You’re listening to the Heal With Affirmations Podcast, and this is episode 8, Feel Free To Reap What You Sow.
Hello and welcome back to the Heal With Affirmations podcast. I hope you’ve been practicing your affirmations and are starting to see your mind shift in interesting ways. Be sure to get in touch every so often to let me know! And download our free guide so you have tips and affirmations on hand.
Today, I want to talk to you about some of the metaphysical concepts behind the how’s and why's of the affirmations practice. I know many of us enjoy these topics, so I’m happy to get into them every so often.
But I encourage you to spend more time practicing your affirmations than pondering the metaphysical questions of life, because it is really through practice that you can see the truth of the metaphysics.
Plus anything we say about metaphysics will always be a theory and there is no amount of theory that substitutes for your personal practice and the results they can create for you in your life.
At the same time, what we will talk about today can actually help us better engage in our affirmations and possibly let go of some misconceptions that we might have around these topics.
But first, I want to set the stage with some general caveats.
For starters, keep in mind that, like I just said, much of what we'll cover today is largely theoretical, meaning it is not directly observed and cannot be proven.
But when we practice affirmations and develop our vision to understand how they have a ripple effect in our life, we will know that these concepts or some versions of them are true.
We can observe them in our life, in our mind, and through our personal experiences. That’s why firsthand experience is so important.
The problem is that they are not outwardly observable like the sun rising in the east, and we cannot use our personal experience as a measuring stick for the rest of the world. We cannot convince others that these metaphysical concepts are true in any way, if they themselves don’t have experience with the work.
But when more of us have these experiences in common, then we can talk about them together and suggest metaphysical concepts that might explain them. We have a common ground for the conversation and we understand each other and where we’re coming from.
That's also why with affirmations and other transformational practices, we have to leave others alone.
I know that when we’re able to manifest exciting changes in our life, we want everyone to know the secret. But it doesn’t work. Often, people are not on the same wavelength, are not ready, or are simply not interested.
You have to look after your own patch of the garden, and leave others to their experiences. Get busy affirming your own good, knowing that no one has any power over you, and that you do not have power over others.
Having firsthand experience with the work empowers you to make sense of how and why it might work.
You can tell when people try to explain things they don’t really understand. They through the motions and just speak a language and repeat fancy words without having real experience with healing. There is a new word for this these days, it’s called larping.
I find that this happens a lot with religious and spiritual people, who often try to interpret their experiences in terms of their religious or spiritual beliefs. They try to fit their experiences into their religious or spiritual paradigm.
They repeat the words from their books, put in a good effort to sound credible and powerful, and convince themselves that they’re living the dream, and try to convince others of the same. And actually, the same thing happens with science.
Many groups, religious or otherwise, are in the business of doing affirmations, except they want you to repeat their affirmations. That’s how leaders and gurus and experts get you to follow them. You repeat their affirmations.
It’s a hierarchy of power and control, not of truth and healing. They brainwash you with their words, whereas you should be brainwashing yourself for your own good and in accordance to your own plans.
And in reality, the theory should fit your experience, not the other way around, because experiences are what is tangible and observable, whereas theories are essentially invented to try and explain the experience.
So if these theories and metaphysical ideas are going to be credible in any way, then they need to be based on the reality of our experiences.
And that’s why practicing is so important. We discover the truth, for ourself. And guess what, the truth heals.
Think about this sentence.
What does it mean? It means that when false beliefs are dissolved, you heal and manifest your good. Get the garbage out of the way, and things fall into place.
Genuine healing and spirituality do not produce a social hierarchy of power and control.
Genuine healing and spirituality create freedom, and not just freedom to manifest the good stuff in your life, but also karmic freedom, meaning a release from external consequence and the control of others.
Yes, I know, some folks will be very upset when you stop repeating their affirmations, when you stop believing their fairytales, and you take your power back.
When you practice your affirmations you take back your power from the outside world, and you gain control over your own experiences. You co-create with the universe, not with the neighborhood guru. The neighborhood guru is just another relationship in your life.
