The Law of Attraction for Hardheads

reply to post by TheSingularity

The common thread in all of their stories was how they would work hard at getting to know the problem that they were trying to solve. Then, after they had a firm grasp of the problem, they would then just let the problem go... and forget about it. Then, sometime later, the solution would come to them in a flash.

This process is common knowledge among people who create for a living. Arthur Koestler described it when analyzing creativity in The Act of Creation. More pertinently and less controversially, the great advertising copywriter James Webb Young anticipated Koestler by about twenty years in a little book entitled A Technique for Producing Ideas. As you'll see from the link, the process actually has five steps, not two. They are, in order,

1. Study the problem from every conceivable angle

2. Think over the problem in depth, internalizing it so that you become intimately familiar with all its aspects

3. Let the problem go - ignore it for a while

4. Produce the solution - which is likely to pop into your mind unbidden at some irrelevant moment (such as - Young's example - while you're shaving)

5. Consciously test, refine and develop the idea until it is a complete creative work

This process works - I can vouch for it not only from my own experience but that of dozens of colleagues, as well as to many subordinates to whom, over the years, I have taught it.

But there is nothing mystical about it. It's just a formalization of the way the creative mind works in the first place.

And it has - I regret to say - nothing in the world to do with getting what you want out of life by wishing for it, which is basicaly what the so-called Law of Attraction proposes. The only way to improve your chances of getting what you want in this world is to work for it. Hard.

I think part of what LOA is missing is the part where you actually make it happen.

If I desire a drink from my fridge, then I visualize a path to the fridge instantly, and then I take the action needed(walking) to get it. I can't just sit here and say I want to attract the drink in there and expect it to appear on my desk. If you are truly attracted to it, then you would do what it takes to get it.

Like a job, you still had to look for a job correct? Did you sit at home and just wait for someone to randomly call you for a job? You had to do your part.

I myself was once homeless, and 5 years later I was an executive in my company. I desired it, and so I spent a lot of time working on it. A LOT of time. Refused to believe I couldn't do it, even though everyone in my family told me I was crazy. I didn't just sit around and wish for it to happen, I had to find a way to make it happen. And I wasn't even looking for that kind of position, I just wanted a job I liked. I started out working for free just to prove myself worthy of any job. I desired it that badly. That is how attracted I was to it.

One thing I did learn when I was in rough times is that somehow I was always given what I needed, when I needed it. And that has always been amazing. Finding a dollar to eat on here and there, or something else just happens to happen. Seems you are always given what you need, but not always what you want. And that is probably the true blessings, because I kind of shutter if I had been given everything I ever asked for or thought I wanted.

Or maybe thats just 30+ years of me believing I couldn't make something appear next to me talking there, and I have 30 years of doubt and disbelief that keeps it from happening instantly.

Originally posted by Skyfloating
reply to post by TheSingularity

 

As a LOA-Teacher myself I would advise you to quit pondering on things that do not work and start looking at things that do work.

For that you have to look at what you already believe works, and do that, instead of trying to make something work that you think does not.

Good luck.

Uh, thanks? Don't take this wrong, but that sort of sounds like you are saying I should move along now, as if there is no room for non-believers in this "seminar"... even though it should be very obvious that I'm trying to believe. So, I'm trying to see, but that's not good enough? I should just abandon this wonderful gift called the Law of Attraction and all of it's rewards... just like that! Just because I had doubt? Even though I tried earnestly in the past? Wow. You're an LOA teacher and that's all you have to say?

Besides, those two sentences are redundant. The second sentence is saying the same thing as the first! Thanks a lot!

reply to post by TheSingularity


Really, the best resource for Law of Attraction issues on the board is Skyfloating's thread:

How the "Law of Attraction Works"

But it is 170 pages long, so it takes some digging to get to all the gems. At some point that I wish I had bookmarked but don't, he also gives a list of recommended reading on the topic – works that are more meaty than "The Secret" or "What the Bleep"-type recent formulations.

To Astyanax: do you have a suggestion about how to do a double-blind study on the LoA? Because I can't imagine how you could possibly make sure that people don't unconsciously draw what they want to them if they're in the "don't use it" group.

