What is the Law of Attraction?

This is a greatly misunderstood and misused concept among New Age circles.

Myths and misunderstandings about the Law of Attraction

• The Law of Attraction means like attracts like.
• The Law of Attraction means that we manifest our thoughts.
• The Law of Attraction means that we manifest all of our life experiences on an individual level.

Because many people misunderstand the Law of Attraction to mean that they are the sole creators of their experiences and that their thoughts are literally made manifest, it is often used in New Age circles to justify oppression and abuse as personal manifestations. This is highly problematic because it suggests that victims of rape, abuse, or other trauma, as well as racism, misogyny, and other hateful social attitudes are manifested or somehow created by the victims through a victim mentality, which enables abuse and oppression to continue and alleviates the perpetrators from accountability.

This is the result of an over-simplified understanding of the law of attraction, the false assumption that 100% of our experiences are created by our thoughts, and ignorance of the reality that we live in a co-created world where every single person is endowed with the same ability. This co-creation means that actions DO have consequences and we can and do use that creative power to oppress and victimize other people. The Law of Attraction absolves no one from shadow work, examining their own biases, and accepting accountability for one’s actions (also known as Karma).

Like does not necessarily attract like.

It is important to distinguish that Law of Attraction is not like attracts like. This is overly-simplistic. The Law of Attraction is like energy attracts like energy.

How things appear on the surface may look similar, however, the underlying energy and intentions can be completely different. For example, you may have two people doing psychic readings. The general assumption is that both people are “lightworkers.” However, one of those people is attracted to this position of authority as a means to gain power, control, and fame, and the other is attracted to this position of authority because they see it as a mission and genuinely want to help people heal. The underlying energies are polar opposites and only the surface gives the appearance of things being similar.

If we want to truly understand the law of attraction, we have to understand it in energetic terms: heavy energy attracts heavy energy. Lighter energy attracts lighter energy. The vibrational frequencies of the energies are a match.

For example: total control and total submission exist on the same power spectrum and they are both symptoms of a heavier, “negative,” fear-based energy, one being a hunger for power, and the other being a state of feeling powerless. Thus, these two energies “attract” because they are the same fundamental energy, and give the illusion of opposites attracting.

When a person is embodying the heavy energy of control, they are attracted to people and situations who are embodying the heavy energy of powerlessness. This is how and why abusers seek out individuals with a lack of healthy boundaries. When an abuser meets someone with a healthy sense of boundaries, they are often repelled from being in relationship with that person because that person’s energy is not a match. Once they test those boundaries and recognize that they can’t consistently penetrate them without consequence, either their mark will recognize the toxicity, end the relationship and move on, or they will move on to look for someone who is easier to exploit.

Manifesting

Manifesting refers to the process by which we create the life we experience. A common misconception about manifestation is that we literally manifest our thoughts.

The fundamental catalyst that engages the Law of Attraction is not thoughts, but our beliefs. Thoughts are products of beliefs. Beliefs are the basis of our thoughts, and subsequently, our attitudes, words, and finally, our actions. As such, the energy of those beliefs is carried throughout our experience, and reflected back to us in our understanding of the reality we experience.

Your beliefs about yourself and the world around you – conscious or not – dictate your words and actions, and your words and actions dictate how you co-create the world around you, and how you perceive that world which surrounds you is largely predicated on your beliefs about it. This is simple cause and effect. Essentially, people experience the Law of Attraction through their frame of reference.

We don’t attract anything to us, but we are attracted to things which resonate with our beliefs.

This is also called confirmation bias. Our thoughts are creative in this context because they are dictating many of the situations, people, and information we choose to engage with. The entire goal of spirituality is to become conscious of our sponsoring thoughts so that we can be attracted to situations, people, and information that we actually want in our lives rather than those we don’t.

Much of our core beliefs and attitudes exist subconsciously. Thus, the only way to ensure that we are not manifesting our world from a place of unconscious fear is to engage in a process of deep self-reflection and trauma healing to release any fear-based programming, thereby shifting our beliefs to more positive attitudes and actions. Our actions create a great deal of our lives individually – at least the aspects which are in our control. Our actions, collectively, contribute to the the things which are not in control, such as systems of oppression. Oppressive systems are a co-creation. How you choose to navigate, contribute to, or dismantle those oppressive systems is your creation and your individual contribution to the co-created reality we live in.

The Law of Attraction and Karma

The Law of Attraction is the mechanism through which we experience “karma.” Through the Law of Attraction, we are continually presented with experiences of similar patterns to that of our initial karmic wound. There is no reason behind this other than conditioned habits and patterns of behavior, but each time it happens, it does present us with a new opportunity for healing. Once we recognize the conditioned behavioral patterns, find the root of the trauma and engage in a healing process, we can then shift that energy and start making better choices that ends the pattern.

Karma is not a punishment for past misdeeds because Karma is not fate. Karma is the consequences of the individual and collective actions of individual members of society. Karma is responsible for the construction of oppressive systems and cycles of abuse, and balancing one’s karma entails holding ourselves accountable for how we have contributed to those consequences and actively acting to dismantle those systems, as well as healing generational trauma.