[pokilty]

Ah there's tons of great responses here, thanks everybody! I'd like to comment on a few that struck me.

Originally Posted by Anagogy

... I think the problem arose because of where the power was placed. If you place your power in something external to yourself, like a god, or a preacher, or guru it is certainly disempowering to you, unless you believe you are on good terms with said god, preacher, or guru. ... The wonderful thing now is that we are consciously realizing the power of belief itself. ...

This is a great distinction between LoA and religion that I didn't make. It makes sense that religion tries to take faith one step further, when faith itself might be the "ultimate power".

Originally Posted by Anagogy

You are looking for concrete truth in a vacuum of abstraction, it is perfectly natural to feel uneasy. ...

I'm glad to know it's not unusual!

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Your problem is quite simple. You're moving too fast. ... Just reach for the more-positive thoughts, within the current range of thoughts which you subjectively accept to be "realistic". ...

You're right, I'm trying to take big steps because I feel like it will prove something. From now on I'll take small steps that I could more easily believe in, then find the correlations between my thoughts and reality.

Originally Posted by cylon

... I'll just point out some differences between LOA and RELIGION, as I see it ... LOA is not something that only works if you believe it. It's always on, always working, for everyone. Just like water makes us all wet "good" and "bad" alike, all people get wet in water. There is no judgement or requirement to experience getting soaked in the rain.

I really appreciate that insight, it's easy to forget sometimes.

I hate to seem like I'm nitpicking since I get the gist of what you're saying, but I don't think the analogy you gave helps me find differences between LoA and religion. If I were a religious person, I would most likely argue that God is always with us whether we want him to be or not. That gives me a creepy suspicion that LoA and religion are alike again. But, like I said, I'm just nitpicking

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Sure. The uneasiness is fear. The fear is that if you start deliberately entertaining certain types of thoughts, they will lead you to act and behave in certain ways, and ultimately those actions will lead to adverse consequences.

I don't think the uneasiness is fear of misuse of my thoughts, it's more like fear of the unknown. I've entertained the idea that thoughts can affect reality for a while now, and I haven't found any reason not to believe it yet. This post is really just my intuition pushing me a little further to pick out the weeds that grow after thinking on the subject too long

But, I will certainly follow your advice on taking it slower. I can imagine how skeptical I would be if I tried to study quantum physics before I had any basis in much simpler mechanical physics.

Originally Posted by Lena Carpenter

... I think the answer here is to start small, to feel better about things you are attracting. For instance, you can start feeling hopeful that things you want will come. Then as you start to associate better feeling thoughts with the subject, you can start feeling emotions even higher on the emotional scale. ...

Thanks for tackling my question straight on. It seems like what you are suggesting is certainly the route I have to take now

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

For example, it appears in psychology & neuroscience. Some people are told that they will be shown a picture of X. Some people are told that they will be shown a picture of Y. Then they are all shown the same picture. The people in the first group all insist that they see X in the picture, but the people in the second group all insist that they see Y.

Aha! That's a great example, thanks. I can understand how the beliefs of the people in this experiment precede what they actually see. For me, the difference between this and LoA is that their beliefs were derived from many decades of seeing familiar shapes of human faces, whereas LoA has little direct correlation that I've actively noticed. Of course, that completely describes why I should try your "reverse engineering" experiment, so I just turned everything back on me