Garbage, all of it.

[Acting Like Godot]

Ah, all the sound and fury. Maybe it's time I take two steps back and write something which hopefully is of some value to all readers here, regardless of what their individual current beliefs may be.

The basic proposition is that "thought affects reality". This very wide proposition can be considered at many different levels.

At one extreme end, we may say for instance, that the sum total of reality is completely dependent on one person's consciousness (Steve Pavlina). Or we may conclude that reality is mostly illusion (Buddha). Or we may say that the subatomic particles that comprise the universe are constantly blinking in and out of existence depending on how consciousness is observing them (quantum physicist Fred Alan Wolf).

Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, we may say, for instance, that the greatest influence on a person's life is his own thinking. Or that positive thinking is key to great success. Or that by identifying our own limiting beliefs and overcoming them, we will be able to grow, develop and lead much more meaningful lives. "As a man thinketh, so he becomes" etc.

At a rather mundane level, we say that "thought affects reality", in the sense we can, for example, cause our hands or feet to move, just by thinking about it or deciding to do it. At this level, the proposition is uncontroversial and I discuss it no further.

Considering the nature of this site (Personal Development for Smart People), there is little doubt that most, if not all, readers here have experimented with deliberately altering their thoughts, emotions, attitudes, beliefs etc, in an attempt to grow, improve themselves, achieve happiness or success, fulfill their potential etc.

This is not limited to forummers in the "Intention Manifestation" section of the forum, but includes forummers in other sections as well - for example "Emotional Mastery"; "Character and Contribution"; "Spirituality, Consciousness and Awareness" .... even "Health & Fitness" etc.

So the question is ... where do we go from here?

Where IM often runs into controversy is the proposition that it can (or will) "magically" generate events and circumstances, in response to a person's thoughts. This leads to a lot of discussion of how exactly one should try to think, in order to generate the desired kinds of events and circumstances. It also leads to a lot of discussion along the lines of "Oh, you are such a foolish bunch of superstitious villagers to believe this crap."

Personally, up till about two years ago, I was probably as skeptical as Mrs Cogan. Around then, I decided to suspend some of my skepticism and permit myself a little curiosity (this is sometimes known as "keep an open mind"). And then around fifteen months ago, I decided to do a full-fledged experiment, using my life as the guinea pig.

Well, the results are in:

.... and it is not possible for me to ignore them. My experience with the law of Attraction has been such that it would be illogical for me to dismiss it. The very, very least I can do for myself is to carry on the experiment and see what else is going to happen.

I am quite well aware that there are some people who have experimented with LOA but failed to achieve the desired results (see Dave Angeles, OP). Well I think that experience is the best teacher. Whatever "magical" may mean to you, if you can't do it, then go back to a more mundane, basic, everyday level and start working on your thoughts and beliefs from there.

For example, suppose you are overweight; too lazy to exercise; your social life is pathetic; and you don't have any personal time for your hobbies. You've manifested for a genie to change your life overnight (or by next week, latest, and oh yeah, you asked for world peace too, just by the way), and it didn't work.

What you need to do is try adjusting your thoughts, beliefs and attitudes step by step. It could begin with a small step like telling yourself, "Today, I will consume smaller portions for each of my meals", and doing so. Or something like, "Instead of moping about my pathetic social life, today I will call X and Y and ask them if they want to go out with me." Or "since I never seem to have time to do the things I want, I'd better organise myself and learn to manage my time better." Small, believable, positive thoughts about things you can actually do.

I trust it's quite easy to see how thinking such thoughts can lead to an improvement in your life circumstances. Nothing particularly "magical". However - and this is the point I really want to make - all this is nevertheless good, general practice for cultivating the ability to choose your own thoughts at will. Every negative thought you successfully banish, and every positive thought you successfully choose, increases your future ability to banish negative thoughts and choose positive thoughts.

