Quote:
Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot  You know, sometimes I think that this is just another example of how the LOA works. Like this:
1. you say something;
2. other people offer advice, comments, opinions, suggestions, explanations etc
3. HOWEVER, everything in your reality is attracted by your thoughts, and nothing enters your reality unless it's been attracted by your thoughts.
4. Therefore if your thoughts are very inconsistent with the advice, comments, opinions etc, then either:
(a) somehow you just won't see them;
(b) even if you see them, you won't understand them. |
Hi ALG - I don't know quite what prompted me to reply to this. Someone at the forum emailed me a while ago and I've been lurking a little.
I was going to reply with some other possible scenarios. Like with me, for instance, it sometimes happens that I join a forum that looks interesting and start posting, but then something in my life distracts me and I forget to go back.
Of course, your proposition makes a lot of sense. Critics or doubters are much more likely to vanish after posting than people who already believe the prevalent philosophy of the forum, or are ready to adopt it. And at the other end of the scale, forums have those habitual posters, who dedicate a good deal of their time to 'educating' others in the philosophy, or just enjoy the community as a normal part of their life, or - there must be some - use their involvement as a substitute for other activities that might provide them a more rounded life, those who are addicted in some way. I'd bet that a rigorous DBRT (double-blind, randomised trial) would support such a hypothesis.
But there's something else about your explanation that makes me wonder if the LoA applies to itself. Your explanation - or any hypothesis about relationships between events - is a thought or a set of thoughts that is yours alone, and maybe its validity therefore only applies to you. Surely the LoA (if taken as
the law of nature) spells the end of science and rational philosophy and all sentences of the kind "X happens because Y happened", since it says "X only appears to have happened because Y happened because you think so" (or at least "X only happened
for you because Y happened, because you think so").
I'm pretty convinced of the fact of placebo, the objective viewpoint that our subjective beliefs
tend to shape our reality to some extent, which is roughly what the LoA, IM and SR theories are all about (but are dangerous when taken as the only laws of nature). The problematic side to it is that we are extremely prone to superstitious, irrational thinking.
I have given a few examples last time I was in a phase of posting here (I think), like the tourists who could "feel" the evil at a site where torture had taken place, and the peace and love at an ancient holy site, only to be told by the embarrassed guide later that day that he'd got mixed up and the locations were the opposite of what he'd told them. They'd been cooing and wow-ing all day about how you could actually feel the "energies", and came up with theories about vibes being left in the earth and stones...theories many people still believe despite (apparently) absolutely no rigorous scientific evidence to support it (and a great deal of scientific evidence supporting the hypothesis that such beliefs arise out of self-hypnosis, placebo, wishful thinking).
I meandered the other day to a website where someone was selling a week's camping (bring your own tent, food and equipment) and new-age 'education' for £330 for the week (not forgetting to tell us that 330 is a 'master number' - ooooooh!), the purpose of which was to make final alignments to the spiritual energies of humanity and the Earth so that Ascention could come about (and we'd all live or die happily ever after, I guess).
Now I might have sent him a critical email asking whether he actually believed his esoteric, ego-massaging nonsense or had any objective evidence that he could alter the history of the world by holding rituals in a field in England, whether he considered his business to be manipulative spiritual consumerism at all, that sort of thing - a kind of "Garbage, all of it" email - but I would probably not have bothered to continue the conversation for long.
I suppose I'm not ready to hear his message. My energies aren't refined enough. I'm too closed-minded. I'm creating my own reality in which things aren't just automatically the way I decide they're going to be because it would be really cool that way.
Sometimes I feel that our susceptibility to self-hypnosis and mumbo-jumbo and magical thinking has been our worst problem though all human history - we believe what people tell us and what we hope or fear is true (and slaughter those who are convinced of different truths) - and I'm tempted to spend a master number of pounds to go to such events to try to wake people up. Of course, I would probably be asked to leave for disrupting the proceedings with my "negative" energy. Of course, the value of recognising self-hypnosis (LoA) is that it also helps us to see the relativity of our views, and thus is one of the most useful things to help humans stop slaughtering each other, too. It's just a matter of balance, I think. Denying objective reality altogether is just another dogmatic position, another entrenched view, of which the believer tends to try to convince others.
Basically, does it matter if you're right or wrong when you say "everything in your reality is attracted by your thoughts"? Doesn't it mean there's no point in telling people what you think? It's only what you think, after all. It has no objective validity whatsoever (?).
Don't people believe in the LoA simply because they believe in the LoA? I suspect that there is an objective reality as well as human thought. It is not equally true that daveangeles has left because he's not interested anymore and that he's reading avidly in between sessions of channelling Venusian emperors.
Peace and Love
John