Quote:
Originally Posted by John Freestone  The classic example is believing that you're 'psychic' because people appear to phone you just at the moment you're thinking of them. It seems persuasive to me that we often make the mistake of ridiculously overestimating the number of times this happens, and if we tested it scientifically (notwithstanding earlier criticisms) we would discover our gift to be utterly fictional. First of all, we get excited about it when it happens. We file that effect away in our memories and remember someone down the pub who was ranting about it for several hours. We forget. Then it happens again. We remember the first time, and the bloke in the pub. Maybe he had something after all, even though we thought he was a nut at the time. We get more excited. We file that experience in memory too.
Meanwhile, we do not get excited about the times we think of Molly (don't ask) and Molly doesn't phone. Can you remember the last failed IM? Probably not, or you won't remember many. Perhaps that is because you have programmed your brain to look for positives, not negatives. In fact, your brain is hardwired to look for patterns in all experience, and if it can't find any it will regularly and habitually invent them. Starting to 'believe' in whatever - Aliens, IM, psychic abilities - turns up the gain. People hear voices of 'ghosts' in white noise on tapes and radios. We hallucinate apparitions in dark corners. Not only that, this phenomenon increases with arousal states, so people see ghosts in corners more often if they're scared - for instance because someone has told them there's a ghost in the corner! |
I understand absolutely what you mean - and as I have said, one way of avoiding such errors is to keep a meticulous written log of your manifestations and what actually turns up in reality.
The other hypothesis I have - which I've previously mentioned in this forum as well - is that if LOA works, and you keep using it generally across all different areas of your life, then over a sufficiently long time frame, (eg 1 to 5 years), your life should improve sharply, relative to what it was before, and relative to people who seemed similar to you at that time (eg people of the same age, with the same kind of job, in the same country, same socio-economic status etc).
Illustration:
If you use LOA and your career improves sharply, then this may be a coincidence.
If you use LOA and your relationships improve sharply, then this may be a coincidence.
If you use LOA and your health improves sharply, then this may be a coincidence.
If you use LOA and your finances improve sharply, then this may be a coincidence.
If you use LOA and your achievements in whatever personal interests you have improve sharply, then this may be a coincidence.
But if you use LOA and your career, relationships, health, finances, personal achievements etc etc etc all improve sharply within the same time frame, well, finally you may be persuaded that this is no coincidence.
Or, as Deepak Chopra would say, that all coincidences are meaningful.