The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

As I have posted elswhere here, I believe the Law of Attraction is simplified and not entirely true. I am looking to identify a more comprehensive set of “laws” (or theories) that can be easily communicated in its stead. Feedback and contributions encouraged.

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

(I am including some posts I wrote on the subject I had written in the Co-Creating Reality Pod)


I'm coming in here late to this discussion but I wanted to put my two cents in as a Reiki Master and energetic intuitive.

A lot of Law of Attraction teachings rub me the wrong way too. For a number of reasons:

1. There is way too much focus on personal money and riches.
Personally, I don't need more than what I have. I have a two bedroom apartment for myself. With two bathrooms! One more than I need! That feels like a castle. The idea that I would need to manifest a mansion for myself is just absurd. It's honestly not that important to me.

It is especially not that important to me when I know that other people in the world are going to sleep in a hut this evening.

I would rather put my vast powers of manifestation onto helping others than to help myself get a mansion.

2. The Law of Attraction denies the existence of conflicting intentions from others.
We don't live in a vaccuum. I can put positive energy into thought of having that specific man over there, but if he is intending something else, guess what? I am not going to get what I want.

We are all co-creating. No-one is creating in a vaccuum.

3. The Law of Attraction denies outside energies.
I am a Reiki Master and an energetic intuitive. Guess what? Sometimes if something doesn't work out for you, that's because other people maybe had negative intentions or negative energies interfering with yours.

You absolutely DO NOT manifest every bad thing that happens to you. I and many energy healers I know and trust work very hard at psychic protection for this very reason.

And no, do not tell me the bad energies of others exist only because I believe in them. They exist independently whether I believe in them or not.

4. The Law of Attraction denies Grace.
There have been oodles of times in my life where I have been in a bad mood, in a negative space, and even downright depressed. Yet, somehow, the hand of God came in and lifted me up without my asking for it or intending it to be so.

So it is absolutely not true that if you think negatively you will only get crap in your life. Goodness gracious, I am living proof that this is false.

5. The Law of Attraction is misnamed.
Yes, we can create things with our intention. Intention is very powerful. But we are not “magnets” so much as co-creators. I would prefer the Law to be called the Theory of Intention or Theory of Co-Creation and not be so simplistically black of white on everything.

I believe that there is a lot of good stuff taught under the name of Law of Attraction, but as a meme it is incomplete and also based in a very American materialistic mindset. It's as if we were all children trying to claim our new toys.

We need to grow up and beyond this notion that material wealth is the ultimate goal. I am not suggesting that being poor is better - but there is a middle ground.

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

(Also originally posted in the Co-Creating Reality Pod)

I was chatting with my friend about this all last night. She is a big fan of the Secret but also doesn't buy into every aspect of it. She sent me a link to this article:

When You Attract Negative People, Be Thankful
http://ezinearticles.com/?When-You-Attract-Negative-People,-Be-Thankful&id=3184

A brief summary: The author, an abundance coach, has a run-in with a “negative” woman in a bathroom who is complaining about her life. This article is the height of irony.

The coach unknowingly expresses in the article her severe irritation that this woman was complaining around her, and finally, out of impatience (from my read), tell the poor woman (a total stranger):

“I've listened to your story and would like to share with you – you are attracting exactly what you don't want because that is exactly what you want. Everything that has occurred has been what you have asked for. If you want to change what you are attracting, start by seeing and making new choices. This and only this will change what occurs in your life.”

And then the coach complains in her article that the woman didn't “hear” her message.

Now really, what average person is going to respond positively to a mini-lecture like that?

The rest of the article is an analysis of how the coach attracted such a negative person to her in the first place, and she decides, finally, that it must be all the “negative” e-zines she reads.

I'm not kidding!

I have to say I was just shocked and appalled by this “coach's” attitude. If a stranger was talking to me about pain in her life, I wouldn't just out of the blue lecture her on the Law of Attraction (basically BLAMING her for her misfortune) without really listening to her “story.”

All that woman needed was someone to hear her and validate her. Not come at her with some arrogance as that coach did.

Furthermore, the idea that the coach attracted this “negative” woman to her because of reading e-zines is ridiculous. The NEGATIVE WOMAN in this scenario is NOT the woman who was complaining in the bathroom! It is the coach herself!

