We live in a world of cause and effect, so where does the law of attraction fit? Spoiler, it comes first. Let’s examine cause, mechanisms, and effect.
None of this is medical advice. Always follow the advice of your doctors.
Cause and effect
You know how the world works already, so we’ll only give a couple of examples. Seemingly simple examples will allow us to properly frame things in a broader context.
When we spend all our money, there’s nothing left over at the end of the month.
Driving too fast risks getting a ticket. Do it often enough, and statistics take over so that tickets come at a predictable rate.
Cause → Effect
The law of attraction (LOA) didn’t come in anywhere above. That’s a fact, but is it the truth?
Chains of mechanisms
The cause, as stated above, isn’t the cause. It only seems like the cause when we don’t look under the hood. What most people call the cause is only a mechanism connecting cause and effect. Let’s consider the examples above and frame them into a framework of cause, mechanisms, and effect.
Spend all the money
Psychologists already have this one figured out.
The end result, or effect, is not having any money left over at the end of the month. That much is easy. We argue that the spending part is only the mechanism in the cause, mechanisms, and effect chain. The underlying cause is an unproductive attitude about money or more generally patterns of thought on the subject. Toward making real change, the real question is where the self-defeating behavior comes from.
- The attitude or belief surrounding the subject of money is the cause.
- Behavior is only a mechanism.
- An empty pocketbook is the effect.
Notice that we’re being careful to say “a mechanism” instead of “the mechanism”. There can be many at once, or there can be a sequence of mechanisms that switch off at different times.
When it comes to money, we can all find lots of mechanisms. Overspend this week. Pay taxes next week. The car breaks down the following week. When it rains it pours.
Belief → Behavior → Effect
but also
Belief → Situation → Effect
The law of attraction brings these mechanisms to us according to what we’re attracting. Mechanisms can certainly be thought of as premanifestations, especially if you recognize them before they start affecting you personally.
The lead foot defense
I drive too fast, and you give me a ticket. Simple cause and effect. Not so fast!
You get the idea now that the peddle pressing is only a mechanism. So attitudes and beliefs, in combination with the law of attraction, are the underlying cause. The behaviors that produce speeding are only a mechanism. Timing such that the speeding happens in front of the various forms of enforcement is a chained mechanism. Finally, the ticket is the end result.
Belief → Situation A → Behavior →Situation B→Effect
Unproductive beliefs about scheduling and safety will only produce certain behaviors a percentage of the time. A different percentage of roads have any kind of speed enforcement. The law of attraction matches those together to greater or lesser degrees based on your vibration. Furthermore, the situations that require speeding are brought to you courtesy of the LOA.
It’s entirely possible to have a productive vibration about speeding. Can you imagine someone who drives fast purely because they think it’s fun? This is not driving advice by any means, but can you imagine it? Such a person would be led safely around dangerous situations, slower sections, and law enforcement. They would also find themselves unconsciously easing off the accelerator whenever the situation warrants.
The law of attraction knows what’s around the corner, and it matches your vibration with aligned situations.
Proximal and distal
Medical practitioners understand this to some extent too. If someone limps in with a sore foot, the foot pain is obviously the effect. When the doctor identifies the actual piece of physiology that’s complaining, she probably says it’s not necessarily the cause. The source of the pain is now known, but it’s only the proximal cause because it’s the closest to the problem. In reality, something upstream is causing that issue. What is the distal cause? Could it be the shoes? A weakness in the hips? Posture further up? Something isn’t entirely right.
Beliefs →Distal “cause” → Proximal “cause” →Effect
Sometimes doctors have no idea what the problem is and only address the effect. These remedies look like pills and props. Pain medications usually only address the effect. If the foot pain is bad enough, a wheelchair would take the weight off.
Better still, interrupting the chain by addressing the proximal cause will provide a longer-lasting “cure.” Extract the inflamed organ. Splint the broken bone. Bandage the sore. Restart the heart. By all means, stabilize the patient!
The best that modern medicine can offer is to address the distal cause. Fix the diet that keeps inflaming the organ. Retrain the running form that keeps stress-fracturing the bone. Address the infection. Lose weight, and walk barefoot to strengthen the foot muscles.
Psychologists and occupational/physical therapists are often the ones who actually address the root cause. These folks routinely fix the problematic beliefs. When the cause part of the cause, mechanisms, and effect chain is addressed, the effect often drops away quickly. Unless…
A vicious cycle of cause, mechanisms, and effect
Mechanisms can feed back on themselves. Runners know this very well. If foot pain causes a problem with the running form, then that improper running form can exacerbate the same foot pain. This translates perfectly to walking issues too. Problems like this can take a while to resolve if nothing changes.
Furthermore, the manifestation can quickly become a link in the chain of mechanisms. Constant awareness of the existing problem will perpetuate it.
It’s possible, and even typical, to fix the original cause but to have the effect remain. Whatever we had going on in our belief system got fixed. Now what? My foot still hurts!
Our continuing awareness (and beliefs about) the initial manifestation will continue to perpetuate the effect. Problems that persist for months and years often do so purely from our awareness of the end result. In this case, the challenge is to soothe the awareness of the effect.
Recognizing its part in holding your attention in unproductive ways is the first step in solving this new problem. This is now the link to break in the chain of cause, mechanisms, and effect. This type of vicious cycle is probably where the placebo effect shines.
The shifting mechanisms of cause, mechanisms, and effect
When our chronic awareness of the effect is the cause, then the mechanism(s) driving the cycle are free to change.
Runners often breathe a sigh of relief whenever their pain shifts literally from one side of the body to the other. It means the problem is upstream, and nothing is seriously broken. A simple weakness in the hips, for example, is a much happier place to be than a stress fracture. Retraining the running form will address the issue for good, but it’s very comforting to know nothing is broken in the meantime.
We have a meditation about how nothing is ever permanently broken.
The medical profession produces a lot of very reasonable and well-calculated diagnoses only to eventually find they had the wrong distal cause. Over and over again. And… again. But it’s not their fault! The mechanism keeps shifting under them. It’s like being a firefighter where the flame keeps disappearing and reappearing all over the room.
Evolving effects
Seth spoke once about evolving effects. As we begin to address the initial cause of an undesired physical manifestation, the effect tends to move outward to the surface of the skin. Visibility to the eyes is congruous with a willingness to finally deal with the problem. The underlying cause hasn’t changed much, but our relationship to the cause has.
The mechanism(s) though, in this case, probably move and swap all over the place. Given the effect literally changes, doctors likely lose sight of the fact that it’s the same problem. Indeed, working within their framework, it is a different problem. Such a short-sighted approach, however, can only be temporarily helpful at most until the effect shifts again. Post-shift, the patient is stuck taking some nasty medication with undesirable side effects, but with “something new” to start treating.
Always cause, mechanisms, and effect
While health issues turned out to be the main example of this post, the framework is applicable everywhere. Particularly in the physical (uni)verse that we call home, matter and energy are only links in the chains of mechanisms. They’re links in the chain of experiencing life in this format, but they’re also links in the chain of manifestations we want and don’t want.
Addressing the mechanisms might provide temporary relief, but once that’s accomplished, pivot and work on the current cause.
