Note: I think this is possibly THE most comprehensive post I’ve ever written. It lays out exactly how the LOA works and how to manifest what you want (and stop manifesting what you don’t). Even though it’s about cancer, the principles I’ve outlined here will work for any situation in your life. If you agree, please share this post with others in any way you see fit.

Fellow blogger and Goth chick lover Fred, pointed me in the direction of a question he asked on Steve Pavlina’s forum. As I began to type out a rather lengthy and detailed answer, it occurred to me that this subject would make an excellent blog post. Here’s the question (abridged):

If whatever we focus on comes to us, can focusing on something like cancer (or even NOT having cancer) manifest that kind of sickness in our lives? Do you think that one of the reasons why cancer is so prevalent in our modern world is that we are so aware of it?

Excellent question Fred! Here’s my answer:

Poof! There it is! Not…

Ok, so first of all I need to clear up a major misconception about the Law of Attraction. It’s the one that goes like this: *Steps up on soap box* You get whatever you think about. Really? So, if you think of a million dollars, it will just magically appear in your bank account right? Has anyone tried this? Do you have a million dollars yet? Yeah… THIS is why people think the Law of Attraction doesn’t work. Because so-called LOA “experts” keep perpetuating the idea that you just magically get whatever you think about. And the flipside of this – excuse my French, but – BULLSHIT, is that you have to be really careful not to think about cancer and accidents and serial killers or you will draw those things into your life. Riiiiiight.

Let me inject a little reason here: If you simply got whatever you thought about, not only would you have that million dollars, but you’d also be dead. How many times have you had thoughts of danger? How many times have you hoped that everything would be ok? If all of those thoughts manifested, your life would at best be a schizophrenic mish mash, and at worst, well, you’d have been squooshed by a falling piano when you were five after watching cartoons. It just doesn’t work that way.  *Steps down from soapbox* Phew. Sorry about that, but I have no tolerance for bullshit and every once in a while I get just a teensy bit riled up.

Cancer is a symptom of resistance

You don’t get cancer by thinking about cancer. Otherwise, becoming an oncologist would be the leading cause of cancer. They think about it all day long. Cancer, just like anything else in your life, is a reflection of your vibration. And just like all the unwanted stuff in your life, cancer is a manifestation of resistance – of some kind of vibrational discord that you haven’t been paying attention to. For those of you who are new to this blog, let me give you the quick and dirty rundown:

How the Law of Attraction Actually Works

You are a vibrational being. When you focus on something, a thought, an idea, a concept, or a million dollars, you are activating that vibration. When you focus on something that you want, it feels good. When you focus on something that you don’t want, it feels bad. Your emotions are your vibrational feedback system, letting you know what you’re focusing on. So, let’s say that you want that million dollars and you think about it. What’s important here is not so much what you’re thinking about, but your vibration. What does that million dollars represent to you? Freedom? A higher standard of living? If you hold no conflicting beliefs (which are just thoughts you’ve spend a lot of time on) to the feeling of wealth or the million dollars, then thinking about that money will feel really, really good to you, and you’re on your way to manifesting what you REALLY want (freedom, wealth, luxury). If, however, thinking about that much money also feels kind of bad, it means that when you focus on the idea of wealth in any way, you are inadvertently triggering an underlying belief that conflicts with what you want. You may hold a belief that money is evil, that rich people are bastards or that you don’t deserve to be wealthy. Whatever. The point is that as you focus on what you want, you are reaching for one vibration and activating a conflicting one, so while you think that you’re giving your energy to something you want (a big ass wad o’ cash), you are actually growing the energy of the thing you don’t want (the winds of despair whistling through your bank account). This conflict is what we call resistance and the more you focus on it (even inadvertently), the more it grows. That’s because the Law of Attraction will bring more energy to whatever you focus on, even if you don’t know that you’re doing it.

So, in order to bring something into your reality, you have to match its vibration without offering any conflicting energy. How do you know when you’re doing this? Again, you can use your emotions. The better you feel, the more aligned you are with what you want. The worse you feel, the more resistance you’re activating. In order to manifest something, you have to feel exactly as though you would if you already had it, even if you don’t have it yet. (That little sentence right there will get you everything you want. Please don’t dismiss it because the information is free.)

If you ignore resistance, it will grow until it gets your attention

So, let’s say that you’re focusing on something in your life, knowingly or unknowingly, and it’s triggering resistance. You have some negative emotion. Only, because you’ve been carrying that particular belief around with you for ages, you’re really used to how it feels and you don’t even notice it. In other words, you feel grumpy, but because you’ve been feeling grumpy for years, you don’t realize what a miserable bastard you really are. If you continue to focus, knowingly or unknowingly, on whatever is triggering your resistance, the manifestation of that conflict will grow. Remember, the Law of Attraction will bring more energy to whatever you focus on. So, your negative emotion will become more intense. You’ll become an angry, miserable bastard. Then you might find that everyone around you is really rude. Someone will steal your parking space. A surly cop will give you a ticket. Your wife cheats on you. You stub your toe. Now you’re a really angry, miserable bastard in pain. But hey, because you’re already miserable, it doesn’t occur to you that maybe this isn’t a symptom of how crappy the world is, but that it’s a series of escalating manifestations that are trying to get you to pay attention to the fact that you have some conflicting energy within you. Misery and pain have become so commonplace in our world that people often fail to realize that IT’S NOT NORMAL. And so, they go on ignoring the symptoms. Ignore the resistance long enough, and it may well manifest as a physical illness, one of which could be cancer.