There is no middle man between you and your highest good, but the only way to find out is to take charge of your mind.
And indeed, many have you believing false beliefs or their beliefs, precisely so you do not have control over your own mind, so that they have control over your mind, and so that you buy their solutions.
This would be opening Pandora's box, so let’s park this topic.
And let’s now turn to the metaphysical concepts behind the affirmations practice. As you can tell from the title of this episode, it is the law of attraction.
THE LAW
What is the law of attraction?
The law of attraction is one and the same as the law of consequence, the law of karma, and the law of sowing and reaping.
It is one of the oldest ideas that have circulated throughout cultures, well before the bible and other religions. The law of attraction is just the latest rebranding of the ancient law. I am not attached to what we should call it, it doesn’t matter. We can just call it the law.
The idea behind the law is that an event has ripple effects, and it seems to be an overarching law across all levels of the universe. It applies across physical and mental planes.
Now, I’m not convinced that the physical and mental are distinct substances, but for our present perception, it is a helpful distinction. And for our conversation here, it doesn’t matter all that much.
In physics, we say “every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” This is obvious and observable in the physical world.
But in metaphysics, it is not so obvious, right?
We can sometimes observe that our actions have consequences. But not every one of our actions is clear like that, which is why the law is not always obvious when it comes to human behavior and much less so when it comes to our thoughts.
But for those of us who practice affirmations, we know that our thoughts boomerang back to us. Now how exactly they boomerang back is unique to us because it depends on a complex set of unique circumstances.
Again, I want to stress the importance of personal experience, because the mind is not external and cannot be observed like physical actions.
And by the way, science is another one of those hierarchies of power and control, most recently telling us with the emergence of artificial intelligence that the idea of the soul is outdated.
Let me tell you something, it is quote-unquote “outdated” because science has completely failed to understand the mind. Scientists are basically saying that because they failed at understanding something, then it doesn’t exist. What a joke.
I encourage you not to give your power away to people who want to sell you potions and machines as a way to freedom and healing.
You already know from your existence that you have an inner life. And you can know a lot more about it when you do some work - like the affirmations work.
The truth is that not many do the work. And so they find themselves drinking other people’s potions and falling into their plans, a cog in their machine.
When you take charge of your thoughts, you will have a handle on the law and you will appreciate that you can use it to manifest your good. This might be the highest level of empowerment possible. I think it is.
Now here’s what’s interesting about the law. If everything has a consequence, then nothing is random, right? And if nothing is random, what does that tell us about our free will?
THE QUESTION OF FREE WILL
Let’s talk about free will, starting with one of the oldest questions asked:
Do we have free will?
Do you have free will?
I don’t suggest you wait for some masterpiece to tell you if you have free will or not. Do not wait for some epic guru to declare to you whether you have free will or not.
Sit down and ask yourself, do you have free will? What is your answer?
Now here’s what.
If you reap what you sow, do you have free will? If what you reap is a necessary consequence of what you sow, do you have free will?
In other words, if your thoughts and actions produce certain results, do you think that you have chosen these consequences freely or not?
If your thoughts and actions produce consequences that you do not want, do you feel annoyed that you need to change your thoughts and actions to produce different consequences?
You choose what you sow, but you do not directly choose what you reap. You have to examine what effects certain causes have, and choose the cause that produces the effect that you want.
So how do you see this? Do you see it as having free will or not?
It seems that these days people are expecting to change the law. They want everything around them to change in order to have peace. They want the whole planet to accommodate them. They expect that there shouldn’t be a consequence for their actions or that the consequences of their actions shouldn’t be what they are.
It might seem like it’s the case today more than ever, but it really isn't all that new. For centuries, men have wanted to fix women so men can go to heaven or inherit the earth, or whatever. Religious belief might seem like it is special, but it’s not, it is just another set of beliefs. What matters is how your beliefs operate in you and how they drive your life and attract your experiences.