Most people have very limited ability to choose their own thoughts. They are stuck in the same thinking patterns and attitudes, whether about their work, or their family, or their community, or themselves, or the country, or the world etc - and they can't even see it. What we should seek to do, in the terminology of Stephen Covey (a strictly non-LOA PD writer, by the way) is to increase that space between stimulus and response; in other words, increase our ability to deliberately think and choose our response to a given event (rather than instinctively react, like a single-celled brainless organism).

And when you have really cultivated some serious, conscious, general ability to change your own thoughts at will .......... you are ready to bring some serious, conscious "magic" with your life.

And by then you won't even need to "do" much .... apart from think.

[Acting Like Godot]

And Mrs Cogan, stop it. It's painful, the way you embarrass yourself.

Originally Posted by MrsCogan

actually much of that *is* testable scientifically. You have to make some of the statements less vague--what makes chicken stew great? Taste? Nutritional value? Visually attractive?. Let's select taste. Now we make a testable prediction: If the soup tastes "great" then more than 2/3 of people who eat it will say they enjoy it. You get your mom to make a huge pot of stew and serve it to 20 people. If 2/3 of the people say they enjoy it, then there is some evidence suggesting that your opinion of your mom's stew is correct. Kraft foods and companies like it do this kind of testing all the time.

Kraft is not a scientific institution. An opinion poll is not scientific research. And the statistical reliability of a proposition is an entirely different matter from its scientific falsifiability or non-falsifiability.

I could convey a survey on anything - for example:

"Is my mother's chicken stew delicious?"
"Is Mrs Cogan a silly person?"
"Do you believe in God?"

Given a sufficiently large sample size, I can always draw a statistically reliable conclusion from the raw data. This is not the same, however, as saying that my mother's chicken stew is scientifically proven to be delicious, or that Mrs Cogan is scientifically proven to be a silly person, or that God is scientifically proven to exist.

[cylon]

Wow this thread has really taken off. One dude comes in to say "it's all crap!" then one lady attracts a thread with the word "garbage" in it and aligns with that.... maybe this could be the official "LOA is a bunch of garbage and therefore I can't help but post about a topic that drives me nuts over and over again, something that I would never in a million years try out for myself... gee I can't seem to stop myself from posting in this thread" thread.

Almost as if a desire to refute LOA brings more opportunities to refute LOA.

It is good to have this debate though... our own doubts draw these things to us of course. The degree we want to prove to others is the degree of doubt we have within ourselves.

For myself, I am still completely fascinated by the words "Bossy Boots" and I refuse to not be dying to use them in everyday conversation. The ony reason I re-clicked this thread is because of that term, and then I see it repeated at least 3 (three) times. Bossy Boots is being drawn into my awareness, along with polar bears.

Levity has ended. Resume debate.

[Lil Chris]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Kraft is not a scientific institution.

Aaaaaaahhhhh, I don't know why it was so funny to me... Thanks ALG


@tbushmoney,
I like what you had to say, I to think and feel there is a change among us...

@cylon,
Bossy Boots, Bossy Boots, Bossy Boots... I'm with ya man... The opportunity will arise today for you to try out your new phrase....

[cylon]

Thanks Chris. Though I may not know ultimately where Bossy Boots will lead me, I have faith that I shall be prepared for whatever revelations it may....reveal.

"What's that Bossy Boots? Quantum entanglement? You're silly."

Bossy Boots and cylon-- best friends forever.




Gotta love it.

[Lil Chris]

Originally Posted by cylon

"What's that Bossy Boots? Quantum entanglement? You're silly."

Bossy Boots and cylon-- best friends forever.

This put a smile on my face... It should be on tee-shirts and coffee mugs...

[cylon]

Lol. If only Angela knew what she started....

[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by tbushmoney

Mrs Cogan,
First and foremost, I'd like to say "what's poppin?". Apparently thats the cool way to greet people now a days, more commonly used amongst the hip hop/street crowd, although I do not consider myself hip hop or street, I do find the phrase humorous, therefor I say it.

It is a cute phrase. I'm not hip hop either (0bviously) but I adore hip hop dancing and watch it whenever I can.

