A couple of weeks ago I tweeted a few times asking for somebody to defend the law of attraction on this blog. I have been less than forthcoming in my praise for not only the ‘Law’ itself, but also the devotees that just seem to want to roll their eyes at anybody that questions their beliefs.
So I wanted a counter argument to the post ‘Is The Law of Attraction A Con?”. The fact is, I’m not at all anti-Law of Attraction, I just haven’t read or heard an explanation that makes any sense to me.
I have seen a lot of film of Esther Hicks performing and also read ‘Ask and it is Given.’ I have also read a lot of Wayne Dyer material (whom I love by the way), so I’m not closed off to this by any means. The problem to me, is that I’ve never seen Esther Hicks in particular do ANYTHING that couldn’t be explained by cold reading, group hysteria and wishful thinking. Not that I’m saying it IS those things you understand, but they do explain it.
Disappointingly only one person contacted me. Maybe all the other believers were too busy attracting massive, glorious abundance to waste time on, or even notice, the likes of me. Flippancy aside, I must say I’m disappointed because I really expected some cool posts that would get me thinking.
What I did get though was an excellent post from Barb McMahon that definitely achieved that.
However, if I was the Law of Attraction and I was up on a charge of being ‘A very naughty law that wasn’t really a law at all’ and staring 25 years hard labor in the face, I’m not sure I’d want Barb defending me.
If she’d been defending OJ she’s have probably dropped the line to the jury of: “If the glove doesn’t fit you must acquit” in favor of the rather more honest “If the glove doesn’t fit he’s still a lousy shit”
You can make your own mind up as to whether you think she makes the case for the Law of Attraction to at least make bail and be home in time for dinner.
Law of Attraction – Positive Life Force or Giant Load of Crap?
Tim set the challenge of writing a guest post on Law of Attraction. And I just love a challenge! So thanks, Tim, for giving me the opportunity to sort out just what I believe about this weird Law of Attraction, that I can’t seem to fully embrace or completely dismiss.
After careful thought, I’ve had to ask myself, do I actually believe in the Law of Attraction?
I believe the theory has its merits and in the right hands and the right circumstances it can do some amazing things. Sort of.
This is as enthusiastic an endorsement as I’ll give to anything. I’d do the same mutter and foot shuffle if you asked how I felt about marriage and I’ve been happily married for 26 years now.
I think there’s enough to the Law of Attraction that I can’t entirely dismiss it. I’ve had moments of being open to and accepting the good things life has to offer. And in those moments, they really do seem to drop into my lap.
And we all know the people who walk through life with a permanent cloud over their heads. Every time you talk to them, something awful has happened. Their car’s been stolen, the roof caved in, they’re being wrongfully sued. Crazy bad weird things.
I can’t help but wonder why is that?
Does the good or bad stuff just manifest out of nothing, drawn by the power of your thoughts alone? Can 228 passengers attract a plane crash just by worrying about it?
Um. No. I really don’t think so.
It’s a big old world out there and on any given day, you are bombarded by things both good and bad. Opportunities and disasters surround you at all times, vying for your attention.
Human beings have an amazing capacity for ignoring the things that don’t need our immediate attention. The bad smells from fish farm down the road, the power lines running right through the beautiful view. The effort it takes to haul our extra ten pounds of body fat around all day. All of these eventually become part of the background of our lives, no longer noticed because we’ve decided they aren’t important.
You learn to filter it out, to focus on what matters the most to you. It’s either that or go through life too distracted to do anything.
And depending on who we are or what we’ve learned in this life, we filter out either the opportunities or the disasters and either believe that life is a great and joyful thing or it’s total crap.
Neither view is the truth. It’s just our accepted reality.
Law of Attraction, with its upbeat message of being happy and being abundant, helps you to filter out some of the bad things you’ve been focussing on. And then, “magically” the good stuff appears.
When you take a close look at your friend with the cloud over his head, you realize that what never gets told in the story of constant disaster, is the fact that he’s got a couple of really great kids, a secure job and parents who have helped him out repeatedly through the years.
Paying attention to that might not fix his roof, but he’d be a happier person.
