How The Law Of Attraction Can Interfere With Empathy

Deconstructing The Law Of Attraction

“God is not your Costco. God is not your bitch. God is not here to grant all of your specific wishes like some cosmic fairy godmother.” –Tosha Silver

The third time I had to leave my home because the smoke from the wildfires had gotten so bad that there was smoke inside my house, in spite of all the air filters, when we were smoke refugees following the AQI index wherever we could actually breathe, I was talking to a famous law of attraction teacher many of you have probably heard of. When I expressed fear about living in a world where those of us who can afford to have to go stay with friends or in hotels when the wildfires get too out of control, when I said this had happened three times in six years after never having to do this for the first 11 years of living there, he said, “Well, if you didn’t have smoky thoughts, you wouldn’t have to evacuate.”

Say what? I looked at him like he had two heads. Did this tall, educated, privileged white man with a PhD actually think that I had manifested the smoke in Muir Beach by thinking pessimistic, fearful, smoky thoughts? Did he actually believe that if I rejected the idea that there was smoke in my house and believed there was only clear air, that I’d be granted a smoke-free bubble while all the others with smoky thoughts still lived under the delusion that they were getting smoked out?

I’d heard of the so-called “law of attraction,” made famous by the wildly popular The Secret, and I knew that it promoted delusional thinking, like how you could manifest a gold coin or Ferrari by setting intentions, magical thinking, and then manifesting that thing you want. The flip side of the law of attraction coin was that if something bad happened, you’d created it. I can see how it would be an appealing belief system for someone who needed to believe that they have complete control over uncontrollable things, that good or bad, you have the power to create what you want and avoid what you don’t want. I can see that this delusional way of thinking could make people a lot of money, because…duh…who wouldn’t want that to be true?

But if this belief system leads an otherwise nice guy to accuse me of being the cause of the smoke in my house, rather than climate change, wildfires, and a shift in the winds from the normal ocean breezes that push smoke the other way, if he can lack all empathy when I’m expressing fear, this is not a benign belief.

What’s The Baby? What’s The Bathwater?

As we continue with this drip release of the book LOVE BIGGER: An Exploration of Spirituality Without Spiritual Bypassing, I wanted to devote the next few chapters to questioning and unpacking a variety of common spiritual teachings and New Age beliefs which, while they may have some benefit for some people at the right timing, they may be hurtful if misapplied. Just as some medicines help some patients with some conditions some of the time but could kill others, these beliefs can be double-edged swords, used surgically to facilitate growth, goal setting, and intentional living or applied destructively to destroy someone vulnerable, especially those who have been marginalized, traumatized, and made vulnerable by forces outside of themselves.

Let’s assume that there are babies in every bathtub, and we need not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Later, we’ll try to pluck out the precious babies. But for right now, let’s take a unilateral look at how these beliefs could cause harm- without negating the fact that they can also be helpful for some people, some of the time, when used as the right medicine in the right moment. Let’s also examine some of the problems that tend to ride shotgun when these beliefs or practices are applied indiscriminately as a cure-all panacea.

Especially when we project these beliefs and practices upon other people without their consent, as this law of attraction teacher did to me when I was in need of empathy, not blame, or when we apply them to ourselves without a trauma-informed lens, we can actually do real damage- unwittingly. Just as a good doctor knows which medicine to use from the medical bag in any given healing crisis, skillful mastery of these beliefs and practices includes knowing which practices to use when and with whom- individualized to the person who they might help at the right time and place, with a trauma-informed, empathic, and social justice conscious lens.

I’m sure there are people out there- right now and in the historical past- who set out intentionally to misuse spirituality as a way to manipulate, control, dominate, and harm other people for nefarious purposes. Just look at the horrors committed by dogmatic zealots in the name of the Catholic Church, Zionism, Islam, or any number of abusive cults. I’m also sure that many have harmed themselves in the name of spirituality. Just look at those who have self-flagellated, fasted themselves into illness, or slept on beds of nails in the name of getting closer to God.

But for the purposes of our discussion, I’m going to assume that you, dear reader, are not a ruthless sociopath who gets off on sadistic torture or a martyring masochist who gets your jollies off torturing yourself. Most people I know who are inadvertently unkind to themselves or others in the name of spirituality are horrified to discover that this might even be possible.

When I first spoke to my literary agent Michele about what I was writing in this book, she suggested I call it “Is Spirituality Making You Mean?” After laughing at the title, I validated that it was a good idea, because that’s what I’m pointing to here, how inadvertently our spiritual beliefs can interfere with our empathy, cause us to be unintentionally unkind, or interfere with basic decency and kindness in the ways we treat ourselves and others.

With the best of intentions, most people think they’re are developing themselves and helping others when they parrot these teachings, not because they are sadistic or masochistic, but because they are indoctrinated into beliefs that are meant to allow others to unduly influence them, exploit them for money, coercively control them, or otherwise take advantage of their good nature, their gullibility, or their rose-colored glasses naivete.

Just as cult leaders brainwash their followers to believe any cock-a-mamey belief they spew out with their “word salad” so they can exploit, con, and often emotionally, physically, or sexually abuse their followers, many New Age teachers or conventional religious leaders use belief systems to keep followers in line. When people are spellbound by indoctrination, we are stripped of our critical thinking and empathy, and we may go on to inadvertently harm ourselves and others because of that indoctrination.

Assuming you would never want to cause harm or be harmed by your spirituality, let’s take a gentle and compassionate look at some commonly parroted New Age beliefs that you may have taken on without realizing that they could be perceived as unkind by some who may not share the same kinds of religious or spiritual, racial, socio-economic, gender or sexual orientation, or health, wealth, and beauty-related privileges you may enjoy.