Basically, I believe that we're on the verge of a massive change in this world. Actually I don't really believe that... I know it. I can feel it in me and I can see it when I look around. The world is changing, something is happening all over. This feeling inside of me is not something I've had all of my life, and it's not something that science can explain.

Saying "science can't explain X" has never been a safe bet.

Science is a good tool to understand lots of this physical world. . . Not needing to "prove" everything to understand it and believe it. Taking it on faith. Not faith in some white bearded whacky god who exists outside of creation in a nice safety net of white clouds, but faith in ourselves. . . This feeling and just a plain "knowing" that science can't explain.

I have a deep affection for discovering the truth as well as we can know the truth andI have a very rich fantasy life (I write a lot of fiction). I think you may be confusing “faith” (as in belief without evidence) with “faith” (belief with evidence) which is more like “confidence.”

I understand that you are 60+ years old. That is 60 years of life on this planet.

I think I said “almost” 60. I’m 58.

That is impressive, I must say! That is also 60 years of holding onto vast amounts of beliefs about reality, existence, and life in general. I can see why it's not quite so easy for you to grasp the concept that you create your reality, after living for 60 years believing we live in a fully objective world where science rules every function of our lives and we just have to make due with whatever comes our way, I wouldn't want to listen to a bunch of "new agers" sayin' that we create our own realities and that whatever pain/happiness/lack/abundance we experience is just that which we have brought to ourselves.

Actually, almost nobody on this planet believes in a completely objective reality. Most think they can manipulate reality to some degree. Most prayers boil down to “Dear God, please violate the laws of physics for my personal convenience.” I was no exception. I had a lucky shirt. I didn’t drive on certain bad luck streets. I would wash my car to try to make it rain. I did astrology. I consulted tarot cards. I was pretty good at the I Ching.

In fact, at 60, looking back through my lifetime of love, loss, sadness, pain, happiness, I think I might be a little insulted hearing that I brought most of it to me!

Not in the least. Grownups take responsibility for their lives. I know that some pain/unhappiness is from random chance and some is from my own mess-ups. I know some of my good fortune is from random chance and some is from my own hard work. I just don’t attribute the random chance to magic.

So I understand! But a plain and simple fact is, no matter how hard you try and convince me that it's not true, you won't be able to.

Well, it’s good to know that you are keeping an open mind on the subject.

Because I know it is. Not because I read Steve's blog, or LoA books, but because I experience it in my life all the time. I've had experiences that science can never explain (out of body experiences,

OOB experiences are scientifically testable and have been. They are dreams.

knowing what people are going to say before they say it,

Very easy to do

intending for something and receiving it, hell I intended money the other day and received a 250 check in the mail that got me out of debt plus 20 bucks).

So was this a random gift from an unknown stranger or does it have an ordinary explanation?

This experience is what proves this to me.

How many times have you needed money and it didn’t just pop up? What you are doing is called "hit counting." You count the successes and ignore the failures. That way you have a big, solid string of successes you can point to.

Even when I get into arguments with family members during Christmas, I look back at what I was thinking during those times and sure enough I was thinking "Oh man, here it comes she's gonna start a fight with me over something." Now you may say that I just know my family pretty well, but would that fight have started had I not thought that? If I were thinking "Oh here comes mom! Let's have a great day together", would that fight have started? Who knows. Who knows.

If you know someone well, you know what sets them off and you know what to expect from them in any given circumstance. This isn’t magic.

There's going to come a point, hopefully, if you allow yourself to see this, that you realize that everything in existence is made of the same exact stuff.

Wait a minute. I thought there was no objective reality. Are you saying there actually is?

Everything is made of the same one substance. Once you realize that you realize that everything in existence is just an expression of that substance, including you, including me. And yes SCIENCE can prove this, that everything is made of the same stuff. Einstein attempted to prove it back in the day. Einstein. One of the smartest minds of our time believed everything was ONE. He even said that if he was religious he would be Buddhist (where they believe that everything is ONE and that ONE is the purest essence of everything).

