Limits on Law of Attraction
First off there is a big difference between real victims and victims who you might say have attracted their ill will.
The person who gets blown up in a mosque or church while praying… they did not attract that. I’m sorry.
A buddy of mine was a crack head many years ago. He decided to go to the wrong side of town looking for a fix with a pocket full of cash. He got his head smashed in with a brick and nearly died. He surely didn’t DESERVE that, but he is certainly more responsible for what happened to him than the woman praying who was blown to smithereens.
I am not “playing God” passing judgment here. Look, at one level, we are all One and part of All That Is or God, the Universe, whatever label fits for you. But at another level, we are all separate, too. I leave the judgment to God, I leave the knowingness to God, but here at this level of separateness, where I am me and you are you, there are things that are apparent.
And if you refuse to believe that I am me and you are you, maybe I could just come live in your house for a while and eat your food and use your belongings however I want? It’s okay, right? Because I am you, and you are me, so it doesn’t really matter, right?
Look. We as humans can only handle about 7 bits of information at one time. Our surroundings, however, have MILLIONS of bits of information. Our universe? Infinite. How can you say with that minuscule awareness that we are All One? How can you really KNOW that? You would have to sift through all of the data in the UNIVERSE to know for sure. That is impossible from our limited human perspective. So we learn to trust based on the data we do have.
A few weeks ago, I was speaking with an expert in how the human mind works. He said how he recently did some mind expansion exercises with someone. That person got as close to enlightenment as this expert has ever seen. The person got extremely sensitive… all of their senses were working at high power to the point of extreme sensitivity. A funny thing happened. this person felt so good about the experience they were having, they fully believed that if they jumped from a building, they would be able to fly or at least glide safely to the ground.
My friend said that if he had agreed or encouraged him, the person would have tried doing so.
Maybe that situation WOULD have ended up miraculously. But as you and I know, the evidence we can see in this shared reality says otherwise. My friend wisely became his conscience and convinced him otherwise.
Karl Marx said that religion is the opiate of the people. He was right in a sense. Now, I am about as far from a communist as a person can be, but the man had a point. What does an opiate do? It makes you feel no pain. And when we feel no pain, we believe we can fly. Because without the teacher of pain, we believe in our mind that we can do things we cannot and we are subject to get hurt.
Kathy had been teaching Claire the concept of “hot” by explaining what things in the house were “hot,” like a cup of coffee, the stove, a pot of steaming pasta, the hot water faucet. Claire understood that certain things were “hot.” She could even point to those things and say, “Ha!” But it wasn’t until she felt the pain of putting her hand in Kathy’s cup of coffee that she really understood what hot meant. She needed to viscerally feel the pain in her body in order to fully understand what the concept of “hot” meant.
Without the consequence of pain, we try to bring into physical experience what works in our imagination. Sometimes the human body cannot handle the consequences.
I think of this lady, who was a little high on the “we are all one” cloud. She thought she could feed the cuddly looking sleeping bear that didn’t look harmful at all. She felt that, but it wasn’t long before she was overridden by the reality of severe pain.
My point is that we don’t really know the truth. Without experience, our pea-sized awareness or even an expanded awareness doesn’t know much at all. I am not saying that there cannot be miracles from higher states of consciousness. What I am saying is it might be safer to take the stairs than glide down to the ground, leave the bear alone, keep your hand out of the hot cup of coffee!
The idea that I want you to understand, the point that was so important in my last post: the guru makes you feel so good in that awareness of ‘all is one’, what are you doing or buying that you might not when you don’t feel so good?
We can play in the realm and have adventures in consciousness. We can experiment and grow in the spiritual realm. But for God’s sake, please don’t leave your conscious mind behind. Or at least bring others in who will care about you.
Go get the tests done on the lump in your chest instead of believing some magic pill cured it. Maybe it did, but double check and use the knowledge of science and measurement in physical reality to be sure.
As far as the limits of attraction, let me say one word: “Hitler.” Yes. Sorry I am invoking Godwin’s law here.
