You won’t believe what has been attributed to the Law of Attraction
BY HARV BISHOP
It’s time to stop hiding behind the Law of Attraction to explain tragedy and misfortune says New Thought historian Mitch Horowitz. The good news is New Thought can help us reach our highest potential, explains Horowitz, but it can also be used as a security blanket to avoid life’s tragedies and mysteries.
Did the victims of 9/11 and Charleston attract their way into situations gone tragically wrong? Do babies “attract” pre-birth genetic defects? Since animals don’t think in a way that we understand, how do they attract illness and misfortune?
These are more than theological or abstract questions, Horowitz says. The recognition that our thoughts can influence our reality is now tied to a rigid belief that there are no accidents. This can sometimes be used as an easy one-size-fits-all explanation for human misfortune and mass tragedies. As a result, people sometimes judge others and lack compassion.
A deeper understanding of evil & suffering
“To reach a more persuasive understanding of evil and suffering,” says Horowitz, “I think we need to release any reliance on the theory of one mental ‘super law’ that accounts for every aspect of existence. I believe that New Thought can be used for positive life change – and even for ameliorating or overcoming evil and suffering. But I think we deepen our search and our questions when we let go of seeing New Thought, or any thought system, as a cosmic cure-all, which it is not. New Thought is a practical metaphysics that probes humanity’s highest potential – and that is extraordinary enough.”
Horowitz and I began exploring New Thought’s response to perennial questions about suffering and evil through the frame of the tragic events of 9/11. Can we in any way say that people consciously or unconsciously “chose” to undergo that experience? I once heard a New Thought minster argue against that view. He said that the people at the Twin Towers did not “choose” their tragic fate. The seeds of 9/11, he said, were sown in religious history, European colonialism, US, Saudi and other state’s foreign policy decisions, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, religious and cultural conflict. Does the Law of Attraction have a place at that table?
“I critique Rhonda Byrne [the author and filmmaker for “The Secret”] on that specific point in [ the book “One Simple Idea”],” says Horowitz. “I could say a lot of good things about Byrne and a lot of things I admire about her. But that notion that the people who suffered that tragedy or the people who … I mean, my God, the march of mass tragedies and appalling violence in this world is such that you can just choose your example.
“The idea that they were somehow syncing on the same page as that tragedy I think is absolutely absurd. It’s unverifiable.
“The only tools of verification that we really have on the spiritual path are within ourselves. I can’t look at my neighbor and say, ‘He got a flood in his basement because of such and such covert reason.’ I mean that is just throwing a rock at my neighbor. There’s really no verification involved.
“I’ve never been personally involved in an event like 9/11 even though I used to be able to see the Twin Towers out of my office window. I doubt Rhonda has ever been involved in an event on the scale of 9/11. We have to speak from personal experience at certain points. To describe covert causes for events that we haven’t experienced with some kind of finality I think is just fantasy. It’s just spinning out an idea of something that we’ve never personally verified and don’t have the means to verify. I part very deeply with that way of thought. “
In the next part of this interview series Mitch Horowitz talks about his deep respect for- and critique of- New Thought luminary Neville Goddard. Horowitz also discusses alternative spirituality’s embrace of karma to explain suffering. Horowitz’s website can be found here. Click here for part 1 and part 2 of this interview series.
My interview with Horowitz, “The Hidden History of New Thought,” will be in the September issue of Science of Mind: Guide for Spiritual Living on sale mid-August at Barnes & Noble booksellers.
It may very well be that a general randomness is the default setting that has existed since whenever for all species from the one-celled organism floating in the steaming primordial soup of a billion year ago to us today. In that vast and foggy randomness, life broadly goes how it goes, which allows for things to appear in the lives of all species that we see as very good (meeting someone serendipitously who become the love of our life), very bad (being a lame herbivore that limps across the path of something larger, carnivorous and very hungry) and everything in between.
The genius of New Thought has come in looking at the experiences of people (not just theoretical takes on what should happen but what actually seems to happen) and from that concluding that, even if most of us start from a random default setting, we can change that setting (at least to some extent) in general, and in the moment. It helps in showing (not telling) that we have an ability to allow for/consciously pursue / attract better things in our lives — to stack the deck at least somewhat more in our favor. Will we hit every single pitch out of the park? Perhaps not “in real life” but our batting average will definitely improve.
This thinking also helps us when life throws us a curveball (to extend my baseball metaphor), which in many ways is even more helpful for many people. It encourages us to accept that something we see as bad can still happen but even there, we have a chance to pay attention and learn, even if we take the time we need to grieve or be displeased or disappointed first. But as we all know, this outcome is less likely when the response from people who claim greater enlightenment seems no more than just “blame-y” rather than truly empathetic and helpful.
Hello Chris,
So great to see your insights. I very much agree with your line of reasoning here. I followed up on Mitch’s suggestion of Horatio Dresser’s book “Voices of Freedom” from the discussion last week and was blown away to find a view of New Thought much like you describe. In other words one that embraced (along with mental healing) evolution, chance, creative emergence, accidents, a call for social justice and a blistering indictment of the New Thought bromide that everything that happens is “all for the good.” And this is all the more remarkable for having been written in 1899. Plus he comes very close to what today would be termed evolutionary spirituality.