I have no quarrel with however reality turns out to be. If there is a theory of everything. Fine. If there is no theory of everything. Fine. If reality is made out of one thing, two things or many things. Fine. No problem. I don’t need the universe to be any particular way just to suit my personal tastes.

Basically our society kind've sucks. The folks in charge don't exactly want the population to know this info, because well, then they wouldn't have the power they do.

What info? That everything is one? A billion Buddhists already know it. Most scientists suspect it. It’s a VERY poorly kept secret.

That's a whole other discussion, but basically, everyone's been fed abunch of lies and distractions (look at the mindless crap on television, just to keep the mind distracted, keep us from thinking too much) to keep us all from finding the truth, which is that we create our own realities and that we are all in fact one, and that ONE is in fact God.

Which God?

TV works hard to reflect society back to itself. It’s just a mirror. I’m curious how come it didn’t work on you? The distraction, I mean. Are you saying it’s really a lousy distraction that only works on some people?

That's the truth. Straight up. Take it or leave it. I know it's the truth because I experienced it in my own life, and I don't need you to believe it for me to believe it. I want you to believe it so you can live a better, more fuller life, for you. Because we're one. And as expressions of that one, it's our right to live life to the fullest that we can, and this is an essential tool to do that.

I already believe that nature is one thing. A consistent, rational whole. But I also believe that physics will not be violated for our personal convenience no matter how sincerely we cross our fingers and make a wish.

[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by tbushmoney

Yo baby doll,
I think you should use some psychedelic drugs. Just a suggestion. I smoked salvia before (its legal and you can buy it in stores) and oh man, I swear to god I was transported to another dimension with these crazy beings all around me. It's nuts! Or eat some mushrooms. Those things will do you wonders, definitely make you question alot.

Throughout most of the 1970s I considered LSD and mushrooms to be a major food group with marijuana as a frequently served vegetable. I lost interest in the early 1980s and wandered off to do other things. Now I'm just high on life.

Oh yeah, and Mrs Cogan, go listen to some Beatles, or Van Morrison's enlightenment CD. This is not some new thing. Folks have been saying all this for a long time now. It's not to late to change your life!

I never got interested in Van Morrison but I know all the words to almost all the Beatle's songs. These days I'm a devotee of Dave Matthews who, with Melissa Etheridge and Sting, forms the perfect trinity.

[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by cylon

Wow this thread has really taken off. One dude comes in to say "it's all crap!" then one lady attracts a thread with the word "garbage" in it and aligns with that.... maybe this could be the official "LOA is a bunch of garbage and therefore I can't help but post about a topic that drives me nuts over and over again, something that I would never in a million years try out for myself... gee I can't seem to stop myself from posting in this thread" thread.

think of it as "Doom" for intellectuals

Almost as if a desire to refute LOA brings more opportunities to refute LOA.

It is good to have this debate though... our own doubts draw these things to us of course. The degree we want to prove to others is the degree of doubt we have within ourselves.

doubt is a good thing. Certainty is bad. Certainty is a closed door and doubt is an open one. I want to refute fuzzy thinking and misunderstood science. Also I didn't see any skepticism and it's my personal chore to bring balance into the universe. I saw only an echo chamber of the same ideas. There's nothing wrong with looking into a mirror all the time, but sometimes it's refreshing to look out a window.

For myself, I am still completely fascinated by the words "Bossy Boots" and I refuse to not be dying to use them in everyday conversation. The ony reason I re-clicked this thread is because of that term, and then I see it repeated at least 3 (three) times. Bossy Boots is being drawn into my awareness, along with polar bears.

Levity has ended. Resume debate.

I'd never heard the expression before. It has a certain resonance with "you ain't the boss a me!" <stamps foot>

[Dan.Linehan]

Hey MrsCogan,

Welcome to the forums.

Have you head the Dave Matthews / Tim Reynolds albums? Brilliant. They have a newer holiday album out too. Just gorgeous stuff.

