apartment in the grand canyon and you put forth the effort to search and search for it you are not going to find it because it doesn't exist, although with enough focus it may come into existence many years from now.

But when you are in a place where what you are looking for is already in existence and you are already putting forth plenty of effort by calling people, reading ads, and working towards finding a new place, the focusing of consciousness on a particular vision seems to interfere with randomness and begins to favor you over others.

You can test this for yourself to see what is possible and what is not possible with conscious focus.

You can try all kinds of silly experiments that have nothing to do with "stuff" just to understand if there is anything to this "attraction" theory.

Let me suggest one for you to try.

Create a strong vision or a mental picture of a complete stranger coming up to you and saying "It’s a beautiful day isn't it?"

Now see that happening in your mind; see it, and see it, and see it, and see it, until it is so sure that it feels like a memory of something as if it has already happened.

It should feel no different from a memory of something that happened in the past.

Now when you wake up every morning see that event as a past/future memory
When you step out of the door, see that event as a memory playing back.
Whenever you have a moment of distraction, play that event as a memory.

Just play the memory of it.....not your desire to experience it.

Keep playing with it as a memory and see how long it takes for you to experience it.

Once you experience a stranger coming up to you and saying "it's a beautiful day isn't it?" try something else like a different interaction, perhaps someone asking you for directions.

Keep working with it until you can verify that your results are more than just random events.

As you get better start making it more complicated like someone on a bicycle saying something funny or kind to you. Perhaps you could start working on specific key words that are spoken in random conversations.

The whole point of this exercise is for you to discover that there is something there that is more than chance and you are somehow influencing it.

It is up to you to discover how much mind influence you naturally have and how much you can acquire over practice and an understanding of what you must do with your consciousness.

It is no different from learning a new skill.

If you start off by trying to double your financial worth at your first attempt you will find yourself asking questions like "Help this LOA thing is not working for me but I truly believe in it, Please what must I do?"

If it has taken some of us here over 15-20 years just to be able to speak about it with confidence, how can one expect to have sudden results after a few books and fewer attempts?

I however, like your question and your approach.

It is better to stay realistic and skeptical while you try out these concepts until you begin to start getting results that defy rational explanation.

And if no such results come forth, you can comfortably conclude that maybe the LOA thing is pure BS because you gave it an honest examination and didn't get any useful results.

My dilemma precisely. I agree with @sdburns that the stuff we manifest isn't always logically linked to the nature of our thoughts. I've manifested good & bad things when I was in a bad place in my life and I've also NOT manifested good things when I was feeling so ridiculously good that I should have by definition manifested everything!

Abraham talks about the Vortex and that the magic door to getting in there and manifesting what's in there is all about feeling good. Well I've tried that and have sustained those good feelings for what seems like a pretty long time and still, I didn't manifest those things in my Vortex. Why not?

So I too have come to the conclusion that there must be a higher power that's guiding our path in this lifetime - one that trumps (pun not intentional) Law of Attraction and our desires, making sure we don't get too far off the intentions we set before coming into this incarnation. Yes, we're allowed free will but not so much as to take us completely off the path.

With that in mind, if my theory is correct, then no amount of visualization and vibration-raising will bring about those things you want because they are not "meant to be"... maybe you need to learn certain lessons or accomplish certain steps in life before those things can appear (if ever).

I too am trying to make sense of this. Only Source/Infinite Intelligence could answer this fully but until I get an answer that makes sense, I continue asking.