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Originally Posted by Jason S  AGL, I think you may have missed me... Your explanation above, while nice, doesn't offer anything new, and leaves the same questions unasked. Such as, what happens when you and I, in exercising our own free will, make decisions that are in conflict--what is the mechanism by which those moments are reconciled? |
This is hardly a new question. It simply crops up in different forms, and all these forms have been and are frequently discussed, in books as well as in this forum. Examples of these different forms:
1. X wants to attract a lover, Y, but Y is not interested. What happens? (Search for Rockchick26's posts)
2. P and Q, a divorced couple, have a battle in court. P wants visitation right; Q does not want P to have visitation rights. (Search for Cdn2wheeler's posts).
3. A wants to improve his appearance to attract girls. Girls are just not interested. (Search for Muah's posts).
4. B wants to be on good terms with his ex-wife. However, his ex-wife is just not interested. (Search for Robc's posts)
5. The competition situation. Ten people compete, all intend to win the first prize. What happens? (Explained in Abraham Hicks)
Statements like:
"Don't focus on the how, focus on the what"
and
'You cannot co-create in another person's reality"
or
Wallace Wattles' advice to avoid competitive situations , and rather, focus on creative situations (in other words, create anew what you want, rather than fight with someone else for it)
all reflect different aspects of the problem (and possible solutions).
The free-will question doesn't really bug me personally, because this is not one of those questions which, in a practical sense, have a lot of significance for me. I am not inclined to coerce, or attempt to coerce, people into giving me what I want, especially when there are usually multiple, non-coercive ways to get what I want (especially with LOA). Various LOA-related systems also display a caution when working with intentions that may have a coercive element on other people (eg Threefold Law in witchcraft, or the standard exhortation in Silva Mind Control that your intentions must be for the "highest good of all" and shall fail if you use them to "harm others").
But if you really want to know, I think of LOA functioning as a kind of vector system; also, I think of it as a perfect system with no loss (like the Law of Conservation of Energy in physics). The energy can't disappear; it can only move from one place to another place, or change form.
Thus for example if X and Y both have strong opposite intentions such that only one intention can manifest in the given context (eg it's a sports competition and both want to win the first prize), only one will win (say, X), but the vibrational essence of Y's thoughts still has to find expression somewhere, eventually. Meaning that if Y holds on to those thoughts and does not alter them (eg by giving up on the sport), Y must eventually attract the vibrational equivalent into his reality (eg he wins another sports competition).
Of course if Y suddenly dies, the essence of the left-over, unexpressed thoughts simply carry over to his next life. That is popularly known as karma, although really karma happens continually, in real time, and is not merely a matter of what happens in the next life.
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The alternative type of explanation derives from two different sources:
(a) Seth's explanation of multiple dimensions
(b) quantum physicist Hugh Everitt's Many Worlds theory (with some extrapolation)
and it goes something like this; the universe splits and divides whenever there are several possible outcomes, into an equal number of new realities.
So for example, we toss a coin and you strongly intend for heads, while I intend, just as strongly, for tails ... the universe then splits into two. In one universe, the coin comes up heads and in the other reality, the coin comes up tails.
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And the 3rd sort of explanation is that the truly irreconciliable intentions simply do not (cannot) occur in the same context.
Just as the victim and the robber always attract each other, so it must be that the non-victim does not attract a robbery from a robber, and so it must be that the victim does not attract a robbery from a non-robber.
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And the 4th sort of explanation is the original version of subjective reality offered by Steve Pavlina. There is only one consciousness, therefore there is no question of conflicting free wills. Whatever you get in your reality, is what you intended. No one impinges on it, because no one else exists.