The Law of Attraction – Part 3

I've been thinking about this again and realise that this rediscovered journey into faith could resolve a few areas of confusion.

As I've mentioned before: I started my journey into the Christian grace message with my own revelation of what's come to be known as the Unionist message. Like others, I was led to believe that every little thing I did was an expression of the Holy Spirit living in me. Now I know this can't be true because not everything that I do is befitting of Christ. I liked the Unionist message because it went a long way towards explaining how ordinary people could achieve great, sometimes superhuman, things.  It also did a lot to relieve the burden of trying to be, do or have something your are not, through an effort of the will.

But I was always perplexed by what I would call The Evil Genius Syndrome: intelligent people using their ability and power for their personal gain, but to the detriment of the masses. The theory of Law of Attraction helps us to understand how people can use power, God-given power, for selfish or even evil purposes. I think it has something to do with the sheer power of believing in yourself.  There is a need to redefine selfishness. Fulfilling your own destiny and receiving blessings which benefit only yourself, are fine. Its only when your behaviour and actions adversely affect others, that it indeed becomes selfish and a bad thing.

When I think about it now, angels following people around, micro-managing every little things they say, think or do - it doesn't sound realistic. Even Law of Attraction points towards the inner self which is in tune with the Universe or God; and has the power to manifest those things you focus on and believe. I like the Unionist message in that it highlights those Bible verses that basically tell us that through Christ we are complete, possessing all the potential that we need to fulfil our destiny. Like others, I was confused because I was told that I already had the divine nature - but could hardly see any evidence of it in my life. The key to unlocking that God-given power from within, is through the mind. Firstly by establishing an overall positive disposition - predisposed to think positive thoughts and experience positive emotions, behaviour and experiences. Secondly, by exercising faith, Law of Attraction - they're the same thing really.

I prefer Law of Attraction to Word of Faith because its not limited to a Biblical framework. Kenneth Hagin always used to say in his books that whatever you wanted, see if there is a Bible verse that says you can have it. Darin Hufford of the Free Believers Network calls this Back-up Verse Theology. I know from experience that this can lead to extracting Bible verses out of their context and twisting them to suit a person's own needs. I'm sure everyone would agree that there are no Bible verses that say you can have a particular model of car (or any vehicle with an engine for that matter). Many Christian quote Philippians 4:19 as the basis for receiving what they want - but its rather generic, to say the least.

I can't help feeling frustrated with Hagin and Word of Faith. But I need to remind myself that Hagin was something of a pioneer for his time: he faced a great deal of opposition for extolling Biblical faith for healing and finances. Hagin also refuted following the Ten Commandments, pointing out the fact that we are under a New Covenant of love now; if we walk in love, we fulfil all the Ten Commandments. Hagin faced a lot of opposition for his stance on the Ten Commandments. At least Hagin got Christians thinking about living by faith and experiencing health and prosperity. Hagin also concurred with a lot of what the Unionist Message has to say. Grace preacher Joseph Prince often quotes Kenneth E. Hagin as being a major influence (perhaps the main influence, from what I gather) in his ministry.

Some teachers, including Hagin and Norman Vincent Peal (author of The Power of Positive Thinking) say that there is power in Bible verses. I believe in the power of God and the Gospel. I also value the Bible as a source of inspirational spiritual writings, which we can look to for guidance and encouragement.  But I'm inclined to believe now that any perceived power in Bible verses themselves is self-attributed, somewhat like the placebo effect. If someone experiences a miracle which they attribute to a Bible verse - I suppose it can't be a bad thing, in fact, its a good thing. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that a particular sequence of words has power, because they’re from the Bible.  I see that some Christians struggle to believe they can have, be or do some things - unless they're convinced that at least one Bible verse confirms it – this is rather restrictive, in my opinion.  I like Law of Attraction in that it focuses on the spiritual law of like-attracts-like, without getting distracted with many of the distractions of religion.  One can still believe in God and be a Christian, its just that Law of Attraction allows a shift of focus that might be beneficial for a time.

I like the way that Law of Attraction simply advocates attuning to your inner self to see what it is you really want. Experience has shown, however, that a confused, negative-minded person is often distracted by things they think they want, but don't really need. But it all comes down to the need to somehow first develop an overall balanced and solid disposition. Even "following the Word" by using the Bible as a guidebook, won't help much in the case of a confused person with a negative disposition. We must bear in mind that the Bible is open to human interpretation.  The same thing goes for sin: if a person is balanced and solid, they'll be inclined to know what’s right for them and have a good sense of what's right for everyone else, from a moral perspective. A person can't necessarily avoid sinning by being told what's right or wrong from their understanding of the Bible.

