Consept

Right, the purpose for a Lion is to be what it is, it would follow it would be the same for us but the problem is we are very complexed and have the ability to imagine anything in our minds. We can even imagine we are not what we are, the lion can not do this and has no choice but to be what it is. What causes suffering is that we cant just be as we are, if we could we'd be perfectly aligned. It could even be that the idea of some greater meaning is what throws us off our actual meaning of just being

True, ive actually gotten a lot out of the bible and Jesus' teachings but if i had taken it in from a 'true believer' of the religion i think it wouldve put me off just because of the dogmatic approach. There are some schools and religions that are an out and out scam but i actually think there is truth in everything, even watching the nxivim doc i could see that there was some truth in what their philosophies were it just went off the rails and turned into a cult. So im open minded in that respect i just dont gel with the 'i believe it because its true and its true because i believe it' kind of dogma, i also think its a bit risky to not have multiple sources, as in just to have one teacher or one religion as you will then tie yourself to that one ideology Yeah excellent reminder and advice. For the forum it is difficult as you have so many perspectives at once, but i guess just let people be where theyre at, if they are open to questioning im sure they will respond in an open way

No offence taken, im more taking a devils advocate role, in an effort to encourage people to have a look at their beliefs, i do the same with myself, but i understand why it may have come off it as it has. Of course stories and anything that leads you into spirituality and deeper meaning is great and that will be the path for some and probably was for myself, at some point that will need to be questioned to progress otherwise youll stay in the red pill pick up mindset for your whole life, or youll have a dogmatic religious belief for your whole life. But maybe that is the journey that some people will take and thats ok as well, but my perspective is if i see others in illusion should i at least encourage them to look in different directions, if they dont want to look then thats fine. Yes stories are great at conveying information, to be honest i find them much more digestable than hardcore science, however when they are taken on as truth that could be a problem, the presentation might be honest in that its fantasy but others could take it on as truth to fit whatever needs they want to fulfil. But i take your point that things need to unfold as they do and maybe its not for me to question things that i see as delusions, im not saying LOA is necessarily a delusion im just saying in general. I will say when ive had awakening experiences, what hit me so hard is the pain and suffering people experience being tied to beliefs, mainly the belief that we are a self, that brings so much pain and i felt a need to help people see out of that, but it is a very difficult task as the mind can feel a certain comfort even in pain. Ill also say that if the LOA lets you see that you dont have to be in pain by writing your own story then fair enough, i would just be concerned about tying yourself to any story as i see it as similar to tying yourself to the bible which can then be used to manipulate, i think there needs to be a certain level of consciousness to really be aware of what the LOA is and to also not get caught up in the dogmatic belief of it

Yes i used them to highlight the belief structure, other practices that follow a similar belief structure should definitely be questioned. Ultimately what any practice should do is allow you to drop any beliefs or thoughts and just witness and be with what is. I think even the religions i mentioned do this to some extent its just they have a whole load of other beliefs and rules you have to follow, then you end up getting tied to this and lose the point, it becomes dogmatic. Im not too concerned about the content but if it can point me in the right direction which is to stillness essentially, then im all for it in terms of helping to open up consciousness for everyone

That makes sense and i can get down with that, but when i hear people talk about LOA including in this thread, its always in reference to material things so thats why ive framed it in that way (im aware that separate material things are just distinctions we make in our minds). If it was talked about in a higher conscious way i think it would make a lot more sense but in films like the secret its talked about in a certain which is needed to get to the masses, as such psuedo-science and whatever else gets propagated and treated as sacred. But i understand the need to sell it in this way as people just wouldnt pay as much attention in other ways. Again my whole point is that dogmatic beliefs are not the best way to go about things, but if people think thats not the case and theyre happy in their beliefs then all the best to them, there wouldnt be anything i could say to convince them otherwise and of course i could be wrong, there could be brain waves that affect vibrations in the spiritual realm and attract certain things in the physical plain, or it could be a psychological process that happens in the brains RAS and maybe we like stories like the Secret rather than neurological explanations, who knows.

Alright man, its all love anyway, im glad its working for you and i wish you the best from it. I hope you could see a little bit what im getting at but if not its all good.

