Consept

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

So do you think its a coincidence that theres quite a reasonable scientific explanation for LOA? There is also a part of your brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) which ill put a short excerpt about below. What literal miracles have you experienced? you are being a bit vague in your responses. But lets say you have, would this explanation of LOA be the only reasonable one? "Your RAS takes what you focus on and creates a filter for it. It then sifts through the data and presents only the pieces that are important to you. All of this happens without you noticing, of course. The RAS programs itself to work in your favor without you actively doing anything. Pretty awesome, right? In the same way, the RAS seeks information that validates your beliefs. It filters the world through the parameters you give it, and your beliefs shape those parameters. If you think you are bad at giving speeches, you probably will be. If you believe you work efficiently, you most likely do. The RAS helps you see what you want to see and in doing so, influences your actions. Some people suggest that you can train your RAS by taking your subconscious thoughts and marrying them to your conscious thoughts. They call it “setting your intent.” This basically means that if you focus hard on your goals, your RAS will reveal the people, information and opportunities that help you achieve them. If you care about positivity, for example, you will become more aware of and seek positivity. If you really want a pet turtle and set your intent on getting one, you’ll tune in to the right information that helps you do that. When you look at it this way, The Law of Attraction doesn’t seem so mystical. Focus on the bad things and you will invite negativity into your life. Focus on the good things and they will come to you, because your brain is seeking them out. It’s not magic, it’s your Reticular Activating System influencing the world you see around you." Well really a contradiction can only exist in your mind, there is only oneness, so if you as a particle say 'im a separate individual' that would be an illusion. It would be like your finger saying 'im separate from the hand' because it hasnt got a full view of the whole body, it may say that its responsible for everything in its life but really thats just its internal dialogue.

I agree there is no way to objectively see things. The law of attraction to me seems to be a way to put the individual as the cause of everything in their life, i think this would be a contradiction to an idea of oneness, which i believe is the case. For example lets say all the atoms in your body had brains and were conscious, so they think theyre individual but are obviously part of one whole thing. They would not have control over what happened to them, the control would seemingly be in the whole, so whatever happened to each individual would be a result of what was happening to the whole. LOA seems to think each atom could control their lives by thinking what they want to happen into existence. @Michal__ This is for both of you, this is an excerpt from an article about the LOA, please read be open minded and give your opinion - "The law of attraction is actually just a candied up version of an old psychological concept called the “confirmation bias.” The confirmation bias is well-studied and researchers have known about it for decades. As human beings, we have a limited amount of attention for all the stuff going on around us. Therefore, whether we realize it or not (usually not), we are always choosing what we pay attention to. The confirmation bias is the human mind’s tendency to notice and pay more attention to objects and experiences that match its preexisting thoughts and beliefs. It does this for the simple reason that it is biologically economical and efficient.4 We’ve all experienced the confirmation bias millions of times, you’ve probably just never realized it before. For example, you spend years not really paying attention to what kind of car people drive. But then the time comes for you to start thinking about buying a car and suddenly you notice the make and model of cars all over the place. You start making decisions about which styles you like and what features you care about. You start noticing these details because, for the first time, they are salient and relevant to your thoughts and desires, whereas before they weren’t. Or let’s say that a close friend breaks your trust and you have a huge fight. Suddenly you find yourself thinking back and noticing all sorts of shady and questionable behavior from your friend that you never noticed or thought about before. Things you can’t believe you overlooked or missed. But before, because you trusted your friend, you didn’t notice them. Now that you don’t trust them, you notice a long trail of red flags. Essentially, The Secret is an attempt to leverage the confirmation bias to one’s advantage. The idea is that if you’re constantly thinking positive thoughts about yourself, you will begin to notice little things in your experiences that confirm these beliefs, thus helping them come true. On the other hand, if you’re constantly thinking negative feelings about yourself, the negative feedback in your environment will stand out to you, thus making you feel worse. The Secret advocates that people assume the identities of the person they wish to become — to actually believe that they are already rich, already skinny and healthy, already in a perfect relationship. Essentially, The Secret tells you to become delusionally positive about yourself for a long enough period of time that your natural confirmation bias kicks in and you only attend to the things in your life that match these new beliefs. This may actually be beneficial — at least at first — for people who have some pretty fucked up and delusional negative beliefs about themselves. Simply changing the way you see things from “always shitty” to “always great” would probably have a pretty big impact in a lot of areas for some people. But at some point, you actually have to, you know, do something…" Now is it possible that LOA is just confirmation bias given New Agey pseudo-scientific language? It does work to and extent and the results are probably the same, this is something that has always been in humans so it stands to reason that it can be seen as age old wisdom, and i guess being able to use it to your advantage is wisdom. Wouldnt this psychological explanation make more sense than the one presented by books like The Secret? It doesnt take away the effectiveness of it, it just takes out the belief in something unprovable. There have been different incarnations of The Secret and im sure people believed them as well, does their need to be a New Agey belief structure behind it?

