Sometimes I get nasty emails.
They are usually from people who strongly disagree with my book, The Attractor Factor, and/or the movie The Secret.
They say the law of attraction isn’t a law.
They’re pretty angry about it, too.
Their number one proof is that the law of gravity is repeatable: drop something and it falls.
But, they say, the law of attraction can’t be repeated at all.
What these well-intended people don’t see is that they are attracting all the time.
They even attract other like-minded skeptics, completely oblivious to the fact that they have attracted each other, but let’s leave that observation for someone else to ponder.
They say they aren’t attracting because they appear to attract what they don’t want.
So, in their mind, the law of attraction can’t be a law.
I can’t blame them for thinking that way. They simply expect the law to work in their favor at all times. (As if gravity does.) They expect everything to be measureable and predictable.
But this is where their logic is twisted.
They never seem to notice that they can drop a pen from a roof a million times but it won’t land in the exact same spot every time.
Why not?
Isn’t gravity a law?
Shouldn’t gravity be exactly repeatable?
In other words, because something falls, they say gravity is proven.
Well, because you attract something, even what you didn’t consciously want, doesn’t that prove the law of attraction, too?
I think the confusion comes from expecting to hit a specific target every time.
With gravity, people are forgiving. If it falls, that’s proof of gravity. They don’t look any further. Experiment over.
But with the law of attraction, people are more demanding: if they don’t attract precisely what they said they wanted, then the law doesn’t exist (in their mind).
Now this is what’s interesting to me:
If the law of attraction is working just as the law of gravity is — neither are precise (they can be but that’s a different blog post) but both are laws — why don’t some people want to agree to it?
And why are so many of these outspoken people angry?
My guess is that as soon as they admit the law of attraction works, then they have to take full responsibility for what they are getting in their life.
Few can admit that.
It’s scary.
It means there is no one to blame.
Think of the apparent burden this places on a person.
If I could shirk responsibility, I’d do it, too!
But once you understand the truth, there’s no going back to sleep again.
And get this —
Taking full responsibility for your life is only stage two in the process of awakening. There’s still stage three. (I explain all three in my latest book, Zero Limits.)
Considering how tough it is to get people out of stage one, I think I have my work cut out for me.
Please join me in saying —
“I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you.”
Ao Akua,
Joe
www.mrfire.com
PS – If you want help in understanding all this, consider my Miracles Coaching program. I also have a DVD that helps explain the law of attraction – and then how to transcend it. It’s at www.installthesecret.com Go see. No charge to go look. 🙂
Note: It would be fair to ask, “Joe, why did you attract those nasty emails from the skeptics?” Good question. I attracted them to get me to write this post. Had I not gotten any emails, I may never have written this or even thought about writing this. In short, those nasty emails were a good thing and I attracted them. Now that I’ve gotten the lesson from them, I don’t need to attract any more of them (unless there’s another lesson to learn from them). This is called getting clear. I believe it is The Missing Secret to a successful life.
18 Comments
Finally the book is released! Can’t wait to read it
Error comes from not accepting that a law doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
While the “Law of Gravity” is being compared with the “Law Of Attraction”, to say that the Law of gravity is NOT exactly repeatable is just as naive as saying the law of attraction doesn’t work.
The Law of gravity will always every time produce the same exacting results.
The Wandering of a pen from a high building is purposefully ignoring other effectual laws that are taking place in full concert with the law of gravity.
Just as not taking full responsibility for what is in your life is an error, any statement that regards Laws as fluid, un-exacting, or changing is more so.
“The likelihood of one individual being right increases in direct proportion to the intensity with which others are trying to prove him wrong.”
– Mr. Jordan from the movie “Heaven Can Wait”
The skeptics you mentioned bring to my mind the Bible scriptures that describe how some would argue and debate about details and the use of specific words while missing the meaning behind the lesson. They would pick apart some of the finer points and not recognize the big picture, completely missing out on the wonderful gift of enlightenment being offered to them.
I love your description of dropping a pen from the top of a building and how it would not land in exactly the same spot every single time. That is a perfect point of reasoning that those who truly want to learn will appreciate, while those who don’t will not see its’ relevance. I’m glad this was attracted so I could learn another tool when teaching the Law of Attraction to my friends and family.
Thank you.
I♥U
Will
:mrgreen:Just stopped by to read your blog i really enjoy the read. I definitely will be back again. i am a student of personal development and i truly believe it is a powerful way to live.
