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Law of Attraction: Manifestation or Just Magical Thinking?
The One Key Principle that Makes the Difference
My introduction to the concept happened by chance. I was in my early 20s, feeling lost and going through what I believed to be an existential crisis. One day, while randomly browsing the shelves at Border’s, a particular book jumped out at me — Creative Visualization.
I was intrigued when I picked it up and flipped through it. This small paperback written by Shakti Gawain held the key to achieving success, all by simply using my imagination.
Reading and enjoying this book set me on the path to my mass consumption of self-help and new-age literature. Looking for answers, I couldn’t get enough. I started to embrace what many refer to as the law of attraction.
More often than not, what appears new and groundbreaking to the uninitiated isn’t. It’s an idea that’s been reintroduced over the years. I remember when The Secret came out in 2006, and Oprah Winfrey hyped it as the latest groundbreaking discovery.
But little did she or I know because what seems new and mind-blowing isn’t. But then again, isn’t that usually the case? Regardless, the concept goes back a long way. The term “law of attraction” was initially coined by occultist Helen Blavatsky in 1877. Over the years, this idea was rebranded by authors such as Phinaeus Parkhurst Quimby (the founder of the New Thought movement), Earnest Holmes, Norman Vincent Peale, and Florence Scovell Shinn, just to name a few.
If I believe it, I can achieve it. Not so fast! Simply repeating affirmation after affirmation, creating vision boards, and visualization will not get you where you want to go. Whether we like it or not, we live in the physical plane where nothing happens by simply thinking about it.
So much of the content around visualization or the law of attraction fails to address this reality. In many cases, it gives people the impression that simply affirming something is enough to make it come to pass. Suppose they fail to manifest what they’re repeatedly declaring. Eager students will often find fault within themselves instead of realizing that they must contend with not just the laws of nature but the free will of those around them.