OK but wouldnt that entail testing everything, which of course is not a bad thing, but the very way to experiment with most beliefs is to believe them, thats what all religions say and many other things say. The reason i was drawn to non-duality and that type of spirituality is precisely because it was a stripping away of beliefs, including ones Id held all my life, rather than trying to add on beliefs. Im not talking about occult as ive said i dont really know anything about it. But in general anything that asks me to believe something without direct experience or trys to take some other happening and attribute it to the particular god or theory or belief, basically something thats not really epistemologically sound, i would consider that a dogmatic belief. A test of this would be to look at whether your reason for belief can be valid with another belief. For example a Christian might say 'i believe in my God because i prayed for something and it happened' so they will say their direct experience is what made them believe, however a Hindu might say 'I prayed to Vishnu and what i wanted happened', however both people will say the other one is completely wrong and theyre right, even though they both came to their belief in exactly the same way it just had a different story. Technically if you accept that your way of coming to a belief is correct you should take on everyone elses belief who came to it in the same way. Therefore the belief is not sustainable. I will say there is a lot of truth in both religions, its just if you take the on dogmatically and literally it gets lost

I agree with you but thats probably a higher level conversation than this thread, reality is not what we see, what just see whatever we need to that aids our survival, so reality probably can never be seen for what it is as long as we're in a human body, so we're talking on a illusionary material level which i dont mind doing lol. But what people are saying with the LOA is that they can reap all kinds of material benefits from believing in it , my point is that if that is true why not help people instead, im not asserting anything myself, im just talking from their perspective. Bro im taking what you literally used as examples of manifesting, you said LOA got you a studio film, fair enough and maybe your art will help people, maybe its completely self indulgent, i have no idea. But either way im sure there are some kids starving in your town or some kids that need help with jobs or whatever why not set some intentions to help them, i really dont get that if you 100% have the power to do these things that you would choose not to

The trouble is, how do you make the distinction? If someone is lets say Christian and says on the forum 'My Christian God exists and you would have to experience it yourself to make your own decision', it means that if i dont experience it i cant question this belief, if this Christian then says 'you have to believe and then it will be true for you', i can believe it but a belief alone does not make something true if that was the case literally anything can be true, even stuff that contradicts. So if people use this belief system for different things, how do we draw the distinction about whats true and what isnt? Have a look at this video, he goes through, polite epistemological process of questioning someone who believes in religion, if you look at the mechanics of her thinking is very interesting

Right but im not necessarily saying cure cancer. Its interesting you bring up that LOA power is somewhat limited, what would be the limit, as in whats the most we can achieve for the planet using it? But anyway it can be relatively small things, like you could use it to help your local elderly people feel less lonely or help people who want to get jobs or whatever, actual achievable things, why dont people or why dont you use the law of attraction for these things?

Well you say you are of higher consciousness, high consciousness expressly is very self-less and so their life purposes revolve around helping other people, if you look at guys like sadhguru and mooji they want to raise the consciousness of everyone they can and also Saduguru especially has programs that help impoverished people. Only wanting stuff for you would be lower consciousness by definition because youre either not conscious of others suffering or you are and you dont care enough to help. So with regards to LOA if you are high conscious and you have the means to help through LOA which will definitely work, I dont see how you could just focus on minor things like material gain for yourself. You should of course take care of yourself as well, but im guessing LOA is an infinite thing so you could do both as far as i understand it, so why choose not to help others or the planet or anything outside of yourself?

Heres my question though, and it follows what @Keyhole was saying, from your perspective if you believe in LOA it means that you have the power to manifest absolutely anything, if you set your intention and do whatever the steps are it will come to fruition, so lets say thats the case 100% no doubt. If you could do that why wouldnt you set an intention to end the suffering of all people, or raise everyones consciousness, or stop poor people dying because they cant afford treatment, you literally have the power to do these things and more, but your choices are to star in a studio film and get an audition. Why dont you or every other LOA believer set these intention and make these things happen? If it is a meta-physical law it will definitely happen so you are making a choice of personal gain over intentions that could help many other people. Why dont you set these intentions that could change the world for the better?

