Why Affirmations Do Not Work and How to Make Them Work (Part 1): Attachments
Affirmations work better and manifest faster when the words that you pronounce are accompanied by a feeling of detachment from the outcome. Even though the term detachment is talked about a lot, very few teachers or authors offer clear instructions on how to attain it. In this article, I will offer a straightforward approach to cultivate detachment for your affirmations with a Spiritual Technology “Basic PEAT.”
If you have not downloaded the eBook manual on the Basic PEAT “How to Make a Leap in Consciousness?” yet, you can do so by joining my mailing list Happy Living Through Self-Healing, or by following a link provided in any of my newsletters.
What are Affirmations?
Even though I will not spend too much time explaining how to write perfect affirmations in this article, let us give a short review of what they are. Affirmation is “the practice of positive thinking and self-empowerment—fostering a belief that ‘a positive mental attitude supported by affirmations will achieve success in anything.’ More specifically, an affirmation is a carefully formatted statement that should be repeated to one’s self and written down frequently.” (Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmations_%28New_Age%29). Affirmations are often used to achieve a certain goal, manifest a certain outcome or inspire and encourage a positive mindset. Some examples: I am loved and respected by my co-workers, I effortlessly ace my job interview, My potential client will like my presentation, I love and approve of myself, etc.
A Big Problem With Affirmations
When I first discovered affirmations, I was super excited. It was like discovering that magic exists, and, if only one says the right words, one can do anything. In the beginning, my affirmations manifested fast and carried a lot of power. But the more I used them, the less frequently they worked and became less impactful. I would even say they became a cause of frustration and futility. The number of fulfilled affirmations was dwindling with time. Eventually, I started losing faith in using them at all. I talked to other people who used affirmations and heard the same or similar story from them. Something was amiss.
The missing element was detachment. You see, excited with the success of the first manifested affirmations, I had built an attachment to the results and increased the importance of getting an outcome. Buddhists call this state “a defiled mind” or a state of “craving.” I have read about detachment in many new-age books and have heard about it in spiritual films, but almost none of them offer a clear-cut solution to it.
Attachment Is a Vibration of Lack
Attachment and detachment are the opposite feelings on the desire spectrum. You can also think of attachment and detachment as “wanting” and “having” because when you have something, you are truly detached from wanting it. Just like you can not stand and sit at the same time, you can not be in the state of attachment or detachment at the same time. That is, if you are attached to the outcome of your affirmation, you are not experiencing detachment.
So what does it mean to be attached? Being attached means to want, yearn, need or crave the outcome. Attachment may express itself as an obsessive thinking or worrying about the outcome. You may have noticed that, if you use an affirmation about something important to you, for example, “I am relaxed during my job interview,” it is almost impossible to remain detached.
Attachment is a not only a craving, but also a vibration of lack and distrust. This needy state is not only a cause of suffering and unhappiness, but also a feeling of “not having.” So, if you feel this way while stating your affirmations, you are activating the opposite force – the vibration of lack. You get what you send out – more lack, more craving, more wanting, more suffering. And then, you get even more frustrated with yourself and the Universe: you may feel that you are not good enough, you are doing it wrong, or the Universe is punishing you. These feelings can quickly exacerbate.
So, it is quite logical that we want the opposite of that, namely detachment. Detachment is a feeling of contentment and trust, of being at peace with yourself and the world. In other words, when you feel detachment while using affirmations, you feel content whether affirmation happens or not. It is a vibration that you send to the Universe which says “Universe, it would be nice if you could help me manifest this or something better, but I feel at peace if this is not meant to be.” With detachment, you release your desire to control the outcome and impose your will on the Universe. You trust that The Universe knows best.
Instead, we often do not trust the Universe, we feel that, if we release worrying and thinking about the outcome, we release control, and the Universe may deliver something unsatisfactory. Therefore, you have to stay alert and in control. In this way people choke their affirmations. They get so attached to the outcome and how it should be delivered, that they completely block it.
Becoming Detached or How to Want And Not Want Something at The Same Time
So let us work on creating this wonderful detachment.
I have found two simple and practical ways to achieve that state. Meditation on your affirmation is a great method to achieve detachment if you are an experienced “meditator,” but in my experience, that takes a long time. At least, longer than the other method I am about to suggest, which is the Spiritual Technologies. The Spiritual Technology such as the Basic PEAT is capable of transforming feelings and emotions of attachment in 5-10 minutes and quite effectively. The Deep PEAT is even more powerful, but usually requires a facilitator like myself.
How To Achieve Detachment for your Affirmation with Basic PEAT?
If you have not downloaded the eBook manual on the Basic PEAT “How to Make a Leap in Consciousness?” yet, you can do so by joining my mailing list Happy Living Through Self-Healing, or by following a link provided in any of my newsletters.
1. Evaluate your attachment by rating the craving on a scale 0-10. As I discussed above, attachment is a feeling. This means that you can feel it as an emotion or body sensation or both. So, when you are evaluating your craving, focus on how you feel it in your body. Really pay attention to how strong your desire is and how you feel this desire in your body. There is usually a tension, pressure, tug, heat (no wonder they call it a “burning” desire), or a combination thereof in the head, throat, chest, heart, stomach, or other body area. The more aware of the body sensations related to this attachment (this craving) you become , the faster and easier you can process it with Basic PEAT and achieve detachment. While paying attention to your body sensations and emotions, ask yourself “How important is it for me that this affirmation manifests or is true on a scale 0-10?”
Pointer: When you are answering this question, you may close your eyes, and bow your head towards your chest slightly. This will shift your focus inward, and make you concentrate more on the feeling rather than thinking.
2. Process your attachment using the intensity of your craving, which is perceived as emotion or body sensation: Now all you need to do is to process this craving with Basic PEAT until it goes down to 0, where you would feel content about whether your affirmation manifests or not. And, this will be your detachment. If you have already mastered the Basic PEAT technique, you should know that you usually need 4 elements of perception for processing any event: Image, Thought, Emotion, and Body Sensations. Sometimes, you may have no specific image to process, as the desire hasn’t manifested yet, and you have no idea what it will look like. That’s ok, there are two ways to work with it.
First, you omit those elements that are not present, in this case – the Image. Sometimes, also the Emotion. So you would rate only the intensity of your Body sensations on a 0-10 scale and only process them until their intensity is 0.
Second, you can visualize the desired outcome and make a snapshot of it. And then evaluate your emotion and body sensations on a 0-10 scale, using that snapshot.
Example
For example, let’s take the affirmation “I easily and effortlessly ace my job interview.”
How important is it to me for this affirmation to be true?
Based on my body sensations and emotions, I feel that the importance (or craving) for this affirmation to come true is at 10.
Four Elements of Perception Breakdown for Basic PEAT
Thought: “I easily and effortlessly ace my job interview.”
Image: I don’t have the image of the job interview yet, because it hasn’t happened yet. I will omit it.
Emotions:
(a) Fear/Worry/Importance: I fear that I won’t be able to pay my bills next months, so I really need this job.
Also I am scared that I may not be prepared enough for the interview.
(b) Excitement: I am excited that I may get this job and this is a job of my dreams.
Body Sensations: pangs in my stomach
So, for the first way of processing, I will omit the Image, but I’ll keep the 3 existing elements:
Or alternatively, I could visualize the manifested affirmation and use that as the Image element in addition to the existing 3.
That is all, folks. Happy manifesting with Spiritual Technologies! Please, leave your comments and questions below.