Have a wonderful day
Susan
http;//susanvlz.blogspot.com
Hey Joe,
1st – Does it matter what order you say the I’m sorry – Please forgive me – I love you – Thank you – I think in the book you have it 2 different ways – and this is the way I’ve been saying it.
2nd – Is it better to say “I love you” as to the four phrases in the 1st? Or do you use them both intermixed – Do you use the four phrases when you know you have lots of clearing or is it just better to say I love you all day long? Do you think about anything when you say the four phrases – or just say them over and over and just know that it will clean the ‘thing or things’ that need(s) clearing the most? Am I making this more difficult than it seems?
Hopefully I’ll get to take Dr. Hew Len’s class sometime this year or next year if these are questions that you can’t answer due to liability reasons.
Thanks!!
J. Hebert
Taking responsibility is challenging, once you walk the first hundred yards or so, you never want to look back again, and why would you want to when you know something more magnificent is just around the corner. 😯
I’m sorry, please forgive me, I love You, Thank you.
Arohanui
Tania 🙂 😀 😎
Joe,
In all fairness, it should be noted that the anger you describe is not limited to those who don’t accept the concepts you present. Some of the most hateful, vitriolic messages I’ve ever received were from people who claim to believe in, follow, and even teach those very concepts. Life is just too short to spend caught up in another’s pathology, no matter in which belief system that pathology is based.
Great post. I really liked your comment about attracting the angry emails so you would have reason to write the post. I have been attracting minor setbacks and irritations for the past day or so and now I have to figure out what the lesson for me is in this. By the way, what does Ao Akua mean?
Jennifer, I think I heard an old interview with Joe where he actually left out the “I’m sorry” because it didn’t resonate really well at the time, or something like that. He also said the order wasn’t crucial, I believe. But that was a while ago. I’d be curious to hear if that’s changed, Joe? Or if I heard that wrong?
Joe, I can’t wait to read this future post you referenced: “If the law of attraction is working just as the law of gravity is — neither are precise (they can be but that’s a different blog post)”!
Lastly, Joe, I admire how well you handle the naysayers. I’ll never forget how you took the strong stand on those follow up Larry King interviews, when everyone else was wimping out. You’ll be well-remembered as the guy who told it like it was when it wasn’t popular!!
Much love to you –
Jeannette
Good Vibe Coaching
http://loaplayground.blogspot.com
PS – I’m curious what Ao Akua means too!
Hi Jeannette. It doesn’t matter what order you say the phrases in. And “I’m sorry” can be changed to “I apologize.” The point is to create a heart opening so you have a divine connection with source. As for “Ao Akua,” I explain it in my book, “Zero Limits.” I’ve also explained it here on my blog, but a while back.
And thank you for your compliments and good wishes.
I DO apprceiate them.
Blessings,
joe
Once it works for me… why would i care what others or studies say, unless of course they can tell me how to make it work even better !
If i can get it to work 4 out of 10 times using something new…where as it was 0 out of 10 beforehand….do i really need 10 out of 10 to make it a LAW?
No i Keep using it and find out how to shift things in me to increase the times it happens to 10 out of 10
What i think people miss is the “Lazy” Factor. We are all “Lazy” and want the Law to do it all for us
It is those that work with the LAW that gain the most from it
We can wish Gravity worked sideways all we want and say it is not a law until it does…but those that accept what gravity is and work within its boundaries benefit from it most
We as Humans are still discovering the boundaries of the Law of Attraction and how it can work for us…or better said…we can work with it
So even if i can hit 8 out of 10 now..it doesn’t mean i will knock those that may only see 1 out of 10…quite the reverse..i will encourage them because i once only knew 1 out of 10
There is something magical about learning a Laws Secrets .
And in discovering it Secrets….i get more of life
If nothing else it is a Fantastic Journey that makes life so much more fun than it used to be.
And it is wonderful to share its Secrets with others
In making friends with This Law….i have made so many great friends…and for that i am Grateful
And i am Most grateful for my friend Joe Vitale in this Quest
Thanks Joe !
Love
Mark
😀
These things are all about belief and feeling. Not all people are going to want to belief nor feel that they are in control of their lives. That is ok. Spirituality, capitalism, etc. is not for everyone. As long as they are happy with there lives, they are successful, right? It is too bad some may not even consider something like the law of attraction and go about there lives unhappy too. But I will not think about that very often.
