Whenever we discovered something fundamental about the nature of reality, it seems we couldn't resist calling it a "law." In all the disciplines from physics, to philosophy, to theology, psychology or chemistry, we have a range of such "laws"; the law of Gravity, the Laws of Thermodynamics, the Natural Law, the Law of Conservation of Energy, the Laws of Motion, and most recently in the buzz phrase, "The Law of Attraction."

In the normal sense of the word, a "law" is passed by some authoritative body such as Congress or a Parliament. It comes into effect on a due day, and presumably can be subsequently altered or abrogated.

The "laws" of nature have nothing at all in common with such usage. Presumably gravity, for instance, worked fine long before anyone decided to stick a label on it. And even the most diehard proponents of the view of God as some sort of human being enlarged; have never suggested that it would be possible for God at some point to abrogate the Law of Gravity or the Second Law of Thermodynamics. All down the centuries the natural law traditions have viewed the "laws" of nature, not as regulations promulgated by God acting as some form of cosmic legislator, but as reflections of something in the divine nature itself, and therefore unchangeable as long as God remains God.

All of that, of course, might not matter very much were it not for the fact that in following out the course of spiritual evolution (to which so many in the world are awakening), the ways in which we think of such "laws" can radically alter our ability to manifest what we desire. That is equally true whether we are aiming at fabulous wealth, glowing health and long life without disease, or a lasting personal happiness.

Isaac Newton eloquently expressed something fundamental about the nature of reality in what we know as the "Third Law of Motion:" or more popularly "The Law of Cause and Effect." To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is absolutely true of everything we experience, whether it's hitting a golf ball or launching a probe to Mars.

Isaac Newton eloquently expressed something fundamental about the nature of reality in what we know as the "Third Law of Motion:" or more popularly "The Law of Cause and Effect." To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is absolutely true of everything we experience, whether it's hitting a golf ball or launching a probe to Mars.

Unfortunately, applying this way of thinking to our spiritual evolution is going to land us in a heap of trouble and disappointment, because all of those supreme and unchangeable laws do not apply at all in the realm of manifestation. We are dealing now with a realm whose laws are entirely different from the familiar, and we have never been told that. Or if we have been told, we have not come to realize the implications.

The Law of Cause and Effect, which we accept so uncritically that it has become part and parcel of the very way we think, can be one of the greatest barriers we meet on the road to manifesting our desires.

There has never been a time when human beings didn't desire to have something that was attractive to them, whether that was a good home, a new job or a satisfying personal relationship. As a race, we have gone through various stages in how we enlist powerful forces seen as outside ourselves, to help us attain those desires.

The earliest form of this was to envisage God sitting "up there," seen in some way as an enlarged human being, who has the ability to grant our requests. Even today most people's form of prayer is based on this form of assumption. However this flies in the face of another fundamental "law" which was expressed by Jesus in the form in which it is most familiar to us today: "When you pray for something, believe it is already yours, and it shall be so." (Mark 11:24).

Instead of obeying this "law" we instead beg, implore, desire, hope, beseech, request and pray that God will grant our request. What this means is, we have thus stated that the desired thing is not ours. Given what Jesus taught, we have now, in effect, issued a law that it can never be ours as long as we persist in that attitude of supplication and lack. We have to first "become it" in order to have it. Most assuredly this is one of the hardest lessons for us to learn on a path of spiritual growth.

Nowadays, when we go into any reasonably good bookstore, we find dozens of titles assuring us that we create our own reality and that all we need do is hold our focus on whatever it is we want and it will be ours. Although this is a very over-simplistic version of this truth, it is certainly a major advance over viewing God's main role as some cosmic form of wish-fulfiller.

But even in this shift we still tend to be bedeviled by the "Law of Cause and Effect." We try to figure out what the appropriate "input" might be for this "Law of Attraction" to take effect and create the output we desire.

Unfortunately the law of cause and effect does not operate in the quantum field, or, to put it more accurately, it operates in reverse. In manifestation from the quantum field, the effect has, in a real sense, to come before the cause. That's also the reverse of everything we are used to experiencing. And it is the reverse of what has been the received wisdom about the nature of reality and about God and prayer for millennia. This is the main reason why there is so much disappointment in religion centering on, apparently, unanswered prayer, and why the art of prayer is so little understood and so poorly practiced.

Miceal Ledwith, L.Ph., L.D., D.D., LL.D. (h.c.) has been a Professor of Theology and University President of MaynoothCollege in Ireland, a member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission, and has lectured extensively throughout Europe and North America. He has been a long-time member of the Ramtha School of Ancient Wisdom, and was featured in the movie What the BLEEP Do We Know!? He has released two DVDs. For an extended version of this article, please visit Miceal's website: www.hamburgeruniverse.com