She's the one who judged the other woman and made that woman's communication into an ordeal when it did not need to be. Personally, I don't get all riled up about other people talking negatively - it does not affect me negatively - why should it?

But this is a prime example of how the Law of Attraction can be abused. People want to use it to abdicate their responsibility for how they treat other human beings, and I just don't buy that. They also think that somehow by insulating themselves from all so-called negative influences in the world, then they will only experience positive all the time….there's something really Stepford Wife-ish about that, if you ask me.

Oh PS, sorry if I am “negative” here but that article just irritated me. But then again, I own my negative emotions…often they are telling me that something's not quite right in Dodge. :-)

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

I really like the way you question things that are taken for Oh so granted in our worlds - including the world of “spirituality”.

I also enjoyed the story of a woman judging another woman in an article and then you judging her in yours… which I honestly appreciate! This is something I often do - criticize others for being critical:-)…. Not that it's such a dangerous thing, it's just that it's one of the ways I have been keeping myself stuck in un-awareness… :-)

Back to Law of Attraction: In my experience there are just as many examples of it “working” than of it “not working”. But then, if it's not working, it's not a Law, is it? :-)

I am a big fan of the Busting Loose From The Money Game book. I have a feeling that you might resonate with it. It's a giant buster! :-)

Warmly

Halina

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

Excellent point of view, OZMA!

I tend to stay away from over zealous shout outs of THE LAW OF ATTRACTION for the very reason that there seems to be no leniency….:) Although I do know that magnetism works!

I am convinced, by my own experience, that this certain Law of A. does exist, but not in the way it is frequently touted. I know the difference between what my true intentions are & how to go about manifesting them in my life, versus wishful thinking. Or dreaming of the really impossible… although the seemingly impossible can occur:)

In the field that you are in, you know, at lot of it is in the body! And Fear can beget fearful events, just as a smile to someone on the street will more likely get a smile returned.

For myself it has been a journey of observation of my own intentions, openness, closed-ness, etc… that guides me into understanding this phenomenon - within me. I'd be foolish to tell someone else the way it works in them. I may suggest an openness to possibility, but not expect someone to agree with me b/c everyday I am learning new aspects about it.

PJ

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

This topic interests me. (Well, that's pretty obvious. Otherwize I wouldn't be posting, would I?) The task of expanding the law of attraction to make it more accurate is (I imagine) rather complicated. But to begin, what directions can we go?

Personally, I hope that some good science is done in this sort of thing. If not soon, eventually. Science can't keep ignoring things like this for too long, can it?

But that being said, it should be obvious that I do believe in a scientific explanation of sorts. I imagine that there are definite laws that govern such phenomenon.

Some observations on fairly general semi-related topics:

Rupert Sheldrake has done thousands of experiments in which people guess if they are being stared at by an observer behind them. People only guess right 60% of the time, but after so many trials, that's highly significant.

The Global Consciousness Project (http://noosphere.princeton.edu/) has collected a great deal of data from quantum sources that should theoretically be completely random, and shown some patterns in them to correlate with worldwide social/political events. So our minds, at least collectively, do have some fairly direct effect on matter, though it's hard to say what exactly.

Studies of twins seperated at birth have shown numerous odd coincedences that I personally do not think can be explained by genetics; names of girlfriends, professions, color of clothing, the way they brush their teeth, et cetera. I do not think there are genes for these things. This suggests to me that a sort of “resonance” exists between the seperated twins that causes them to accumulate similarities.

To bring all of this back to the law of attraction:

The law of attraction deals with a “resonance” between desire and outcome. How are resonances established? In the twin studies, there are two possibilities: either past interaction increases resonance, or direct similarity of two things/people increases resonance, or a mix. If the first is true, then, for example, a person might have resonance with things they've had a long time. If the second is true, then a person can only have resonance with other people, or possibly images made to represent people. Likewize, an orange only resonates with other oranges, and particularly with other oranges with more similar genetic makeup (since any similarity should increase resonance). The second possibility is the most viable in cases of the law of attraction, because one might say that a resonance is set up between images in your mind and the actual world because of a similarity between them; once this occurs, you can manipulate the images in your mind, and reality will have some amount of tendancy to conform. Resonance based on interaction might also be used, but it's harder to apply, since the form the resonance should take with objects that don't correspond to eachother is less obvious.

