“I’m confused. You say there is a difference between the soul and the self-image, but I’m not sure I understand this. Aren’t they one and the same?”
This comment was made in a recent conversation I had with a person who had just finished listening to my talk, The Truth About The Law of Attraction. I explained the difference in this way:
Imagine a retail clothier with a store full of inferior merchandise that no one is interested in. They hire an advertising firm who assures the retailer they have a technique that will get potential customers into their store. The advertiser suggests revamping their window display with a level of merchandise that equals the type customer the store owner wishes to draw. Excited at the prospect of attracting new customers, the store owner orders some finer garments to create a phenomenal window dressing. It works! People begin pouring into the store. The money the retailer spent on the advertiser pays off.
Or does it? Once the would-be customer enters the store, they encounter a problem. The racks and shelves are filled with the same inferior merchandise they rejected in the past. They leave without buying anything.
Emphasizing the law of attraction, the New Thought/New Age hawkers of success and prosperity through positive thinking and visualization place their focus on the window dressing of the self-image. They know little or nothing about actually filling the store with quality merchandise. Their specialty lies in generating responses from the surface level of life. It’s these hawkers of success, not the actual merchants (you and me), that leave with their pockets full of cash. And because there is no shortage of people looking for a quick pass into the kingdom, the hawkers do quite well.
Tapping the authenticity of the soul becomes the primary focus of one who is genuinely interested in building a successful life from the inside out, the bedrock of the soul. This is the law of expression: first fill the store with quality merchandise. When the display window (self-image, personality, ego) reflects the actual content of the store (soul), when these two become one, then the world knows what it will get when it walks through the door. No one is fooled. No one is disappointed.
Those who are looking for that magical formula for instant success will not do what it takes to fill their store with quality merchandise. They won’t sell all their junk to buy even a small quantity of authenticity. Such small beginnings have no appeal. They’re only interested in the window dressing that will trick the world into thinking they are something other than they really are. Isn’t this the whitewashed tomb full of dead men’s bones that Jesus was talking about? And, he wasn’t just talking about Pharisees; he was talking about the Pharisee within us all.
The law of expression comes first. Fill the store with quality merchandise. Seek first the kingdom. Engage the soul. The law of attraction, then, is the natural effect. Your window dressing – what the world sees – exactly represents your store’s content. You attract that which is in harmony with who you are. No trickery needed.
J Douglas Bottorff 
The soul is already whole. We mask it like a shell of an egg with false image. By false I mean learned and contrived something that conceals rather than reveals.
Accepting ourselves completely where we are and as we are frees us from fear because we are honest and are earnestly self aware, not judging, compassionate and forgiving of our faults while taking steps to correct and adjust thought word and deed into accord. In this, there is no blame, no shame and our compassion grows for all. Compassion is understanding that we and others have created circumstances or developed habits and have opportunity to change through facing what comes…have help and strength to overcome. These are lifelong practices that bring us into harmony and accord with soul. Soul is our portal to “remembering” Oneness.
“… that bring us into harmony and accord with soul.” Do you see “us” and “soul” as two separate things? I would say “us”, as you’re using it here, is the self-image that will never be brought into harmony and accord with the soul. Your thoughts?
What a wonderful exposition on how our understanding of our true self – who we are in the ‘innermost’ (our soul) – must exchange places with what our intellect – our false self – tells us we are before we will express in the outer what we truly are in the inner. As within, so without. Jesus taught that it is what comes out of us, not what goes into us, that reflects our true nature. He continually spoke to the inner man, urging us to give up useless rituals and false idols for he knew that the kingdom lay within. That was what he taught and all he saw for he judged not by appearances, but with “right judgement.” A magnet attracts only what is of a certain nature regardless of what we adorn it with or where we place it. Everything else it simply ignores. A right understanding is better than riches. Thank you once again for an excellent talk!
Thanks for your comment and insight, as always.