A friend asked me how our new mangement consulting business will attract clients.

I sat back and thought, "How do I know that we are supposed to "attract" anyone at all?" 

For those like my friend who find business building and marketing exhausting, there is a spiritual school of thought that says, "It's OK. Stop trying and start attracting. You are a spiritual being and the law of attraction will have your clients find you." Well, yes, we all are more than just our bodies. Talk to anyone who has had a near death experience, like Anita Moorjani (video below).  But you can't unplug your personal plan and just plug in a new spiritual marketing plan.  I am not seeing this working for people.  And I'll get to what's missing in a moment.

Whether my techniques are old-school marketing and cold calling or new-school "attracting" it seems to me, the problem is: I am still working on the level of myself, Elese the human being using techniques to the best of her ability. It's as if we say, " I have tried marketing techniques, social media techniques, affiliate techniques, now I'll go for spiritual techniques."

We cannot substitute personal effort with spiritual effort.

In fact, I'm not sure there is any such thing as spiritual effort.  What do I mean by this?

I mean, I don't think we MAKE ourselves spiritual, and I don't think we have any role in making spirituality work on a personal level -- anymore than we make electricity work. 

To use "attracting" as your sales plan is just another technique, no different from traditional marketing, it doesn't work unless what is behind it is authentic. So if you are a coach, or a human services provider...

I believe you can't substitute any technique, spiritual or otherwise, for improving the base quality of your work. And the quality of your work is related to the depth of your own view of who you are and how you function.

Think of a magnet. A magnet does nothing to attract.  When the right metallic components are in range, the polarity takes care of itself. I think we love the idea that we make ourselves into great magnets through our work and then people just get attracted. No. You don't make your polarity. You ARE the polarity because of your nature.  Should you just stand there and radiate? Will they come?  Maybe. 

Or are you thinking that your job is to increase your polarity?  Well, it's not.  You job is to dance your dance.  You don't even need to go deeper in anything unless it is useful to you to not only be who you are but to have awareness of who you are. But, you are already who you are. You are already the base metal and so is everyone else.  Without your concept of who you are and your ideas about who you are, you would just simply be you.

So who am I and who do I think I am. Am I thinking of myself as someone who needs to attract clients?  Where are all the areas I tend to forget who I am and become afraid and insecure? What's underneath my insecure thinking?

When was the last time you really reflected on: Who Are You?

From who you think you are flows everything that you do to make yourself happy, everything you think you need or is missing, all your problems and all your concerns.  You are doing everything in your life right now based on your best guess about who you are.

I was raised in a Christian Science family and I was told from the earliest of ages, "you are not your body."  I never believed this, even after spending the first 18 years of my life dedicated to this metaphysical study.  So I do not expect that anyone, not you, not me, should take anyone's word for who you are.  Belief should not come into it. You cannot sit solidly on a belief. But inquiry can get us beyond who we think we are.

We are too quick to accept everything we think as a true and accurate picture of life and of ourselves.  We speak far too easily about ideas like "Law of Attraction," "ego" and "spiritual self" and have not taken enough time to investigate these beyond the level of concepts and pop culture.

Everything we do as humans is an attempt to remedy a life that is the direct result of accepting whatever crazy things we think and living them as true.

Most people I know (including me!) suffer at some point from some form of dwarfed or warped self-image. Most people simply try to apply this idea of "attraction" using their self-image. This image is made up of what we think of ourselves, but what is underneath it is actually what is most attractive about us.
 
At some point, if you are a coach and you are growing your business of service to others, the investigation into who is "Me" is a necessary investigation that has taken my clients and will take you through to the next level.

Forget attracting. Get to know yourself.

 "Before enlightenment I was depressed, after enlightenment I continue to be depressed"  -- Anthony de Mello

One of my clients once asked me, "If I'm so spiritually evolved, why am I having a bad day?"

Don't we all have this question in various forms?   

"I'm a coach, why am I having difficulty with this issue?"
"I'm a therapist, why are my own relationships in trouble?"
"I've been doing self-development for years, why am I still getting angry?"

Or perhaps you've had the question tossed at you... 

"If you teach this to people, why don't you go practice it yourself!"  

We tend to see these questions as pointing toward some issue within us; something we need to clean up or some way in which we are inauthentic or out of integrity.

Not so.

... unless the purpose of self-development (or spiritual growth) is to never have a bad day again.

It's not that I think becoming issue-free is unrealistic or impossible.  Perhaps it is.  But what interests me more is this:  Do we study, have our spiritual practices, or hire someone to help us 'get better' in order to never ever feel bad again?

If we make our self-improvement all about becoming a perfect human being with a perfect life, we are in for trouble.  There is no greater suffering than striving to be a flawless human.  It is an endless moving runway with a carrot dangling -- always -- just out of reach.   You make improvements in one area and soon you are noticing all the ways that you are lacking in another and then you are right back on the treadmill. 

It's very easy when we read spiritual masters, reflect, meditate, study or hire someone to work with us, to fall into the trap of believing that a sign of enlightenment (or progress) is that we will stop having strong negative emotions.  Just look at how shocked we are when a one of our icons admits to feeling depression, gets mad at a being stuck in traffic, gets a divorce or declares bankruptcy!  

No matter how much 'work' you do on yourself, you cannot get rid of your emotions -- because you cannot get rid of the fact that you are a thinking being.  The two go together, hand in glove. We always feel whatever we think. 

Thoughts themselves are a kaleidoscope of infinite colors and shapes, many of which are not all that pretty.  We define the bad, uncomfortable, unworthy and wrong ones and then set about trying to extract them as if they were cavities. How would you do that, really?  And more importantly, why would you want to?  You are by definition as 'sentient being'.

'Bad thinking' isn't something to rip out and replace with positivity.  Maybe life would be better if we could do this; but have you ever actually succeeded? Are you sure that's purpose of personal growth? 

For me it proved stressful, and ultimately unsuccessful! 

A turning point for me was when I noticed that I actually do not take EVERY thought seriously.  I've had thoughts of punching someone, and not followed through. I realized I am actually already naturally and effortlessly ignoring all kinds of thoughts. You probably do too, within the last hour perhaps.  

You know how they say "the thought crossed my mind"?  It's true. Thoughts do cross your mind.  AND if you notice, you might also find that, you too have plenty of experience in not taking them seriously. Thoughts themselves cannot compel action from us.  Thoughts are not us. So the types of thoughts you have do not define the kind of person you are.

Seeing this, we can relax. We can understand that thinking is not problematic. It just happens.  It's not who we are, but it happens in us.   

I have given up on trying to change and get rid of certain thoughts.  My life is the better for it.

Last week I was teaching at our CSC Retreat by the Sea and for the 9 hours driving up and back to Santa Cruz from San Diego, I was listening to Anthony de Mello's Wake Up To Life lectures (which I highly recommend!).  He asserts,  

"Do you know it's possible to be anxious, yet not troubled?  Do you realize that you can be happy in your anxiety and in your depression?  The only reason you don't is because you don't understand what happiness is. You think happiness is 'thrills'. It's not..."

Most of us are trying to be happy without knowing and without inquiring into what happiness is.  When we define it as 'never having a bad day' or 'never being upset' no wonder we are never happy! 

I am wondering if perhaps the purpose of life is not to get happiness or even to be happy, but to understand what happiness really is.   

Only then, does happiness have a chance to unfold within us and be recognized.