Don E. Gibbons, Ph.D., NJ Licensed Psychologist #03513
This Blog is published for information and educational purposes only. No warranty, expressed or implied, is furnished with respect to the material contained in this Blog. The reader is urged to consult with his/her physician or a duly licensed mental health professional with respect to the treatment of any medical or psychological condition.

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Thursday, April 9, 2020

The "Law of Attraction" is Fatally FLAWED! Here's how to fix it.

The central theme of the book, "The Secret," is that we can create our own reality by using "the law of attraction." If we send forth positive thoughts, then we attract positive events to us; and if we send forth negative thoughts, then we attract negative events.

Whatever an individual's thoughts can attract, a group's thoughts should be able to attract also. If we really do create our own reality by sending forth positive or negative thoughts, then this effect should be apparent not only in individuals, but also in groups, in historical trends, and in society as a whole  --but it isn't!

I have listed below some comments which my friend Roy Hunter reports as being made to individuals who are suffering from cancer and other maladies which should also operate according to "the law of attraction," and I have taken the liberty of constructing a reply to them. 
  • What did you do to attract cancer in the first place? What about all those people who get cancer because they are living in an area where there is a high level of carcinogens in the environment?
  • You have a disease consciousness. The Black Death killed between 75 and 200 million people, between 1348 and 1350. What could all those people have been thinking that caused such a plague to so suddenly descend upon them?
  • You must have a karmic debt to pay off.  If you have read The Diary of Anne Frank, you will have a good idea of the kind of person she was. Now consider the fate of Ann and others like her as they lay covered with lice and dying of hypothermia in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. What did they do to bring this upon  themselves?
  • Why can’t you create enough faith to be healed? Age is a wasting disease. And the survival rate for this particular disease is zero. Has anybody crated enough faith to get out of that one?
  • Don’t you know smoking will kill you? With 99% of the same genes as our closest simian cousins, the chimpanzees, and over a century of experimental research to back them up, most psychologists agree that short-term pleasure is often more important than long-term consequences in determining our behavior, particularly when it comes to matters of addiction.
  • Fat people are out of control. An African journalist recently stated that her greatest surprise in coming to the United States was to discover that in America, thin people are rich and fat people are poor, since in her own country the reverse is true. If this is the case, how can weight be a function of one's personal discipline rather than one's culture?
  • You have a poverty consciousness. The CIA World Factbook lists the United States as twelfth in per capita income, behind such nations as Norway and Hong Kong, yet most Americans are inclined to think of themselves as the richest nation in the world. If we create our own reality, why are we not in first place?
  • "Get out of the victim trap!" Try telling the survivors of Stalinist tyranny who were imprisoned in Siberia that they shouldn't have been thinking so negatively about their situation that it caused them to end up there.
  • Why did you create this problem? The CIA World Factbook lists the United States as fifteehth from the top in infant mortality compared with other nations. Explain to the parents of the babies who died because they were not given better medical care what they or their children did to create this problem.
  • What is God punishing you for?  If God is keeping quiet about His reasons, then what is the point of punishment?
  • If “The Secret” is not working for you, then you must be doing something wrong.  Maybe so!  On a recent radio interview show featuring a leading theoretical physicist who was commenting upon the latest discoveries in his field, a questioner asked him about the "law of attraction." He forcefully criticized this belief for misleading people, and assured the caller that the universe simply does not work that way. Perhaps, he suggested, what people who subscribe to this  doctrine are "doing wrong" is believing in "The Law of Attraction" in the first place!
If individuals are able to claim instances of success by this method,  it is most likely because they have injected a dimension of will into their belief, as expressed in Schopenhauer's "The World as Will and Idea," or in Claude Bristol's "The Magic of Believing," as preseented below in full audiiobook form.




Can we really command the Universe, as Schopenhauer and Bristol are saying, or are we just believing in our goal so intensely that it gives us the confidence to act, think and feel as it were impossible to fail, which enables us to proceed against all odds until the goal is achieved?  The Greek philosopher Seneca said that luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity, which favors the latter interpretation.  All I can say is that I have used this book since my adolescence as a guide for challenges great and small; and despite my rigorous training as an experimental psychologist, I remain firmly convinced that if you can believe in a goal deeply enough, you can believe it. And if you can believe it, you can make it happen! Here's a link which was sent to me by my friend Lisa Brown that may explain how.

https://projectyourself.com/blogs/news/the-universe-itself-is-a-giant-brain-and-it-may-be-conscious-say-scientists