Or what a "placebo" would be?

Very strange idea.

reply to post by americandingbat

To Astyanax: do you have a suggestion about how to do a double-blind study on the LoA? Because I can't imagine how you could possibly make sure that people don't unconsciously draw what they want to them if they're in the "don't use it" group.

Or what a "placebo" would be?

Interview people suffering from a chronic, debilitating illness. Eliminate professed rationalists, atheists, agnostics and other party poopers.

Randomly divide those left over into two groups, A and B. Tell both groups they are engaged in testing a new medicine for their condition. Give them all pills. All the pills are placebos.

Inform the groups that this new treatment is partly pharmacological and partly psychological. The patient has to be in a special frame of mind for the medicine to work properly. Give them some mumbo-jumbo about psychosomatic effects and the immune system.

Now tell Group A that, in order to attain the requisite frame of mind, they must practice the rituals of the Law of Attraction for a certain minimum time every day, earnestly visualizing themselves as fit and healthy or whatever it is they're supposed to do.

Tell Group B that, in order to attain the requisite frame of mind, they have to perform a set of meaningless physical or mental exercises for a an equivalent minimum length of time.

Researchers who have never met the subjects and don't know which group each one belongs to then track the medical histories of group members over the experimental period. The results are analyzed and any differences among the results for both groups are noted.

Thus the efficacy of the Law of Attraction is supported or falsified. Placebo effects are eliminated, or rather rendered immaterial, because every functional variable in the experiment is a placebo.

(You didn't say it had to be ethical, did you?)

As for people 'drawing what they want to themselves unconsciously', you need not worry about that as long as your groups are large enough. The ability to do this should be equally incident among any two random samples of the population and would cancel out in the results.

[edit on 28-1-2009 by Astyanax]

reply to post by Astyanax


Yes, I know you are skeptical of these claims. But that's what has happened. Btw... I'm not sure the graph would apply to my relative (my father actually), because we live in a different place with a different economy, different habits etc... And he's in his mid-50's, it's much more difficult for someone that age to get a job. And remember he has two actual paychecks. Pension and job. Yet every month for the first 6 months since he started to listen to the tape, he received the equivalent of 3 paychecks. Every month something extra. Anecdotal evidence doesn't count as such for you, but in court it does, and for his bank account it definately does.

That's how I see it. That to me has more value than any scientific study on the subject. I can't wait on that to happen in order for me to try it out on myself or on relatives as mentioned above.

And all of that with no visualising, no positive thinking or any of those commonly talked about LOA rituals. It's just simple controlled reprogramming of the (subconscious) mind, listening to affirmations (while awake and during sleep) that did the trick.

reply to post by Astyanax


I didn't say it had to be ethical, no.

I still don't think it would work though.

What is the placebo effect if not a form of the Law of Attraction?

So you'd have a bunch of people consciously practicing the application of LoA according to some protocol, and a bunch of people who are not. The people who are not, there's no way that you can prevent them from using a self-invented form.

In the end you compare the two groups. In your model, you're only attributing the difference between the two to LoA working, when in fact all the cures in both groups may be LoA related.

Your model would work to test whether one formulation of the LoA, or one protocol for practicing it, was more successful in training people unfamiliar with the concept (add a third group with a different protocol of LoA). But I don't think it would be a reliable indicator of whether it works at all.

reply to post by americandingbat

Oh, you mean any kind of wishful thinking is the Law of Attraction at work?

Well, then, that explains why all I have to do is visualize a 1959 Gibson Les Paul really, really hard for me to turn at once into Jimmy Page.

Also explains all those mounted beggars and the decline in the profession of tinkers.

We already have an entire big thread focused on that subject:

How "the law of attraction" works
Replies: 1169 Flags: (170) and counting...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

My thread may give you some insights on a logic approach for the skeptic on the law of attention (attraction).
www.abovetopsecret.com...

[edit on 29-1-2009 by infobrazil]

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by americandingbat

 

Oh, you mean any kind of wishful thinking is the Law of Attraction at work?