The Law of Attraction – Part 2

After listening to The Law of Attraction abridged version, I decided to download The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. The Secret is about Rhonda Byrne's experience with The Law of Attraction. Her marketing gambit with The Secret is in making reference to great people from the past - such as Plato, Mozart and the like, whom she claims used The Secret, although they might not have been aware of it. The book seemed to consist of a lot of quotes from various self help author's such as Joe Vitale and Jack Canfield. In fact, the quotes made up about 20 to 25 percent of the actual book. As you'd expect, there's not a great deal of new information in this book - it basically echoes what was already said in the LOA (as well as many other related books). However, there are some good points she makes. She emphasises the need to be grateful for what you have and to take the time to express that gratitude. She also emphasises the need to have positive emotions in order to attract positive circumstances. Rhonda Byrne recommends finding those things that make you happy and doing them when you feel down, in order to make a positive shift in your emotions.

As you'd expect, The Secret was full of anecdotes from well known self-help guru's of how they achieved amazing things. There's a testimony from Morris Goodman, the Miracle Man, who, after being paralysed from a plane crash, made a remarkable recovery through positive thinking. There's also a testimony from Jack Canfield, who was able to purchase a 4.5 million dollar mansion through believing in the success of his Chicken Soup for the Soul books. These people and their books often go on about how we can achieve anything we want. I'm uncomfortable with this approach as it encourages insecure people to try to attract incredible things into their life - things that they think will make them happy. What is evident to me is that in order to attract positive things into your life, you first have to be a balanced, secure and positive minded person first.

I read in a related book by James Weaver that its important to be content just as you are: you need to be able to live without those things that you're trying to attract. This probably goes a long way towards explaining why these things didn't work for me in the past. But I'm convinced that there is something to all of this - once you get away from all the marketing hype. In reality, I believe what we're able to attract is probably somewhat more down to earth than the stories we've been told. Its all about being true to what you really want in your heart - what is truly right for you at that time. But when a person is negative and confused - it becomes difficult to identity or to believe in those things. They say its as easy to attract a million dollars as it is to attract ten dollars. I suppose they're just trying to take the limits off our thinking. But its not an invitation to fantasise about things that are really not meant to be in our lives. There is a lot of confusion about this kind of thing and I wish self-help authors would do a lot more to clarify these things.

As I said before: I wasn't ready to use the Law of Attraction in the past as I was too negative. Its all about a person's disposition: if a person is positive, on the whole, they'll tend to attract positive people and things into their life; the reverse is also true. In fact, I'd say that positive people don't really have to use the LOA, as they're already using it, to some extent, without realising it. If a person is struggling with depression and anxiety, they'll no doubt want to attract a few, big, incredible things into their life, which they believe will change their life and make them happy. This approach won't work. For these reasons, I'd say that any method that shifts a person's overall disposition towards the positive, is more important than LOA related teaching and activity.

As a Christian I needed to focus on and accept the grace message. I needed to go beyond the righteousness-by-faith message of Joseph Prince, and to embrace the Freebeliever message, in order to take a critical look at religion and the church-life. Many Christians seem to stay at that stage: going over the grace message again and again. For me, I also needed to release negative beliefs by using The Work of Byron Katie. But now I feel that I can't progress much further with these methods. I've come a long way in the last five years and can honestly say that I've changed a lot and can be truly grateful for what I have. But I feel as if I'm living my life to fifty percent capacity. Some days I feel like my glass is half full, other times I feel my glass is half empty. I go from feeling genuinely grateful for what I have, to feeling unfulfilled.  I've made a big effort to come to terms with reality and to be happy with what I have, but I feel like I'm missing out on some things and I could do better.

I wanted to get the perspective of the LOA from someone lower down the food chain than Jack Canfield and his 4.5 million dollar mansion. So I downloaded a couple of eBooks by James Weaver to my Kindle. They're only short books, less than fifty pages, that relate his experience with LOA. James Weaver related things like how he was able to get some animals for his farm for free - through belief. He describes his experiences and some of the things he attracted, in the eBook, The 30 Day Attraction Experiment. In The Attraction Blueprint, James Weaver recommends a series of steps to attracting what you want in your life. He recommends taking time to determine what you really want and then making a written statement declaring that you already have it. He lists the techniques in the following order:
1) Visualisation; 2) Expressing gratitude; 3) Practising acceptance; 4) Reading your intention statement; 5) Eliminating limiting beliefs; 6) Raising your expectations; 7) Affirmations.

I've been thinking about what I really want. Unsurprisingly, a brand new Ferrari is pretty low down on the list.  I feel as if I'm in a stalemate situation now and that nothing will change unless I do something about it. So I'm going to make a written statement of my intentions for the things that are important to me now. James Weaver recommends reading your statement of intentions a few times first thing in the morning and last thing at night (and once or twice in between, during the day if you can).