Most people have always been unaware of the law, and so they could never improve their experience in the world. Many of them went on to become great philosophers and leaders telling us what existence is all about. Some of them even went as far as to tell us that life is suffering. What an affirmation, can you imagine what kind of life this thought produces?
No, my dear, life is not suffering. Your life is suffering. Your life is the product of your affirmations.
And what ends up happening is that the life-is-suffering people attract other life-is-suffering people and soon enough they have a life-is-suffering group and the next thing you know it’s a global action movement. Be careful who you hang around.
The truth is that the law never changes. And it won’t change because of your ideals, your beliefs, your religion, your scientific breakthroughs, or anything else. The law underlies everything in the universe.
It is up to you to play the game.
You reap what you sow every time, no matter what. What you give out comes back to you no matter what and there are no exceptions to the laws. There is never a time that you are not reaping what you sow.
I appreciate that this can seem very challenging, especially when considering tragedies we might experience.
But when we are looking at life through this lens, we are not settling for an ordinary mentality. We are rising up to a new level of understanding.
Of course, you don’t have to believe that there is any law, but chances are, if you’re not interested in entertaining these ideas, then you’re not really interested in doing affirmations and you probably won’t be here.
You might challenge the law because well, the idea of sowing and reaping is in and of itself an idea. It’s a theory.
Like I said, we know that in the physical world, every action has a reaction, but with the intangible world of the mind and complex human behaviors, it’s not so obvious.
Agreed. And this is why I invite you to practice affirmations and see how changing your mind changes your experience, and then decide for yourself whether the law is true or not.
The law has been called a secret because we can’t observe the law at work in our life in the same way that we observe actions and reactions in an engineering lab. And it is also secret because only a handful of people take the trouble to do the work.
And the truth is that the goal isn't to prove whether the law of attraction works or not or whether it exists or not. The goal is that we attract our good. The quote-unquote ‘secrets’ of the universe are an enjoyable by-product of improving our life by taking our mind into our hands.
The practice is a practice not a theory. Practice affirmations to find out for yourself whether changing your mind changes your experience.
Again, this is also why talking about the metaphysics behind affirmations is only truly earned by those who have firsthand experience, not those who just believe in it because it sounds cool.
So, back to our initial question about free will.
It appears that we do not have control over the consequences of our actions. But it appears that we have control over our actions.
We have control over the sowing part, the first half of the equation, not the reaping part, or the second half.
So how do we interpret this statement in terms of free will? Do we have free will or do we not?
I ask you. If you accept that you always reap what you sow, how do you see that? Do you see it as having free will? Or would you see it as not having free will or only limited free will?
Again, I encourage you to think for yourself and not wait for some expert to give you an answer.
I studied philosophy and I can tell that neither the arguments for or against free will have been settled, and they probably never will be. And scientists who propose to deal with the issue and suggest that we are the product of our biology fail to answer the question before even getting started, because free will is by definition an intangible concept and the mind-body connection has never been demonstrated without assuming some physicalist or reductionist definition of the mind, which is a circular error of reasoning.
So here are my thoughts.
First off, it doesn’t have to be a black and white issue, although philosophers love drama and will think it’s too easy, not romantic enough, or not sophisticated enough for the issue to be a halfway house.
But the truth is, those who want free will probably see it as having free will. They say, I am free to initiate the chain reaction.
Those who do not want free will, probably feel that because they don’t directly control the outcome of their actions, it’s not really free will.
Notice how you can choose which one of these to believe.
At the end of the day, if your goal is to live the life you want, it doesn't really matter whether we really have free will or not.
What matters is that you can take charge of your thoughts and actions to drive the results that you want in your life, and the rest of the universe doesn’t really matter. We call that pragmatism.
The sowing and reaping law is not an obstacle, it is an amazing tool. In all cases, you have the option to see it this way.
When you appreciate that you can control the chain reaction from how you initiate it, it empowers you to make better decisions about the initiatives that you take in life, meaning the seeds that you plant.
And even if this means that you don’t control the whole chain, it is a good thing that you can control a small part of it. Do your affirmations, and discover how the sowing is not a small thing at all.