As far as the "thoughts creating reality" discussion, its certainly interesting, isn't it?

You can't do anything without thinking about it first, so the statement that "thought creates reality" certainly rings true, but then there's the endless debate about whether or not you are bypassing action.

Here's how I like to think of it.

Imagine this circle:

Consciousness --> Beliefs --> Thoughts --> Action --> Reality --> Consciousness.

"Thoughts create reality" skips the Action step, but that doesn't mean the statement isn't true. Let's try some others:

• Action Creates Consciousness.
  Have a kid and find out.
  
  
• Reality Creates Beliefs.
  Sure, this is the whole field of modern science.
  
  
• Consciousness Creates Thoughts.
  Sure does. I know of no other way to create thoughts.
  
  
• Beliefs Create Action.
  Definitely. Whenever you take an action your core beliefs are almost certainly behind it.
  
  
• Thoughts Create Reality.
  To change reality you have to think about it first.

[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

And Mrs Cogan, stop it. It's painful, the way you embarrass yourself.

I'm ok. Don't worry.

Kraft is not a scientific institution. An opinion poll is not scientific research. And the statistical reliability of a proposition is an entirely different matter from its scientific falsifiability or non-falsifiability.

Kraft doesn't need to be a scientific institution. Anybody can use the scientific method, even you. It's open source.

I think you are under the false impression that science produces certainty. It doesn't. You said the chicken stew hypothesis wasn't testable. It certainly is and I showed you how. It produces results that seem to verify your assertion about how great the stew is. That's all science ever does. Sometimes it does that so well that you can rely on the data without question (Theory of Evolution, Theory of Gravity, Germ Theory of Disease, Atomic Theory, etc). Sometimes not. But all tests produce data. And that's all the test is really for.

I could convey a survey on anything - for example:

"Is my mother's chicken stew delicious?"
"Is Mrs Cogan a silly person?"
"Do you believe in God?"

Given a sufficiently large sample size, I can always draw a statistically reliable conclusion from the raw data. This is not the same, however, as saying that my mother's chicken stew is scientifically proven to be delicious, or that Mrs Cogan is scientifically proven to be a silly person, or that God is scientifically proven to exist.

science doesn't prove things. It only creates a high (or low) degree of confidence that a hypothesis is true. With the theory of gravity the confidence is so high they can easily land a little toy robot on Mars. With remote viewing the confidence is so low the CIA is embarrassed they ever considered it.

And no amount of asking people if they believe in God will prove that God exists. You're right about that. It just tells you that a lot of people believe (or won't admit atheism to a stranger with a clip board). Richard Dawkins thinks there's a potential scientific test to prove the existence of God. I disagree with him. I think God's existence is untestable.

[Dan.Linehan]

@ MrsCogan,

Hey, your pocket Darwin links are broken. You can update them to point here if you like.

[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

@ MrsCogan,

Hey, your pocket Darwin links are broken. You can update them to point here if you like.

Thanks! I'll fix it on Wed. when I get back to work.

[tbushmoney]

Hey i hope we're not "bashing" mrs cogan for her differing views than ours. That ain't cool. I'm sure you've all experienced what it's like for someone to do that to you. Everything is a choice and you have to respect the individuals choices.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by tbushmoney

... you have to respect the individuals choices.

Did you go to that same Bossy Boots School?

Actually, I don't have to respect an individual's choices. The person, yes; the choices, no. That's my choice, of course.

[tbushmoney]

Come on, you know what I mean. She clearly doesn't want to believe in Law Of Attraction, and that's fine. That's her choice.

[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by Angela

Actually, I don't have to respect an individual's choices. The person, yes; the choices, no. That's my choice, of course.

I absolutely agree with you 100%! Some ideas are not worthy of respect. People, always.

Always.

I'm human. If I feel attacked I can be pretty snarky, but generally speaking I will attack ideas strenuously and not attack the person at all. There's no sin in having a bad idea. Anybody can have them. I've had bad ideas by the bushel.