It’s the feeling that counts

Now, people don’t get cancer because they deserve it or because they “brought it on themselves” as if it’s somehow their own fault. As I stated, this process works whether you are knowingly focusing on resistance or not. And no one knowingly focuses on something that makes them feel bad, just as no one smashes their thumb with a hammer on purpose. So, how can we figure out what caused the illness? How can we get to the root of the problem?

Again, it’s all in the emotions. When someone has an illness, it will feel a certain way to them. Perhaps it feels limiting, unfair, powerless, punishing, or victimizing. However it feels, there is a corresponding limiting belief within this person that feels the same way. And THIS is at the root of the illness – THIS is the real cause of the cancer. I’ll give you an example: Shelly has been feeling powerless all her life. She carries a great deal of anger around with her, but has been suppressing that anger because, well, our society and her family have made it clear that being mad is not really acceptable. We’re not supposed to be angry. And so, Shelly has never allowed herself to move out of powerlessness and past the anger. She’s been stuck in that vibration for years. And every time her husband or mother or mother in law makes a decision for her, which happens often, instead of saying something, she grinds her teeth, smiles and tells herself it’s ok.

Shelly’s anger has been leaking out in various ways. She makes little passive aggressive comments to her family and friends. She’s been getting bitchier as the years go by. She frequently hurts herself in little ways, like cutting her fingers or spraining her ankle, and has been experiencing panic attacks. The powerlessness she’s not addressing is manifesting in bigger ways to get her attention, but she continues to ignore it. She’s in more and more emotional pain, and it’s becoming harder and harder for her to get out of bed and tightly smile her way through her day. And then one day, she finds a lump in her breast. It’s cancer. She’s devastated. She feels that her life is over and that she has absolutely no control over her body. She feels utterly and completely POWERLESS (the same feeling that has been trying to get her attention for years).

Turning that lump into a diamond

However, this illness, devastating as it is, can also represent an opportunity for Shelly. As she’s sitting in her hospital bed, she no longer has all the distractions of her everyday life. She is forced to actually feel her feelings and think her thoughts. And what she discovers is both painful and liberating. She decides to get into therapy and explores the emotions she’s been suppressing all these years. She realizes just how powerless she’s been feeling, uncovers the thoughts and beliefs at the heart of those emotions and, with the help of her therapist, shifts those thoughts. She is liberated and feels better. And once she shifts her energy, her cancer recedes. Her treatment is incredibly effective and she leaves the hospital a new woman – empowered, strong, uncompromising and at peace with herself. Although the illness was a horrific journey, she honestly believes that it’s the best thing that ever happened to her.

Shelly ignored her resistance until she simply couldn’t take it anymore. When the conflict within her manifested in a way she could not push aside, when it finally got her attention, she was forced to address it. And when she did, she released her resistance and the manifestation of that conflict cleared up.

So, does the Media coverage of Cancer cause cancer?

Well, yes and no. As I just explained in nitty-gritty detail, you don’t get cancer by thinking about cancer. However, if you have some resistance in you, then someone continuously feeding you the idea of cancer can make that the easiest path for that resistance to squirt out. And if cancer feels a certain way to you, and you have some vibrational conflict that matches that feeling then yes, focusing on cancer could cause it to manifest. But that’s not the same as saying that thinking about cancer causes it – you have to have the resistance in the first place, or nothing will manifest. How you feel about cancer when you think about it has a lot to do with it. This is why oncologists can think about cancer all day long and not get it.

I’ll give you another example: there is clearly a correlation between smoking and cancer. How can that be? Do most smokers have conflicting vibrations? Well, yeah, they do. How many smokers do you know that feel great about smoking? You have these individuals who are performing an activity many times a day that they feel really crappy about. They smoke and feel horrible about it. That horrible feeling is a symptom of resistance. Add to that the fact that they are fed a continuous message that smoking causes cancer and they will very likely link cancer to their feelings about smoking. And presto: years of resistance around smoking has caused cancer. Indigenous people in the Rainforest have been smoking Tobacco as part of their rituals for millennia without getting cancer. But they feel very differently about smoking than we do.

Disclaimer: I know that I’ve already mentioned this, but I want to stress this again. If you or anyone in your family or circle of friends has cancer, I am in no way saying that it’s your own damn fault. I’m giving you an explanation, based on my understanding of how energy works, of how such illnesses come about and I think that I’ve been really clear about the fact that no one knowingly manifests things that they don’t want into their lives. But once you know how this mechanism works, you can begin to dig up the reasons for anything unwanted in your life; you can pay attention to how you feel and change what manifests into your reality. If reading this post left you angry and defensive, then I’m afraid that you’ve kind of missed my point. If, however, it left you empowered and inspired and ready to go tackle some beliefs, you now have an understanding that will allow you to deliberately receive anything you want, and probably even more importantly, stop receiving the crap you don’t.

If you liked this post, do me a favor and go like my Facebook page. Fred has challenged me to a duel and if I get more FB fans than him, I win.