And really, isn’t that what we all want? To be happier? Most of the proponents of Law of Attraction tell you not to worry about the details of how it will happen or what your life will look like when you get to “Happy”. They say to just focus on the feeling of being happy and it will come to you.
They’re right, of course. It comes to you, not because your circumstances have changed, but because you’ve reordered how you see the things around you. You’ve started to give more weight to the things that make you happy and less to the things that bug you.
The same thing happens when you go looking for new opportunities. I bump into new, exciting opportunities every damn day. Because I know I’m surrounded by them. I don’t filter them out.
But I know and you know people who do filter them out. I’ve stood back and watched as Opportunity not only knocked for someone, but actually came up and clobbered them over the head and they didn’t see it for what it was. So they walked away, leaving the two of us, my friend Opportunity and me, shaking our heads.
These are people desperate for a new chance. They think “All I need is a break.” But they can’t see the breaks for what they are. They come up with all kinds of excuses, reasons why they can’t take the opportunities that are being handed to them. They reject opportunity.
We’re all looking for a better life. I don’t believe that there’s a magical way to get there. I do believe that a kind of magic happens when you start to see the good stuff that’s all around you, whether you think it just appeared, or if you believe that it’s been there all along.
Some people can get to where they want to be just by deciding to change their filters. Some by counting their blessings and some by looking at the world through the Law of Attraction.
I say, on the road to Happy, choose the conveyance that gets you there the fastest.
Having explored the furthest reaches of her ineptness in the small business sector for fifteen years, Barb McMahon is sharing her gifts and hard-won knowledge as Director of Communications for the non-profit Pediatric AIDS Canada.
In her spare time she blogs at Basically Unemployable where she comments on life in all it’s weirdness and wonder.
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I consider myself a spiritual person. I also believe in the power of positive thinking….to an extent.
I believe our thoughts are a *part* of a cycle. That cycle includes action. I believe monitoring our thoughts is important and does impact how we interact with the world, and therefore, the results we sometimes achieve.
But I think the ‘Law of Attraction’ is….well, let’s say I’m not a fan.
Most of my exposure to it has been through the ever-popular book ‘the Secret’, but I have a few problems with it.
One is that if you can magically think good things into your life, how does that explain the ‘bad’ things that happen? The answer becomes ‘you must have thoughts/desires/etc’ that you’re not aware of. (In religion, it reminds me of the answer that some people receive, “Bad things happened because you must have some sin in your life”…..it becomes something else for the individual to beat themselves up about).
Either that, or believers just don’t ever really answer the question.
Also, there are a lot of people out there sitting on their couch ‘attracting’ a million dollars. Which, of course, they’ll never receive sitting on their couch.
But mostly?
One of my biggest problems with the Law of Attraction (at least as it’s told in ‘the Secret’ & most sites I’ve seen on it) is that it’s all about receiving. It’s all about ‘you’. It’s all about what ‘you’ can get.
I think there’s a kernel of truth to the Law of Attraction.
But I think that most people have taken that small kernel of truth (‘think & you shall receive’) and turned it into a ‘magic elixir’ to sell their book or tape or other product to the desperate.
And no. I don’t think simply believing in the Law of Attraction effects real, true, lasting change.
But that’s my two cents.
All the best!
deb
Deb Owens last blog post..leading a life of quiet desperation? (finding purpose & passion)
Good points as always. I did read The Secret, and I do listen to Esther Hicks / Abraham, and I do like Deepak Chopra, etc. etc. etc… but I don’t take it terribly literally. To me, the value is more along the lines of just getting “good thoughts” into your head because they’re more useful than shitty ones. Most of what I take from them is “Don’t look down; keep your eyes on the prize.”
Johnny B. Truants last blog post..I have no point, but I may or may not be funny sometimes regardless of what that guy with the lazy eye says, and also, where’s my taco?
Focusing on the good in life is certainly a smart move. It’s a path to happiness. It’s also more conducive to positive action than focusing on the negative. And, it is, by the way, action that gets us where we want to go.
To add my 2 scents on the law of attraction… I, like Tim, enjoy Wayne Dyer’s stuff, even though I do not buy into the LOA. Also, my favorite book of Wayne’s is his first one, “Your Erroneous Zones,” which by the way, doesn’t mention the LOA.
