“Positive thoughts attract positive things and negative thoughts attract negative things” feels like a grand oversimplification.
“I have a hang nail” could be a thought.
“I am not good enough” is another thought, but with an added dimension of judgement.
“I worry that you’ll get sick” is yet another thought, but this time a new dimension, fear, replaces judgement.
The statement about positive thoughts and negative thoughts assumes one thing that I believe to be false, that thoughts are positive or negative at all. Thoughts, like all things, are neutral. They just are.
The tricky part, the magnetic part, the part that activates the law of attraction is how we feel about the thoughts, what we make them mean, if we believe them to be the truth, or can detach from them as simply word sentences that don’t need to impact our being.
“I have a hang nail” might not make us feel any certain way, but we end up clipping the nail. And it’s over.
“I am not good enough” can ruin a moment, or a lifetime; or not, depending on whether we believe it, doubt it, or repeat it to ourselves.
“I worry that you’ll get sick” can cause us to constrict with a feverish feeling of being out of control, or it can open our awareness to the fact that worry is impotent and thus heal us.
So for me, the idea that positive or negative thoughts attract similar things misses the key ingredient in the equation: our cooperation with those thoughts.
Granted, often our cooperation is automatic, as with anyone who goes through life totally unaware, unconscious, or uninterrupted.
But life has a way of interrupting us when we settle into autopilot for too long.
How do we react when we get interrupted? Do we get offended and tell life to shush and wait it’s turn to speak? Or do we recognize the loving kindness and inherent wisdom in life for speaking up and trying to show us how to be more conscious?
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I listen to that still small voice, and other times I tell it to wait its turn, shut the fuck up, and let me think. I just want to think about my thoughts without interruption from my thinker, geez.
But alas, thinking might not be all that we thought it was after all.
Come to think of it, we probably have no idea.
2 Responses
I like your take on the Law of Attractiom.
Thanks for reading. I find it so important to focus on my inner state of being over just trying to control thoughts. I mean, have you ever tried to control a fire breathing dragon? Much love!