Abuse and The Law of Attraction

For a community that is supposed to be focused on love, light, and healing, New Agers have invented and contributed to some of the most toxic, harmful, bullshit ideologies on the planet, and nine times out of ten, the Law of Attraction is behind it.

One of those toxic ideologies is that people manifest their own abusive experiences through Law of Attraction, including children. I’ve written previously about the topic of manifesting abusive experiences, but I didn’t go in-depth on the Law of Attraction in that post, which I will do today.

I’m just going to come right out and say it: No. Unequivocally, children do not manifest their own abuse through Law of Attraction.

What Law of Attraction zealots want you to believe, particularly those who are making money from coaching people to manifest the life of their dreams, is that you are the all powerful, absolute creator of the totality of your experience, the God of your own world, and you can have absolutely anything your heart desires–all you have to do to harness this power is think positive thoughts and set an intention about what you want, and the Universal vending machine will deliver it up to you on a silver platter!

It’s bullshit.

Try manifesting a physical living breathing unicorn in your back yard using that ideology and let me know how it goes.

This line of thinking is actually a form of separation consciousness because it downplays, ignores, or outright denies the interconnected nature of our human experiences. Yes, you are a creative being and you have the ability to shape the world around you, but it is not as simplistic as these opportunistic gurus would have you believe.

I’m going to return to the book that I refer to as my bible today, Conversations with God.

Thought + Word + Deed = Manifestation

There’s a reason that magick involves intentions, incantations, and rituals. They are the thoughts, the words, and the actions to bring one’s vision to life.

And not just any ole thoughts…the sponsoring thought.

What is a sponsoring thought? The sponsoring thought is your deeply held beliefs about yourself and the world around you, much of which exists on a subconscious level until you engage in the appropriate amount of shadow work to uncover them. Until that point, you’re “manifesting” from your trauma, your wounds, and your self-limitations rather than fully-embodied consciousness.

Learn about shadow work’s role in spirituality.

Chances are, the shit you’re trying to manifest if you haven’t done this work is going to be materialistic and egoic and end up causing more harm than good.

Another famous line from Conversations with God:

 

“My will is your will, but your will is not my will.”

What that means is, God wants you to be the creator, and that entails having the free will to do what thou wilt, even if it isn’t in alignment with the highest good or your most authentic (read: healed) self, however, what God wills for you is that you rise to your highest potential and bring yourself back into alignment with that natural state. Once your will is in alignment with God’s will, you have become a conscious creator.

In simpler terms, once you’ve done the work to examine your unconscious beliefs, biases, and the traumas the created them, your idea about what might make you happy and the things that you desire will be on much healthier footing, and they will be in alignment with higher consciousness, not your lower desires and unconscious fear-responses, which typically end up creating nasty consequences–the old “be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.” Watch Wonder Woman 1984 for a general idea of how well that might go…

This is precisely why a lot of the better spiritual teachers out there will tell you that attempting to manifest anything is a useless endeavor until you’ve done the work. It’s why the ancient mystery schools had initiation processes, and its why most orders still do today (If you want to learn more about this, I highly recommend listening to this podcast interview with Damien Echols), and the ones who are trash are just reinforcing toxic positivity, spiritual bypassing, and rampant materialism.

So no, your passing thoughts and random fears are not going to literally manifest if you think about them for two seconds. Or even an hour. It is likely, however, that a great deal of your thoughts and fears are a part of some greater subconscious belief system or attitude which you are helping to perpetuate (and thus, manifest) into the world around you.

Learn the real mechanism behind the Law of Attraction.

The Secret: Prosperity Gospel for the New Age

It’s a much better marketing gimmick if the charlatans can convince you that you’re the singular God of your own universe instead of a part of a divine global collective of interconnected beings co-creating together. It’s the influence of western cultural values that prize individualism above community, domination over cooperation, manifest destiny, and so on. As I mentioned earlier, this is a form of separation consciousness and an avenue to avoid social responsibility. Toss in a heavy dose of capitalism and materialism and you have Americanized spirituality.

But these overly-simplified ideas about Law of Attraction gloss over this important fact: we are not individually the only creator on this planet. We live in a co-created world with other people who are endowed with the same creative potential that we are, and we’re all co-creating our existence every single day, with every conscious or subconscious belief we have that influences our thoughts and attitudes, which in turn influence the words we speak and the actions we take. Our actions directly affect other people in the world around us. That’s precisely how we’ve manifested the world we live in today…and what a spectacular shit show!

Wait–are we responsible for this mess?!

Collectively, yes. Humanity as a whole, throughout time, created this world and all of the fear and trauma and oppression that exists within it evolved out of the unhealed wounds and the unconscious actions perpetrated from those wounds.

On an individual level, we perpetuate that trauma by manifesting–through actions, cause, and effect–from our unconscious belief systems built upon unhealed wounds–or, we heal it by expanding our conscious awareness of ourselves, eliminating destructive belief systems, choosing constructive actions, and taking responsibility for ourselves and the creative role we have in the world around us.

Child Abuse and Ancestral Karma

In a previous post on this topic I wrote:

A child’s first experience with abuse can never be the result of their own thoughts because the experience has never entered into their awareness. Especially when we are children, we haven’t yet fully developed a sense of self–our brains don’t even finish forming until we’re 25–and we are at the mercy of the adult/child power dynamic. Therefore, any abuse perpetrated on a child by an adult can never be the result of Law of Attraction.