I find the law of attraction to be extreme and entirely over simplistic. The loa attempts to package all of the universe and its endless layers of mystery into one neat little package: our thoughts create everything around us.
Of course, I find the universe to be much more complex and much greater a mystery than this. For example, I don’t know why it is that sometimes good people suffer greatly and bad people live care free lives. I don’t have an answer to this question and I don’t believe it’s because of their thought process.
I believe things happen in life for reasons we may never understand, at least not in this lifetime. Tragedy strikes in all corners of the earth to all kinds of people. This is especially true because there’s free will in this world. And we are not only subject to our own free will, but the free will of others too. So if a nut job wants to hurl a nuclear warhead to a city in which a LOA guru lives, his thoughts will become irrelevant.
The same is true for victims of crime. No matter how positive and profound your thinking, this does not guarantee that you will perpetually never be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But the LOA, in its extreme positioning, will say that the victim attracted such consequences. That’s very convenient but is completely devoid of rational.
Perhaps the real problem is that people don’t want to accept the unpredictability of the world. And the LOA is a way to psychologically shield a person from this reality. Wishful thinking.
So… the greatest problem I see with the LOA is that it casts responsibility for injustices on a person’s thoughts and not on the free will of others. Could you imagine telling a victim of a crime that his or her thoughts was what attracted the situation?
The up side of the LOA is it teaches people to be vigilant with their thoughts instead of allowing their mind to be on auto-pilot. I do see that as a positive. I just don’t agree with the underlying philosophy of the LOA and the logical conclusions it must make.
I could say more… Because I’m a huge proponent of positive thinking. And a huge proponent of the mind, body connection. Positive thinking, meditation, and visualizations can indeed have a huge impact on one’s ability to improve their health. No question about it. But that’s the mind body connection, not loa.
I recently wrote a post on the subject of positive thinking / believing in oneself. Not LOA, more the emphasis that our state of mind influences our performance:
http://punintended.com/blog/why-you-should-anticipate-things-will-go-well/
Bamboo Forest – PunIntendeds last blog post..The Meaning of Life
@ Deb – Actually Deb this blog is all about me and I notice yo0u haven’t sent me any cash lately. I’ll let it ride as long as you can fax some through my end of play today. Thanks.
@ Johnny – And I’m sure Deepak likes you too, he seems like that kinda guy. Good thoughts are good.
In reply to the most important point of this post:
Yes, your new header by Nick Cernis is FABulous! The tag is perfect, the vibe and voice are delightful, well-done Tim/Nick ~ !
Friend of Discomfort-as-needed ~
~GirlPie
“Law” might be a bit of a misnomer — I think of it more as the Really Good Idea About Deliberately Thinking Thoughts that Feel Good When I Think Them and That Works Very Well in Getting the Results I Want of Attraction.
For me, it’s not about Mazzeratis and parking spots; but this whole framework of Ask-Allow-Receive works well for achieving my heart’s desires, which are almost always ways of being, rather than material goods. (Although some interestingly fun and surprising things ‘n stuff have shown up, too — could just be a coincidence; doesn’t matter.)
This is not a supernatural process:
Ask: articulate what I really want – you know, the whole “For what purpose? and that, for what purpose?” routine. Just pinpointing what my true desire is can increase the likelihood of it showing up in my seven plus or minus two. You get more of what you focus on, and all that. Most often, just articulating it can make a “problem” disappear, and get me into an upward spiral of thinking.
Allow: practice letting go of the limiting beliefs and judgements, and generating a welcoming, grateful attitude, not just around the desire but also seeing what else shows up in my awareness. This unties the knot in the hose and facilitates flow, at the risk of getting all whoo-whoo on you.
Receive: practice enjoying my heart’s desire here and now. Notice how I might re-gift it. Wallow around in the good feelings of the creative, generous, ongoing process of life.
You got a problem with that?
@ BF- I very much agree with this “The up side of the LOA is it teaches people to be vigilant with their thoughts instead of allowing their mind to be on auto-pilot”
That is the huge upside of all this to me. Well that and I do think it has made some people more open-minded to less controversial ideas.