As for the sense of being stared at studied by Sheldrake, I think this suggests a different type of interaction: things react to potential. The reason people react to being stared at, even when they can't see the starer, I think, is because a person staring at someone sets up the potential to react to that person. If this potential were in the form of ill intent, the person being stared at should be able to feel that. If it's good intent, the person should feel that as well. I don't know how to explain it any better, but I think that potential for reaction is important. To some extent, cases of reading minds might be explained as cases of reading potential reactions. And this isn't directly precognition, either. I think it's more direct. If you caused some huge reaction potential in some situation in which you'd never see the outcome of that reaction, I'd guess you could still feel it.

This ties in with the attraction law by suggesting that what we're doing in creating positive images is looking for positive reaction potentials. (That sounds like I'm getting back to precognition, but oh well.)

In large, there are a good number of different possible directions of explanation.

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

I am attracted to this discussion (teehee).

I too think that there is something to attraction, but not because I am widely read, but because I have been so lost in my lifetime that I have been assiduously mapping my interior, so to speak, for lo, these many years…

What I have found is that when I am very coherent, when I find myself striding like I am on my path, it seems that synchronistic events begin popping like popcorn. I feel like I am being shown the red carpet after many long miles of wilderness…

I have also seen where the “attraction” thinking can slide into superstition where it is fear-based. I often meet people who struggle with identity issues and anxiety. They often express the “what if I don't follow the right impulse…” or the “if this bad thing happened I must have done something wrong…” complex. A nasty side-effect of this “attraction” belief.

And I have witnessed many cruelties and blaming-the-victim rationalizations. It is grossly unfair to verticly arrange people on a scaffolding derived of your own terms. People are suffering. Many because they are bumping around in the dark, without the awareness of the tools to organize their own perceptions, many because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We can't know what we don't know.

But this tantalizing “grain of truth” at the core of this “meme.” How to get to it from here?

I try to remember always that each of us is only able to organized our perceptions according to our own precepts. Precepts are cultivated over time with experience. We are all uniquely in our own moment of development, and cannot be other than what we are right now.

So my view of  this attraction force, such that it is, is not a learned thing, it is an experienced thing.  What I see is that when I achieve a certain all-too-rare coherence in my mind, combined with a certain strength and purity of intent, that the resulting effects are almost like the universe can be “folded” like an accordian, and collapsed to pull events to you, like on a string… I tend to have lucid dreams during these periods,too.

I do not profess to understand this effect. It is really just a piece of the grand puzzle that I spend my life noodling. Sometimes I think pursuit of complete understanding can be addictive… But as a lover of science, science as a mapmaking tool, I am very curious about this one thing:

What the heck is going on around around here?!?

;-)

Thank you for this forum, Ozma!

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

“Not a learned thing, but an experienced thing”. That seems to make lots of sense to me. It seems to me that with many spiritual events, all one can do is follow. Trying to get what you want out of spirit doesn't work because it guides you, not the other way around. So the law of attraction is wrong in some situations because it switches the roles in that way. Perhaps a better law of attraction would stress more the importance of following positive images and feelings that come to you (following the spirit) rather than making your own positive images for the world to follow. It's sort of a reverse law of attraction: YOU don't attract IT, IT attracts YOU. This gets rid of all the problems with imagining that people are the sole cause of all good/bad events in their lives. Co-creation of reality comes in loud and clear.

But, on the other hand, it doesn't address the original cause of these positive spirits that may come to a person. Are they precognitions? Potentials? Resonances based on similarity? Or divine grace?

But it does immediately remove much of the self-centeredness of the Law of Attraction.

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

“It's sort of a reverse law of attraction: YOU don't attract IT, IT attracts YOU.”

That is BEAUTIFUL. Abram. I love that. I will meditate on that and see what inspirations I receive.

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

It attracts you!  Yes powerful!

Brings me back to the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan & spiritual magnetism..