One of my missions in life is to teach people about science. I'm pretty passionate about it. And I'm well aware I can be overbearing. It's something I work on. I came to this site to learn how to get up earlier, get my writing on track and to learn how to make money with the work I love. I have already benefited from Steve's ideas. Imagine my delight when I found that there was also a rich opportunity to teach people about science! (Creationists are all breathing a collective sigh of relief )

Obviously, I think the universe is beautiful and doesn't need to be sprinkled with pixie dust. I want to help other people to see that beauty and let all the pixie dust go into the bushel with all the other bad ideas you embrace, learn from and discard as you grow.

[Angela]

I get what you're saying, Mrs.Cogan, and I'm sorry I made you feel unwelcome or attacked. I will watch myself for signs of that showing up again.

Please feel free to continue sharing what's coming up for you, and I will do my best not to take away any feeling of safety in doing so.

I am a little sensitive to having my "you have to" button pushed, as you have seen.

[wolfgang]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

"Intrapersonal" intelligence is explained as follows:


For obvious reasons, I kinda suspect that people with high intrapersonal intelligence will have a big natural advantage when it comes to conscious creation.

High intrapersonal intelligence makes you more attuned to your own feelings, dreams, ideas, emotions, goals and intentions. What more could a conscious creator ask for?

There should not be some special trait to "get in". This that you say is like the Christians saying if you don't believe what we do then you are damned forever.

If conscious creation is in effect - everyone is doing it naturally fro being in the world and continueing to exist. The conscious part is a matter of your own desire to pay attention, not based on some certain kind of intelligence.

[wolfgang]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Ummm .... the rude way of putting it is that if your intrapersonal intelligence is very low, then maybe you just aren't cut out to consciously use LOA in a big way.

Again, this is creating a hierarchy out of LoA which is not really part of the picture. it is available to all - or it doesn't make anysense to believe LoA.

[Dan.Linehan]

Originally Posted by wolfgang

If conscious creation is in effect - everyone is doing it naturally fro being in the world and continueing to exist. The conscious part is a matter of your own desire to pay attention, not based on some certain kind of intelligence.

Well, some people can pay attention better than oth... oooh! That dog has a fluffy tail!!

[wolfgang]

Originally Posted by MrsCogan

I agree that intention-manifestation and The Secret are all hogwash with earflaps. (I have a very foul mouth and I'm working on it.) They are based on an ignorance of how the world works. In physics negatives attract positives and vice versa. The yin-yang symbol is much more indicative of the real world than the medieval sympathetic magic of "if I think about it, it will drop in my lap."

Just to pint out that the attraction of the LOA is more of a sympathetic resonance than magnetism.

Sympathetic resonance is when a string, like a guitar string, will vibrate it the same pitch is in the air.

The yin/yang is a mutually arising duality model - not what vibrations attracts other vibrations. Duality becomes a whole when looking at LoA as a spiritual path.

[wolfgang]

Originally Posted by MrsCogan

And in physics like repels like. Only opposites attract.

Like vibrations come together. Ocean waves are built on constructive reinforcement.

The opposties that attract in physics are part of a duality that is objective and are "parts of a whole" that we have thought to seperate in our minds.

[Lil Chris]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

Well, some people can pay attention better than oth... oooh! That dog has a fluffy tail!!

HA! That made me smile... Thanks, Dan

I would agree that paying attention is a skill, a skill that can be developed by anyone who chooses to do so. I would also like to add, many books describe being able to think a certain way, again which is available to all, who choose to do so... From what I can make of it, this certain way of thinking is to think in images, not in words...

My 2 cents...

[wolfgang]

Originally Posted by MrsCogan

let me paraphrase for you. Einstein was arguing the exact opposite. You must assume an objective reality and you ignore objective reality at your peril. If you create your own reality, then there is no particular reason to learn how the world actually works (since your magic mind can make it work however you can imagine it) and that is very, very bad. It will get you into more trouble than you can possibly imagine. Objective reality can and will reach up and bite you in the ass.