Children don’t have the luxury of making their own decisions or truly thinking for themselves. They don’t manifest abuse, because abuse is karmic and it is perpetrated onto them.

Remember this: karma trumps Law of Attraction every time.

When I say karmic, I don’t mean the notion that karma is some kind of punishment for past (life) transgressions. Have you ever heard the phrase, “Hurt people hurt people?” All of that stuff I just talked about–manifesting from unhealed wounds? The consequences of the “manifesting” we do (a.k.a. the actions we take) from unhealed wounds is our karmic contribution to the collective. Karma is the energetic legacy we leave behind us. It stays here on the planet and affects those who come after us.

Ancestral karma is when that energy is passed down through generations of a family lineage. Child abuse is ancestral karma: a learned pattern from the previous generation inflicted upon the next.

Children come into this world as a blank slate, with no deeply held belief systems. Our parents are the only reference we have for what the world means for the first several years of our existence. We are completely at the mercy of these people’s actions. They have ultimate authority and power over us, and because we need to survive above all else, that means attempting to bond with the people we are dependent upon for survival.

We have no real choice about what to think or believe at this stage of our lives. Abusive adults wield this power dynamic in unhealthy ways, causing trauma. That trauma, when left unhealed in an adult, manifests as more unhealthy power dynamics, abusive behaviors, and/or destructive coping mechanisms, inflicting more trauma onto their children, and so the cycle goes.

You were never responsible for what happened to you when you were too young to think for yourself, and you did not manifest it. Those experiences were inflicted upon you by an adult who held power over you.

So What About Now?

Law of Attraction advocates tout that you attract to you everything that you experience, like metal to a magnet. What if it’s the other way around? What if you’re not the magnet… but the metal? At least for as long as you exist in an unconscious stage of manifestation?

Let’s take relationships, for example: we’re often attracted to people who exhibit the same toxic or abusive behavioral patterns as our parents did.

Those who grew up in a household with an abusive parent or had an otherwise chaotic childhood learned from those experiences that this is what love looks and feels like. And that’s not their fault–it’s the only thing they’ve ever been exposed to. They subconsciously recognize and associate that chaotic feeling with love, and that’s what they are attracted to in potential partners. They probably walk past healthy potential partners all day long and never give them a second glance, or if they do, their coping mechanisms cause the relationship to self-destruct before it ever gets off the ground (ask me how I know…).

It’s not that you’re manifesting abusive experiences for yourself, it’s that you’re responding to your subconscious childhood programming–until you become aware of the patterns.

When we heal the patterns, we fundamentally change what we are attracted to. We can begin to discard old beliefs, recognize our patterns, heal our trauma, shift our perspectives and attitudes, and take actions that have healthier consequences–both for ourselves and everyone that we are connected to here on earth. We become a conscious co-creator of our collective reality. We liberate ourselves, and each other.

 

Xo,

Ash

 

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8 Comments

  1. This article was meant for me today. I am not sure how you became so wise but the wisdom in this article is evident to me. Your words definitely brought a clarity and understanding and with those a greater sense of peace within me. As an adult I thought I had manifested my trauma because I had chosen my stepmother. You can only imagine how the impact this belief has effected me in life. Grateful for those who have supported me and strengthened me in my journey of healing…and to you…for adding to my healing. Sending you much light and love your way.

    Reply
    • No, you didn’t manifest it. Not sure if you read my other post that I linked to, but in it, I talk about how the typical M.O. of an abuser is to blame the victim for the abuse. Any spiritual person who tells victims of abuse that they manifested it are no different than the abusers themselves. They are enabling abusers and contributing to a collective cultural energy of trauma and abuse.

      And, many times, it’s also coming from people who were victims of abuse who blame themselves, and are projecting that onto other people because they haven’t let go of their own guilt and shame.

      I know that this kind of belief system is rampant in the spiritual community and it’s exactly why I wanted to address it: to stop the victim-blaming.

      I wish you luck with your healing <3

      Reply
  2. This was so spot on. Someone gave the me the book The Secret and it seriously just rubbed me the wrong way. I have a great deal of childhood trauma, and for someone to essentially say i attracted it, really infuriated and disgusted me. I’m so happy I found your page, thank you so much for this insight!!

    Reply
    • I’m happy you found it, too!

      Reply
  3. I wish I had found this website when I was struggling with New Age teachings, during my depression. I became so afraid to reach out because people used me to scratch their the savior complex itch. It’s like they didn’t even listen. They just wanted to use my suffering as a way to make it about themselves and how they had my life all figured out on so little information. So many of them blamed me for my suffering that I tried to take my own life. I believed them. It took many tests before doctors found it was a neurological problem. No one “attracts” brain injuries. Sometimes, sh– just happens! I don’t do substances, smoke or drink, either. It was genetic.

    I like how you explained karma more accurately. Your explanation lines up with my personal experience and studies. A lot of people just want to bend the rules to make life out to be harder than it needs to be, I guess.

    I’ve got to stop letting people get in my head and start trusting my own intuition. What you wrote here makes a lot more sense. Thank you.

    Reply
    • I’m glad you’re here 🙂

      Reply
  4. Fascinating and so relatable. Just curious about your thoughts on Abraham and Esther Hicks… which has always seemed slightly cult-like to me and unbelievable.

    Reply

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