Is the LOA Spiritual?

Practicing the "law of attraction" as taught by the movie The Secret basically breaks down into "my will be done."

Practicing the spiritual teachings as taught by Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Jesus, Krishna, and so on, breaks down into "Thy will be done."

That's a huge difference.

So, is practicing the LOA really a spiritual practice if it's constantly fueling the desires of the ego instead of surrendering the ego and its workings to God/Truth/Love?

When looked at in this light, the LOA is all about the me, mine and I, while true spiritual practices are all about losing the me, mine and I.

It's no wonder that it's said that "God laughs at our plans". We're all too eager to try to control every aspect of our life, but where does that leave the perfect infallible Will of God that always knows what's in the best interest of All? (That which is everything, knows everything.)

A Zen Master once said "Don’t try to win. Go out with nothing in your mind. Give up the thought, 'This is how I’m going to win.'"

Aurobindo taught that "None of us are here to 'do as we like', or to create a world in which we shall at last be able to do as we like; we are here to do what the Divine wills and to create a world in which the Divine Will can manifest its truth no longer deformed by human ignorance or perverted and mistranslated by vital desire."

It's important to remember that the word "spiritual" refers to the non-material and non-physical, so the practice of spirituality is the evolving beyond the material & materiality.

A Course in Miracles says "Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no need for driven behavior of any kind." Since this quote is taken out of the context of the whole I should make clear that by "have everything" it means "are everything". And that's what Oneness is; all of existence is Oneself. What's there to get, gain or obtain when you are already the Allness of Existence?

Skeptical of "The Secret"?

The "law of attraction" as taught in the movie "The Secret" states that our thoughts and emotions create our "outside" life circumstances, situations, and happenstances. The entire concept of the law of attraction, or "karma" as I prefer to call it, is flat out rejected by many people. Would you like to know why some people accept it as truth and why some people don't?

The average person has a non-stop infinite stream of pointless thoughts, emotions, and thinking going through their head all day long. If the concept of karma is true, it only makes sense that the more random babbling of thoughts and emotions that you have going on inside your head, the more random and chaotic your life is going to be. Obviously it's going to be pretty difficult to discern which particular thoughts are creating which situations in your life if this is the case. The more you think, the harder it will be to connect all of the dots. It would take forever for the Universe to catch up and manifest all of that random junk.

However, the less you think, or the more you focus your thoughts on just ONE thing, the easier it will be to recognize. And it generally manifests into physical reality a whole lot quicker as well because the universe doesn't have to catch up.

It's for this reason that many people who are stuck in the realm of the intellect, the mind, or science, are non-religious, or non-spiritual. They can't see the forest (karma) through the trees (thoughts).

What does it come down to? Realize the worthlessness of your thoughts, and stop focusing on them. Let them die. They're not helping you if they are hiding the Truth of Reality. After all, searching for the truth is what science is all about. The problem is that it has to be done solely by you, and you alone. Nobody else can ever "prove" it to you.

You wanna know the best thing of all? Sudden epiphanies and ideas happen in moments of inner quietude because Silence, which has no shape or form whatsoever, is All-Knowing. In order to truly know all of the truths of the universe, you have to stop thinking. And that's why highly evolved spiritual teachers tell us to do just that.

Here's the quotes:

"Only those who have dared to let go can dare to reenter." - Meister Eckhart

"The extinction of self is salvation; the annihilation of self is the condition of enlightenment." - Buddha

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." - Ghandi

"Still your mind in me, still your intellect in me, and without doubt you will be united with me forever." - Krishna

"A mind free of thought, merged within itself, beholds the essence of Tao. A mind filled with thought, identified with its own perceptions, beholds the mere forms of this world." - Lao Tzu

"All the concepts you have formed in the past must be discarded and replaced by void." - Huang Po

"The less one thinks the more delightful life becomes." - David R. Hawkins

"Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen." - Bodhidharma

"But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the buddha, they attain the understanding of a buddha without using the mind." - Bodhidharma

"The thought 'who am I?' will destroy all other thoughts, and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then, there will arise Self-Realization." - Ramana Maharshi

"If you could only keep quiet, clear of memories and expectations, you would be able to discern the beautiful pattern of events." - Nisargadatta Maharaj

"The more you talk and think about it, the further you wander from the truth. So cease attachment to talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know." - Hsin-Hsin Ming

"My thoughts do not mean anything. This idea applies to all the thoughts of which you are aware, or become aware in the practice periods." - A Course in Miracles, Lesson 10

"Enlightenment is total emptiness of mind. There is nothing you can do to get it. Any effort you make can only be an obstruction to it." - Ramesh Balsekar

"In that state of fasting the mind is only 'blank' in so far as there is a total absence of objects; itself is not absent but totally present, then and only then." - Wei Wu Wei

"Even the best writing is like taking pot-shots at the moon." Wei Wu Wei

"Be careful about all that you see with your eyes, for the principal deception is by the eye." - Talmud, Tractate Derech Eretz Zuta, Chapter I

"You must set free your soul from all outward things and turn wholly within yourself, with no more leaning to what lies outside, and lay your mind bare of ideal forms, as before of the objects of sense, and forget even yourself, and so come within sight of that One." - Plotinus