Interesting, i like the idea of non-linear time. How ive heard it described is - If you look at a comic book the whole story already exists at one time, it takes another agent, a perceiver to experience the comic in a linear way but it is only linear if the perceiver perceives it in that way. So in regards to deja vu it could be that (if you take the perspective of a character in the comic) the character has somehow accessed a page that is further along the comic without it yet coming in to its perception in a linear way. I would say the explanation from op is speculation but a good explanation all the same, its a really fascinating subject deja vu, as there doesnt seem to be a definitive answer

What would be the purpose of life for a Lion? Serious question

It's not that I was upset about it or that I even thought people that believed in LOA are automatically trapped closed minded dogma. It's more the nature of the response to questioning and the attitude that was taken by some around that belief. Actually when I looked into it, there's loads of stuff that's true about it but just not necessarily the pseudo science aspects which is the main thing some people were arguing about. So for me it's not so much the content, it's the assertion that this person thinks they're 100% correct when really there are gaping holes where they've jumped to massive conclusions, the content could be anything really. Of course judging this is the hard part because those that are tied to dogma will argue that they're not. It's probably both as I said and that will be something for me to introspect on. But how I look at it as well is that the point of spiritual work is to become aware of our many delusions otherwise what is the point of the forum, to just hold up our dogmatic beliefs?

@Michal__ (tag is a phone bug) If LOA leads to this kind of mindset where I'm name dropping Hollywood stars on a consciousness forum, I don't want it just off of that basis. Calm down bro, humble yourself

So was watching 'The Vow' which is a doc series on HBO about the cult Nxivm. Couple things came to mind 1. How this Actualized hasnt become a cult yet im shocked by and 2. Is it possible for anyone to hold so much power over other people and not be corrupted in some way? The human is an animal and as such theres so many desires and wants and needs. What i found interesting about the nxivm cult was that it targeted people who had all their survival needs met and then some, so they were taken in because the cult offered them some kind of life purpose, which goes to show how much of a drive for a life purpose is within all of us. So the leader, although seemingly well intentioned eventually gave in to his base desires and started manipulating the female members into having sex with him and basically whatever he wanted from them. This seems to be the usual way it goes, in a way its a shame because it would be great to have a community of people that were pushing themselves and having some kind of shared higher purpose. But is this even possible with an all powerful leader? Will the temptation always be there, whether its money or sex or whatever. I came to the conclusion that, there could be a leader but they wouldve had to transcend all material desires, so they would genuinely not feel the need to manipulate people or even have power over others, they also would not need money. I would like to think there are people like this such as Sadhguru and Mooji but who knows maybe something will come out about them. The other option is that it would have to be a flat system so no one has more power than anyone else, but most likely a leader will emerge or there could be debates on who has more power, so again you would need a group of people who have transcended their desires otherwise the problem could be worse. Any thoughts?

Lol I'm only joking bro, it's just when someone says what level they're at it strikes of someone who isn't at that level esp when it's so high. For example I can't imagine sadhguru posting on forums about high he is. But part of me calling it is probably ego but also part is wanting to help in a roundabout way. Because from your posts you dont seem to be some crazy high enlightened person, so if you believe that you are and you're not it will keep you stuck on whatever level you are actually at. So when people call you out on it it's most likely these 2 things, you may not see it in that way of you're tied to your identity as an awakened being but I think it's good to talk people who will question you.

@AwakenedSoul444 so are you on jesus level or was he slightly higher or lower?

@Michal__ I don't think you have to be at a certain level of consciousness to believe it, I think if you are at a high level you can use the principles of it without having to resort to extra meta physical, pseudo scientific beliefs. @Mikael89 yes there actually a lot of dangers with just blindly believing things, I share your passion for truth and I feel drawn to it above all, even my own happiness. I think with LOA there's a distinct lack of compassion, because to believe it you have to believe everyone brought their situation on themselves, this isn't too far from the Conservative view of pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and @Keyhole is right in that this view is a very privileged view, that you can only have from a certain life situation. @Fran11 to be honest I probably have a bias toward Eastern philosophy, I haven't really looked into the occult so I don't know too much about it. As long as its not magical thinking I'm open lol

Ive done it and got what i wanted but i wouldnt put it down to meta physics and quantum law

