Law of Attraction: Manifestation or Just Magical Thinking?
The One Key Principle that Makes the Difference
My introduction to the concept happened by chance. I was in my early 20s, feeling lost and going through what I believed to be an existential crisis. One day, while randomly browsing the shelves at Border’s, a particular book jumped out at me — Creative Visualization.
I was intrigued when I picked it up and flipped through it. This small paperback written by Shakti Gawain held the key to achieving success, all by simply using my imagination.
Reading and enjoying this book set me on the path to my mass consumption of self-help and new-age literature. Looking for answers, I couldn’t get enough. I started to embrace what many refer to as the law of attraction.
More often than not, what appears new and groundbreaking to the uninitiated isn’t. It’s an idea that’s been reintroduced over the years. I remember when The Secret came out in 2006, and Oprah Winfrey hyped it as the latest groundbreaking discovery.
But little did she or I know because what seems new and mind-blowing isn’t. But then again, isn’t that usually the case? Regardless, the concept goes back a long way. The term “law of attraction” was initially coined by occultist Helen Blavatsky in 1877. Over the years, this idea was rebranded by authors such as Phinaeus Parkhurst Quimby (the founder of the New Thought movement), Earnest Holmes, Norman Vincent Peale, and Florence Scovell Shinn, just to name a few.
If I believe it, I can achieve it. Not so fast! Simply repeating affirmation after affirmation, creating vision boards, and visualization will not get you where you want to go. Whether we like it or not, we live in the physical plane where nothing happens by simply thinking about it.
So much of the content around visualization or the law of attraction fails to address this reality. In many cases, it gives people the impression that simply affirming something is enough to make it come to pass. Suppose they fail to manifest what they’re repeatedly declaring. Eager students will often find fault within themselves instead of realizing that they must contend with not just the laws of nature but the free will of those around them.
The notion that we create our reality has a dark side. Over 25 years ago, I stumbled upon a term coined by author and physician Joan Borysenko ― “new age guilt.” The criticism The Secret received by critics exemplifies this by taking the idea that we create our reality to extreme conclusions.
Are you or someone close to you facing a fatal illness? Maybe a tragic accident? If you create your reality, then, on some level, you create your misfortune. If you didn’t think such bad thoughts, perhaps you wouldn’t have gotten cancer or been at The World Trade Center during the 9–11 attacks. It puts a patchouli-infused, crystal sparkly veneer on victim blaming.
On the other side of that same coin is the toxic positivity when one refuses to acknowledge reality by suppressing anything that even slightly resembles a negative thought. It also promotes a special kind of narcissism cloaked in superficial spirituality by encouraging you to shut off your empathy and refuse to acknowledge the genuine suffering taking place around you.
Although my vast consumption of new-age spiritual philosophies adds value to my life, I still struggle with the pitfalls that come along with it. If I do so much as stub my toe, I sometimes ask myself, “What did I do to attract this?” It takes a hot minute for me to snap out of it.
While searching for the “law of attraction” on YouTube one day, I discovered a concept that helped clarify it for me. It was in a presentation titled “Natural Law: The Real Law of Attraction” by Mark Passio.
In his presentation, he uncovers the “lost” principle, which is the dynamic of CARE. He is not referring to compassion or any of the usual ways we understand it but as the thing that drives our behavior or generates our thoughts and actions — otherwise known as the Generative Principle.
Care is not limited to simply saying we want something; it encompasses where our actual attention lies. In other words, it reflects my belief that any meaningful change must come from within. What we genuinely care about, the things we focus on, find a way to manifest in reality.
Before you dismiss the power of visualization or the law of attraction as complete bullshit, there is still so much truth to it. Dr. Larry Dossey discussed this in his book Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine, where he documents how prayer, like visualization, improved the health outcomes of his patients.
Whether you call it visualization, the law of attraction, or simple prayer, there is still plenty of evidence that our minds, wills, and consciousness are indeed powerful. Each of us possesses this power to bring about greater good. So why not embrace it?