LoA Realities

Listening to LoA podcasts, then to anti-cult podcasts, creates an interesting dichotomy. There’s a lot of crossover, particularly with the large group awareness training cults because so many of them fall into the LoA teachings, distorting them to make themselves wealthy and/or powerful while abusing people to keep them in and constantly paying.

As I have said before, I have been in positive thinking and LoA since I was about 9 and read “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale. The book “Wishcraft” is next to “Real Magic” by Isacc Bonewitz. I read Sonia Choquette’s “Your Heart’s Desire” and Sarah Breathnach’s “Simple Abundance” (which wasn’t simple or cheap, btw.) I recently read “The Magic”, “Super Attractor” and “You are a Badass at Making Money”. I plan to read Atomic Habits in the near future.

The problem with all of these are fairly prolific. They are almost all full of some kind of woo, whether it be spirituality, to magical words/thinking. They don’t actually explain the process. Just “If you have faith, let go, keep positive and have gratitude, the Universe will answer you”. It sets one up for either disappointment or become susceptible to these group awareness training cults. About the only two so far that haven’t have been Sarah’s book and the Badass at money book. They tend to stay away from really serious woo. And when you look at where these authors are now, many aren’t really in good places. Many are already dead, some have gotten so deep into woo that they are just completely out of touch with reality and others, that is about all they have done is that one book, or a series of books that conveniently show the downward spiral of their lives.

The LoA books suggested to be read don’t take into account the author themselves, their lives, how things are going now, as many of these books were written at least 20 years ago, or where they have ended up. Books like The Secret (and The Magic), came from the Prosperity Gospel that gave birth to the megachurches who absorb the tithes and don’t give back to the community, except the rich ones where the ministers have moved into multimillion dollar mansions, that also helped give power to the extreme Christian Right who are determined to cull and remove all the rights of anyone who isn’t them.

They portend a type of pseudoscience by misquoting Einstein and other genius celebrities throughout history, taking out of context, or completely misquoting all together to make their points that their tactics are real. They take their very limited knowledge of psychology and apply it, sometimes with dangerous results, to the LoA training. They use NLP unethically to hook you into believing their bullshit. They talk word salads, trying to sound philosophical about a topic they don’t fully understand and can’t possibly have the answer to because they just don’t have the knowledge base behind them.

LoA is rife for collecting victims, and unfortunately, many who produce content are aware of that.

The truth is LoA is a thing. It is a mindset. It isn’t magical thinking or even woo. You can remove a lot of that garbage and still have a concrete practice. You don’t need to talk to spirit guides, meditate, have a mantra, affirmations, etc. None of those are required.

Do they help? I suppose. Spirit guides, absolutely not. I’m not against people believing they have spirit guides and/or angels helping them. You do you, boo, but honestly…that voice is just your brain, not some fisherman from the 1500’s Mediterranean Sea, giving you his salty wisdom of the universe from the other side. It’s literally just your brain telling you what you either want to hear or already know.

Meditating can be good, but it can also cause mental harm and if you aren’t practicing the correct type of meditation, (active, resting, trancing practices), it may have absolutely no effect for you and can actually cause you psychiatric harm.

Matras are okay, but really, what is your mantra actually trying to convince you of? Something real or something you wish were real? You need to really scrutinize the words and their intention.

Affirmations are okay as well, but their main purpose is to get you to focus, not on the negatives in your life, but train your brain to think in positive terms so you stop being so sad about the reality. That’s not necessarily wrong, as long as you are acknowledging the bad and taking care of resolving those things that you can and not just ignoring them through affirmations.

Gratitude is good. It helps you be happy with what you have, what is around you, and the things that come to you. It helps you start to see the good over the bad or make good out of bad situations. Gratitude makes me think of Joy from the movie “Inside Out”, always turning a bad thing on its head so that it is actually a good thing. And that’s okay, as long as you aren’t using it to block out the real problems you need to work on and resolve.

There are many good things about LoA that does help you mentally. Does it cure cancer? Fuck no, lol. By thinking negative thoughts, do you cause yourself to have illnesses? LOL Bigger fuck no. Is it your fault when things beyond your control happen? Please stop believing this. This horrible belief only hurts yourself. Please don’t hurt yourself. Not everything happens for a reason. In fact, a lot of things in this world happen for no reason at all other than certain conditions lined up. That’s all. Quit beating yourself up over the things you can’t control.

But, what about those people wanting to get pregnant, and can’t until they start the LoA?! For many, the stress of trying to have a baby can be counterproductive to having a baby. When you use the LoA practice to manifest a baby, you are relaxing, letting go of trying to wrangle control and reducing your stress, and making your body far more hospitable for babies. And some people, regardless of the LoA, still never reproduce.

We usually only hear the success stories because part of the LoA practice is telling people if it didn’t work, it was because you didn’t believe enough, use affirmations/meditate/write your gratitudes/etc correctly. The fault lies with the practitioner, and not the fact that the LoA process doesn’t focus on the reality of life, science and psychology, fills people up with potentially false hopes and doesn’t provide a support system for when things don’t work out.

Having said this, I do believe that there are very good things about the LoA process, but we have to be realistic about it. It isn’t the magical miracle the Universe wants to lavish us with. LoA teachers are often charlatans looking to make an easy buck off people desperate for changes and easy targets. We really need to provide safe, science based practices that take into account the real results of positive thinking versus negative thinking. We need to quit putting the burden of the unrealistic on those who have been told they can literally do anything and believe it. We need to have compassion and support for those who end up disappointed and help people take the smaller steps to reaching their goals.

There is nothing wrong with believing in yourself and having confidence to do the things you dream. We all should have these. What is wrong is convincing people it’s completely okay and safe without a safety net or a rescue crew on call.