The Law of Attraction

Saturday’s movie – The Secret – has seen a lot of success in recent times. Aside from adding a steep irony to the title, the movie has been tailored for the masses.

Cheesy ?  yes.

Marketed (successfully) for the American pulp fiction market? yes.

A little low on peer reviewed research? Don’t even ask.

But yet, the topic of the movie is something real, that most people kind of believe in, even if only passively: That somehow, your attitude to the world, and your belief in yourself have a strong influence in how things manifest around you.

Have you not known people who seem to bring disaster on themselves? Is it their bad luck, psychology or karma? Is it their fault – are they somehow actually attracting problems to themselves?

Other people seem to just attract positive things. They seem to get the breaks – but is this due to charisma? Or perhaps we are simply drawn to the optimist.

Of course no one is the same the whole time. If you look through your own life and experiences were you at times drawing in negativity from the world around you? Drawing in illness, or people to victimise you at work or home? It definitely seems that way much of the time. This is the topic of the movie – the idea that your mental attitude practially ‘creates’ the world around you.

To pick an earthy example. Does your mental attitude affect your physical health? While ‘science’ focuses on purely on a mechanistic view  – the body is a chemical/biological machine that sometimes breaks down – the mental side is dismissed. Often registered experimental effects are shown to be ‘nothing more’ than placebo.

As Khun Morakot (who leads a monthly meditation session in Bangkok) pointed out last month, if the placebo is recognised as real, why is there so little investigation into exactly how it works? Should we not focus on this mental aspect that can heal – to find out how it works, how it can be enhanced and developed, in just the same way as a traditional herbal remedy might be analysed and broken down to find the essential chemicals that produce the healing effects?

There is something reassuring about this Law of Attraction. If it is real and not imagined it suggests that we are not the victim of our karma. We do not have to be the victim of our circumstance or psyche. It says that it is possible for human beings not only to change, but to change fast. Seems like something worth looking into.