Sunday, May 26, 2013

Some thoughts on the Law of Attraction

    About a week or so before I was supposed graduate from bootcamp I got a stress fracture in my foot, putting me on hold from training. I was on hold for something like 6 weeks and found it even harder not to be extremely depressed. Anyway, I used the time to check out some of the other religious services offered there like the Unitarian Universalist and Buddhist ones. The Buddhist one was actually something called Nichiren Buddhism which oddly seemed to have aspects of the Law of Attraction principle (made popular by 'the Secret' movie) woven into it. Essentially, what I gathered from it was that by chanting and focusing on what you desire you will either receive it or come to an understanding of why you didn't.

    Towards the end of my time being on medical hold, the doctor had told me that he was going to send me back a couple weeks in training, instead of just letting me finish out the last tiny bit of training like I requested. For whatever reason though, he wouldn't allow it. So, I decided to try chanting and focusing on my desire to get the hell out of bootcamp. Long story short, I finished bootcamp 3 days later and the following week I was sent to Maryland for school. Now, I guess that wasn't the greatest, impossible miracle to ever happen (though at the time, it sure felt like it) but it is a story that have thought a lot about since. Was it really because I had "attracted" the outcome into existence? Honestly, I don't know but I found it very interesting none the less. There have been many other similar coincidences in my life as well.

     Regardless of entertaining the law of attraction from time to time and seeing what appears to be results, I admit that I have often dismissed it as silly. I mean, saying that I can have a Ferrari or a million dollars if I continually think and speak it so that the universe will somehow bring it about...does indeed sound silly and I'm not particularly sure about those sorts of applications. However, since coming to a more pantheistic view of God, I have to admit that the basic principle actually makes a great deal of sense to me. If everyone and everything is essentially a manifestation of God then why wouldn't the power to create worlds and stars be within each and every one of us? If God is not this guy out there somewhere pulling the cosmic strings and it's really me, then theoretically I can achieve virtually anything. Crazy, supernatural things even...theoretically. I mean, Jesus claimed to be God and he supposedly did all sorts of miraculous things. I don't know if any of those things really happened or not but if so, maybe the truth is he wasn't any different than any of us, he was just much more in tune to his "God-hood".

    What sets apart the people that achieve greatness from everyone else in this life? Maybe its talent or luck or perhaps there really is a deity separate from us and he/she blesses some more than others for some mysterious, divine reason? Perhaps it is those things but perhaps it has more to do with our thoughts and the way we focus on them. I'm not sure what the context of the quote was, but Muhammad Ali said, "I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was." Sounds a bit egotistical, but maybe the deeper truth in that statement is that Ali's intention and speaking of that intention helped alter reality in such a way that he become a boxing legend?

    One last thing, I was talking to a counselor recently and telling her my various life issues and one of the things she said was that my negative self talk was basically acting as a self-fullfilling prophecy and I needed to reverse that in order to see change. Now I don't know that she necessarily meant anything spiritual by that, but it makes a lot of sense when I think upon my different situations. For example, I've been basically single for something like 4.5 years. And truthfully in that time I have thought and talked about it a lot and it would seem that I have somehow perpetuated that situation by thinking and speaking that negative fact over and over again. So realizing that, I've been trying to flip those negative thoughts into positive ones and I intend to focus only on that. Maybe if I focus really hard on being a "chick magnet", perhaps I will become one ;)



 
 

   
 

 

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