Magnetism is something that can be wasted, that can be lost, and that can be made powerless. When a person consciously exerts the magnetism he has it becomes powerless. The very power with which one exerts the magnetism makes it powerless. Magnetism can be wasted if one does not have the strength and control to sustain it. Many possess great magnetism in some form or other, but without knowing it they lose some of it every moment of the day. As one needs a safe for keeping one's treasures, so one must know the key to the control of magnetism of whatever kind. More

I have noticed many times the powerful attraction I feel around highly developed beings - they are like magnets pulling the seekers in…

PJ

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

I hear a lot of talk about the Law of Attraction being based on “magnetism,” but is that true?

Do we have any scientific evidence or proof in any way that spiritual energy works in the way a magnet does?

I also hear a lot of people throwing around other scientific concepts from quantum physics to justify this meme. They will then say the Law of Attraction is “science” simply because they were able to come up with an explanation for it based on pop physics, which isn't even a full understanding of physics.

I have actually been thinking about how manifesting might actually work.

Here is an example: Twice I have “intended” for neighbors to move away and they have, usually within months of me moving in. (I “intend” for them to get a better place. The reason I want them to leave is that they are noisy.)

So one school of thought would say that my opposite energetic vibrations are magnetically repelling the neighbor's energy. Well, that can't be totally true because otherwise my entire building would be filled with people like me, and that's just not the case.

It could just be coincidence, of course.

I think it's likelier that some form of telepathy is going on. I am thinking in my mind (with a lot of energy and intention): PLEASE MOVE. THERE'S A BETTER PLACE FOR YOU.

Somehow, they are picking up this message and internalizing it and following my directions.

My other theory is that we have helper spirits around us who are coordinating things and so when we have an intention like “I need my neighbors to move,” they'll work behind the scenes to facilitate it.

Thus, in the case of a person who needs more business but isn't getting it, it is possible that mentally they are saying “I'm not ready for a lot of new business” and telepathically this message is being sent out to others (or their spirit guides).

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

Essentially, I feel, that we have nothing but our own opinions to draw upon, based upon our interpretations of our own experiences, and our acceptance or rejection of others opinions.

With profound passion, strong intention I have also drawn & removed people from my life, drawn or removed circumstances in my life, or did I? Were there unseen helpers? Did the others involved agree? What is really going on we really do not know.

Certainly a lot of coincidence, synchronicity, & happenstance:):):)!!

I have been magnetically attracted to, drawn to certain leading people of our time, was this the phenomenon of Call & Response, their charisma & my seeking, past lives seeking reconnection, intention, what label can we give something we cannot prove in the material world?

It is a sincere practice of mine today to intend the highest good for all, will that really come about? It is my sincere intention to attract only that which can/will co-creatively work with me towards the higher good, will that always happen??

I don't have the answers, but I do have my experience, albeit, my interpretation may not be what others see….  :):) & the quest goes on.

Just pondering,
PJ

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

Yes, it is true we do have helper spirits, b/c they always tell me when there is unkindness, closed mindedness and to beware of beings who seek harm rather than sharing & growth.

You are absolutely correct, there are protective spirits all around us. I am so grateful for being aware of that, and too, being acutely aware of when harm and dark energies lurk about….

Peace & Joy to you all,
Peggy J

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

The movie “The Secret” is oversimplified and not entirely true.  However, that does not make the Law of Attraction invalid.

The Law of Attraction at core states…

A) One can achieve joy through transformation of thought alone. 
B) Outer reality is a mirror of inner reality.
C) All truth is a function of the one choosing to “believe” the truth.

Using LOA to attain riches without joy will never work.  One who has attained joy may find they are no longer interested in riches.

Not a fan of “The Secret”, but receiving everything I truly want from The Law of Attraction.

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

Glad to have you here, Andrew!

Re: The Secret / Law of Attraction Meme

Yes, but delusion springs eternal and people pay to hear pretty stories, especially concerning their own prosperity and especially without any payment in terms of, say, giving up calories to be unfat and fit, as “The Secret” would offer people.
It's selling fortune telling on a grand scale and it definitely appeals.
If one only looks at successes, “focusing on the positives”, not only is one only going to feel lucky and blessed, but he'll also be able to ignore the plight of all the have-nots and complacently tend to his own interests, free of conscience.
All the religions teach at least being good before earning the right to receive.