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Originally Posted by pokilty  I've admittedly been on-and-off with practicing LoA, but I feel like whenever I think or read about it, my intuition nags at me. Lately following my intuition has given me greater results than LoA, so I can't dismiss it any more.
In order to successfully use the Law of Attraction, you must first believe that it will work. This is an impasse if you're a skeptic, because skeptics want to try it to believe it. This is what the physical world teaches us - that if I see it then I'll believe it, rather than if I believe it then I'll see it (I understand that some of you will want to say, "no! that's just what you've been taught to think", but bear with me...).
I think what bothers me is that there's only one place I see this "believe then see" ideology appear in the world -- and that's religion. Almost every religion operates by letting you know that God doesn't work for you unless you believe in him first. Now, I'm a strong atheist and I've seen many ways in which following organized religion can be disempowering.
To pull this together, I understand that you must have an open mind and not dismiss anything that could be a possibility. But, if I were to live my life by "believing then seeing", I feel like I would be a totally disconnected fanatic just to try anything. What sets LoA apart that means I should give it a shot any more than believing something else? Maybe I should try believing animals can talk and see where that goes. Or believing that I can see the fourth dimension. If I came to this forum with, "Guess what guys, I tried believing that wiggling my toes can affect the world, and now I can fly!", would everybody start wiggling their toes?
I hope this didn't seem like an attack of any sort, but I can't rid this uneasiness and I'd like to understand why. I feel like in the end it might come down to, "We never guaranteed it's the best belief, it just worked for us", but I'm looking for more insight if it's available  |
I have a different take, which is that the maleability of external reality is much less than is being posed here by the believers, if they believe in external reality at all, which some do not seem to. What I believe is very maleable is internal reality, which means that as you begin to put some effort into directing external affairs, your internal mental reality changes in subtle but powerful ways, with the general result that you now think you are actually creating (external, or 'real' as some people call it) 'reality'.
In that sense I do see LoA as very much a religion, which as you observe, is based on faith itself rather than using faith as some kind of vehicle to getting across a particular religious doctrine. However, looking at this more closely, there are two things to observe: 1) LoA does have all sorts of doctrine, much of which has been presented here, and much more of which you can find in books and on the net. It is very similar to religions, old and new, 2) it is a kind of meta-religion, as regards that point about faith causing reality, as observed already.
Examples of optical illusions and other mistakes of comprehension have been used as an 'insight' into how our mind changes reality. However, if you compare this with the scheme I'm setting out here, you will hopefully see that it demonstrates how our beliefs change our beliefs - internal reality - not external. The picture doesn't change. It has an objective reality. If it didn't, people couldn't post it on the internet and confuse you about its implications.
It is because of this maleability of our internal model of reality, our vulnerability to self-delusion, that we must doubt our 'intuitions' and, if there is a method, check them out. One method people use, tried and tested, is all the empirical observation and peer-review process of science. Science, if you want to investigate these effects more, has a great deal to say about them (in the field of psychology, I mean, rather than quantum mechanics, in case anyone's confused).