The labyrinth at the Florida Pagan Gathering at dusk–a powerful maze for contemplation. The best thing about labyrinths is that you just let your feet follow the path and your mind flies to more spiritual planes.  Photo Copyright by Lorna Tedder; all rights reserved.

From the upcoming book, 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It

My 17-year-old sprawls across the passenger seat, her injured foot on the dashboard, and she cuddles against her pillow.  Her mood is that of a wounded kitten, and she’s withdrawn rather than her usual outgoing and delightful self.

I don’t understand how I could have manifested this,” she whimpers.

She’s not talking about her foot.

Her foot injury is a simple accident that resulted in a lot of pain, soreness, and blood–and hopefully not a broken toe.  That happened as we were leaving four days of camping and festival-making in the Ocala National Forest.  The throbbing foot was the icing on the cake, a culmination of her frustrations.  Easy to see how that one manifested.

Instead, she’s talking about how much she’d looked forward to this festival–for weeks–only to wind up feeling shut-down by people she’d admired because of a new policy put in effect that felt like a gut-punch rejection.  We’d both been so thrilled about this trip that we were thrown off-kilter by a series of events that left her tearful and me pissed off on her behalf.  Of all the camping trips we’ve been a part of since 2006, this was probably the worst for us–and the only one where we considered leaving a day early  and finally left for home feeling low instead of amped.  Considering that we’ve attended past festivals when my dad was dying and also right after two big heartbreaks, that’s saying something.  What saved the trip for us was being involved with particular circles of friends as well as some great workshops and talks.  The downers were all specific to a policy that affected her, one where she’d followed the rules  100% and the rules were changed on her mid-way.  Not her fault and no way to change minds …which was another reason we took it so hard.  We had no control over a hurtful situation.

As she sleeps and I drive for six hours, I start trying to figure it out for myself.  How exactly did this manifest when we’d left for the trip exuberant about the possibilities?  The present situation, simply, boils down to legalities involving a minor child and her professional photography.  It involves being told she’s misunderstood, it involves feeling coerced into agreeing that what she’s told is okay, and it involves her having to be the bearer of disappointing news.  It involves her being pulled into the politics of adults and, to some extent, being pitted against her mother.   Funny, but that’s incredibly familiar, isn’t it?

Different characters, different setting, but the same elements of plot and theme.  It’s a replay of a situation that has not yet fully resolved.  We’re still repeating that pattern, that “vibration” of six weeks ago, and it’s still an active pattern that we haven’t broken, even though we thought we were done with it.

Six weeks ago, Aislinn was pulled into a situation that left me equally as angry at seeing her put in the middle of what should have been between adults.  The past situation, simply, boiled down to the questionable legality–and definitely the ethics–of involving my minor child and her professional photography talents in someone else’s deceptive activities.   She was told she’d misunderstood (about me), felt she had no choice but to agree and keep quiet, and left to be the bearer of disappointing news that should have been delivered by an adult.  She was put in a predicament where she was pitted against her mother, and Mom was very unhappy about that, enough so to involve authorities.

The past situation of six weeks ago isn’t just in Aislinn’s vibration but it’s still in mine.  I recognized that almost immediately–a month ago at least.  My part of the past situation is more personal than professional, and though I can immediately end a relationship with a long-term liar with multiple girlfriends who don’t know about each other, I cannot immediately change my entire vibration so that I don’t repeat it. How did I recognize my vibration?  Easy–all I had to do was look at what was going on around me.

The first two guys to approach me about dinner dates were already encumbered and lying through their teeth about it.   One was married, according to his social networking site, but “getting a divorce,” according to him.  I didn’t just take his word for it.  I quizzed him about whether she knew they were getting a divorce and golly-gee-whiz, but she’s on a business trip and he’s planned to talk to her about it when she gets home.  The other guy, when pressed for details about the girlfriend shown on his social networking site, became quite cagey.  About 3 hours before we were to meet for dinner, he finally told me that he was on his way to see her to break up with her (he hadn’t already as he’d sworn) and he’d see me afterward at dinner.  Wow, thanks, dude!

I decided not to date anyone new for a little while, until this pattern of lying scumbags had passed.  When I ventured out again, I met a seemingly sweet man who said all the right things–and like the last man in my life, went to great lengths (oooh, I mean the last two men in my life) to keep his girlfriend a secret on his social networking sites and somehow failed to mention her except eventually to refer to her as a “friend.”  Sheesh, isn’t it exhausting to walk such tight ropes?  These guys could probably produce enough electricity to fuel North America if they spent their energy on positive works rather than deception.  The highlight of their lies is that almost every time, their other girlfriends turn into crazy stalker chicks who feel the need to blame me for their men not being truthful with them or with me.  In the end, they end up with their liars and not me–and that’s not a bad thing at all.