Well, then, that explains why all I have to do is visualize a 1959 Gibson Les Paul really, really hard for me to turn at once into Jimmy Page.

Also explains all those mounted beggars and the decline in the profession of tinkers.

I love sarcasm.

Now, this is my understanding of the Law of Attraction, and I am not an expert, or a professional. I do not use it in any disciplined sense, but I suspect I'm pretty good at it in a savant kind of way. The universe takes much better care of me than I can explain.

Is any form of wishful thinking the Law of Attraction at work? No, of course not. No more than me imagining bouncing a tennis ball off a wall is Newton's law of equal and opposite reactions at work.

It kind of requires there to be a tennis ball and a wall involved to manifest the equal and opposite reaction (or the action, for that matter).

The Law of Attraction isn't the protocols for how to use it. The protocols are a way to harness what is a natural and constant (universal) law. They are meant to show people how to tap into what is already there.

Do you know that you’re Jimmy Page while you’re visualizing that guitar? Do you have (as another skeptic in another area of ATS put it recently) 100% FAITH that you’re Jimmy Page?

Do you even really want to be Jimmy Page?

Maybe that’s why the area that seems to have the most successful rate of application of LoA without people even being consciously aware that that’s what they’re doing is in healing. Miracle cures have been reported throughout human history, and attributed to all sorts of things. The placebo effect has been well studied scientifically – if people believe that they will get better, a statistically significant number of them do.

Maybe it’s just that in that one case people really know what they want and direct all their energy toward that goal, so well that they are successful without the discipline that the protocols offered by LoA instructors can bring.

reply to post by TheSingularity


No, I wasnt telling you to move along. This is what I tell people who come and visit me as a "Coach".

They describe something to me and tell me its not working for them, so I start asking them questions to direct their attention at something that does work for them.

This is called "going the path of least resistance" in LOA. Instead of testing the limits of what one is able to believe, one goes with what one already believes...which makes the ride easier.

So if someone, for example, does not believe that he can create a reality by thought alone, we'd look at some of the actions he/she believes would bring about that reality.

Method and Dogma are not important. Whats important is that someone identifies his/her true hearts desire and experiences results in that direction.

And that then, is true application of "reality creating" (a term I actually prefer to LOA, which is somewhat narrow in scope).

Almost no time spent discussing and pondering what does not work. Almost all time spent considering what does work.

[edit on 29-1-2009 by Skyfloating]

Originally posted by americandingbat
I love sarcasm.

Oh yes, me too. Isn't it wonderful?

The Law of Attraction isn't the protocols for how to use it. The protocols are a way to harness what is a natural and constant (universal) law.

Could you define this law for me, then, or point me towards a definition you regard as, well, definitive?

'Coz all you're saying is

1. You gotta have faith

2. LoA is, or is behind, the placebo effect.

3. If you want something badly enough, the LoA will work for you without your even having to do the mumbojumbo.

And what I say is:

1. Faith is a substitute for, not a means of, getting what you want. You just tell yourself it's going to happen or already has, over and over and over again, until you finally brainwash yourself into believing it - or think you have. This is the saddest, most contemptible aspect of this miserable little farrago: the self-delusion, the deliberate fight to irreality.

2. The placebo effect is real. It is also, quite obviously, biochemical in nature. Emotion is chemistry. When you are full of faith and hope, you have a different set of chemicals sloshing around inside you thanwhen you're desperate and hopeless. Obviously this has an effect on all the biochemical processes of life, including healing.

3. If you want something badly enough, you will work, beg, borrow or steal to get it. You will practice, you will take notes, you will pester people, you will call in favours, you will sell your body, you will do whatever it takes. And quite often, you will get it. No mystery here. Of course, you may also choose to pray or cast spells or sacrifice your daughter to Poseidon - or perform 'visualization exercises' and listen to droning tapes while you sleep - in the belief that it will help; and if you're kind of superstitious and gullible you may end up believing that it is those things, rather than your own energetic and praiseworthy efforts, that have brought you what you want. People do.