@Michal__ it's not that it's important, it's just it implies that it's a scientific law, which would make it as strong a phonomena as gravity for example. But I can't see where its listed as a law in any scientific literature, for example there are no scientists that actually talk about the law of attraction as a law. As I understand it, it means like attracts like, but this is not true in the world as magnets with the same polarity don't attract each other, masculine energy doesn't attract masculine energy etc. You could also call it confirmation bias, as in the more you think about something as true, the more your mind looks for confirmation of this. How do you mean they changed the parents age?

I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with you, but in what sense is this a 'law'? Are you saying it's a scientific law? As that is usually what 'law' would refer to

Can you break down the universal law? I'm not clear on the nature of this law

'seems like' is important, if you take an individual photon away from the main source and it acts in a certain way it would seem like its acting of its own accord, but for one why would their be an individual separate conscious entity behind that photon making decisions? I think it's the same for us we are, at least from our perspective, separated from source (although you could argue we're not really) we believe we have agency but really we can't do anything without there being some other cause for it

@Moksha Could you come up with a choice you can make that is completely independent of any other cause?

Nah not really i just like to question peoples strongly held beliefs to see how they came to believe what they do and if it could be true, its just epistemology. I also feel like if i point out flaws in their beliefs they may notice them and maybe question their beliefs and not be so tied to them. What i find interesting is that although ive never outright said its not true youve taken a really defensive attitude to my line of questioning, i find this to be a common theme in people with dogmatic beliefs, religious people, Trump people, conspiracy theorists etc. Im not really giving or have given an opinion on LOA but because im not agreeing it youve painted me in whatever way allows you to maintain that belief, its easier to you to think of me as 'some orange guy who doesnt get it', despite the fact you have zero data on me or know me, than to actually answer questions or have a real discussion about it, i feel this would be the case with anyone that disagrees with you on this. On one hand I see that LOA could be useful, it doesnt appear to have any scientific backing or real evidence but nevertheless having an abundant mindest is obviously important. As i said its nothing new in the field of psychology although Maslows abundant mindset is a bit different from LOA. On the other hand dogmatic beliefs in general can be dangerous, im not necessarily saying you, but someone could believe in it so much that they suggest people dont get treatment for cancer for example, because they believe in manifesting so much. Or, like someone i know, literally think they have to take no action to get material things, this is very common. I think the Secret and books like that are there to make money and they over simplify deeper psychological concepts which are still just concepts but nevertheless. Ultimately i think people are scared of not being in control of their life and scared of uncertainty, LOA offers a way to give some kind of certainty to peoples lives, because if it works they did it but if it doesnt they also did it, this is the real crux of why its so popular. The ego has become so strong in recent times and this is the ultimate ego celebration of power. Just my opinion

If it makes you feel better, funny how you dont answer any of my questions. Should try not to be so judgemental and defensive, you may attract it in your life

Nah i think you might have a point, if someone can be unknowingly corrupt it means anyone can be including ourselves. If someones corrupt its easier to think someone chose that and it may have been because of power. People like the idea of free will and choice because it means that you could and would chose good over evil, little do they know how misguided that actually is

Whats my limiting belief, i dont think ive stated any beliefs, is my limiting belief that i may not believe in the LOA? Also how do you know that you chose your life before you came here? Do you have a memory or direct experience of that?

Hmm ok this seems to lack some compassion, its also making a lot of assumptions. So youre saying everyone in a bad position is because theyve manifested that bad position or because when they were a soul they chose to experience that bad situation. Theres an assumption that you know what happened before we got to earth, i dont think you do, unless you have some memory of that youre just repeating something else that youve heard. In which case this would fall squarely in the belief category, if you do have direct experience of this please share. The thing is this manifestation thing can only work if you also say that everyone else manifested their situation in some way, therefore it seems to me that you would have to blame the victims, like if someone gets raped or if someone is wrongly imprisoned and given the death penalty or if a child gets a terminal illness. If only these people knew about the LOA they could have changed these situations, or maybe they did know but didnt manifest with enough belief. I dont know man this is kinda weak

Interesting take, i think the ego will always find away out or an excuse, i will say that im not sure the corrupted person always blames the power itself, usually its other peoples take on it. To blame the power or to give some kind of real answer would need some self reflection, usually the corrupted person will stick to their guns or give a forced apology. Even in the cases of Weinstein and Cosby, theyve never come out and admitted things and then reflected on it. I would love to hear someone like that or the nxvim leader come out and give an honest account of what was really going on in their head but you dont tend to get that. It would follow that if the ego is that strong in them why would it stop at getting caught This is true, i think really a leader should be reluctant but take power on a 'if i dont do it someone corrupted will come in' kinda vibe Could we get to a stage where we are all selfless? Another problem that occured to me is most corrupt leaders will get voted in because the voter is voting in their self interest, so we get the leaders that are reflected back at us

Careful bro you might attract aggression into your life with that attitude OK genuine question, what about all the people who say get terminal illnesses or people from war torn countries that lose everything, or people who were abused as kids, would you say they brought it upon themselves with their thinking?

What would you consider dogma? Are you saying you dont believe in LOA?

Do you not think there have been instances of people going into things with good intentions only to later be corrupted when they started to get power?