It's Time the Law of Attraction and Spiritual Communities Take a Hard Look in the Mirror
theomzone • July 1, 2020
And it's way past time for some difficult conversations.
I have been sitting on my thoughts regarding what I would call a backlash against law of Attraction for longer than I probably should have. I think it's been brewing. For those of us in the LOA Universe, it's been hard to talk about. However, talking about it is probably important.
For me, at times it's hard to talk about because in some ways the backlash feels personal. However, I also understand why it's happening. A big part of the reason there is a growing frustration if not downright anger towards the law of attraction community is because we aren't addressing what's not right about our corner of the personal development world nor are we addressing the misconceptions about what's wrong.
In about a decade law of attraction has become a multi-million, maybe multi-billion dollar industry in its many forms. Gurus emerged and massively profited with promises of thinking your way to millions or your dream-spouse without lifting a finger. People bought books, watched the movies, and filled the stadiums. They invested a lot of dollars and time into the idea that they could have anything they wanted without working for it.
The movie The Secret launched an industry peddling concepts that were hardly secret at all. Stars were born and people were sold on fanciful concepts that in their essence were probably mostly right, but painfully under-explained leaving many people inspired and then disappointed and confused.
These concepts have been around for a very long time. New thought teachers from the late 1800s and early 1900s were writing about these ideas long before the words law of attraction were strung together. Both the Buddha and Jesus taught concepts that run in the same stream. The idea that thoughts become things stands the test of time because there is truth there. But make no mistake. There is no real secret here. No one can sell you hidden magic knowledge for the highest bid.
As an LOA coach, I've made money helping people leverage the power of their focus to get where they wanted to be. I've done the very same work with people who scoffed at the idea of Law of Attraction, using the very same tools. People still get results. The bottom line is, even if you don't believe in the law of attraction, thoughts become an identity, identity shapes behavior, and behavior determines outcomes. While the language of behavioral psychology and deliberate creation might be different, in a lot of ways the processes are the same.
However, when you're aiming for a massive shift in your life, behavior might look a lot like "work". A lot of people are drawn to deliberate creation because they are looking for a magic pill that will transform their reality without any of that. In some LOA circles "work" is the ultimate four-letter word. There might be a reason for that. A lot of people are working too hard for too little and crossing the finish line too exhausted to enjoy whatever they built with brute force.
I've said it before: If shear working your ass off was the ticket to being a millionaire, there would be a lot more of them. I'd be one. I used to be a classic over-worker with nothing much to show for it. I don't live that way anymore because I know there is an easier way.
However, that easier way is way more complicated than "Just get happy." The real work of alignment and identity shift is way less sexy than the soundbites the "experts" like to peddle for easy consumption and profits.
Sure, just go get happy sounds great. However, the nuances of being human are more complex than that AND that is the beauty of being human. Whitewashing the human experience has a very dark side that might be described as mood shaming, victim-blaming, or spiritual bypassing. Law of attraction shouldn't be about criminalizing "bad" feelings or hard experiences. However, in many ways and many places that's exactly what has happened, leaving LOA less accessible for anyone human.
Additionally, the idea that we create our reality absolutely is complicated and at times dangerous. We live in a system of constant co-creation. The questions are hard and nearly impossible to answer. Is a child with cancer supposed to be responsible for their cancer? Did that child create it? In the absolute territory that is dogmatic law of attraction, the answer is yes. The child attracted their cancer unwittingly because they didn't know better.
And to that, I have to say bullshit.
I don't fucking know why kids get cancer. No one does.
Taking that one step further, as a rape-survivor I'm going to have a big issue with anyone who tells me I created my rape. I'm not going to swallow that - ever. That said, I have been told that's exactly what happened.
I once fell down a flight of steps, breaking my leg in two places, requiring three surgeries. Well-meaning LOA savvy friends asked me why I attracted that. I spent way too much time trying to find meaning in an accident and beating myself up for manifesting it.
I was in the best place I've been in my life in a long time, maybe ever, when my house burned to the ground and we lost everything we owned. From a vibrational standpoint, there is no way to say I was aligned with that kind of loss and devastation. I was happier than I've ever been. It was a wildfire. I didn't create that.
Last night we thought my mother had a stroke. I will fully admit I didn't want to deal with the quiet but unrelenting judgment, external and maybe internally about how I attracted another tragedy in my life at this point. My mom is fine by the way. But for more than a few minutes, I struggled with figuring out how I could have aligned with something like that. Sometimes I still beat myself up with that bullshit even though I know better. That's not healthy or useful but old habits die hard.
An LOA purist would argue my point here, but I don't care. Life is more complicated than just me and my mood. It doesn't always make sense from where we see it. No one is to blame for their cancer, or rape, or wildfire AND any belief system that suggests experiencing something like that is YOUR FAULT because you couldn't just get happy is lacking both compassion AND evidence to support that nonsense.
A true LOA purist, (honestly, there aren't that many purists), will purposefully ignore the suffering of others so as not to attract what that person has created. They will justify that by saying that seeing that person's suffering only reinforces the vibration that got them there in the first place. That act of dismissing suffering might even extend to failing to compassionately understand the challenges that minorities and people in poverty experience.
I've been LOA shamed for my activism and political work. As an LOA coach my rage against the Trump administration, my work in reforming police brutality laws, and even my homeless advocacy work, has been unwelcome in some LOA circles, not all, but some.
It's been said that law of attraction works really well as cover for spiritual but not religious racism. While I don't think that is always
true, I will say it's easier to get "aligned" when you can wrap yourself in privilege and ignore the challenges that other people face daily when you don't face those kinds of challenges yourself. It's not your fault they attracted that stuff. Right??