Placebo effects and common causality are not the 'Law' of Attraction. For something to qualify as a true example of the LoA in action, one should be able to proceed from the formal cause to the effect directly rather than by way of an identifiable efficient cause. Magic, in other words. The Law of Attraction is nothing but magic.

And the trouble with magic, as a biographer of Aleister Crowley once pointed out, is that it does not work.

Originally posted by Astyanax

Originally posted by americandingbat
I love sarcasm.

Oh yes, me too. Isn't it wonderful?

I can't imagine where we'd be without it.

The Law of Attraction isn't the protocols for how to use it. The protocols are a way to harness what is a natural and constant (universal) law.

Could you define this law for me, then, or point me towards a definition you regard as, well, definitive?

'Coz all you're saying is

1. You gotta have faith

2. LoA is, or is behind, the placebo effect.

3. If you want something badly enough, the LoA will work for you without your even having to do the mumbojumbo.

Not "if you want something badly enough." Because it's not just wanting.

I don't know how this Law of Attraction works any more than I know how the Law of Attraction Due To Gravity works.

A while back a physics grad student was telling me something about particles, gravitrons maybe, that "carry" gravity, or that "are" gravity the way photons "are" light? I dunno, I think that would mean that there is something faster than light out there, since gravity works faster than light. But honestly, I don't need to know any of that to keep my feet on the floor, which is mostly the kind of thing I use the Law of Gravity for.

I think probably my favorite LoA formulas are along the lines of "like attracts like". But as I said, I'm no expert. I haven't read The Secret; heck, I didn't even see the movie. I don't much get into all the "quantum physics" mumbo-jumbo because first off, I don't understand it; and second, I don't think a lot of the people who spout off about how that explains everything understand it either.

Maybe that will explain it, and maybe gravitrons will explain gravity. I look forward to the physicists letting us all know.

And what I say is:

1. Faith is a substitute for, not a means of, getting what you want. You just tell yourself it's going to happen or already has, over and over and over again, until you finally brainwash yourself into believing it - or think you have. This is the saddest, most contemptible aspect of this miserable little farrago: the self-delusion, the deliberate fight to irreality.

1) I wonder if people who have recovered from a disease due to the placebo effect (or the miraculous intervention of the Virgin, etcetera) would agree that faith is a substitute for getting what you want, not a means. What is it that makes you assume that people substitute Faith for getting what they want, instead of having both? Or have you audited the lives of every person who has tried to use the LoA to get something and determined that none of them ever have gotten what it was they wanted?

2. The placebo effect is real. It is also, quite obviously, biochemical in nature. Emotion is chemistry. When you are full of faith and hope, you have a different set of chemicals sloshing around inside you thanwhen you're desperate and hopeless. Obviously this has an effect on all the biochemical processes of life, including healing.

2) You seem comfortable enough with the idea that we can affect our own bodies with our thoughts and moods (what some might call "energy" or "vibrations"), even in ways that we can't consciously control. I'll bet you'll even acknowledge that we can in a limited way affect the world around us – for example, our attitude may very well change the sorts of pheromones we emit, the signals given by our face and body language, in a way that will impact people around us.

But how does a thought (immaterial) change a chemical (material)?

3. If you want something badly enough, you will work, beg, borrow or steal to get it. You will practice, you will take notes, you will pester people, you will call in favours, you will sell your body, you will do whatever it takes. And quite often, you will get it. No mystery here. Of course, you may also choose to pray or cast spells or sacrifice your daughter to Poseidon - or perform 'visualization exercises' and listen to droning tapes while you sleep - in the belief that it will help; and if you're kind of superstitious and gullible you may end up believing that it is those things, rather than your own energetic and praiseworthy efforts, that have brought you what you want. People do.

3. Or you might even believe that it was both your faith and your works that got you the desired thing. I don't think most people see the world as quite so black-and-white as you seem to.

Or maybe the desired thing will come to pass while you're still in the planning stages of all that work – buying notebooks, say, or researching which corner is best to sell your body on. In which case you can either decide you had nothing to do with it and it had no meaningful cause, or you can decide that thinking about it, wanting it, imagining it drew it to you.