I tend to think this way too - can't deny the school of hard knock of the 3d world - but that there are two "things" happening. There is a comon field we are all one of oneness with but also we each have our own bounadaries and individualities. There is the ego and there is oneness - both exists or are not to be denied.

Einstein also said

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

[wolfgang]

Originally Posted by tbushmoney

Come on, you know what I mean. She clearly doesn't want to believe in Law Of Attraction, and that's fine. That's her choice.

It looks more like LoA stuff needs a proper frame to fit. Not wanting to believe something is not what is going on.

"Thoughts create reality" is definitly out to lunch as a literal interpretation. I don't think any of the hardest LoA "believers" say that directly out of context. The context is really that reality presents itself to your individual self and becomes more to your individual liking when your spiritual self comes through you, when your will is also a divine will. The thoughts are like indicators of how much spirit you are letting in. Thoughts that we keep that interferes with spirit bog us down and we get to see "stuff not working" because our habitual mind is in high gear. Thoughts or no thoughts that are coming from spirit and oneness are naturally resonate with manifestation. I tend to put LoA in that vien, where I have felt or sensed oneness and everything was exactly as it is, perfectly unfolding as divine light was seeing through me the direct experience of "LoA" was very tangiable. However, I'm not sitting around trying to make the universe give me "things".

LoA is not here to teach us how to reverse gravity but to be able to find peace and harmony which, then helps you in your particular circum stance of life. After all the LoA material says to tag your desires with - "and for the highest good of all".

[Angela]

Originally Posted by wolfgang

"Thoughts create reality" is definitly out to lunch as a literal interpretation.

I agree with you that the context makes a difference. I do believe that "thoughts create reality," and I can see where someone might interpret that as "Reality for me is the belief that I can materialize the presence of a mazzerati out of thin air," when my context is actually: "Reality for me equals how my life occurs for me." I have all the power in the world to choose and change the actual reality of how my life occurs for me. I can generate a life I'm in love with, or I can generate a life of constant struggle. That is real power.

In that context, maybe even MrsCogan would agree with me -- maybe.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by wolfgang

There should not be some special trait to "get in". This that you say is like the Christians saying if you don't believe what we do then you are damned forever.

If conscious creation is in effect - everyone is doing it naturally fro being in the world and continueing to exist. The conscious part is a matter of your own desire to pay attention, not based on some certain kind of intelligence.

My own thoughts on the matter are a little more evolved than that.

Going back to MI theory, we know that most tasks in life need not necessarily be tackled with any one specific intelligence; and in fact most tasks can be tackled with a variety of intelligences.

For example, to play a musical instrument, the most obvious intelligence required would be musical intelligence; but one lacking in musical intelligence may compensate with, say, logical intelligence, eg in figuring out how to read musical notation; or bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, which would involve fine motor skills, eg in plucking the strings of the musical instrument. Meanwhile, we also predict that the musicians with a great sense of showmanship are likely to be those with high interpersonal intelligence, as they have a better natural sense of how to relate to the audience.

Nevertheless, as I said, the most obviously fundamental intelligence for a musician is still going to be musical intelligence.

Now - for tasks like:

1. identifying what you really want in life
2. becoming aware of your own emotions
3. identifying your own beliefs
4. setting your own goals, etc

MI theory tells you that the most fundamental intelligence is simply intrapersonal intelligence. If you consider (1) - (4) to be important for conscious creation with LOA, then it follows that people with high intrapersonal intelligence have a natural advantage with conscious creation with LOA.

It does not mean that people with relatively lower intrapersonal intelligence are not also creating their reality through their own thinking. What it means is that they have less ability to consciously create.

In a way, it is nice to think that we all have equal ability in everything. However, I definitely cannot compose like Mozart and I am sure my ability to consciously create is lesser than that of Jesus.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by wolfgang

Just to pint out that the attraction of the LOA is more of a sympathetic resonance than magnetism.

Yes I already pointed that out to Mrs Cogan.

The other example I gave of attraction not being a case of like repels like is ...... plain old gravity.