Now use your critical thinking here. Answer me these questions honestly, please.
Do you really think the poor little 7 year old girl attracted a rapist and killer? That her attraction was so powerful that this poor guy was pulled into her vortex and was made to commit this heinous crime against her? Come on, now. If you really believe it is a law of attraction, if you really believe and she attracted it and created her own reality, then the victim must be the poor guy who did that. (Really?!)
Do you really believe the German people in the 1930’s fell prey to those terrible Jews who, through the “Law of Attraction,” attracted the poor Germans to elect Hitler, give him free rein of power, and put to death between 11-17 million people, 6 million of whom were Jews?
Or maybe it was a “mutual pact of attraction?”
Be careful now. This is an incredibly slippery slope… answer these questions honestly.
If you really believe this, I am going to tell you something you will not want to hear.
In fact, I’ll bet money you cannot hear.
But that is only for those that believe… and hopefully I don’t get any of those responses. I hope we are all on the same page as this point.
Yeah right. LOL
Great post, Mark. Bottom line is that a “law” is by nature inflexible. If identical conditions don’t produce identical results, describing the divergent results as proof that a “law” was being manifest is ludicrous.
To say that someone “attracted” every instance of their suffering (or, for that matter, that another somehow repelled painful experiences) by the sheer power of their own focus is both arrogant and dismissive. And as we all know, the universe has an uncanny knack for taking us down a notch when we start feeling smug. 🙂
What I find really absurd is that some “teachers” claim that the path to “enlightenment” is one that avoids anything that might be construed as negative. “Look away when you see suffering, so that you may avoid allowing negativity to keep you bound to your own suffering.” One “teacher” has even gone so far as to claim this was the true teaching of Buddha. Guess that person “forgot” that Siddhartha lived his early life sheltered from any observation of suffering, and had to immerse himself in the “negativity” of the world before he could discover its true source and continue on his path to Buddha-hood.
Even if it were true that we attract everything that we experience, I believe that the part of us that is capable of deciding what to attract in our lives possesses a wisdom that transcends the limits of our human experience, with the decisions made by the decarnate “spirit,” unencumbered by human ego, fear, and desire. By attempting to consciously change what we attract, are we not trying to overrule our higher wisdom with our limited human perspective?
Ron, thanks so much for your comment. It resonates greatly. I especially liked this: “part of us that is capable of deciding what to attract in our lives possesses a wisdom that transcends the limits of our human experience.” That is the great question, and a more important question than is the “law” of attraction valid. The question of us creating our own reality, but who is the “us” doing the creating. That is one of the things that attracted me most to ho’oponopono and personal responsibility. It really is not about claiming responsibility for all that is wrong and then self flagellating (or beating up others) for that which is wrong.
The reverence of saying “I’m sorry, Please forgive me” for whatever is imperfect, including judging that something is imperfect to begin with, brings us closer to that place.
You’ll love my series of posts starting tomorrow about the different types of teachers. They’ll be posted tomorrow through Thursday.
You’re right. I once had a cop instrct me to lay on my belly, then he stepped on my back and told me that he would shoot me if I x and then told me to leave and get off of his street.
It created hatred in me for all cops…
Just like extremists in cult religions
Strong filters on a persons mind that can be broken.
Now, I can joke with cops. Before, I would be filled with animosity, like the guys
reality filters can get shifted and twisted into behaviors that could potentially be harmful.
I think people have to go deep into themselves to feel extreme ecstasy, or life sucks.
I believe it’s like trick or treating and you want to monitor your candy so that you’re not the ass end of a joke.
You still have to go out there and have fun though.
I have felt some extreme highs in my life, especially when purple weed was introduced on the drug scene… Drove me into skitzo states.
I swear to god, with Richard Bandler and a cool profession (music and relationship coaching) I feel 10 times as great… Now I ask myself “how much ecstasy can I stand?” and I don have to reach for the medicine cabinet and phisically harm my body in the process.