It's all hypotheticals though.

Placebo effects and common causality are not the 'Law' of Attraction. For something to qualify as a true example of the LoA in action, one should be able to proceed from the formal cause to the effect directly rather than by way of an identifiable efficient cause. Magic, in other words. The Law of Attraction is nothing but magic.

And the trouble with magic, as a biographer of Aleister Crowley once pointed out, is that it does not work.

See now, if you know what the Law of Attraction is and isn't, why did you ask me? Or anyone else?

But why can't magic have an "identifiable efficient cause"?

It goes back to E.E. Evans-Pritchard and his Nuer tribesmen (or was it Dinka?)

A beam falls on a man, crippling him. The tribesman explains that the man was cursed: that the beam fell on him because a powerful sorcerer had performed a ritual to punish him for something (something to do with the sorcerer's cow, I think, but it's been an awful long time since I read it).

Our brave empiricist (and imperialist) anthropologist points out that termites had eaten through the beam and posits that perhaps the beam fell not because of some curse, but because of termites.

The tribesman looks at him with disdain and replies that of course it fell because termites had eaten through it; but it fell on the man because of the curse.

Magic explains things at a different level than materialist science.

*all the above is just my opinion, and the E-P story is seriously paraphrased because I'm too lazy to look it up. It's from the book Nuer Religion I think, if anyone else wants to check up on it*

and an edit to fix the quote tags and end tags

[edit on 1/30/09 by americandingbat]

The only way to improve your chances of getting what you want in this world is to work for it. Hard.

To work hard or to work smart? That's the question.

That's THEY working hard:


That's ME working smart and easily:



[edit on 30-1-2009 by infobrazil]

Originally posted by americandingbat
I think probably my favorite LoA formulas are along the lines of "like attracts like".

IF we analyse the principles of thought on which magic is based, they will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and, second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed. The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not.

- J.G. Fraser, The Golden Bough, Ch. 3.

My emphasis. Sir James's classic work was published in 1922.

But why can't magic have an "identifiable efficient cause"?

Well, what is it, then?

See now, if you know what the Law of Attraction is and isn't, why did you ask me? Or anyone else?

I was hoping someone could provide me with a more convincing case for it than I was able to make myself. Alas, it is as I feared it would be...

By the way, the speed of gravity has been measured.

Originally posted by Astyanax
My emphasis. Sir James's classic work was published in 1922.

I'm familiar with the work. I was referring to the Law of Similars.

But I'm not clear why you point it out?

But why can't magic have an "identifiable efficient cause"?

Well, what is it, then?

Again, you've lost me. What is the "identifiable efficient cause"? In the Evans-Pritchard story, the identifiable efficient cause (your term not mine) of the beam falling was weakness due to termite infestation. That doesn't have any implication on whether or not it fell on the man due to a magical curse.

Is that what you're asking?

See now, if you know what the Law of Attraction is and isn't, why did you ask me? Or anyone else?

I was hoping someone could provide me with a more convincing case for it than I was able to make myself. Alas, it is as I feared it would be...

Why is it that I'm not convinced by your disappointment?

By the way, the speed of gravity has been measured.

Nice! Do you think I should now start using the speed of light in the calculations of how to keep my feet on the ground, instead of just winging it?

reply to post by TheSingularity


it was a link that must change over time. I searched there and found a similar link on this page

The link read:

Secret Behind The Secret
Master The Law of Attraction Today Free Course w/ Stars of The Secret.

this link sent me HERE

can't find the 7 secrets one from the other day.

Originally posted by americandingbat
I'm familiar with the work. I was referring to the Law of Similars.

But I'm not clear why you point it out?

To make it as plain as the nose on Pete Townshend's face that what you call the 'law of attraction' is nothing but the first law of sympathetic magic, and its New Age makeover cannot hide the stink of grave-mould and chicanery rising from it.

What is the "identifiable efficient cause"? In the Evans-Pritchard story, the identifiable efficient cause (your term not mine) of the beam falling was weakness due to termite infestation. That doesn't have any implication on whether or not it fell on the man due to a magical curse.

