does law of attraction bother you?

[Ales2]

Sometimes I really find the law of attraction platitudes offensive and ignorant. Does anyone else?

When someone says, "you only get what back what you put out there" - I can get really offended.  People who advocate this attitude really offend me because what they do not realize is that for someone like me who was severely emotionally and verbally abused as a child, for absolutely no reason (i.e none of us deserved this treatment), I've been handicapped and crippled and despite my best efforts to recover, heal  and deal with all of it in years of therapy, I still attract verbally and emotionally abusive people, emotionally unavailable,  incapable of genuine love and respect, without putting that out at all, in any way to others.  I find it enormously frustrating and hurtful for someone to point to me as the source of my own problems!

Does anyone else feel this way? I've tried over the years to change my attitude toward these kind of statements, but still find that these people can wound me quite deeply when they force this belief on me.

[BonesMS]

Sometimes I really find the law of attraction platitudes offensive and ignorant. Does anyone else?

When someone says, "you only get what back what you put out there" - I can get really offended.  People who advocate this attitude really offend me because what they do not realize is that for someone like me who was severely emotionally and verbally abused as a child, for absolutely no reason (i.e none of us deserved this treatment), I've been handicapped and crippled and despite my best efforts to recover, heal  and deal with all of it in years of therapy, I still attract verbally and emotionally abusive people, emotionally unavailable,  incapable of genuine love and respect, without putting that out at all, in any way to others.  I find it enormously frustrating and hurtful for someone to point to me as the source of my own problems!

Does anyone else feel this way? I've tried over the years to change my attitude toward these kind of statements, but still find that these people can wound me quite deeply when they force this belief on me.

I can identify!  It's just about as bad as the "meta-physical" crap that some have tried to hand me.

Bones

[Guest]

Hi Ales

I find I can reduce the amount of frustration and hurt I feel by realising that what others think is their business. If they want to believe stuff like that, it's up to them. I think it's (that 'law') mostly bunkum and morally offensive - i.e. it's akin to oh, say, racism, as an idea. I can't stop other people believing idiotic things and they can't force their belief on me either. Nobody can force any belief on us, really, not when we're adults. Yeah?

[Twoapenny]

Hi Ales,

Yes, it bothers me, too!  It also used to really bother me that I knew some really unpleasant, unhealthy, abusive people who had really easy lives in the material sense - well paid jobs, nice houses, plenty of cash etc - whilst I struggled on a low income even though I considered myself to be a nicer, kinder, healthier person.  That always really bothered me, but it bothers me less these days.  I have often wondered what I had done to deserve so much bad luck, so many bad people in my life, so much pain, etc.  That, too, is lessening now.  I have often wondered why so many of the problems I deal with in my life are caused by other people, not by me, and that is something that I still struggle with.  Something else to work on.

Sometimes I think it's one of those ways of just not having to get into a conversation about it or offer sympathy - you know, someone's having a bad time and it's easier to blame them in some way than to offer up some support or kind words, or just a friendly ear.  I suppose it's the same as any belief system - applying it to everyone in every situation just doesn't work.  It's often the 'victims' that attract more criticism than those who have committed the abuse/crime/bad deed or whatever it is.  I don't know why?  What I can say is that I do seem to be attracting more and more nice people into my life these days.  I'm not sure what has happened but something seems to have shifted and nicer things are coming my way - but perhaps that's just part of getting older, not putting up with other people's nonsense, being more choosy about who I spend my time with and so on.  I'm not sure.  But there have been times when I felt (feel!) like everyone around me is nuts and I'm the only one who isn't!  It's a funny old game sometimes

[Hopalong]

Yes. I find it intellectually and spiritually sloppy and it sets my teeth on edge...until I let it go.

I took a Louise Hays-based workshop one time and asked, when they were going on about how even children, as little spirits out in the universe, actually "choose their parents" -- well, does that mean an infant who is abused CHOSE this?

Somebody answered, oh, that baby chose those parents because the baby needed to work out something from an earlier life...

At which point I quit. At that time, quite infuriated.

I do get it in the sense that if you put out integrity and kindness in the world you are much more likely to experience positive and satisfying responses from other human beings. It improves your chances of maturity and happiness. Period.

However, that is no guarantee you will find ease or comfort, depending on your luck--and I don't think one should make one's decisions based on believing it will "attract" or manifest "abundance" or whatever...but because one is operating according to INTERNAL values that have less to do with "getting what you want to get" (though I'm driven by that like anyone) -- but more ideally, "GIVING what you want to give".

Oh easy to preach. Not always easy to do.

Hops

[Guest]

Hops


getting                                                           giving
                             
                                   being

                                     ?

(I bet that doesn't come out as well-spaced as I would like it to! but I reckon you'll know what I mean)

[bearwithme]

Yes.  Those words and thinking infuriate me to no end.  I think it's B.S.  NO child deserves to be abused and mistreated.  You did not ask for anything of the sorts, who would?  Crazy people? 

Hops said:

I do get it in the sense that if you put out integrity and kindness in the world you are much more likely to experience positive and satisfying responses from other human beings. It improves your chances of maturity and happiness. Period.