So in looking around at the men I’m still meeting, that pattern of liars is still there for me.  And my fix for that is to not date, to not get involved, to just keep things easy and single for a while.  Kinda gives new meaning to the term sucka-free, doesn’t it?

But the pattern is still there for Aislinn, too.  How to fix it?  Maybe she’ll break her pattern by not offering or not being talking into offering her photography skills for free, whether they’re paid for later or not.  Or maybe she’ll just make sure her skills are really wanted and appreciated.  I don’t know.  Given the good heart she has, it would be far harder for me to convince her not to volunteer for the next photography project that arises for a good cause than it is for me to decide to forgo men for a while.

When the current pattern has finished playing itself out, then I think we’ll both be free to be appreciated to our full extent.

From the upcoming book, 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It

It’s easy to blame all the lying, cheating, mean bastards out there, but if they’re not bringing us down every chance they get, don’t worry: we’ll do it to ourselves.  There’s a little bit—or a lot—of the Saboteur archetype in all of us.  Few of us can defy our past overnight and shift into a different vibration, or pattern.  That means that old wounds are repeatedly re-opened or new ones formed, thanks to our very own self-sabotage of the great and wonderful things we want to bring into our lives.

Let’s say that we recognize the error of our ways.  We’re tired of the bad stuff.  We want to bring a certain something good into our lives and we set the intention to do so.  We make lots of changes in our lives to get to a better place to bring it to us.  Unfortunately, no matter how hard we try or want, we can’t get into the vibration of that certain  something good.  We really want it, and we really do understand the Law of Attraction and how to get it.  The problem is, we just can’t manage that last step we need to bring that certain something good to us because we’re stuck in the past where a certain something good never came to us or, if it did, turned out to be a certain something not-so-good.    So even though we now adhere to the Law of Attraction, we still can’t make it happen for us I the way we want.  Oh, it happens for us all right—but it’s just a miserable repeat of the past.  We are still vibrating away at the frequency of oh-please-screw-me-over while yearning for sweet princes on white horses.

It’s taken a rather powerful new influence in my life to help me see this, and I’m actively working to change my vibration to one of perpetual buoyancy by focusing on trust.  I’m honestly fascinated with the situation and the lessons I’m learning from it, and I’m determined to correct my course.

I’ve dated over a dozen terrific men in the past year, and a couple who weren’t exactly terrific but, for the most part, didn’t send me scrambling for a window in the Ladies’ Room while at dinner.  Even from the less-than-wonderful, I learned more about what I wanted and didn’t want.  My intention, set back at the Winter Solstice of the previous year, was to enjoy one or more romantic partners who were happy, vibrant, young, drama-free, kind, interesting, sincere, good men.  Oh, yeah, and hot, too.

The Universe certainly delivered!

There’s only one of these men that I continue to see after a year, and I’m rather fascinated by what I’ve learned from him.  Namely, that it took me a solid year to trust him. I’m not sure whether to be surprised that it took so long or that I was ever able to trust again at all.  But I’ll come back to that.

Looking back, I know now that I had a similar situation in my life with platonic friendships.  During and after my divorce, I was terribly hurt by the lack of emotional support from the people I considered my closest friends.  Five years ago this month, I cleared my slate of most of my 50 closest friends and allies because I was making a big change in my life and they represented the negativity and inertia of my past.  Energetically, they felt like a physical anchor dragging me down, trying to control my actions and thoughts, and constantly telling me what to do.  Within the next year, I parted company with the last of my closest friends from my “old” life.

In that year’s time, even though I said goodbye to almost all my former friends, many of whom were really terrible friends to me who lied to me or used me, I didn’t want to become jaded about friendships and relationships.  I wanted to trust again.  I wanted to have friends again—just not the control freaks, users, and liars of my past.  So I made big changes in my life and made a conscious effort to bring new friends into my life.  Too bad I was still vibrating that my friends were control freaks, users, and liars…because that’s exactly what I attracted to me yet again.

I was so used to being disappointed by my old friends that it was an underlying expectation.  It didn’t take long for my new friends to disappoint me in ways that could not be mended.    Within six months,  I was being blamed for the break-up of a long-term marriage because my friend had told her husband she was out partying with me when she met her new boyfriend, even though I was never one to go out clubbing and was intentionally celibate at that time while I healed from my divorce.  She was seldom home, and she usually gave my residence or “Lorna needs me” as her reason for her  extended absence from her home and children.  There were lots of lies told, and I never really got the closure I needed that would have come from defending myself.  As soon as I discovered the truth and refused to cover for her or let her use me, she dropped our friendship.