Exactly. That mechanism is well understood. Now show me the mechanism by means of which the timing was implemented. Perhaps you had better go here first so that we both know what we're talking about.

Do you think I should now start using the speed of light in the calculations of how to keep my feet on the ground, instead of just winging it?

You mean nobody ever taught you good old f = G.m1.m2/r^2?

[edit on 1-2-2009 by Astyanax]

Originally posted by Astyanax
To make it as plain as the nose on your face that what you call the 'law of attraction' is nothing but the first law of sympathetic magic, and its New Age makeover cannot hide the stink of grave-mould and chicanery rising from it.

That's pretty much exactly how I understand the Law of Attraction – as a reformulation or specialized application of the so-called Law of Similars, which underlies the magical theory and practices of pretty much every culture on Earth. That's always been plain to me. If it comes as a surprise to you, then maybe we've gotten to the bottom of your confusion on the matter.

Just to be clear, I'm using the term "magic" in its anthropological sense rather than as a judgement. The two can be separated.

Exactly. That mechanism is well understood. Now show me the mechanism by means of which the timing was implemented. Perhaps you had better go here first so that we both know what we're talking about.

Why would I want to show you this? I've stated repeatedly that I don't know how it works. It actually has no real relevance for the question I originally posed to you about designing a double-blind study, or shouldn't – there are plenty of medications that work even if we don't know the biochemical mechanism by which they work.

But you're looking for the LoA to be something it isn't, or at least isn't yet.

To be honest, I'll be a little disappointed if the physicists discover the "attractron", find the mathematical formula for the "force due to attraction", discern all the variables involved, and calculate the constant coefficient. I don't think it will really change how I practice LoA, any more than the formulas for force due to gravity change how a basketball player uses the Law of Gravity.

Maybe that would convince you. It wouldn't change anything at all about the existence or truth of LoA.

Do you think I should now start using the speed of light in the calculations of how to keep my feet on the ground, instead of just winging it?

You mean nobody ever taught you good old G = m1.m2/r^2?

You're quite right, they did. It's just that it's been so long since I actually used it that it didn't spring readily to mind.

How have I been keeping my feet on the ground all these years without it?

Originally posted by TheBandit795
Let me put it this way. It's much easier to manifest things that you either don't really care about or that are compatible with your core beliefs. Beyond that you have to either change those beliefs or accept that you already have that which you are seeking to have and let it go (which is one of the most difficult things ever for the average western society minded human like me).

The above part which I added emphasis is what I got most out of this thread. Perhaps, there could be subconscious beliefs that are holding you back that stand in your way of getting what you want. Maybe you don't REALLY believe you can get or deserve something. You have to truly believe that it's actually possible. The whole "faith" thing is just a trick to overwhelm your conscious mind into letting that belief filter through to your subconscious as well as getting your controlling conscious mind to be more cooperative instead of hindering things coming to you through it's reality filter.

Secondly, regarding the argument that obviously you can't wish for something and just sit around for it to happen, I look at life with an analogy like this:

We are like molecules bouncing around and mingling with the other molecules in life, be it people, or things. When you finally get to the point where you ACCEPT that you can receive something and are open to it, that is analogous to changing your molecular arrangement slightly to be a receptor for another kind of molecule. Another molecule of which you desire will fit.... once you come into contact with it. But, life isn't static. You have to MOVE AROUND; start mingling in life and DO THINGS and when opportunity arises, you will naturally and probably subconsciously tend to take the course that leads you to your desired outcome... the molecule that you have configured yourself to fit into. If a molecule just sits still and stay put, then you will have to wait around for a miracle to happen for your desire to just fall in your lap, which the probability will be very low. So, the point is that action is required. There has to be aggitation, in a chemical sense, to get all the molecules mixing so chemical reactions can occur.

With all that being said, I do believe that the LOA, as well as magick, all exist in the mind, and therefore, as the greatest affect on self change. When people try to apply these things to the outside world, it could work, but it requires action in the outside world.