@ TGP – Thanks a lot, Nick’s ability to make my laugh is matched only by his great design work. Am I brown-nosing here? What I meant to say was, “Yeh, he’s awright”
@ Angela – Guess what? http://www.ReallyGoodIdeaAboutDeliberatelyThinkingThoughtsthatFeelGoodWhenIThinkThemandThatWorksVeryWellinGettingtheResultsIWantofAttraction.com is still available!!! Quick grab it before I do.
And no, I haven’t got a problem with any of that ;-)
Deb and Angela – you get to write the next post on this topic.
The “bad things” part is a sticking point I’ve never seen adequately answered, either. And thanks, Deb, for articulating the selfishness of the The Secret.
Angela – I tried to make an acronym of your replacement of “law”. But, while I do like it better, I don’t think RGIADTTTFGWITTaTWVWIGtRIWoA would sell many books…
And I agree with you, Johnny – good thoughts are definitely more useful.
Thanks for the input!
Barb McMahons last blog post..Three Things I Won’t be Saying on my Deathbed
err.. I’m not familiar with this “law of attraction” but.. I’ll try to explain it in a way that’ll make it obvious.
Who drives the driver? The conscious mind.. is not the whole mind.. I think Freud did a good job of covering this sometime ago? What guides our live is not as much reason as we often think.. but this whole complex world of psychodynamics.. actually psycho-social dynamics.. and other fun stuff.
A whole self.. or a whole of consciousness.. if we were to include the unconscious.. includes things like “the instincts of our biology.” We are, after all, animals.. and the unconscious mind serves as a balancing factor against whatever our conscious attitudes about things might be.. so from a basic “how to live” perspective it makes some sense to try and find the center.
Now there’s the question of “where do our thoughts come from” and.. the channels by which thoughts have to travel before they dawn on the conscious mind.. and there impact on the conscious mind.. classic Freud.
Well here’s the deal.. we are in a kind of constant dialect with the external world.. evolving to it.. and while we evolve to it, it evolves to us..
If you understand that.. ..our awareness of things is by necessity limited.. and its on the basis of this, and a limited.. lets say idea of reality.. that we are interacting with and through.. as sort intermediaries.. you can see that these intermediaries are worthy of some attention.
The real idea.. that we would relate to the idea of “laws of attraction” have to do with the nature of those intermediaries.. how they are formed.. and how they relate to whatever it is that’s the problem we are dealing… and also is about entering into a relationship with the un known mysteries and the roll they play.. .all of these things together.. and they’re roll in how our lives unfold.
So.. lets take a moment and think about the nature of attraction…
In our lives.. we have limited energy with which to meet the challenges and conflicts of life.. and so it is that this influences the value of stuff..
The power of alcoholism is in its ability to mediation the impact of difficult emotional stuff.. and it becomes a problem when that mediations subverts the influence of the difficult emotional stuff’s needs.. as they are expressed in how we value stuff… but consciously and unconsciously.
There is a kind of hierarchy to these needs.. that operates in a way analogous to Maslows hierarchy or.. say that of the Kundalini chakra system..
Its kinda like.. you wake up with a hunger for ice cream.. why? Well, that’s the expression of your bodies needs.. all be it inside of a complex system of other factors.
So the shape of these needs and there hierarchy influence what’s get attracted into our awareness.. and in terms of what’s driving us.. and thus are reflected in the very nature of our idea of what reality is.. at any given moment..
So I mean.. eventually you need to come to understand that your idea of reality.. your experience of it.. is a kind of mythology.. basically what we are talking about is.. how does one interact with a mythological system… this would seem to be something religion worked out years ago.. but has had trouble relating to our modern situation..
Err.. I don’t know that that quite nailed it. but it ought to take you pretty close to it anyway..
Hi, I saw your Tweet about OJ so I came to read your post.
One point I’d like to address is the topic of cold reading.
A big mistake people make with Esther Hicks is the question of whether she’s channeling Abraham makes the channeled material better or more valid than if she were an ordinary women who’s a great public speaker.
