Law of Attraction: Detaching from Things We Truly ‘Need’

Hi Kelli, I really hope you can answer this question: how do you let go of your sense of need for things you ACTUALLY need.

Feeling like we ‘need’ something is not helpful in the process of transforming our outer circumstances by way of inner transformation. When we feel like we ‘need’ something, we are very focused on its absence, and if what we focus on expands, we see the problem here. 

Need always stems from some sort of pain. The circumstance is making us feel badly in some way and since our mind doesn’t want to contend with bad feelings for even two seconds, it is always looking to the outside to change in some way so this pain can go back dormant, go back to being undisturbed. 

If a circumstance didn’t produce a negative emotional response, we wouldn’t care about changing it. If a potential future outcome didn’t make us feel badly in some way, we wouldn’t feel any resistance to it happening. 

Dealing with a situation that has a lot of negative emotional charge is obviously more challenging than dealing with one that isn’t as upsetting. Detaching from something that you truly believe you ‘need’ isn’t as easy, that’s for sure. 

Here’s the thing though…working on your energy around something that may truly be a ‘need’ really isn’t any different than something that may merely be a ‘want.’ The core shifts in thinking are the same. The process of ‘attracting’ is the same for everything. 

Again, it’s just harder because your mind puts up a much bigger fight against these shifts. It is much less willing to play ball. So the onus is on us to decide whether we commit, recognizing we really don’t have a choice about doing things differently IF we really want them to change at least, or  just give into it because it’s too challenging to break away from the conditioning.

Attraction is Neutral

You have likely heard the phrase ‘you don’t attract what you want, you attract what you are,’ countless times. And there is an important truth here that is easy to overlook, especially since the law of attraction is often presented as some sort of ‘tool’ you use to get the Universe to just do your mind’s bidding and give you whatever you want. 

My favorite description I have ever read about the Universe and how it ‘functions’ in relation to what we attract into our lives is that it is ‘benevolent but disinterested.’ 

The process of attraction appears to be mechanical, dispassionate, in that our experiences, both positive and negative, are merely neutral feedback of our predominant energy. We are not being punished for bad thoughts and focus, nor are we being rewarded when they’re on the positive end of the spectrum. 

The Universe, or whatever your preferred term ,is not witholding this or that thing because you’re not being positive enough yet, because you haven’t yet proven how badly you want something or whether you are worthy of receiving  it. 

 It can’t just give into your demand to give you X amount of money by next Tuesday when your credit card payment is due. It can’t give you something because it sees how badly you want it or because how hard you’ve been working to ‘attract’ it. 

It’s not responding to your verbal declarations that you believe in the law of attraction or your intellectual understanding of the process. It’s not responding to how you say you feel, but how you actually feel. 

No matter how justified the feelings, it doesn’t change the fact we have to change them. The Universe can’t give us a pass on transforming our beliefs, thinking and emotions around certain challenges because it is ‘harder.’

Whatever your dominant energy is will determine what shows up and what doesn’t–no two ways about it. 

I know this harsh truth can be upsetting to hear. I know we may find it extremely agitating because it means all the bullshit our mind is trying to pull just won’t work. We actually have to make an effort to change, we actually have to engage our feelings, we actually have to pay attention to our thoughts, and if most of us are completely honest, we don’t want to be bothered. 

We are hoping to find all these magical hacks that would allow us to experience all sorts of dramatic change inside and out without having to do a damn thing. 

Our mind loves nothing more than to cling to our pain and all the crappy beliefs and perspectives that created it.

So if our experience is based on nothing more than neutral feedback of our energy, we realize we…

Can’t Keep Fighting for the Negativity

As a fellow human, I totally understand the negative reactions we tend to have to certain types of situations. We’ll probably feel sad if someone breaks up with us. We will feel nervous if we lose our job and we’re not sure when we’ll find another one. 

If a big expense wipes out our savings, we’ll feel fearful of not having that safety net anymore.  We will feel stressed if money is tight and we don’t know how we will pay the bills due in a couple of weeks. We will feel really frustrated, and angry at our body, if a flare up of a health condition is negatively impacting our day to day life. 

But knowing what we know about energy, we see how all of these feelings are not going to help us. We see that the beliefs and perspectives that are creating these emotional responses are not very manifesting-friendly. We see how the need to examine them and let them go in favor of their more empowering counterparts is really not negotiable. 

We see how insisting we get to remain in resistance to a situation because we don’t like how it makes us feel doesn’t serve us. We see how insisting that we are justified in feeling certain negative feelings because we don’t have something we ‘need’ is going to be a huge problem. 

Of course it is important to acknowledge these feelings and feel them so they don’t build up and fester. That is the most crucial part of energetic transformation, far more crucial than trying to cultivate positive emotion–which, by the way,  will occur automatically as a natural ‘byproduct’ of dealing with the bad stuff. I digress though…

So yes, we get to acknowledge and feel these feelings. But insisting on remaining in these emotional states until something happens that justifies feeling better? Insisting on clinging to the beliefs that are creating these painful emotions? Insisting we won’t change our tune belief-wise until we manifest some sort of ‘proof’ thinking this way is valid?

Nope…can’t do it. Well we can, but the consequences of that are things probably staying pretty much the same as they are, and I imagine you don’t want that. 