Heres the vid btw -

I agree with you some people treat the sciences as sacred and of course we know that to not be the case, again it is a way for humans to understand the world around them but at least there is some kind of method that can come to a relative truth, definitely not an objective one though. But if youre going to throw all science out and go with 'i feel that this is true because', (not saying you) youre going into a territory of anything and everything can be true including cults, qanon and whatever other magical thinking you can think of. What people that believe in the Secret usually say when you question it is - 'If you dont believe it, it wont work for you', so essentially the key thing that makes this true is that you have to believe in it, i could say the same for literally any kind of magical belief, in fact it is the logic that underpins every magical belief. So in that way if i believe the Secret Id realistically have to believe anything, or i could choose what i wanted to believe and it would automatically be true, be it qanon or whatever else. I dont see how this type of thinking could lead you to any kind of truth and if it does its complete luck. Non-duality is actually the taking away of beliefs, the taking away of content and being left with whatevers there, what is. LOA is more content, theres a reason why non-duality teachers dont really talk about law of attraction and why Leo hasnt talked about it for years. This is a summary that he wrote from his video on the Secret from 6 years ago - "Video Summary: Were you one of those swept up in the clamor about "The Secret" (the movie and / or the book)? Were you convicted by it to make your thoughts more optimistic and focused? How long did that last? A day? A week? Or did you miss the movie, and wonder what you missed as your friends enthusiastically raved about how great it was? While the movie was based on the Law of Attraction, a well-respected precept of psychology that states "like attracts like," the movie fails to equip the most disciplined among us to make those inspiring changes. Perhaps it would be unfair to expect that much from any movie. But it also is not a fair representation of Law of Attraction. Neither has it been much of a secret. If you didn't know about it, perhaps you haven't been listening. The movie is more an unnecessary justification for Law of Attraction drawn from metaphysics, paranormal phenomenon, and quantum physics, overlaid with slick marketing techniques, couched in the words of "experts." More disturbing, viewers may come away with the impression that they've been relieved of the responsibility to strive for success -- they need but "put it out to the universe" to get their just desserts. Just as disturbing, those who are beating their heads against walls trying to be a success may interpret that delay as a sign from the universe that it's not meant to be. The Law of Attraction does not give you a pass." This is not a call to authority, im just saying

I agree with you, im not really a materialist or have that bias. Of course there is more to consciousness than what is physically there i have experienced it through direct experience. My argument is that just because there isnt a full explanation for something we shouldnt jump to some conclusion that 'feels' good. I think any certainty about something that is essentially uncertain limits your understanding or potential understanding of that thing, this goes both ways for materialist and spiritual. What i see with LOA is that the explanation for it as spiritual is very certain to the point of almost a religious belief that doesnt take into account psychology, neuroscience and evolution, which would be like saying gravity exists because we all think it exists, which could be true but we dont know that, if we were told that over and over again maybe we'd believe it but how we got there wouldnt be epistemologically sound. Yes to your point causation doesnt equal correlation, but wouldnt this be the same for people that believe in LOA? Just because they got the car or money they were constantly thinking about does that automatically mean it was a spiritual thing? It could be or it could be connected but to assert that you know would be a massive jump. The other thing is that this new understanding popularised by the Secret is relatively new, so the language used around thought manifestation, including calling it LOA has only been around for the last few years, before that it was 'think and grow rich' and other more psychological based terms. So is it a coincidence that this has happened or have people taken on board what books like the secret have said and run with with them as almost sacred? Im all for spiritual and mystical ideas but i think false spirituality ultimately sets people back and they miss what true spirituality is, this has been the case in the past with religion being watered down and fed to the masses to keep control, i see LOA in a similar way

Your external world would be your perception of it yes, but it doesnt equal an objective external world. For example if someone has psychosis and believes theyre a chicken, to them that is definitely true but to everyone else its not true. Thats why relative truth is also important as its pretty impossible to get to an objective truth. What we know is that there is some kind of phenomena where if you think about something enough you start noticing it more and maybe more opportunities arise around that thing. Ive noticed it as i wanted to buy a particular car and i started seeing this type of car everywhere and started seeing more people selling it and became much more aware of it, then eventually bought it. So did some unknown forces come together and start creating and manifesting this car in the external world because i said in my head i wanted it or were these cars always in the world and my brain just started paying attention to this car more and more because i attached importance to it? I can imagine we evolved in this way because early humans would need to be able to spot food that was nutritious, so they would need their brain to focus on finding this food, it would be a matter of survival. Maybe they didnt have an explanation for this phenomena either and thought it was a sun god that gave them this food. Now, however we do have an explanation for it which is actually a lot more simple than the one proposed by LOA. Can you expand on this parents aging thing by the way im really curious