About 20 years ago Marianne Williamson mentioned in one of her lectures that one shouldn’t need to be a Lemurian for people to listen and take in one’s thoughts seriously (she was referring to Ramtha). I think this is spot on.
What the current round of stuff from Abraham-Hicks misses, I think, is the idea from Shakti Gawain in her tapes and book “True Prosperity.” It’s not that you should pick what to manifest from the cosmic shopping list — because your soul may have already chosen a journey where you’re a toothless, homeless amputee in Calcutta. But you can experience prosperity and joy whatever your station in life.
The odd thing is, sometimes when we release our blocks to experiencing prosperity this way, the material things flow. But it starts within. Abraham-Hicks focuses on the results — the cosmic shopping.
Not everyone is going to be a cosmic shopper.
Also, a damaging thing to their own material is when Abraham refers to itself as beyond mortal concerns. Obviously, if we accept at face value that Abraham is being channeled, the quality of the channel matters. Earlier tapes show a weird accent; recent ones show a clear voice that sounds American. So obviously Abraham is being influenced by this world. The comments from Abraham about the producer/writer of “The Secret” sound kind of cranky and whiney and worried about intellectual property — surely a material concern and not an otherworldy one.
Abraham isn’t God (duh) and the Abraham-Hicks material, although pretty good, isn’t as deep as others in the field and certainly not as broad or original as the Seth material.
I didn’t think I believed the law of attraction.
Then I read ‘think and grow rich’ and then it made a whole lot more sense, to my practical use of it anyway.
I’m a big believer in positive thinking but am not at all a believer in the law of attraction.
Perhaps I’m biased based on the gimmicky nature of The Secret and how the law of attraction is often applied to get rich quick schemes. Being a very logical thinker, I have trouble believing that the frequencies of the thoughts leaving my brain enter the universe and change reality. Does this mean that the frequencies of other people’s thoughts that I don’t even know about are directly affecting what I do? I certainly hope not!
I too have failed to get a logical explanation from anyone about how the law of attraction could actually work.
However, what I do believe is that my thoughts will influence the many small decisions I make each day which will in turn either result in me achieving or not achieving my goals.
Vin – NaturalBiass last blog post..The Acai Berry: Don’t Believe the Hype
@ Matt – Nailed it? Well maybe, maybe not. I’d need to actually understand what you meant to answer and I haven’t got a clue.
I’m grateful to the trouble you went, but I think I need some pictures ;-)
@ Gib – And what a misleading Tweet it was too ;-) Thanks for the change of voice Esther Hicks info. I must confess I’d not even stopped to think about that, but now I think about it, you’re absolutely right.
The whole Ramtha thing leaves me a bit cold. I loved What The Bleep except the bits with JZ Knight in who quite frankly came over to me as being a bit mental!
@ Jarrod – I liked TAGR, but even so I think positive thoughts and actions can explain everything in the book.
@ Vin – I think that pretty much nails my thoughts on it too!
Vin said, “I’m a big believer in positive thinking but am not at all a believer in the law of attraction.” I feel exactly the same.
The first time I read about the Law of Attraction, it was someone saying how they imagined a giant read balloon and viola – a hot air balloon showed up in the sky, although it wasn’t red.
How can anyone take this seriously?
I love the new tagline, BTW.
Vered – MomGrinds last blog post..10 Ways To Hate Yourself As A Woman
When I signed up to do a guest post, Tim asked me to check in on the comments occasionally and sort things out. I was expecting hate mail and possibly live cabbages.
This is a big relief! Lots of thoughtful people who like the positive aspects of the Law of Attraction, but can’t quite deal with the superstition.
Of course, the fact that no one has come up with a solid defense of the thing (even mine was pretty weak) makes me realize why I’m the only one who volunteered: I read the directions wrong…
Barb McMahons last blog post..Three Things I Won’t be Saying on my Deathbed
@Tim: I agree that the law of attraction is positive thought and action. The results out of that.
My personal opinion is that much of the LOA stuff is a big sellout by people who know better. Whether they really do know better or not, I guess I don’t really know. But if you read people like Jack Canfield and the early Dyer, it appears they are promoting something quite different.