Dear Joe,
Thank you for such insights. Among the things you have written, what changed my life most was your writing about whether youre going to meet your friend at the river that time or your gotta finish what you were doing. But anyway, as for those who choose to criticize you, we cannot blame them nor can we even call their emails nasty, but well, for maybe a lack of a better word, “nasty” would suffice. Your ideas and opinion parallel with Shama Hyder’s and many others even those in the Scriptures, but i guess thats because thats how i choose to see it. My idea is this–i just hope that those people who criticise the law of attraction are truly happy when they were doing that or whenever they do that. Because ive learned one thing when i tried to accept responsibility for everything (100%) in my life and in everything i experience—its the reverse of the statement from Speiderman’s Uncle Ben in Spiderman1—“With great responsibility comes great power.” ..Lately i was touching a car parked near a restaurant where i usually eat, and i just can’t imagine the great feeling i had when i thought to myself that i am actually the one who made it exist. Thank you Mr. Vitale. And for those people who criticize, i am sorry, please forgive me. I, Sev, take responsibility for that.
hi i enjoyed the read
You attracted another one, Dr. Vitale. (Well, I should be able to edit most of my emotion out of it.)
Most folks seem unaware that gravity doesn’t exist. Newton only said “let’s pretend there’s something called gravity that accelerates two masses towards each other, proportional to the other mass and inversely proportional to the distance between them. If we pretend that, then we can explain all this stuff we see (including elliptical orbits of planets around the Sun) and can predict other neat stuff”. He made it up! Unless, of course, apples fell upwards before Newton thought about it; then we gotta thank him for inventing gravity.
Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation (so-called because the hypothesis of gravity has really-frequently been shown to do what Newton said) doesn’t insist that the pen you drop lands in the same place every time; it insists that if gravity was the only force involved, the pen would land in the same place. As a previous commentator noted, that’s never the case (even in an experimental vacuum), but lots of times Newton’s Law looks great. Other times it doesn’t look so great, so folks use the general theory of relativity instead (“curved space”, what a concept). In 1905 Einstein contra Newton predicted that light from solar eclipses bends around the sun to get to earth; it was demonstrated fourteen years later. Did I make that clear? Sometimes Newton’s Law isn’t the best description of what’s going on!
The “Law” of Attraction certainly explains a lot of stuff, but I don’t see anyone making any repeatable predictions with it. Anecdotes galore, but no experiments. Heck, there’s even an obvious experiment that Dr. Vitale could sponsor – he could teach one group that using the Law of Attraction for successful change requires constant action (as implied in the May 31 blog entry on three principles of change), and he could teach another group that “[i]t is about aligning your thoughts; it is not about taking action in order to achieve results” (page 25 of Hicks and Hicks “The Astonishing Power of Emotions”). OK, maybe those aren’t in perfect opposition, and maybe that’s more a test of the Law of Allowing than the Law of Attraction, but somebody better than me at experiment design can improve on this.
And until this is done, it’s only the Postulate of Attraction – no better or no worse at explaining things than “it’s all God’s/gods’ will, but I can alter His-Her-Its-Their will by visualizing-prayer-sacrifice-suffering-whatever”, which billions of good people (and some bad) around the globe appear to believe.
Speaking of postulating: I say that angry emails and “taking full responsibility” aren’t necessarily contradictory. And some say that in a non-dual universe, there isn’t even a “Law” of Attraction: the “Law” is just another illusionary duality, and everything is god’s will. Ramesh Balsekar says this; then again, he’d say that “taking full responsibility” is illusionary, too. (Those non-dual folks are tricky.) But now we’re getting to philosophy which takes more experienced analysis than I can provide.
Maybe lots of people can create happier lives – or even a better world – with the help of a belief of the Postulate of Attraction. It doesn’t make the postulate “true”. It would be nicer, though, if we all agreed on what a “Law” was.
Excuse me – one screwup in the previous entry: Einstein made the prediction as part of his General Theory of Relativity in 1915, so it was only four years until light was demonstrated to bend in 1919…
Hi Joe,
Beware, paradigm shift ahead.
The following blogpost may help you explain the Law Of Attraction to sceptics. In fact that’s what it’s designed for.
It may be mind bending at first, but come on, you know a shortcut when you see it.
Take one minute to find out whether this helps you: Gravity and Attraction
Get lots done
Karl c]:-)
PS: Honestly, I just took inspired action when I wrote this post.