Law of Attraction: Use With Care
One of the things I’ve always worried about in being an advocate of Law of Attraction is that I’ll turn out to be one of those arrogant, ignorant right wing types that blames the poor and sick and oppressed for their own victimization. I’ve never been comfortable with that—maybe because I once considered myself one of them (poor and oppressed, NOT a right winger). If not for the grace of God, there go I kind of thing.
In her recently published book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, author Barbara Ehrenreich discusses her objections to the teachings of Law of Attraction. Besides seeing a lot of magical thinking in the school of Law of Attraction, she also sees a lot of the “blame the victim” mentality advanced. I think such notions are a perversion of how it all really works and reveals a lack of understanding on Ehrenreich’s part.
I do not think Law of Attraction is particularly mysterious or magical. I think it is logical and very accessible. The idea that you get what you think about is pretty obvious. If I’m thinking that people are out to get me, I’ll pretty much have that experience, even if only in my own head. I’ll turn every action toward me, no matter how kind or courteous the intent, into some sort of attack or malicious intention. My world will be colored by the dark hues within my own shadowy thought patterns, and my perception of these experiences will reinforce my negative expectations.
On the other hand, if I go about thinking that people are generally helpful and caring, I will have that experience, even if only in my own head. My perception of actions or words toward me will tend to see benevolence, rather than animosity. My world will generally be a bright reflection of my positive thought patterns and my perception of these experiences will reinforce my positive expectations.
Perfectly logical stuff. No woo woo involved. But what about the really bad things that happen to people?
Ehrenreich sees a lot of practitioners of Law of Attraction to be simply in denial of reality. Take the financial meltdown, for example. Many of the folks who contributed to bringing the economy down were caught up in a fantasy fed by their belief in Law of Attraction. Their fanatical adherence to the Law of Attraction enabled them to deny reality about the financial destruction they were creating for themselves and the rest of us. Even now they are probably scratching their heads wondering what the hell happened, or more likely wondering when the expected mammoth windfall will arrive on the scene to dispel the current gloom of reality.
The economic trauma our nation, indeed our planet, has experienced in the last few years is undeniable, except to those who still haven’t awakened from their trip down the rabbit hole. For the rest of us, even those of us with a positive attitude, we’re trying to figure out how to keep from being sucked under a tidal wave of debt without a life raft of capital.
And where does that leave Law of Attraction?
Right where it’s always been, like the power of electricity, it’s available for us to harness its power, to be used for good, to discover all the ways it’s power can be applied, to learn painful lessons of it’s misuse.
I don’t know if Law of Attraction can be used for ill purposes without backfiring. After all, if someone has to deprive others to get what they want, that is a belief about scarcity, not abundance. Did the Law of Attraction deliver on that scarcity paradigm on a massive scale? Is that how the financial meltdown manifested? The details seem complex, but how could it seem otherwise with so many million participating in it?
These are the questions this blog was created to explore.
Perhaps there is a danger, or more likely, a guarantee, we will each interpret the disasters of our day to fit neatly around our own belief systems. Perhaps it is only normal that we will massage the facts, camouflage the discordant elements of our experiences to mold nicely to our theories of how reality is made. If this is so, we might as well choose the belief systems that allow us more joy and give us a greater experience of being in control of our reality and our experiences. Helplessness and victimization and poverty are not fun and from my own experience I can say they taught me little except that I didn’t want to experience them and didn’t want such experiences to befall others. This is why I use and share the principles of Law of Attraction.
Law of Attraction is an empowering belief. It is worth learning about, sharing, and practicing. Please use responsibly.
