Time to get real on the Law of Attraction
BY HARV BISHOP
It’s time to get real about the Law of Attraction, reject “magical thinking” and respect life’s mystery says Rev. Dr. Jim Lockard, a Religious Science minister.
Did you have a thought about wanting to kick the dog in anger last week and came down with a cold this week? Assume that a person is experiencing poverty because of their negative thinking? Lockard describes views like these as being “over literal about reality” and the Law of Attraction – the idea that what we think about is mirrored in our lives.
“Reality is much more complex, subtle and unknowable than we want to admit,” says Lockard, recently retired minister at Center for Spiritual Living Simi Valley northwest of Los Angeles. “We are always looking for linear connections – ‘This happened in my life so I must have had this thought,’ when really it is about patterns of thought.
“There is no way you could keep track of what were the causative thoughts that led to me having a cold or me winning the lottery. There is a real temptation to fall into what I would call magical thinking in teachings like ours because you cannot see the process between the thought patterns and the outcome.”
Lockard says when he teaches, he uses the example of a black box experiment in a science class where you know what goes in and you know what comes out, but you don’t know what happens inside the box.
“I think every student of the teaching goes through this. They want to analyze the whole thing. I want to take my consciousness apart and see how it works. But I cannot do that. Our fear-based, egoic mind tries to figure out a way to game the system a little bit because if I think I understand it I will feel better. And I make something up. I make something up based on what I appear to be experiencing. I got a cold so that must be because I had these three thoughts last week, or something like that. And the Law of Attraction people will say ‘If it is in your life, you must have been thinking something to attract that so it’s your fault.’ It gets into blame and the other stuff that we are conditioned to see.
“I try to teach my students is that it’s really a mystery. We know there is a connection – not so much between individual thoughts, but between patterns of thought – and it’s hard to be aware of patterns of thought.
“It’s not a single thought that creates the outcome, it is a pattern of thinking. I don’t get a cold because I was thinking fear-based thoughts like ‘I don’t want to get a cold.” I get a cold because I was thinking thoughts that created a depressive action within my physiology that lowered my immune system. But I may not know specifically what those thoughts were. Once I get the cold I can’t say ‘Last Wednesday I was thinking this and this and this.’ I may know I wasn’t feeling good, but it is unlikely I’ll know what I was thinking.”
Lockard will be part of a forthcoming Science of Mind magazine article with other leading New Thought voices asking how Centers for Spiritual Living’s mission statement- “creating a world that works for everyone”- can become a reality.
Check out Lockard’s excellent new blog New Thought Evolutionary which explores emerging models of leadership in New Thought.
I love this article, and have always loved how Jim Lockard teaches. The tendency towards wanting to frame everything in a linear fashion is totally understandable, but there’s something within me that feels irked every time I hear a simple explanation for something that is totally amazing and complex. Folks in New Thought like to use quantum mechanics to explain the principles of the law of attraction or creation, yet, the quantum world is totally wacky… to use quantum physics, the world of non-linearity, to explain a process in a linear way, has always seemed confusing to me. The Black Box analogy gives room for both understanding and mystery, which seems to be so deeply part of this being human thing that we’ve all got goin on. If we want to be able to not only instill empowerment through New Thought, but also instill compassion and non-judgment, this way of teaching seems crucial! Thanks, Harv and Jim for shedding light on this.
Great point, Masando. I often ask people: if you hang your understanding of God on quantum physics, what will you do when it is proven partial or altogether wrong?
Everything I’ve read by various Science of Mind teachers as well as Joseph Murphy and Neville Goddard tells me that figuring out how it’s going to happen isn’t my job. But it also teaches that it’s not me who creates anything. My job is to have a desire and release it to what you call it – Higher Power, Divine Mind, Universal Intelligence, Subconscious Mind, Imagination, God. It really doesn’t matter what you call it.
If I’m trying to figure anything out then I’m not doing it right. That’s not some holier than thou statement. I’m speaking from personal experience. Worrying about outcome is the same as planting a seed and then digging it up every 3 minutes to see if its sprouted yet. It doesn’t work that way.
I know how scary life can be sometimes. I’ve been there. I’ve worried about paying bills, getting that promotion, being able to meet that obligation, etc. The one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that all of the worrying I allowed myself to do didn’t help any of those situations at all.
What I’ve learned for myself is to focus on creating peace within first because worry just perpetuates the problem, keeping stuck in an endless loop of yuck. So far, in my own life, this approach has always led to better outcomes.
Besides it’s not the thoughts themselves that create but the emotions generated by those thoughts.
I hope this makes some sense.
It very much does make sense and relates well to Dr. Jim’s comments below. Thanks for these thoughtful comments Rob. As a longtime worrier I can relate!
Hi Harv – thanks for the nice post.