And yet, the dogma remains and that dogma ran unchecked for a long time. In the Law of Attraction universe of personal development years passed before a slow but persistent rumble of dissatisfaction, if not seething rage started to rise. I think in some ways the #metoo movement was what transmuted that rage from bubbling under the surface to burning like a wildfire.
How can you have a public conversation about sexual abuse, rape, and harassment if you're going to be blamed for bringing it on yourself with your bad vibe? You can't.
Furthermore taking responsibility for your rape by default feels like letting the rapist off the hook baring no responsibility for his behavior. Instinctively, we know that doesn't feel good, right, or appropriate. But, hey, do it anyway and just go get happy.
The leader of the band for modern law of attraction teachings is Esther Hicks and Abraham, a group of "ascended beings." The LOA community quotes Abraham like a Southern Baptist preacher who quotes the Bible. Abraham's message is clear, "get happy". That's easy to digest and it's easy to repeat. However, it can be very harmful psychology.
I've always felt a bit of an uneasy relationship with Esther's work and channeling in general. That said, I've listened to probably thousands of hours of Abraham audios and read all the books. There is something in her message that sticks even if I don't believe her work is scientifically on the mark - which I do not.
I've watched Esther's work change lives for the better in big ways. I've also watched people, some including my clients use her words to drive their lives off a cliff of inaction and confusion chasing a feeling they couldn't hold on to.
Esther has made dozens if not hundreds of comments that make my skin crawl.
“It is less than 1% of the actual rape cases that are true violations, the rest of them are attractions and then a changing of intention later…”
“As this man is raping it is our promise to you this is a disconnected being, it is also our promise to you is the one he rapes is a disconnected being…”
“We believe that this subject [of rape] is really talking about the mixed intentions of the individual, in other words, she was wanting the attention, she was wanting the attraction, she was really wanting all of it and attracted more than she bargained for and then as it is occurring or even after feeling differently about it…”
“Do you think it would be accurate to say that many of the descendants of some of those who were brought here in slavery are now living in a much better environment than if they’d stayed there? It’s really hard to believe that whole cultures of people could have things in their vortex that would call them to it that would be part of an overall improvement of humanity...Some of that trauma and tragedy that they are wanting to condemn, if you could make peace with it and acknowledge it was the beginning of a journey that was better then the improvement could be yours today, but the determination to condemn it as wrongdoing on whoever’s part you want to point the condemnation toward holds you in the place in not receive the benefit they all cared so much about in that they were willing to live it in order to create it.”
In another talk, a woman asks Hicks a similar question about the Holocaust. “How did six million people of Jewish descent attract such despair and suffering that they endured?”
Hicks replies by saying that many did not die because of vibrational differences amongst them.
“For everyone that died in that way there were many, many, many more who didn’t. In other words, it didn’t happen to everyone, so why didn’t happen to everyone? Because there were vibrational differences among them you see. How can that many people have that negative experience? Because you hang around with each other and you talk similarly, and you get a similar vibration going and you dovetail into the currents of things and then inevitable things happen.”
These comments, among others, were collected for a Critique of Abraham Hicks for a website called The Guru Mag.
When that article dropped online people talked, lots of people, except the LOA community itself which resolutely did not blink. I consider myself a member of the LOA community. In whispers with friends, we very quietly unpacked what that article revealed. Since then, I've spent weeks researching volumes of Abraham material. Those ideas are not rare or isolated in her work.
These types of ideas have forced me to withdraw completely from Esther Hicks and the body of her work. I will not quote her anymore. I do not mention her in client sessions. I can't dismiss that kind of victim-blaming. Well, I could, but I won't. However, I did use her work as foundation in my practice with clients for years, longer than I should have. I say that because Esther's work is not necessary. I can't un-know what I know about deliberate creation because I'm disenchanted by Esther Hicks.
I don't need Abraham/Hicks to understand deliberate creation. The field of Quantum Physics has proven the observer effect creates an experience. Science tells us a lot about the nature of reality and how we are manipulating it with quantum measurements or observations. Neuroscience and the study of brain chemistry tell us a lot about why we interact with the quantum the way we do.
However, while the spiritual side of deliberate creation and the science of quantum physics seem to merge in the broad strokes, the details are not the same. Details matter a lot. The spiritual community cannot seem to let go of ideas that don't hold water scientifically. When we ignore the science for a spiritual notion being spouted by a guru, it starts to feel a lot like Christianity to me. I couldn't swallow Christianity on faith alone and I won't be asked to dismiss the science of influencing reality on faith either.
All of this said, I'm happy to talk deliberate creation with anyone from the LOA curious to the LOA haters. What I'm not interested in talking about is the work of a few who have muddied the waters with damaging or shady commentary that shames people for tragedy or inspires people to isolate from the experience of being human.
I can't tell you how many times I've had a client ask for help figuring out how they "attracted" something in their lives ranging from unpleasant to tragedy. I can't tell you how often I've retraced my vibrational steps searching in the dark for the same answers. However, I cannot find any way to believe that every single thing we experience is a creation of one. We do not live in a system of isolation.
I know that specific focus creates specific results.
I know that what we observe expands.
I also know that human experience is complicated, nuanced, and beautiful. Not everything unfolds as planned no matter how airtight that focus might be. There is power in focus but magic lives in the unknown.
I don't know where, as an industry or a community we go from here. I do know, change is afoot. One might say we attracted that. I can't say that change is unwelcome because I think it's time we start to check ourselves and find our voices of truth and reason above the soundbites of the gurus who led us this far.
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Lisa Hayes, The Love Whisperer, is an LOA Relationship Coach. She helps clients leverage Law of Attraction to get the relationships they dream about and build the lives they want. Lisa is the author of the newly released hit book, Score Your Soulmate and How to Escape from Relationship Hell and The Passion Plan.
I coach the version of you that remembers she was powerful long before she was polished.
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