Steve the Owl's Blog

Hi, everyone! I hope today finds you well, and for you Seinfeld fans out there, I hope you are enjoying a Festivus for the rest of us. Yesterday, I started a series on answering some criticisms of the world of personal development, some of which I thought had a point. Many of the criticisms were against the efforts of those who preach a literal and hardcore version of the Law of Attraction, that in its strictest definition, argues that anyone can have anything in the world if they only want it badly enough. Part of the complaint about these works were the ways that they have a tendency to focus almost exclusively on personal things rather than societal things.

They Can’t Both Win

One of the questions that I have never seen answered in some of the works that focus more on this self-focused version of the Law of Attraction (which truly does seem to put the reader at the center of his/her Universe) is what happens if two people have equally valid and worthy things that they seek, and what happens if they seek something that is in conflict with each other.

Here is an example: for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it is now winter. However, here in Philadelphia, it has actually been above 50 degrees (10 degrees Celsius) each of the last three days. Currently, as I write this (past midnight), the temperature is still up, and it is raining rather than snowing. Many people who work outside are very content with the fact that, barring a huge shift in the next two days, that we will not have a White Christmas this year. However, people who are farmers in the West Coast rely heavily on snow melt to water their crops. Neither is a selfish desire. The outdoor workers know that they can’t work or feed their family if there is inclement weather. The farmers know that they can’t have crops if there is not.

It either has to snow or not snow. Which one should we root for? Each one has a worthy cause. If the Law of Attraction in its most literal sense, if it is to be believed this way, would say that it is the one who wants it more. Well, what if both want it the same? Where does the tiebreaker go?

These are just some thoughts as I move forward. Come back soon for the conclusion of this series, and you will find the solution to the question of what kind of personal development we should seek if we acknowledge the limits of the Law of Attraction, and if it really is as all-or-nothing as its strictest proponents claim it is.

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Tags: competing claims, Law of Attractions, wanting it more, worthiness

This entry was posted on Friday, December 23rd, 2011 at 1:44 am and is filed under Personal Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.