Law of Attraction Manifestation Revisited

In my book, Hoodwinked: Uncovering Our Fundamental Superstitions, I start with a simple but completely non-intuitive premise:

What we think of as the physical world is actually a description of the world and not the world itself.

In this post, I want to look at the concept of the Law of Attraction manifestation from the perspective this premise represents.

The Law of Attraction is referred to by many people who have sought answers to questions about why we experience what we do, why we have stuff we don’t want and don’t have what we do want. In a word, we wonder why we’re not very good at manifestation.

As I began to familiarize myself with the idea of Law of Attraction and manifestation, I wanted to put it to work. I visualized attracting people, places, and things, all “out there,” in what I presumed was the real and durable world that contains me and all the things I might want.

For example, I thought that if I wanted to attract a certain kind of person into my life, I could visualize them, imagine what they might be like, or what they might look like. The next step, I thought, was that a person with those characteristics would somehow find their way into my experience. I tried to visualize how that could happen even if that person didn’t happen to live in my vicinity, and even if they weren’t available to rendezvous with me.

I worked hard on trying to use the Law of Attraction manifestation by simply visualizing what I wanted.

Like so many of us, I wanted certain things and particular experiences to show up in my life. I was in a perpetual state of wanting more, of focusing on what I didn’t have and trying to turn that absence into the presence of what I wanted.

In time I became frustrated, feeling like I didn’t know how to manifest anything. Quite naturally, I began to wonder whether the Law of Attraction is actually real, and whether it’s a useful idea.

It turns out I was approaching this whole experiment incorrectly.

You see, back then I believed wholeheartedly in the external reality of the physical world. However, in the years since I have been exploring the premise that we actually live within a description of the world, that belief in the externality of the physical world has slowly worn away.

Monument Canyon, Colorado National Monument

One might imagine this process much like the one revealed in the geological formations visible at the Colorado National Monument. These beautiful and awe-inspiring structures are what remains when less durable material is worn away by the forces of nature. I realized on my last trip to the Monument what a useful metaphor this is. It shows me how mistaken beliefs can be released to uncover stable understanding rooted in reality.

What is left when the sand of mistaken belief is worn away?

The rock that’s left is the reality that we know from direct experience, and direct experience is the only way a human being ever really knows anything.

In the case of the world we perceive, when we allow our mistaken idea of a durable physical world to wear away, we’re left with our experience of Being in the world and our interpretation of the information delivered to us by our senses.

Now let’s return to the Law of Attraction.

What is the Law of Attraction? The Law of Attraction can be stated as “my thoughts attract people and experiences that more closely reflect those thoughts.” In other words, what eventually manifests in our physical experience more and more closely matches our thoughts. From the perspective of living in a durable, external world, that’s a difficult idea to embrace. It can be difficult to understand how thoughts attract physical objects, events, and people. How could mere thought affect that real world out there?

However, what happens if we replace our idea of an external physical world with a picture of the world created by an interpretation of sensory input, a picture that lives solely in our minds? This would amount to replacing the world as the context in which we show up, with our awareness as the context in which our description of the world has its being. When we see that what we think of as the world exists within our awareness, within us, the idea of Law of Attraction shifts. Now we’re talking about an interpretation, a thought-scape, that shifts based on new thoughts, a new story that we’re telling about ourselves and about our experience of Being in the world.

We are so accustomed to the idea that we are our bodies, objects surrounded by a world of other objects, that it’s difficult for us to accept that what we think of as the world is not external to ourselves but is rather something composed of sensory input assembled into a coherent picture in our minds.

From this perspective it is possible to see that we don’t need to use the Law of Attraction. Its effect is natural and automatic. You don’t need to use the water pressure in your house. Just turn on the tap! It is not mind over matter. Rather than the world being a landscape, it is a mind-scape, a story that enables us to function in a world that is ultimately unfathomable.

Isn’t that easier to buy into? Just asking…

For more, I invite you to check out my new book, Hoodwinked: Uncovering our Fundamental Superstitions. It will show you how to use the Law of Attraction!