The Law of Attraction
Here's another guest [opst from Dana Horton - thanks! For those with a spiritual bent:
The Law of Attraction
Or
Why Couldn’t the Author of The Secret Get Her Asking Price.
(3 minute read)
We had so much fun contemplating the Law of Reciprocity last week that we are following it up with the Law of Attraction.
What is the Law of Attraction? It is the belief that positive or negative thoughts bring positive or negative experiences into a person's life. It is akin to the power of positive thinking, but with a spiritual component. And it is one of the basic spiritual laws inherent in New Thought philosophy.
Wasn’t there a book and movie called The Secret that dealt with the law of attraction? You bet. And the author, Rhonda Byrne, made a ton of money off of it. Good for her. And we are sure The Secret has helped a lot of people. But that alone does not make it a spiritual truth.
Ryan Holiday’s take on it. While we were thinking about this, we ran across a related blog post by one of our favorite authors, Ryan Holiday. https://ryanholiday.net/law-of-attraction/
Ryan makes a compelling argument that the Law of Attraction is pretty much BS. He sharply criticizes Ms. Byrne for not walking her talk when she was trying to sell her own multi-million dollar house in California.
Ryan cited a May 2015 WSJ interview with Rhonda about the house sale. We looked it up. Sure enough, the original asking price was $23M. Ultimately, she marked it down to $14M. Not that $14M is a trivial number. But if this law of attraction thing works so well, why not hold out for the $23M? Rhonda dismissed the WSJ reporter’s question, saying she merely had not taken the time to focus on it. Really, Rhonda? It seems like a good return on investment to apply a little focus for an extra $9M.
The other side of the argument. But let’s ease up on Rhonda for the moment, and give due consideration to this spiritual law of attraction. Maybe we can still come up with a rational, albeit unprovable, theory here.
Y’know, Rhonda was not the only person involved in trying to sell that house. There was the real estate agent, the field of potential buyers, and countless other people who indirectly may have been influencing the ‘energy’ around the house sale.
What else? In addition, there’s this over-arching concept that New Thought proponents call the collective consciousness. It’s when a large group of people share beliefs or ideas which operate as a unifying force. Think 100,000 fans at a college football game.
Applying this to the house sale, maybe Rhonda was trying to sell the house in the midst of an economic downturn. Or maybe there was a news story related to risk of fires in her area of California. And y’know ... sometimes we just do not know what is going on in the universe that might affect the price of the house. So even if this ‘Law’ works, and even if Rhonda was spot on with her intentions, there are a lot of competing intentions that could have been working against her.
So the Law of Attraction — for it or against it? Positive thinking is a good thing for anyone to employ. But if pressed for whether there is an invisible spiritual power behind it, we are going to use our fallback position — we have no idea.
There is a lot we do not understand about both physics and spirituality. So for now, we’re going to hedge our bets and continue with one foot in the realm of spirituality and the other in the realm of materiality.
Dana Horton is from Ohio, United States and is currently (though not for much longer) working full time as Director of Energy Markets a large utility company. In August 2019, he earned his ministerial license through an organization called Centers for Spiritual Living based in Denver, Colorado. This is a New Thought organization following the principles of Ernest Holmes. He acted as interim minister at the Columbus Center for Spiritual Living and, after eight months, he decided to leave and has no interest in returning to a formal religious organization. But he enjoys investigating spiritual principles, how they originated, and how they might be applicable to everyday living. I also enjoy discovering the history of both the Old and New Testaments, and how it differs (greatly) from the traditional Christian interpretations.
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