Law of Attraction

[Pacion]

Whilst it is called the 'Law of Attraction', as I understand it, it is more universal and about attracting various things into your life, not just about the human sexual attraction - your thoughts 'attracting' various people to your life, that your paths cross or you are always in the 'right place at the right time' be it for the winning lottery ticket or a parking space or to be able to do a good deed even.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shooshoo
I remember getting this message once saying that things happens in your life for a reason, sometimes for a season and some for a life-time. So to make it easier for myself, I look for a reason or accept it's a season and try to enjoy all other life-time people in my world.

I subscribe to this theory entirely, but it may be because it is more appeasing to the mind. .... Even a bad experience has some educational value, imo (although the educational value of losing someone you love escapes me). Might be hard to accept at the time, but you live and learn, right?

Thanks Shooshoo. Thanks MQ. Thank you everyone who has posted on this! (Oscar speech over, now the tears :lol:

Yes, the 'experience' has had 'some' educational value, which I am still trying to figure out. :lol: I laugh/have to laugh because once you have 'hit the bottom', the only way is up, right? Is it my own personal version of Groundhog Day ie. a lesson I need to learn and will keep experiencing until I learn? Hard to say. Is there something in my subconscious that is being played out in the Law of Attraction? Trying to figure out.

 

[quixotedlm]

Two words - Doesn't work.
I can do better I suppose. One word - superstition.

Out of the several occasions in my life when I wanted something important to me with all my heart, looked forward to it with infinite eagerness and worked my knat off to earn it, I only got what I wanted about 2-3 times ever.

Reflecting back upon the times when I was deeply disappointed (sometimes mourning the failed expectations for several months), I can't think that I didn't have the most positive attitude towards the object of my affection, i.e., I believe I projected a genuine attractiveness towards my goal. Of course, I wasn't experimenting with the 'law of attraction', but that's just how it was.

My experience says that if it doesn't work most of the times, then the occasions when it does seem to work must be statistical anomalies.

So yeah, this is just wishful imaginative thinking. It's like saying that if you act funny and dress well enough and be an overall great person, then you can seduce anybody you try to seduce. That too doesn't work. All life is a series of chance happenings. Like followers in a dance, we have some control and the ability to express ourselves, but it's rare to find yourself dancing with that great lead with whom you have an amazing connection and it clicks perfectly. It does happen - sometimes - maybe...

 

[DancinAnne]

Two words - Doesn't work.
I can do better I suppose. One word - superstition.

Out of the several occasions in my life when I wanted something important to me with all my heart, looked forward to it with infinite eagerness and worked my knat off to earn it, I only got what I wanted about 2-3 times ever.

Reflecting back upon the times when I was deeply disappointed (sometimes mourning the failed expectations for several months), I can't think that I didn't have the most positive attitude towards the object of my affection, i.e., I believe I projected a genuine attractiveness towards my goal. Of course, I wasn't experimenting with the 'law of attraction', but that's just how it was.

My experience says that if it doesn't work most of the times, then the occasions when it does seem to work must be statistical anomalies.

So yeah, this is just wishful imaginative thinking. It's like saying that if you act funny and dress well enough and be an overall great person, then you can seduce anybody you try to seduce. That too doesn't work. All life is a series of chance happenings. Like followers in a dance, we have some control and the ability to express ourselves, but it's rare to find yourself dancing with that great lead with whom you have an amazing connection and it clicks perfectly. It does happen - sometimes - maybe...

I disagree... but neither did I say that everything in life clicks perfectly with the right attitude or that everything is in our control/power. Oftentimes, I believe you get what you need and not always what you want.

Okay, now I sound like a cliche.

But I believe it nonetheless.

 

[mamboqueen]

The Law of Attraction is a theory commonly associated with New Age and New Thought philosophy. It posits that one should never dwell on the negative, as the met@physical principle of life is embodied in a "law of attraction": "you get what you think about; your thoughts determine your destiny."

My thinking is not that you'll necessarily get what you think about (otherwise I'd have won the lottery on Tuesday night rather than that silly truck driver who doesn't need expensive dresses), but I think that things happen for a reason, unbeknownst to us, and so maybe you're not getting what you want per se, but what you need (lord...am I sounding like a Rolling Stones song yet??). I also believe in not attaching negative feelings to something that might be *at this moment* negative, but rather to look at it and then let it go.

Hey...DA.. you're probably better off sounding like a cliche...I think I'm starting to sound like the nutty professor.

 

[Kiteless]

Yes, the 'experience' has had 'some' educational value, which I am still trying to figure out. :lol:

Then again, it could be just a random event. No one can control everything that happens in their lives. Back in the 19th century, the "mechanistic universe" philosophers used to believe that if they had a big enough computer, they could predict everything that would ever happen in the universe. Quantum mechanics has since shown that this is not true; at the mirco level, many events are inherently probabalistic and can't be predicted no matter how much data and computing power you have.

 

[quixotedlm]

Oftentimes, I believe you get what you need and not always what you want.