The LOA and The Secret both quote Bible verses pertaining to asking, believing and receiving. It struck me that there is actually and accord between LOA and Word of Faith as taught by Kenneth E. Hagin. There are verses about faith in the Bible that cannot be ignored. It seems that with the focus that people put on the grace message, they seem to forget all about these verses of faith. But to do this would be to ignore a significant aspect of The Gospel of Jesus Christ. I couldn't get LOA-style self-help and Word of Faith teaching to work for me in the past. So when the grace message came along I kind of ring-fenced all of that off in my life. If there is no credibility to faith and LOA then that would refute a substantial amount of Christian and self-help teaching out there - including the Bible. I feel as if I've come full circle now and have returned to the very kind of teaching that set me on my spiritual path. Its good to know that perhaps all of that teaching in the past is not all bogus after all. But I'm interested in knowing more about why it didn't work for me in the past and, more importantly, how I can apply these teachings and methods into my life now.

The Law of Attraction – Part 1

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I've often referred to The Law of Attraction as being the Self Help/New Age equivalent of Christian Word of Faith. But in all honestly I'd never actually read or listened to LOA. So I recently decided to download the abridged version of the audio book from Audible. I just wanted to post my initial thoughts about it here.

The thing that surprised me the most was that the recording was from the eighties and was of Esther Hicks actually channelling the group of discarnate entities collectively known as "Abraham". Esther spoke with what I'd describe as an Eastern European accent while speaking on behalf of Abraham. She sounded rather robotic, a bit like an alien, I thought. I was not expecting this at all and felt it was a bit creepy. As you'd expect, there are red flags throughout the recording for most Christians. Only Freebelievers would be open-minded enough to listen all the way through. For example, there are references to reincarnation.
The main issue, which is the very essence of the theory, is that you are in complete control of your life through your thoughts; you can have anything you want if you can believe it; everything that happens to you is the result of the focus of your thinking. If you're the victim of an injustice then its your fault, because you attracted it through your wrong thinking. I believe that much of what happens in life is, to an extent, random. We often develop beliefs based upon random life occurrences. The study of this is known as Operant Conditioning.

I do believe to an extent, that our beliefs do attract circumstances to us, according to what we believe: whether they are good or bad.  I’ve experienced this myself, I believe, many times.  I also believe in some sort of "karma": if a person is driven by negative beliefs, attitudes, thoughts and emotions - they will attract negative circumstances as a result, directly or indirectly. This could be likened to some degree to punishment for sin - but more of a correction, a learning process, than mere punishment. But this operates on a more direct, physical level as well as a spiritual level. For instance, if a person's attitude is proud, their inevitable rudeness towards another will likely provoke hostility from them. Such a person cannot exactly say they are being punished by God as a result of this. If a person is depressed all the time, its likely they'll do little to attract other people to them, other than people who themselves are dull and depressed. I feel LOA does not quite cover this idea of karma. Although it could be implied through the generic idea of LOA.

There is no mention of God or a divine plan for your life. But to be fair, LOA does emphasise the fact that your inner being knows what is best for you and what you really want - I agree with that. But there seems to be no allowing for the fact that many people are confused and don't know what they want on a conscious level; or they think they know what they want, but actually want the wrong things; or they want the right things but with wrong motives. The focus of LOA is on what you want. In fact, Abraham constantly repeats the phrase, "What you are wanting", over and over again like a mantra.

I've covered what I see as the bad points - are there any good points?  Actually, yes, there are. I do believe in some kind of Law of Attraction: our persistent thoughts creating beliefs that attract circumstances of like-kind to us. I like the focus on our thoughts attracting like thoughts, people and circumstances. I like the fact that the focus is on self, rather than trying to control or judge others. When you realise that you are responsible (to whatever extent) for what happens in your life - you can take action to attract what it is you actually want. Then there is no need to control or judge other people, who are responsible for their own destiny.

LOA does not recommend monitoring all of our thoughts. But to simply be aware of this universal law and to make an effort to focus on the things you really want, instead of what you don't want. They recommend spending 15-20 minutes each day in a "workshop" in which you focus on what you want, with positive emotion. I like this idea of a workshop: it seems simple and practical.

In conclusion, I believe there could be something viable to the Law of Attraction - if you are open-minded about it. There are some things that you might no agree with, but you can mentally filter them out. The focus on being able to have anything you want through your thoughts, is somewhat exaggerated and imbalanced, in my opinion. But I like the focus on what you think about the most - you are likely to attract. The 15 minute workshop is a great idea. But it does not account for those who are immature, imbalanced and insecure. Personally, I unsuccessfully dabbled with ideas such as LOA in the past. I'm returning to things like this now because I've matured over recent years, so I feel ready to try these things. This maturity has come through time and experience, often painful experience. As a Christian, I had to detox from religion through the grace message: Joseph Prince's righteousness-by-faith emphasis, followed by Freebeliverism. At the same time as FBN, I also started The Work of Byron Katie, which helped me greatly in letting go of negative, confusing beliefs.