There were other new friends who disappointed me also, but it was the betrayal of this new best friend that hurt the most and bothered me for years afterward.  By the time my other significant friendships ended, I drew inward for a while to work on myself and make sure that I had changed my vibration enough that, instead of bringing more users into my life as best friends, I would bring in friends who genuinely cared about me and weren’t users by nature.    That transition time was very hard for me, very lonely.  I literally had no friends for  many months while I rebuilt my life to reflect the kinds of friends I wanted.  I built a new social network, brought back a couple of old friends who’d been through changes of their own, and grew lush new friendships.

I needed that downtime to transition from someone whose friends were users to someone whose friends were sharers.  There’s no way I could attract happy, caring friends into my life when I was still stuck in the vibration of what I’d experienced repeatedly in my past.  Even though I took the right actions to find new friends after clearing out the old ones, I still had an underlying belief that I couldn’t trust my friends to back me up when things got rough.  I had to change my own beliefs and vibration, and that took time and some careful deliberation on my part.

Which brings us back to my fascination with a man I’ll call “Bear,” thanks to his stature.

It has taken me a year to trust him.  Not that he’s given me any reason not to trust him, except thanks to the Saboteur we all have in us.  For a year, I have observed his interactions with me, with my daughters, with his child, with his colleagues, with his friends.  All of his actions have been consistent with his words to me.  I have seen things I didn’t quite understand and felt those old pangs of fear that it was evidence of a deception, that it was just history being repeated…and then, before I could even ask or before he knew that I knew, he would offer up that information as well as the reason for it.  No deception.  No using and abusing.  And then, as if the Universe was telling me here was something important to pay attention to, someone unrelated would unwittingly corroborate the information he’d given me.

The fascination I have with this epiphany is that for the past year of not trusting him, it’s not been about anything he’s done or hasn’t done.  It’s been because, while I brought him into my life with solid intentions of spending more time with men who really are good men, I have been vibrating  my belief that good men are too good to be true, that a seemingly good man will eventually be discovered to be either a lying user or a gutless coward…because that’s been a prevalent pattern in my life.  (Pattern equals vibration.)  That has been my true belief about men, and as a result, I’ve attracted men of that type to me again and again.

So my challenge now is to stay in this vibration of being joyful that there are some great guys out there whom I enjoy and who have been good for me…and just continue to enjoy the hell out of my time with him and anyone else like him.

Know your vibration? Just summarize the qualities of your friends and relationships, and you’ll find your vibrational match.

One of the basic tenets of the Law of Attraction is that we attract to us that which is similar in “frequency.” The problem is, how do you figure out what your frequency is so you can clean it up and attract something better.

Actually, this is one of the easier Law of Attraction questions to answer. Remember the old saying about how to figure out what “George” is really like, just look at his friends? The reasoning is-and I’ve found this to be true-each friend has some quality that either reflects where George is or where he wants to be. If a cherished friend (or more than one, especially) tends to be a little rebellious and likes to discuss radical ideas, then George is probably a bit of a freethinker, too, and secretly-or not so secretly-enjoys challenging The System. If George’s friends are rather diverse and seem to be left of center in their personalities, then there’s probably a part of George that is that way, too, even if it’s not obvious from the start or he tries to hide it. That’s truly the Law of Attraction at work, gathering like together.

So to figure out what your vibration is right now, look at your closest friends and acquaintances. Look specifically at the people and relationships where you spend most of your time and effort. What are they like?

I can look historically at my friends from different eras of my life and see where I was-emotionally, spiritually, and “vibrationally”-at that instant. At one point, my friends were all very focused on career, including promotions, resumes, and whatever it took to get ahead in the workplace. The people of that group who are still in my life are just on the periphery now, now when I’m no longer on the fast track and don’t care to be. That was a miserable, unfulfilling time for me.

During another era, my friends were all focused on churning out book after book, pleasing editors who didn’t get our vision, pleasing readers who were skimpy on cash and fickle on subject matter, and constantly worrying about rejection, reviews, and plagiarism until they were also worried about ulcers. We fed off each other, all our insecurities, fears, and doubts. That’s what groups of writers do.