The crux of all personal growth ‘work’ is essentially choice. And the most common type of choice we will be contending with is choosing to abide by our mind’s assessment of what is happening and the resulting feelings, or embracing the perspectives that feel a hell of a lot better, and lend themselves to putting you in an energetic state that is receptive to the changes you wish to see in your life. 

There are two different filters through which we can view life and ourselves, our challenges, our unwanted circumstances. 

There is the filter of the mind with which we are already intimately familiar and has been the cause of all our suffering up until this point. 

Then there is the filter of the ‘spirit’ who sees you and reality as it truly is, who knows all your needs can easily be met and then some, who knows all your human problems have solutions, who knows all is well no matter what is happening, who knows the world as we see it is a giant illusion, who knows all the circumstances we don’t like are amazing opportunities to create more of what we would like. 

Which filter we employ is nothing more than choice. The trick is we have to make this choice over and over again. Most of us aren’t going to reach the level of an enlightened master. We will have our attachments. We will constantly be bombarded with ‘contradictory’ information and input that will challenge this way of thinking and feeling, and will ‘prove’ our mind’s nonsense ‘right.’ 

Each time we choose in favor of ‘spirit’ filter, we build momentum. And the more momentum we build, the more this energy will impact our life, and the easier it gets to keep moving in that direction because you will see first-hand there is something to thinking that way. 

There is no more trying to adopt these beliefs based on intellectual understanding of the theory of it all, or out of sheer desperation, hoping against all hope it might be true. 

A key to transforming this tendency to fight for our negativity is constantly reminding yourself….

Bad Feelings Play No Helpful Role

This ties into my first point about attraction being a neutral process It is so important to remember your negative feelings play no beneficial role in the creation process beyond giving you a sense of contrast. It might be the thing that brings us to this journey but it can’t be the fuel for it.

Your mind really, really does not understand this. It really, truly believes they help somehow. And because it feels so strongly about this, it instills great fear in you about letting them go, letting the resistance go. 

In the paradigm of forcing change through action, pain can be a good motivator–we want to do something we believe will ‘fix’ it.  We usually end up engaging in all sorts of painful actions, all sorts of struggle, to get where we want to be, and to our mind that pain is worth it if it will help get us get rid of the original pain we attribute to not having this thing we are trying to get, to accomplishing some specific goal. 

If being unhappy with how our life was going,  if all our anger, fear, anxiety, sadness, bitterness, frustration and what not about our circumstances played a role in getting what we wanted, we would be hitting the jackpot continuously because all that noise tends to be the primary energy surrounding our desires. If merely wanting something guaranteed its arrival in our life, we wouldn’t be able to keep up with all the receiving.

So every time your mind wants to fight you on feeling better because somehow it thinks that will ‘cancel’ the order, that whatever force won’t think you want it anymore, remember this negative emotion plays NO role 

You can’t receive something you are not aligned with on that emotional/energetic level. 

When we try to change our circumstances from a space of just wanting bad feelings to go away, the bad feelings intensify. Manifesting from pain-minimization just creates more pain. No matter how much that pain may be justified to the mind, using it as the fuel will cause a lot of problems….really try and remember that.

Gotta Purge

Letting ourselves feel our negative feelings is the most crucial step in transitioning from one belief system to another, from one perspective to another. When we don’t, all that ‘static’ makes it harder to stay in those higher vibing states more consistently. We can’t connect as powerfully to the part of us that recognizes these things to be true, which means we can’t draw on that energy.

The crappy feelings keep us anchored to the crappy beliefs and fears that created them, which then just feeds the feelings more strongly, which then feeds the belief more strongly. And so the vicious cycle continues.

When we lighten that emotional load, we can see things more clearly, we can see things as they really are. We may still recognize we are faced with certain challenges, certain problems, but we feel more genuinely and sincerely hopeful they will be resolved.

You’ll accept certain things may come to pass but this thing happening isn’t as bad as the mind is making it out to be. Sure, maybe you’ll be late on your Visa bill this month, but it will be fine…the credit card company isn’t going to come and break your kneecaps.

Money will be a bit tight the next few weeks so you have to rely on your credit card more–instead of seeing this as some sort of ‘failure’ you can feel gratitude they are available. You know you’ll manifest the money at some point and you’ll pay it off, no harm done.

The bottom line is: the less pain we have, the less ‘need’ we’ll feel since that is where it is coming from.

Who You Really Are Needs Nothing

One of the biggest challenges of transforming our belief system and emotional state is the mind is very resistant to the ideas we are being asked to embrace. What we are trying to achieve on that energetic level make zero logical sense to the mind.

But it is important to remember you are not being asked to accept these things on an intellectual level. You are being asked to accept them on an emotional level, you are trying to change your feeling state.

The mind is resistant to this nugget in particular because human you in fact does need things–you need money and all this other stuff. But again, you are trying to change your feelings. And imagine the type of energy that could be cultivated if you accepted this idea on an emotional level, the idea that you need nothing. Considering how much the energy of ‘need’ screws with everything, this is a game-changer.

This is what imaginations are for–imagine what it would feel like to need nothing outside of you to happen to be happy, to be okay. That is all you need to do.

Your Turn

What did you think of the post? Anything resonate in particular? How do you deal with the ‘need?’ Looking forward to your comments as always.

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