Every time I relate that line to someone, they smile and laugh.
Why?
It’s a great example of a paraprosdokian. A paraprosdokian is a sentence where the ending comes as an unexpected surprise. Another example is this - “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.”
I love how you can structure writing to make an impact. That’s why I wrote the book, Hypnotic Writing. But that isn’t the point of this blog post. Instead, I want to explore why the first paraprosdokian is funny, as it helps explain the Law of Attraction.
Most people believe God (or Divine, Tao, Nature, Allah, etc.) won’t grant wishes. That’s the underlying reason the above line triggers a smile. You can ask God for a healing, but you can’t ask God for stuff. God isn’t Santa Claus. Not according to popular belief, anyway.
Deeper than that belief is the one that says while God won’t grant wishes, He/She will take away sins. God’s loving and understanding, so of course He can release you of your oops.
As a result of this thinking, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for what you want. At least, that’s how some people think.
That’s pretty messed up, isn’t it?
This is why I keep writing books, such as The Awakening Course and The Attractor Factor, to explore the programming behind what we think, feel, and do. Most of us are running on autopilot. We have no idea we are led by the nose by our mental programming or mindset. Our beliefs – mostly unconscious – filter reality.
I was reading the new book, Redirect by Timothy Wilson, and loving the idea of story editing the meaning we give events, until I realized the author was victim to programming he didn’t even see.
In his book, he blows the whistle on different causes or processes that he says don’t actually work. Early on, he takes aim at the movie The Secret.
He quotes me as saying the reason you have what you have is due to your thoughts. He apparently missed the part where I said you have what you have due to your actions. Thoughts are only part of the equation.
Glossing over facts because they don’t support your underlying message is a common way to communicate.
But it’s not real. Or accurate.
Again, it’s not the author’s fault. He’s as unconscious as the rest of us.
In the same book, the author suggests that self-help books don’t actually work, else there would be a stand out title in the field. That’s strange logic, but let’s run with it. In the same chapter, he mentions one of the all-time greatest self-help books, Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 The Power of Positive Thinking.
How’d he miss that?
He also fails to mention such historic self-help treasures as Think and Grow Rich (been around since the 1930s), and The Magic of Believing (came out in the 1950s, still a classic today).
How’d he miss those?
On top of all that, he overlooks the fact that new cookbooks are published every week, and there are thousands of those in print, yet no one suggests “they don’t work.” How’d he overlook that?
I’m not kicking the author’s shins, as I enjoyed his book and urge you to read it. But I am reminding us that we all have unconscious blind spots – even authors who try to help us see them. We don’t see them because they are unconscious.
The point of life is to awaken.
But how?
Paying attention to the results we get and then reverse engineering them to discover the thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and actions that created them, will help. My forthcoming new book, Instant Manifestation, explores all this. It reveals that what you attracted right now is based on what you thought and did a few days ago. When you understand that process, you can redirect your thoughts and actions right now, to attract a different reality in the near future. What are you thinking right now?
What are you going to do next?
Your answers will attract what’s just around the corner.
Choose wisely.
Finally, to swing back to our opening example:
“I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.”
Forgiveness is a powerful tool for transformation. But you don’t need God/Divinity to forgive you. You need to forgive yourself.
Manifesting what you want is a God given birthright, though you may not have known it until recently. You don’t need to ask God/Divinity to deliver anything to you. You need to ask yourself and your connection to All That Is for what is in your highest good to receive.
Now go forth and make your life miraculous.
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