Hey Harv, Yes Dresser was really remarkable. He was a protege of William James’s and had a really prolific output. I think “Voices of Freedom” is some of his best work. As I recall — and I’ll have to do some digging! — I wrote down 3 or 4 key principles that seemed to run throughout the book. I will send them to you. I’m now reading David Spangler’s “Everyday Miracles” and finding his insights really remarkable and helpful — so, a big thanks for putting me on that path. More to say about him down the road…
I will look forward to that! Much appreciated. There are books that are a thrill to read and Dresser’s is one of those. From the preface on it is apparent he is a deep and prescient thinker. Also look forward to your reflections on Spangler. He definitely has the emphasis on working from his personal experience and reverse engineering the steps rather than relying on the tried and true.
Thanks, Chris — I think you’ve hit upon exactly what has made New Thought of such enduring appeal.
I heard Rev. Kathianne Lewis say that the Universal Law of Averages is what brings random events into our lives. I used this idea in a talk, being from West Texas, I said one rancher is wealthy because oil is found on his land, his neighbors land doesn’t have oil and therefore isn’t rich. Is it karma or just the Universal Law of Averages.
Hello Max,
Welcome to these pages. Very interesting allowance for the randomness of life. There are definitely CSL ministers like Rev. Kathianne and practitioners such as yourself who have more enlightened views on these questions. I would count CSL spiritual leader Kenn Gordon among those and we’ll be featuring Dr. Kenn in a forthcoming post. At the same time- in the responses to the first post with Mitch- we have heartbreaking testimony from people who were not treated well in their hour of need facing tragedies. Hopefully as more people think on these questions people will encounter a more tolerant and loving face of New Thought.
Great perspective! Thank you for this.
I completely concur that The Law of Attraction, one of my favorite topics–particularly, the monetization of this spiritual law–does not answer the “why” for most of the things that occur on Earth’s stage.
As I posit in my 2008 book “Crossing an Unseen Bridge: The Law of Attraction Secrets No One Wants to Talk About,” what distinguishes a law from a possibility is that a law responds the same way 100% of the time for 100% of the people.
If the Law of Gravity performed the same way as the commercialized Law of Attraction, buildings and people would occasionally fall UP. There also would be no such thing as a surprise or disappointment. If it worked the way that Byrne posits, we’d only get what we desired, affirmed, visualized and expected–and we’d ALWAYS get what we desired, affirmed, visualized and expected.
To the conversation about why inexplicable things occur, I’d like to offer some questions to consider:
What if we are souls, eternal beings? What if it is the eternal being that creates our experiences here, not the human body costumes that we are wearing? What if our brief visits to this planet are but a bat-of-an-eyelash experience in Universal Time and have no permanent destructive consequences? What if, as souls, we have a spiritual history? What if we created some imbalance at some point in our eternal lives that needs to be re-balanced?
What if we choose to learn, grow, balance our karma, and even help others to evolve or balance their karma by agreeing to play certain roles during a brief visit to this planet–roles that might even be terrifying or tragic? What if our intent is to realign the Soul Self with the Divine Self? What if, instead of engaging in the futile and Procrustean act of perceiving everything through the Law of Attraction lens, we always asked ourselves these two questions: Why did I create this scenario? How does it serve me?
Thanks Patricia. I just ordered your book. I think the gravity comparison is very helpful. I also tell people that gravity, as a law, is consistent — but it behaves much differently based on circumstances, such as mass, or whether we’re on earth or the moon, etc. Even if a law is real, there are a vast range of equally authentic laws and forces (perhaps more than we can know) which impact outcomes. All best! m
Thanks so much, Mitch!
Another thought: If we concur with Einstein, that everything is energy–even mass–there might “appear” to be outcome variables. In reality, there is none. What we see on Earth’s stage might look completely different from what I call “the balcony of life”.
I sincerely believe that LOA is real. As sincerely, I believe that “The Secret” is not.
LOA is a spiritual law. As such, it most likely responds to us as immortal spiritual beings rather than as the human body costumes that we’re temporarily wearing. Consequently, if we’re looking for consistent outcomes from the Law on the physical level, we will not see it.
As souls, we have been alive since The Beginning. We have worn many costumes and, believing that we were the costumes, we have done things that need to be balanced. For example, if our intent prior to our latest costume change was to balance previous missteps so that we could evolve, I believe that the Law will respond accordingly, bringing us into scenarios that fulfill our soul’s mission.
Thanks, Patricia. What you write here corresponds in a certain way with a theory called “information leakage” in the quantum physics field. Some physicists attribute the differences between what is observed in the quantum lab vs ordinary mechanical reality by noting that the less closely we see things, or the coarser our sensory equipment, the less and less we understand. William James made the same observation in 1902 noting that we can use a microscope to see what’s REALLY going on — but the more we pan back the less we know; he was making the point that we understand so little about our physical, earthly lives.
Exactly! That’s why the commercialized version of LOA will never be able deliver consistent results–other than “cha-ching” for its promoters.
Thanks for engaging me in this conversation. It’s an honor to share my thoughts with you.