The Law of Attraction - Revisited
In my forthcoming book, Hoodwinked, 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.
It is not my purpose in this post to argue that premise; I do that in the book. Rather, I want to look at the concept of the Law of Attraction from the perspective this premise represents.
Once I became aware of it, I worked hard on trying to use the Law of Attraction. Like everybody else, I wanted certain things and particular experiences to show up in my life.
Like pretty much all of us, 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.
I worked on trying to manifest anything I wanted, everything 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 real, and whether it’s actually a useful idea. Finally, I began to question the value of “working” and “trying” in moving towards what I want.
Ultimately, I saw that the Law of Attraction was just bringing me more working and trying, and not what I wanted! I had come upon a mistaken belief that formed a crucial pillar of my belief system.
The Rim Trail, Colorado National Monument
To use a metaphor from our nearby sandstone cliffs, 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. That experience of Being in the world is real. All else, including our interpretations and stories about our experience, is transitory, ephemeral… just so much sand sculpture!