You can wait around forever, the law won't change. That's why we say it's a law. At least to the best of our knowledge, or should I say, to the best of the knowledge of those who have truly practiced, it looks like the law of attraction is really a universal law that underlies all phenomena in our existence.
Find out for yourself, and reap the rewards.
The idea is to play the game. You can think of the law as the rule of the game of life
Will you play the game? Or will you pass on it?
The truth is that it's not you who passes on the law, it's life that passes you by. Life is indifferent. Time moves forward regardless of your beliefs, and everyone else is busy with their own life.
What are you getting busy with?
So really, it is the game of your life. It is up to you. You do have free will, at least some of it, or part of the equation. Take advantage of it.
You can't change what you can't change, that's probably true. But don’t assume that nothing can be changed. You can change your thoughts. You make choices every moment of the day. Just take time to notice, and become intentional.
Thoughts are very powerful. Thoughts are the source of free will in our universe and guess what, you have thoughts. What are you thinking? How are you using your miraculous ability to think? What are your thoughts doing for you?
If you take the trouble to examine the chain reactions in your life, I can bet that you will discover some pretty interesting connections.
Free will is for people who want to do something for themselves. Whereas people who dwell in ideologies and the drama of life want to say that life is this or that way as though they have nothing to do with their life experiences. There are no philosophies or ideologies that explain life. Only your thoughts explain your life.
How would you know? By thinking and observing, and also by practicing affirmations to create change. Doing affirmations is one of the easiest ways to know. It does not require any beliefs, just your willingness to open your mouth and say nice things about yourself and your life.
Doing affirmations enables you to discover how much change you can create in your life, and you will see clearly to what extent your thoughts create your reality. It’s powerful stuff.
You can then play the game, and you don't need to spend time figuring out why the law is the law, why life runs on the law, and all those philosophical questions. Of course you can enjoy philosophy, I do, but it is not a substitute for doing affirmations, and doing affirmations has certainly informed my philosophy. It is the so-called secret.
That is the power of affirmations. Expression starts in the mind. And the best way to access the mind is with words and the language we use.
Now more than ever before, governments and other powers are getting societies to believe en masse absurdities that fly in the face of the most basic observations. They are doing this with invented words and constructs and invented relationships between these words and constructs.
Words and the relationship between them is so powerful that people believe them as true. These words, the relationships between them, and the paradigm they create soon enough become a reality, and people act accordingly.
But if you wind back to the bases of these paradigms you will find that thoughts and beliefs can be false or limiting and you don't have to build your life on them.
You change your thoughts by doing affirmations. It is the easiest way to pull outdated thoughts out of your mind and replace them with helpful patterns.
You do have choice in the thoughts you think and the words you speak. Say them now:
I choose the thoughts I choose to think.
The thing about the mind is that it thinks. It has to think, this is what it does. So if the mind has to think, it might as well chew on helpful thoughts, right?
So it is best to replace unhelpful thoughts with helpful ones. As we've said before, you don't switch off the darkness, you just turn on the light.
ARE THERE EXCEPTIONS TO THE LAW?
One issue that comes up when we talk about the law of attraction is whether we necessarily attract everything, big or small, good and bad.
I have come across many authors who tread around this idea very carefully and say things like, "the law is not meant to be understood as suggesting that we attract wars and natural disasters into our life."
In this way, they treat the law in a more symbolic way. It’s more of a tool and not so much a law.
I feel that those who see the law this way, don’t really see or know how far the law goes. It didn’t really sink in. And they probably haven’t done enough work with affirmations to really know that. I also think this can be limiting belief, because it limits how much they believe they can change their lives with affirmations.
Although I agree that we can take advantage of the law as though it is a tool, I do not think it is symbolic and I do not think it has exceptions.
If the law is truly a law, by definition it does not have exceptions.
I appreciate that this can be a pretty controversial point of view, but from a philosophical perspective, rationally and metaphysically, there is no reason why a law would have exceptions and applies only partly - assuming it is really a law.