Let’s begin our exploration of New Age beliefs that could be harmful by focusing on the mother lode of New Age teachings, the “law of attraction.” Before we dive into unpacking law of attraction and manifestation teachings, I want to start with another story to demonstrate what I want to talk about. A few years back, during the pandemic, I was with my friend Shiloh, who was in my pandemic bubble, in her new house, which has been recently renovated. My arms were full of computer cords, and my phone dropped off the top of the pile and landed face down on the floor. I reached down to pick it up, hoping the screen hadn’t shattered, and when I stood back up, my forehead crashed right into the sharp edge of the wrought iron spiral staircase that arises right out of the middle of the living room hallway. I felt the blood running into my eyes even before I felt the pain of my busted open head.

Now, don’t worry about me. Aside from a sore noggin and a gash at my hairline, I was fine. Head wounds are show-offs, with all that vasculature, but it looked far worse than it was. What struck me after Shiloh attended to me emotionally, and her paramedic husband Jonathan dressed my wound, is that many people I know would try to instantly make meaning out of what happened. Like, if thoughts create reality, I must have thought myself into a head wound and manifested this accident with my negativity. Or maybe my soul chose this injury as a way to teach me something so I can grow spiritually. Or maybe it was karma and I’m expiating some bad deed from the past by having misfortune in this life. Or maybe my “energy was off” and I should have been keeping my vibe higher. Maybe “everything happens for a reason” and it’s my job to figure out why.

My friends were about to leave, so maybe I subconsciously didn’t want them to go and this was a ploy to keep them with me. Maybe I’m so powerful that I can create a reality in which my friends had to stay and take care of me. Maybe I subconsciously wanted an excuse to be let off the hook for the many responsibilities on my shoulders at that moment. Maybe I busted my head open because God doesn’t give us more than we can handle. Maybe it was all my fault. Maybe I was distracted and not paying close enough attention. Maybe I was thinking about something else and not present enough or in my body enough or grounded enough to avoid that staircase when I stood back up. Maybe it was all a recreation of my childhood wounding, a traumatic reenactment rising to the surface for healing now.

Fortunately, those in my inner circle do not blame the victim or try to explain accidents with spiritual aphorisms. My friends just loved me and treated me with empathy and tended to my needs. After my wound was dressed, Shiloh put her hands on my head and started praying, reminding my body it had everything it needed to clot this wound without stitches and take my pain away. It clotted within minutes, and prayers plus Aleve made the pain go away. Then Shiloh gave me a hand rub. None of us tried to figure out why it happened, and after the immediate crisis was over, Shiloh and Jonathan tootled off. I made a mental note to be more careful around that spiral staircase.

As I was recovering from the shock of it all, I thought about how many times I’ve heard others try to make sense out of senseless accidents and horrifying events. It’s almost like we can’t handle not understanding why bad things happen to good people, so we have meaning-making parts that need to make up a story to explain the tragedies of the world, as if being able to make meaning out of them will somehow help us prevent such things from happening to ourselves or those we love- or will at least silver lining what happened.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve been guilty of saying some of those same kinds of things myself- and thinking I was somehow being helpful by saying them. When applied to me, I’ve even found some of those ways of thinking and making meaning helpful during painful or traumatizing events. Maybe it’s true that our souls choose traumatic events as a way to help us grow or that our frame of mind participates in the co-creation of our reality. Perhaps such things are true. Maybe they’re not. But isn’t it funny that we so rarely just accept reality as it is?

The only thing we really know from what happened in Shiloh’s house is this:

1. My head was intact.

2. I reached down to pick up my phone.

3. When I stood back up, my head smacked into hard wrought iron.

4. My head was no longer intact.

5. End of story.

Maybe we’re just too uncomfortable with uncertainty, with the apparent randomness of painful turning points. In this instance, it was probably just carelessness on my part, mixed with very poorly chosen staircase placement. But I’m certainly not going to beat myself up over it or sue Shiloh for putting a metal staircase in the middle of the living room.

I figure that if a belief system makes my life better and helps me cope with a difficult world, I’m all for keeping it- for myself. The problem comes when we start applying those same thought forms to oppressed or marginalized people. How would it land to tell a Black or Indigenous person who is getting repetitively harmed by systems of oppression that his soul chose his Covid? How would a Black woman feel if you told her that her thoughts created her rape or that if an Indigenous woman’s energy wasn’t “off,” she wouldn’t be poor or sick or heartbroken or wounded or grieving so many cultural and personal losses? How would a disabled person feel if you told them they must be a “strong soul” who chose to endure great suffering in this lifetime? Does “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle” really apply to all those who committed suicide or overdosed because they couldn’t handle their pain?

As part of my own deprogramming/ deconstructing from religious and spiritual bypassing indoctrination, I’ve been a ruthless watchdog of how my mind works in the past decade, not in a punitive sort of way, but almost like I’m playing a game with myself. I notice the way my mind works and the many ways I try to make sense of a bewildering world. I ask myself whether the thoughts I’m having- thoughts that might comfort me and attempt to make sense of the world- would make any sense to my BIPOC sister who struggles to make ends meet and doesn’t get much of a break in this world. More often than not, my thought experiment ends with “No.” So I’m questioning my thoughts and beliefs- and inviting you to gently question yours.

In the next installation, we’ll be unpacking the law of attraction with a fine toothed comb, so if you’re curious, this would be a great time to subscribe to read more of LOVE BIGGER! I always appreciate your patronage and am so grateful to those of you who support my writing.

If you want to dive even deeper into this topic of deconstructing spiritual beliefs, you can learn with me and many of my non-bypassing approved teachers, including Dick Schwartz, Thomas Hübl, Tosha Silver, Keli Rankin, Carol Penn, Shiloh Sophia, Karla McLaren, and Rebekah Borucki.

Learn more and register for Spiritual Bypassing Recovery 101.