Oftentimes, I've experienced that I've been unsuccessful at avoiding depression while highly successful at finding the resources for high quality theraphy (which never seems to end). And I'm speaking both figuratively and literally... So I suppose life does give us what we need


But your disagreement is actually good. Because it shows that either its possible to have a frame of mind that is generally contended, or that life indeed can be mostly satisfying, esp. wrt to our pursuits. So that's a source of hope. Good for you!

 

[Pacion]

I agree with everything everyone has said.


(Hopefully, this will mean that I will have all the agreement in my life that I need, rather than what I want :lol

 

[FTL]

With endless number of positive wishes some would eventually happen. It sounds more like a law of probability than attraction.

 

[mamboqueen]

Excellent point!

I hope I win the lottery tonight. I hope I win next Tuesday. I hope I win next Friday...and the Tuesday after that (did my chances just go up?)!

 

[FTL]

Excellent point!

I hope I win the lottery tonight. I hope I win next Tuesday. I hope I win next Friday...and the Tuesday after that (did my chances just go up?)!

Not gonna happen. You've got to buy the ticket too!

 

[samina]

Two words - Doesn't work.
I can do better I suppose. One word - superstition.

the proof is in the pudding on this one... as well as "whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right". this isn't something that's arguable, only with yourself or against circumstances in one's life.

i've used these principles to consciously manifest very specific things in my life. i've used it to overcome many things, and to achieve things considered hopeless or impossible. the list is... extensive.

fwiw, my starting point was very negative, and with a deeply ingrained belief of a very bitter "if it's too good to be true, it probably is", which sounds not dissimilar to how you currently may be feeling, quixote. so believe me, i understand.

it's not like a recipe that you recite a few times and, if the results don't appear, you can reasonably conclude that it doesn't work. the realm is very intangible... the many layers of one's psyche, of one's thoughts, feelings, beliefs, conditioning, personality, wounds... it's like sitting at the corner of an enormously tangled fisherman's net and starting to untangle it... tracing how paths are interconnected, looped, tied too tightly to un-do in the moment, crusted by debris... i mean, this is not magic. it's work.

for myself, i've demonstrated repeatedly in my life that it works, so i depend on it now for everything that matters to me.

 

[DancinAnne]

Oftentimes, I've experienced that I've been unsuccessful at avoiding depression while highly successful at finding the resources for high quality theraphy (which never seems to end). And I'm speaking both figuratively and literally... So I suppose life does give us what we need

I'd like to think so... and thank goodness for good therapists and counselors!!

But your disagreement is actually good. Because it shows that either its possible to have a frame of mind that is generally contended, or that life indeed can be mostly satisfying, esp. wrt to our pursuits. So that's a source of hope. Good for you!

I guess we do what we need to... I do have my hopes and dreams, not all have panned out quite like I planned and some have worked out quite well... some are in the works... but there are also quiet times when I need to believe that all is as it should be...

 

[quixotedlm]

fwiw, my starting point was very negative, and with a deeply ingrained belief of a very bitter "if it's too good to be true, it probably is", which sounds not dissimilar to how you currently may be feeling, quixote. so believe me, i understand.

it's not like a recipe that you recite a few times and, if the results don't appear, you can reasonably conclude that it doesn't work. the realm is very intangible... the many layers of one's psyche, of one's thoughts, feelings, beliefs, conditioning, personality, wounds... it's like sitting at an enormously tangle fisherman's net and starting to untangle it... tracing how paths are interconnected, looped, tied to tight to un-do in the moment, crusted by debris... i mean, this is not magic. it's work.

re attitudes, magic vs. work etc, i'd like to reiterate the operative part of my post -

Out of the several occasions in my life when I wanted something important to me with all my heart, looked forward to it with infinite eagerness and worked my knat off to earn it, I only got what I wanted about 2-3 times ever.

re intangibility of this principle -

I wonder if you are really talking about faith... for some inexplicable reason, this reminds me of .. link ... although the two ideas are really not congruent, or even very similar.

 

[samina]

re intangibility of this principle -

I wonder if you are really talking about faith... for some inexplicable reason, this reminds me of .. link ... although the two ideas are really not congruent, or even very similar.

well, you could relate this principle to aspects of probably all religions, as well as throughout the sciences... it's in both "i am that i am" as well as in the construction of all energy & matter...

manifesting using ****physical principles most definitely requires faith up to a point... then it's something beyond that, a quality of irrefutable knowing...

fwiw, indian philosophy has been a very big part of my own journey, since around nine.

 

[quixotedlm]

fwiw, indian philosophy has been a very big part of my own journey, since around nine.

not to get offtrack...

Indian philosophy, decoupled with spirituality, theology or ritualistic ways of life, can be a very intellectually interesting pursuit. Highly recommended if you are an agnostic or atheistic, because you'll actually learn to refine your own world-view so much more and understand well the arguments for and against that viewpoint, and the validation that comes from the knowledge that several philospher and their peer-reviewed and respected works seriously entertained agnosticism and atheism as valid answer to The Question along with theism, without concertedly trying to pick one side over another.