Their stuff works for other reasons and those reasons are not near as sexy or near as easy to sell to the lazy masses, so they just LOA it.
There are some really smart people out there who have a lot of great ideas, but they seem to go brain dead when they start thinking about the LOA. Joe Vitale, someone who is very successful and obviously very intelligent made the following argument in support of the LOA:
1) Opponents of the LOA are attracting evidence against the LOA.
2) Therefore in attempting to disprove it, they are proving it’s validity.
Huh?
@ Stephen – LMAO at that quote!! Brilliant, quite brilliant!
[...] Tim Brownson is not a subscriber to the view that we generate our own experience but, loving a good debate, often asks for explanations or justifications of the law of attraction from ‘believers’ and I find myself with no interest in trying to convince someone for whom this view has no appeal. This is an important aspect of my philosophy: if it doesn’t feel right for you then it’s not right for you. End of story. [...]
I have been reading all the positive and negative posts regarding the Law of Attraction. Let me begin by stating that I am a strong proponent of following the suggestions of LoA. To quote Dwayne Dyer (not particularly about LoA)
“if you want things in your life to change (be different), then chanmge the way you look at them”. This quotes simply restates that we are able to be responsible for our own reality and if we stop “blaming” others, or circumstances for how we feel, we can make
a major difference for ourselves in our lives. If you believe someone else is upsetting you, you are stuck until they change. When you realize that you create the upset based on your past, you can stop blaming others and THEN you are free to CHOOSE how you will be at that moment in time.
Freedom and Power in life come to us when we recognize that we do have the ability the create our own reality.
That said, If you see things different, like being open to the possibility that the LoA works, there are many opportuniuties open to you.
Many things cannot be proved, that doesn’t stop people from being open to their possibilitiy…especially if doing so makes a difference for you.
It wasn’t too long ago that the earth was flat and that falling off the edge was real. Ask anyone who lived back then…Well anyone except those who were open to those things they couldn’t prove and were open to being so.
If no one were forward and open thinking, the word technology would not exist.
I do not believe in the LoA. I don’t know for sure that is actually exists. What I do know is that in the past sever years that I have followed its xistance of a godtenants, my life has changed greatly. It was a wonderful life before and now just gets better. Is there negativity in my life…SURE…that’s life. Do I have more power and freedom in my life?…is there more happiness in my life?
YES…Perfect? Far from it…
I could explain changes in my life with other explanations…why would I.This works for me…
The existance of orthodox religious people and athiests neither proves nor disproves the existance of a god and yet each belief can be beneficial.
Bottom line for me, if something works for you…go for it. Do not be “controlled” by others beliefs…do what you believe to be true… perhaps some day with that thinking Man will be able to fly or even be able to land of the moon (few besides Kennedy said it was possible)
Change how you look at things and be open to the ideas of others…don’t always look for “why not” look for yes I can.
I am a personal life coach and I do not profess the LoA, unless requested. It doesn’t matter what you call it…certain behaviors can make a major difference to we humans…
Thank you for this opportunty to share what worksw for me.
JG
I agree with you, that when we think the positive things we see the opportunities that are already there. God, if He is ok to mention anymore :), is so abundant. Look at a little corn seed. With a little effort it literally yields thousands of percent of return. 1 seed turns into approx 100 seeds, plus you have a 5 foot plant that provides homes to a lot of other creatures.
Abundance is, and always will be, right in front of you. That is, in my opinion, the REAL law. Choosing to see that, of course, allows you to partake of it. Choosing to see things in lack or “poor pitty me” will only blind us to what God has actually given us already.
And then there is the idea that we attracted “bad” things. Well more often than not, the seemingly bad things are actually the best things that could ever happen to us. The experience might cuase us to look up, and see something we might not have otherwise seen. So with that in mind, there are really no “bad” things.
The Law of Attraction is marketed by saying “Think about it and you will have it”. What if the things you are wanting are not for your best good? How do we know? Luckly for us, in my experience, we only attract what is best for us. So it all goes back to sit back and enjoy the ride, even when it is bumpy. Not accepting things as they are, only causes us to be unhappy. Look for the good in any situation.