Another era of my life-and I admit that some of these eras overlap-my friends were mostly overly helpful, great at advice and guidance, over-protective, and fierce. So was I. That was the good part of our vibration, though. When I started making changes in my life, the transition didn’t run smoothly because I was changing AWAY from the similarities I had with many of these dear people. They resisted my changes and the helpful advisor aspects turned very controlling. I insisted on my changes in my life and following my own guidance, which was much of what they were like also, just not in my situation where I was breaking free of old habits and relationships. I was mired for a while, but my friends of that era were entrenched as well in their own doubts, fears, and strong negativity.

In the current era of my life, to see where my vibration is, all I have to do is look at the people I focus on. There are more strong, independent, confident women in my life than ever before. My friends are mostly upbeat and happy, in spite of whatever disappointments or tragedies might come into their lives. They are mostly serene, even though there is occasional drama brought to their doorstep. They tend to be compassionate, self-sacrificing individuals (that’s somewhat of a problem), with a lot of openness, spirituality, and genuine love. Family and spiritual growth are priorities for them. They’ve almost all experienced abuse and some continue to experience abuse. They have overcome tragedies to become stronger individuals. They look for adventure and fun but without intentionally hurting anyone else. They worry a little about money, sometimes more than other times. They love Nature and want to live a “full life,” an uncommon life. They’re rather “different” in how they think, especially in terms of romantic relationships and partnerships. Some are a little OCD but they’re all very tender-hearted, even if you don’t see it at first. Most of them could never, if you really knew them, be considered either ordinary or traditional.

That’s my vibration right now. It’s as simple as taking a paragraph to describe what all my closest friends and relationships have in common.

Actually, this is one of the easier Law of Attraction questions to answer. Remember the old saying about how to figure out what “George” is really like, just look at his friends? The reasoning is-and I’ve found this to be true-each friend has some quality that either reflects where George is or where he wants to be. If a cherished friend (or more than one, especially) tends to be a little rebellious and likes to discuss radical ideas, then George is probably a bit of a freethinker, too, and secretly-or not so secretly-enjoys challenging The System. If George’s friends are rather diverse and seem to be left of center in their personalities, then there’s probably a part of George that is that way, too, even if it’s not obvious from the start or he tries to hide it. That’s truly the Law of Attraction at work, gathering like together.

So to figure out where you’re vibrating right now, look at your closest friends and acquaintances. Look specifically at the people and relationships where you spend most of your time and effort. What are they like?

I can look historically at my friends from different eras of my life and see where I was-emotionally, spiritually, and “vibrationally”-at that instant. At one point, my friends were all very focused on career, including promotions, resumes, and whatever it took to get ahead in the workplace. The people of that group who are still in my life and just on the periphery now, now when I’m no longer on the fast track and don’t care to be. That was a miserable, unfulfilling time for me.

During another era, my friends were all focused on churning out book after book, pleasing editors who didn’t get our vision, pleasing readers who were skimpy on cash and fickle on subject matter, and constantly worrying about rejection, reviews, and plagiarism until they were also worried about ulcers. We fed off each other, all our insecurities, fears, and doubts. That’s what groups of writers do.

Another era of my life-and I admit that some of these eras overlap-my friends were mostly overly helpful, great at advice and guidance, over-protective, and fierce. So was I. That was the good part, though. When I started making changes in my life, the transition didn’t run smoothly because I was changing AWAY from the similarities I had with many of these dear people. They resisted my changes and the helpful advisor aspects turned very controlling. I insisted on my changes in my life and following my own guidance, which was much of what they were like also, just not in my situation where I was breaking free of old habits and relationships. I was mired for a while, but my friends of that era were entrenched as well in their own doubts, fears, and strong negativity.

In the current era of my life, to see where I’m vibrating, all I have to do is look at the people I focus on. There are more strong, independent, confident women in my life than ever before. My friends are mostly upbeat and happy, in spite of whatever disappointments or tragedies might come into their lives. They are mostly serene, even though there is occasional drama brought to their doorstep. They tend to be compassionate, self-sacrificing individuals (that’s somewhat of a problem), with a lot of openness, spirituality, and genuine love. Family and spiritual growth are priorities for them. They’ve almost all experienced abuse and some continue to experience abuse. They have overcome tragedies to become stronger individuals. They look for adventure and fun but without intentionally hurting anyone else. They worry a little about money, sometimes more than other times. They love Nature and want to live a “full life,” an uncommon life. They’re rather “different” in how they think, especially in terms of romantic relationships and partnerships. Some are a little OCD but they’re all very tender-hearted, even if you don’t see it at first. Most of them could never, if you really knew them, be considered either ordinary or traditional.

That’s my vibration right now. It’s as simple as taking a paragraph to describe what all my closest friends and relationships have in common.