"All thought is vanity, all opinions are vanities. The pleasure of vanity is the basis of the ego--unplug it and it collapses." - David R. Hawkins

It's All Me

The law of attraction means that my life is utterly and completely...
a dream of self creation,
a forming of the inner,
a mirage of thinking,
a hologram of awareness,
an illusion of perceptions,
a reflection of consciousness,
a mirror of mind,
a manifestation of thoughts,
an actualization of opinions,
an expression of beliefs,
a culmination of values,
an impression of ideas,
a materialization of views,
an unfolding of outlooks,
an arrival of dispositions,
a symptom of attitudes,
a reproduction of emotions,
an echo of feelings,
a symbol of personality,
a representation of character,
an appearing of traits,
a display of attributes,
an unveiling of integrity,
a shining back of conduct,
a bouncing back of karma,
a fabrication of free will,
a balancing of choices,
an unfolding of destiny,
a returning of intent,
me,
oneself.

And yes, a thesaurus was used to help write this. :)

Beyond The Secret

The major underlying points to grasp in The Secret are that, first, unconditional happiness, gratitude, peace, acceptance and forgiveness must be chosen FIRST, and then the rest of one's life will reflect that perfectly. In fact, a person's circumstances and situations are already, and always, an absolutely perfect reflection of the attitudes, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and choices of that individual. Second, a point which wasn't really even talked about, is that everything and everybody is interconnected. All is One. The law of attraction would not work if this wasn't true. Third, that the law of attraction, what goes around comes around, you reap what you sow, everything comes full circle, the ebb and flow, balance in the universe, or karma, is in effect 100% of the time. There can be no "cause" of anything. There are only effects and automatic consequences of what one is (choices, thought processes, feelings, actions). Picture yourself as a tiny magnet among countless others. Likes attract likes. Which means that there is no such thing as a co-incidence, accident, random event, miracle, fluke, luck, or chaos. The entire universe is basically an infinite electromagnetic field where everything is happening exactly as it needs to according to what we make ourselves to be. To put it simply, EVERYTHING is karma, and everything is happening spontaneously on its own as an automatic consequence. What you make yourself to be is a choice. What happens to you as a result of what you are, is not.

Next, if there's no "cause" of anything, then reincarnation explains perfectly why "bad" things happen to "good" people, with the science of cellular biology also coming to this realization in The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles by cellular biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. This book is solid science but it's written in a way that's perfectly accessible to the layman as well.

If we take Oneness to the next level, we come to understand that if you are connected to everything else, then you ARE Everything else. There is no "you", "me", "here", "there", "this" or "that" when All is One. There can be no "other". In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna refers to this as the "Self", as do many other advanced teachings. Others have called it God, Universal Mind, Universe, All That Is, Life, Existence, Collective Consciousness, Creative Intelligence, Source, Pure Awareness, Presence, Spirit, Nature, Tao, Buddha, Christ, Self, Love, Energy, Divinity, Reality, Truth, The Absolute, The Infinite, Intuition, etc. It's all one and the same thing, and it's only the limited concepts of the mind, and the identification of those automatic thoughts as being "truth" and/or "me", that makes us think otherwise. Words are limiting concepts that can't possibly fully describe that which is Absolute and beyond the limitations of words, conceptual thinking, and form, so it really doesn't matter what we call It.

"The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They're not the Way. The Way is wordless. Words are Illusions." - Bodhidharma, founder of Zen

Searching for Happiness

The movie The Secret, and what's taught in it (the law of attraction), is beginning to take the world by storm, and while this may be extremely beneficial to the masses, for those seeking Enlightenment it's just more relative truth, another obstacle to be relinquished, surrendered and let go of. There's creating specific things intentionally with thought, and then there's having COMPLETE TRUST and FAITH that the universe will, and is, supplying EVERYTHING that one "needs". However, some people might require the first step in order to eventually reach the second. Sooner or later one comes to realize that neediness and craving are never ending and cannot be filled by depending upon external phenomena. Happiness is experienced from within which means the source of it is within, when it's chosen. The more it's chosen, the larger it grows, and the larger it grows, the more we realize it's within. Happiness is a choice, and freedom comes from having no specific "needs" (addictions, cravings) outside oneself. Choosing to be happy at all times brings inner wholeness, completion, and peace. If one is already utterly whole and complete, NOTHING else is needed.

It needs to be made clear that negatives are not the opposite of positives, but rather the ABSENCE of positives (think temperature on a thermometer). It's not possible to be needy and complete/happy at the same time because neediness is the absence of happiness/completion. We can't focus on negatives and somehow expect the "opposite" to happen. Whatever we put our focus on, we receive. Focusing on the negatives will bring more of the negatives. Focusing on the positives will bring more of the positives. This is where we take a REALLY close look at our current life circumstances, and then we REALLY look at the thoughts, concepts, perceptions, attitudes, limitations, emotions, opinions, and beliefs that go on inside our own head, and we realize there's a HUGE connection. One's mindset is creating one's so-called "outside" reality.