That desire that we have to be happy is basically a yearning to experience wholeness. While the human genome code may tell us why we have brown eyes, it cannot tell us why we long for certain things, why we value certain behaviors, or why we need connection and intimacy with each other. Our spiritual DNA (the principles by which we live our lives) tell us that.

Attraction

With the principle of Attraction in your invisible garment, you have a talent for magnetizing exactly what you need in life. Whether it is money, relationships, jobs or toys, you know how to bring manifest them. If you really trust this talent, and if you do not abuse it, this will be your greatest life gift. You need not worry about anything, because the universe is looking out for your well-being. However, of course, if you abuse the power (either through laziness or greediness), you will pull energies to you that may be tough to handle. Be careful with Attraction. Honor its magnificence, and it will serve you well.

When Attraction operates in our lives, energies that work somewhat like a magnet surround us. For example, have you ever noticed that when someone is down on their luck the “bad” luck just keeps coming? That’s, unfortunately, the principle of Attraction at work. Of course, Attraction can show up in opposite ways, too. You have probably also witnessed the seemingly undeserving receiving more and more money, attention, and rewards. From a strictly superficial view, it would appear that Attraction isn’t “fair.”

However, from a more sophisticated level of understanding, Attraction is ultimately fair. Attraction has no judgment. It places no value on things or experiences. It responds directly to human energetics.

Attraction may be first cousins to gravity and magnetism, but it actually works in a different way from either of these forces. Magnets attract opposites. Attraction doesn’t necessarily. Gravity depends on spin and mass. Attraction doesn’t. Attraction is not a force of nature. It is a spiritual principle that works according to the laws of spirit.

How does spirit operate through Attraction? Like this. It calls us. It never stops calling us to remember who we are and that we are without need. Everything we truly need will appear before us. Our job is NOT to define our needs, but to recognize the energies that meet our needs (the jobs, the relationships, the opportunities, the ideas and the things) when they show up in front of us. Most of us are so busy being needy and living in scarcity that we fail to recognize the gifts that life brings to us on a moment by moment basis. Those gifts come to you via a system of energetic Attraction.

Further, Attraction acts as a frame or a lens through which we see the world. All the principles can only work effectively and efficiently in your life to the extent that you are liberated from childhood traumas or from belief systems that stymie your full actualization. If you are free from limitations, however, you will see clearly through the lens of Attraction. Ask yourself these questions to examine whether you see clearly through that lens:

– When an opportunity to serve humanity appears before you, do you see it as a possibility, or do you reject it as something you don’t have time or money to do?

– When you meet a new person, do you see them with the fresh eye of an artist, or do you categorize them as being like other people you’ve known?

– When you encounter a challenging situation, do you embrace it as an opportunity to be creative, or do you feel burdened by it?

– When you need to make a decision, do you rely primarily on “facts” and “reasonable” solutions, or do you wait patiently and listen carefully for guidance?

– When information about the external world comes to you in a dream, do you write it off as “just a dream” or do you pay special attention to the gift?

– When someone gives you a gift do you feel an urge to give them something in return, or do you accept it gracefully and realize the metaphor?

Attraction’s magnetic power may not behave the way you expect. You may not be able to recognize the potential – the gift – in everything that shows up on your radar screen. But when you are liberated from your old patterns and free to experience the world authentically, Attraction will present you with everything you need to self-actualize.

Before you write the resolutions that you hope to keep for this next year, take inventory of what you’ve attracted and created for yourself in the past. Now, be careful. It’s very tempting to fall into a scarcity trap when taking inventory of one’s personal history. We’re not, in this moment, asking why you didn’t get the job of your dreams or why this or that relationship broke up or hasn’t shown up. Instead we’re looking at what did show up and how it was recognized and embraced.

For example, in 2005 our global community experienced a tsunami, a devastating earthquake, and two major hurricanes, resulting in horrific death tolls as well as hideous living conditions for the survivors. What was your role in serving those communities? Attraction (along with many other principles) was at work during each of those events, calling us to remember who we are and asking us to give the gift of life in every way we could.

Take inventory of your work history, if you have a career. Without becoming emotionally attached to the circumstances, call up some memorable situations that have presented themselves to you in the workplace. Think about the ways you magnetized what you needed in those situations. How has Attraction been alive in your career?

Then move on to your relationships with friends. How you’re your friendships called you into the service of life? Who has shown up in your life in the last year? Why, from a spiritual viewpoint, through the lens of Attraction, did they come into your sphere of influence?

Then go to your family. Why did you choose your family of origin? Pretend for a minute that you had full choice about your parents and your siblings. In what ways have they been agents of Attraction, calling your more and more fully to your own authenticity? And if you have children…why did they chose you? How do you evoke authentic living from them? Or do you? Do you try to mold them, or do you see them clearly?

Your final round of inventory will be to examine your relationship with yourself. It is, after all, through your thoughts about yourself – how nakedly honest you are with yourself – that Attraction does its magic. You will attract to yourself events, circumstances, people, and things that reinforce your opinion of yourself. Examine that opinion in the most unbiased way you can, and you’ll see all the events in your life more clearly.

Spiritual practice must never be confused with psychological clean-up. We go to therapy, or we self-analyze, in order to clear out the wounds and scar tissue that limit our self-understanding. Psychological work is essential and must be done before we can grow spiritually. But we do spiritual practice – self-inventory — for an entirely different reason. Our spiritual work delivers us to the mirror of the soul, so that we can remember who we are, so that we can get “over” ourselves and get on with delivering the gift of soul into the realm of form. The thirty principles that I define in my book The Invisible Garment compose the unique frequency of each person, and create the gift that each person is to bring to life.

If Attraction is in your garment, look carefully at what you magnetize, and know that what comes to you longs to be seen and embraced. The more authentically you love your life, the more abundantly life will love you.

If Attraction is not in your garment, look at how it operates in the world. Indeed, this principle IS at work in your life, whether or not is a vital thread in your personal weave. Each encounter you have with another person determines something about how the world operates. The way you treat every person affects the vibration of human consciousness. The way you embrace every circumstance that shows up every day influences the holistic weave of the planetary experience.

As you write your resolutions this year, resolve to bring into your life only that which is beneficial for the greatest number of dynamics. Resolve to dedicate your life to Life. Deliver the gift that you came into the world to give. Know that Attraction constantly calls you toward happiness. That’s why we say it: