Bargains always include an IF and a THEN.

The following are just a very few of the bargains we make with life that keep us stuck repeating patterns that are not only inauthentic, but which build a steeper climb to a fulfilling life:

* IF I give you this $2.39, THEN you will give me that loaf of bread.

* IF I can stay and keep tolerating the intolerable in this awful job, THEN I can continue to complain and blame, never having to take responsibility for my own fulfillment.

* IF I stay married to this person who reminds me so much of my abusive father, THEN maybe I can vicariously get my father to love me through him.

Knowing How To Receive or Accept

Acceptance is not generally a term we hear applied to our common understanding of the law of attraction, but actually it is one of the basic tools we use in activating the true potential of our lives. The art of acceptance is the very essence of reception. In order to have abundance we have to know how to receive or accept abundance. But acceptance is a process, which includes similar stages to the now commonly known stages of grief, stages which also end in acceptance. Similar but not exactly the same, for those stages of grief include depression.

The process of acceptance, on the other hand, includes denial, anger, sorrow, bargaining and finally brings us home to acceptance. Why is it necessary to consider this? Because in order for us to accept abundance into our lives, we often have to move out of denial, to own and begin to use the energy behind our anger, to experience some sorrow over losses that come about as a result of stepping away from toxicity, and we may spend some time bargaining with, instead of accepting, our abundance.

Are You Repressing Acceptance?

Generally speaking, most of us came to believe that the law of attraction was a way around having to deal with any so-called negative feelings. In fact, trying to stay in affirmation and so-called positive thinking, only means that we repress the very process of acceptance that is essential to our receipt of abundance.

Rather, the true law of attraction is not about attracting from the external world what we think we need to make the internal world happy. Instead, we are attracted to and by all of those things, people, places, events, circumstances, etc., which will allow us to come to know who we are as Divine beings. This is a much taller order than that described by our initial understanding of the law of attraction. It will both require much more of us and give us even greater gifts.

Therefore, the choice to get into the true flow of life energy within us is a process that involves serious life-changing decisions. And taking personal responsibility for getting into that internal flow means that we have to move through these stages, including moving beyond bargaining and into acceptance.

Bargaining with Life: If I do this, then I can...

But bargaining generally means that we are deciding that IF we do X or Y, THEN we can have A or B. Bargaining is based on a notion of secondary rather than primary gain. Primary gain is direct gain: We do a job and get paid. There are no under-the-table deals going on with primary gain. But secondary gain is usually fraught with efforts to manipulate the Universe or other people into getting for us what we think we need. In other words, secondary gains are often made unconsciously through various bargains. In each of the areas of life highlighted below is only one of the possible bargains we can make in that area.

Parenting Bargains:

The Overprotection Bargain: IF I can face and handle all of little Johnny’s challenges for him or make sure he is never challenged, THEN he will need me and he’ll never leave me.

Life Bargains:

The Out-of-Control Bargain: If I tell myself that I’m out of control, that life is way bigger than me, and that I simply have no choice, THEN I can avoid having to take responsibility for my own conscious and unconscious choices and just wait for life to happen to me.

Career Bargains:

The Comparison Bargain: IF I am busy measuring myself by what I perceive others have, THEN I don’t have to really take responsibility for finding out what I desire and living into it.

Relationship Bargains:

The Enmeshment Bargain: IF I don’t do what they want, THEN they will reject me. IF I don’t agree with them or IF I have a different personality from theirs THEN I am somehow betraying them. Therefore, IF I conform, THEN I don’t ever have to take the risk to find out if I can love myself even if they don’t.

Mood Bargains:

The Depression Bargain: IF I repress my pain and fear long enough, THEN I will use all of my energy for that purpose, and THEN I’ll have no energy for taking the risk to be personally responsible for creating a fulfilling life.

Secondary Gain: Avoiding Risk or Responsibility

The secondary gain of each of these bargains is found in its THEN, and each of these secondary gains has something to do with a bottom line of avoiding risk and/or responsibility. When we factor these unconscious bargains into our attempts to work with what we understand to be true about the law of attraction, these efforts are likely to fail. In fact, the soul has a much higher calling for us, and was never meant to work from the outside in.

The truest and most powerful and fulfilling gain any of us will ever have is to know and experience ourselves as One with the Divine. Such access and knowledge is primary gain, which takes the direct internal route to the authentic Self or soul. By beginning to make contact with the more genuine aspects of essential being, we are moving past bargaining and into acceptance to receive from our own souls all that we want and need.

Article Source

The Law of Attraction: The Soul's Answer To Why It Isn't Working And How It Can
by Andrea Mathews.

Click here for more info and/or to order this book.

About the Author

Andrea Mathews is the author of The Law of Attraction: The Soul’s Answer To Why It Isn’t Working And How It Can, (Sept. 2011), and Restoring My Soul: A Workbook for Finding and Living the Authentic Self (2007), as well as several published articles and poems and a blog in Psychology Today Magazine called Traversing the Inner Terrain. She is a practicing licensed psychotherapist with over 30 years experience, a corporate trainer, motivational and inspirational speaker and the host of the highly successful international internet radio show called Authentic Living on VoiceAmerica.com. You can learn much more about her at http://www.andreamathewslpc.com