Looking at this part our interview now, I would only want to add that within those “patterns of thinking” resides the emotional self, which takes us another step away from a linear understanding of cause and effect. My feelings arise from subconscious cues that may be triggered by conscious thoughts about immediate events, or by subconscious patterns of belief that are triggered beneath my awareness. All within the “black box” as it were.
I find that as I open to allow myself “not to know” specific causes and to become centered in a sense of trust that something inside me does know, then I can access my intuitive self more dependably.
So I would add to your description of my description that thought must been seen in a multi-dimensional sense – the words or language of the thought; the image or visualization; and the feeling or emotions. It is the emotional sense that creates what we carry forward as a new or modified belief.
We are deeper beings than we realize.
Love and Light,
Jim
This article touches very well upon the concept that we are not often aware of our thought
patterns consciously and that there are a great many things that form the composite of earth
plane experience far more powerful than just what we were thinking last week, otherwise we
are forced to hold the victims of 911 responsible for their ‘fate’.
Erick Dean Tippett
Retired Musician/Teacher
Chicago, Illinois
Very well said. Thank you Erick. I too believe the shadow of blaming others for fate does not serve New Thought well.
I agree that what we experience results from a pattern of thinking. But here’s the thing: If we are immortal souls who are temporarily having a human experience, that pattern of thinking pre-dates the current body and the brain that will die with it. That is why we have such difficulty connecting the dots.
As souls, it seems logical that we have a spiritual history. That history includes millions of thoughts and actions that attract specific experiences and individuals to us at some point in our eternal lives.
Laws produce the same results for everyone. In this case, the spiritual Law of Attraction returns what we have given–in equal measure–an eye for an eye. It’s not only responsive, it balances.
For example, if our souls hold a belief in suffering, we will attract experiences that include suffering. If, as souls, we believe that we have done something unforgivable or that we must be severely punished before we can be worthy to be in the sight of God, quite conceivably, we will attract suffering as our way to purify ourselves–even if good old-fashioned self-forgiveness is a lot more effective and a heckuva lot less painful.
I do believe that it is the evolving soul, and not the body, that creates our life experiences. If the body held creative power at that level, there would be no such thing as a surprise or a disappointment. I also believe that we souls choose very intentionally to incarnate for a purpose or two–and that we script the experiences that support the soul’s purpose(s).
I doubt seriously that any soul incarnates for the purpose of amassing material “prosperity.” It would be akin to spending time on the moon, scooping up as much moon dust as possible, instead of completing important scientific experiments. What is the value of that distraction when you’ll return Home without accomplishing the intended goals?
As for the concern that New Thought blames the victim, let’s consider a different perspective: What if a soul holds a misperception about itself, God and forgiveness and it believes in severe or even inhumane punishment? What would it attract?
What if a soul has believed for eons that God is vengeful and solves problems by killing people? What would it attract? What if a soul wanted to balance an unkindness or even a brutality committed against another? Knowing that a human lifetime on Earth’s stage not only is a temporary existence, but a bat-of-an-eyelash experience in Universal Time, why wouldn’t a soul endure a second or two of pain to pay a karmic debt? If it not simply thought but deeply (and mistakenly) believed that its past actions must be purified through suffering, why wouldn’t a soul very consciously choose to incarnate in extreme poverty, war-torn or drought-stricken areas of the planet?
I believe the Law of Attraction is a real and reliable spiritual law that responds to the soul at the most perfect time and in the most perfect way–unlike the monetized (and karma-creating) LOA that has been peddled to the masses. If we consistently see ourselves as souls temporarily wearing human body costumes on Earth’s stage, and look at that stage from the balcony of life, we realize that there is no mystery.
Because of the Law of Attraction (otherwise known as karma), everything can always be explained. No blame, just choice based on the thoughts and beliefs of a soul evolving to the healing power of Love that forgives everything. But, of course, I could be completely wrong about all of the above. 😉
Thank you Patricia. There are so many layers as to what is in the black box and as we saw in the blog with Gil Fronsdal many interpretations of karma within Buddhism. I have experienced the issue of karma based on lack of self-forgiveness so for each of the explanations put forth from thoughts to emotions to karma/soul growth my response is “yes and” there is still mystery. Your view of karma as self-inflicted is most interesting and I love your lines about prosperity akin to scooping up moon dust rather than doing important experiments. It is indeed a thin slice of pie.
About 25 years ago when I started going to Unity and these thoughts about taking personal responsibility for how what you were thinking would cause of the circumstances of your life started becoming very popular. I Felt as though a lot of people were taking a self righteous attitude about it. They would say things like “well it’s your fault that you were having this negative experience.” And I thought to myself in the universe that is supposed to be infinite it can’t be that simple. I thought to you’d have to be thanking A thought or a group of thoughts an awful lot in order to tilt infinity in some direction or another.
Lately I have come to A knowing that that is the case and I am glad to see this article.
Thank you Keith. “If the universe is infinite it can’t be that simple.” Well said.