I agree wholeheartedly.  So let's flip this.  I know a few people, like my sister-in-law, who have been less than nice to me over the course of a decade.  She has  been mean, spiteful and dishonest.  She ignores me and treats me like an idiot.  She is rude to others and has raged on them as well telling them completely off in public. She has never, ever apologized for her actions; YET, she gets everything she wants (seemingly). She gets such "satisfying responses from other human beings."  People bow down to her, she gets money, she gets praises, she has luck and power, people crowd around her at parties and think she's so attractive, (she's really not in my book) when she rages on people, they say, "Oh, that's just Sue, you know how she is, she's such a go-getter and tough gal...she tells it like it is and is really pragmatic."  Huh?  If I put Sue's "attitude" out in the universe, then I get hammered!! 

I don't necessarily believe that it works the other way around.  Mean and rude people seem to get more in life while the nice, reasonable people (some of them) get walked on and have to struggle all the more.  I think it's unfair that way.  Having said that, I am much happier being nice and reasonable and considerate than rude, mean and vicious to get what I want, etc.  But what's the difference if you take the attitudes out of the equation? 

I just get really mad at the fact that people like my sister in law seem to get away with it constantly and with excuses to boot!  Not to say that anything negative has ever happened to her in return but it seems that there is a lot more of acceptance there.

I'm not so sure that of the quote "you get what you put out there."  Just not a believer at this time.  Sorry to those who believe this.  I do waiver at times

Bear

[Meh]

Quote : "I find it enormously frustrating and hurtful for someone to point to me as the source of my own problems!
Does anyone else feel this way? "

Yes, I get angry sometimes because to me that statement demonstrates a lack of understanding.

I might feel my heart get metallic after hearing that from a relative.

[Twoapenny]

I think the point about babies choosing their parents is a really difficult one.  My son has been the thing that has turned my life around.  My decision to have him was life-altering, for the better.  But his childhood has been really difficult because of my problems.  Don't get me wrong, I've always done my best by him, he's always loved and well looked after and I am still working really hard on myself so that I can always set him a good example and raise him in a good way - but he could have easily 'picked' a mum and dad who could have given him all of that without all the tears and drama. I would struggle to see what he's gained by picking me as a mum instead of picking someone from a loving family who was in a loving relationship and had a bit of money in the bank.  All those things would have made his childhood better for him.  I really hope he hasn't suffered because of me, but if as an adult he sits down one day and tells me he wasn't happy I will have to take that on the chin and accept that was my fault and apologise.  There is no way I could turn around to him and suggest he 'picked' me out!  I love him to bits and have always done my best but sometimes my best hasn't been good enough (or as good as someone else's best might be) and that's the way it is.  I can see how my having him was my salvation but I don't really see what he got out of it that he couldn't have got just as easily somewhere else.

[Hopalong]

I agree that cruelty and power often, even usually, triumph. Temporally speaking.

But my hero, MLK Jr, reminded me:
"The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

I believe I will never know for sure, how it will all wind up. Did justice win?
The arc is too long for me to know. But I'd rather be marching on faith he is right.

The most agonizing part of Man's Search for Meaning (Victor Frankl) for me was when he leads the reader to logo-therapy ("meaning" therapy)...to the place where we absorb his conclusion that our lives and our choices DO have meaning, even when we not only cannot control the outcome, but even when the outcome may be terrible.

His final example was, what meaning in life could a person who is being marched naked to a gas chamber, and who knows what is about to happen, possibly find? The answer was, they could choose what final thoughts they would think. And choose to reassure their children, to cover them in love until life is gone.

I believe he was saying that love, in the aggregate, IS the outcome (meaning). Death is not the outcome. Cruelty is not the outcome. So long as a person is able to choose their own thoughts...there can be meaning even amidst suffering.

(I don't think suffering or poverty are redemptive in themselves. When people become unloving and brutal because they do not have the capacity or courage to choose otherwise, I do not judge them. They are unfortunate. I may hold them accountable and/or avoid them and damn well better avoid them...but ultimately, if they knew how to create meaning by choosing thoughts of love and justice, I believe most, most of the time, would.)

I don't choose it all the time. Far from it.
But when I do, I feel as though there is meaning in my life.

xo
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

getting                                                           giving
                             
                                   being

Guest, I think you hit the nail on the head!

Through giving, if we pay attention, we also experience the gift... therefore "getting"... or receiving... and we are in fact, in that moment "being"... what the gift is.

Maybe that's a convoluted, zen-ish way of looking at things. But it works for me!

[Guest]

Amber, it's the grey area between the poles too? Your description isn't convoluted to me.

Hops,  I agree mostly, esp about being able to choose our own thoughts. Don't agree with the MLKjr quote at all; I just don't see it as true/factual, but, I can see that it might help to think that, in certain times. But if we want to believe in a 'just' universe, that's a free choice. (The universe appears exceptionally neutral to me.)

Hmm. Meaning is not love though. Perhaps 'meaning' is sanity? I.e. you know what you are doing, and why you are doing it.

[sKePTiKal]

I used to think that "if only..." I could learn enough.... some day I'd know so much... that I'd also know the meaning and significance behind all the "great" questions and I obsessed over this quest.

I still like to know things, but Watson was able to ring in faster on Jeopardy, than my brain can retrieve all those old dusty library cards!

I kinda gave up my quest - or at least modified it. One: there's too much for any one person to "know" and if I knew as much as Google, my head would explode. (Used to tell students on a similar quest that it's better to know where to find the info, than to try to hold it all in one's head.) There is no society-bestowed "gold star" for knowing "everything" anyway. And Two: there is something emotionally satisfying about being OK with some things remaining mysteries... that means there always room for more discoveries I guess. And it's always so much fun to have those "huh! I didn't know that" moments.