[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Tim Brownson

In regard to the Metta Bhavana or loving kindness I do know a bit about that and do it 3 or 4 times per week myself. I actually believe in putting love 'out there' and I just don't believe it has any effect other than to make the giver feel good.

Ah. I thought your point was whether there is any connection between "Buddhism" and the "LOA".

If you look at LOA techniques, and then you look at the loving-kindness meditation methods in Buddhism, then you see quite clearly that the loving-kindness meditations in Buddhism are pretty much how you would use the LOA to manifest a happier, more loving world.

So that is one example that I would cite to you, to illustrate the connecton between Buddhism and the LOA.

Whether you believe that those Buddhist meditations work is of course a different sort of question (just as whether you believe that the LOA exists is another question).

All this kind of supports what I said in the post. That the goal posts are on the move. In the stuff i read from a few years ago, none of this came up. Now it's like "Yeh but we really meant EVERYTHING is the LoA"

What you really mean to say is:

(a) you perceived that there were goal posts
(b) you perceived that someone or some people put them there a few years ago (who are these people? I dunno)
(c) you perceived that the goal posts are being moved now by some people (again, who are they? I dunno, except that from your latest post, I'm supposed to be one of them).

Sounds like plenty of reality-creation you're doing there, with your mind.

Your comment about "a few years ago" is also somewhat baffling to me, because I really don't know what you were reading "a few years ago". Many of my favourite books about the LOA are much older than a "few years ago" eg:

-- The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, by Deepak Chopra (first published in 1996)

-- Personal Power Through Awareness, by Sanayan Roman (first published in 1986)

-- Creative Visualisation, by Shakti Gawain (first published in 1978)

-- The Nature of Personal Reality, by Jane Roberts (first published in 1974)

-- The Master Key System, by Charles Haanel (first published in 1917)

.... and I'm aware that the phrase "Law of Attraction" was already being used more than 100 years ago (eg William Walker Atkinson published a book entitled "Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World" in 1906).

So .... whose goal posts are you referring to?

As for the meditation exercise, again you sound incredibly patronizing. I did do my research, I did read from multiple sources because I didn't believe it was BS, I wanted to think it was true. I actually doubted the rather right-leaning authors of the book. It was the research that led to the post and not vice versa.

The stats were based around violent crime and more specifically homicide and apparently theere were over 50 scientists helping to conduct the experiment and keep it as valid as possible.

The number of scientists does not seem terribly relevant to me. There are definitely still more than 50 scientists in the world disagreeing and debating about the effects of Vitamin C.

I hope you also do not misunderstand my post about that meditation exercise. I do not know whether it was BS or not BS; I do not particularly believe or disbelieve it. From what I know of it, however, I am quite firmly of the view that it was a badly-designed experiment. Therefore from a scientific view, WHATEVER the outcome might have been, it would not have reliable in a scientific sense.

You might not see this yet. What I invite you to do is compare this experiment with, say, William Tiller's double-blind experiment about the effects of meditating on fruit fly larvae (an account of this may be found in Lynne MacTaggart's book "The Intention Experiment").

Once you compare the two experiments, you will understand why I say that the TM anti-crime meditation must have very, very poor experimental controls (in comparison with Tiller's experiment, where every variable can be controlled and the exact outcomes can be measured and observed under laboratory conditions).

Brief summary of Tiller's experiment:

- One batch of fruit fly eggs is divided into 2 samples

- 4 highly experienced meditators meditate on 1 sample of eggs, sending "positive" energy to improve the health of the eggs in this sample

- Both samples are hatched under identical lab conditions

- Fruit flies are reared under identical lab conditions

- Average hatching time; average lifespan; average mortality rate of fruit flies from both samples are compared.

See how tightly this experiment is controlled? Whatever the outcome, you can have a much higher degree of scientific certainty that a correct conclusion can be drawn.

We all suffer from conformation bias you know, even you and me.

Of course. Confirmation bias is one way that the LOA works.

Really.