If you think the law has limits, it would be good to define these limits. But we don’t have an objective standard or a rational way to define these limits.
These quote-unquote "limits" are usually the situations that people are not comfortable entertaining that they could have somehow attracted. It feels a bit much.
What do our thoughts have to do with earthquakes?
Well, if you affirm for your safety, you will be moved to a place of safety. If you affirm for peace, you will be moved to a peaceful situation.
It might surprise you, but some people do enjoy some drama. They say they like to be challenged. They like to be heroes, for example. Heroes attract problems so they can overcome them and feel like a hero. These are archetypal forms that play out in life and I will have more to say about them a bit later on.
When you are incompatible with certain conditions, your life would have changed to reflect that, and you would be in a state that is compatible with the balance of your affirmations.
Your affirmations can move you through life in the most fortunate ways. It is a mysterious process but it is at work all the time, whether you are aware of it or not. Better be aware, right?
The more experience you have with your affirmations, the deeper your vision will be, and the better you will be at making connections between your thoughts and the results in your life.
So, are we able to attract into our lives all sorts of things big and small? I think yes. But I invite you to find out for yourself.
This is also the reason why it is a bad idea to prescribe actions. Actions are too specific and are necessarily part of an environment where you do not have control over all the factors.
So you affirm your good in a more general way and the way it manifests is a way that is perfect for you and your circumstances.
Even though we have not always had a developed vision, the manifestation of our affirmations is always perfect because the law is always at work, no exceptions.
The issue with seeing ourselves as attracting even the biggest problems in the world lies in the ideas of blame and responsibility.
First I appreciate that blaming is not constructive, whereas responsibility is a more enlightened way of looking at things. But at the same time, I appreciate that it might be just a matter of wording, and that we just need to cut through the fluff and focus on changing our thinking.
In this sense, it is no longer about who's fault it is. Instead, it is about stepping up to our life and taking charge of what we can, so we can live our best life.
For those who find themselves in tragedies, personal or at the level of society, accepting these ideas can be very difficult.
But remember that you do not need to deal with philosophy, and you do not need to deal with all of society and all of the politics in the world.
And affirmations and doing affirmations are not a substitute for regulating society and having an orderly process through which people operate together.
But you need to tend to your garden. You are looking to feel better. You are looking for an improvement over your current situation. So you only need to affirm this step.
Trying to change the world will make you miserable and I encourage you not to waste time.
Change happens when you change. It is law. And once you get the hang of it, you will love it and get excited about all the things you are going to do for yourself.
AFFIRMATIONS TO ALIGN WITH THE LAW
When you think about the law and contemplate how you are free with what you put out into the world but not so much with what you get back as a result, you could feel resentful, you could feel happy about it, or maybe you're not seeing a connection.
Wherever you are in your awareness, it is totally fine because your affirmations can open up your mind and help you turn your consciousness around.
Your affirmations help you create your life more intentionally, so the results in your life are in better alignment with what you want.
So here are some affirmations you can use to align your intentions with your good:
I am willing to see clearly.
I love what I see.
I acknowledge that everything in my life is perfect.
I choose the thoughts that create the life I love to look at.
I always do the best I can with what I know.
I am always learning.
My awareness of life is ever increasing.
I now take charge of my mind and I align with my good.
I love creating the life I love to live.
I have compassion for myself.
I am one with life.
I am a powerful being.
All is well in my mind and all is well in my world.
When you take charge of your thinking you can turn your life around. There is no doubt about this.
And when you start to see that your thoughts do in fact create your experience, you will naturally move away from disempowering people and circumstances.
You will change your thinking and attract better for yourself. And you will get busy with creating the life you want. The rest of the world and all its problems will shrink by comparison.
There is nothing more empowering than the truth of your firsthand experience with your affirmations.
There is no amount of philosophy, science, religion, dogma, or ideology, that can make up for what you can know about yourself and your life firsthand.
Begin affirming your good, knowing that you are designed to attract it, knowing that life is designed to deliver the essence of what you affirm.
Begin your affirmations today and don't waste time. Play the game!