229 replies
Are God and 'The Secret' competing for who is Lord of all.

There is a quote in the secret that the law of attraction has been called many things, Guardian Angel, Higher Self, God.

But I disagree.

God and The Law of Attraction are not one and the same.

God created the universe and all the laws that govern it. He created the law of gravity, and the law of interia. He also created the Law of Attraction.

God created the Secret, they are not the same thing.

The Law of Attraction is just a law that exists because God created it. Just because it appears to be a supernatural law doesn't mean that it is on par with God.

Let me know your views
#god #secret
  • Profile picture of the author MemberWing
    I was fascinated with Law of A. since 2000 by reading books and essentially practicing very similar stuff with dedication. It's wasn't named that way by other authors but idea was the same.

    Results were fascinating (predicting Sep 11/01 attack by getting clear signs and placing huge PUTs options trade and documenting it the day before it happened).
    Results are inconsistent (doesn't work every time no matter how dedicated you are).

    To me Law of A. was a step in my growth. Positive and propelling. When i found and read about it - i was sure "It Is and Thats It!!!".
    No. It's just a step toward next step. Higher.

    Law of A. is a good thing. It helps people to see beyond the swamp and grow.

    Gleb
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    • Profile picture of the author JesseM
      Originally Posted by MemberWing View Post

      Results were fascinating (predicting Sep 11/01 attack by getting clear signs and placing huge PUTs options trade and documenting it the day before it happened).
      Could you elaborate, via PM at least?

      This seems similar to: [blah -- can't even post a link to this forum. It's a topic in "Mind Success blah blah", on the 1st page that I replied to last, with a somewhat similar name], sorry if I'm wrong - but I've posted my beliefs about it there, no sense in repeating it.

      BUT - "Are God and 'The Secret' competing for who is Lord of all." No. I agree with you, if LOA is real (I believe you need a positive mindset, I've never studied LOA specifically though; it's basically that, right?) then God created it and as you said, isn't "on par" with Him.

      I'm off to Google some free resources about LOA haha.

      edit: meh. I keep forgetting about the post-count/PM thing.
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    • Profile picture of the author eijk82
      I simply agree with you, God created the most sophisticated creature that is a human being. People actualy can have, can do anything what they desire. We can use law of attraction as we pray to the God and ask him for anything we want. But we must keep in a state of sincerity (Feeling Good). And also believe in a Law of a nature which is "The more you give, The more you'll receive"
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      • Profile picture of the author Lisa aka LJ
        Saying "God vs The Secret" is like saying "Creator vs Creation." God created the universe and all its laws. The Law of Attraction is a manifestation of an orderly universe created by a God Who loves orderliness.
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  • Profile picture of the author MemberWing
    My way before was like visualizing, feeling, intending, letting go-ing and then wondering why I getting inconsistent results. Or like 2% results. When you're entering 2% phase - it's exciting. You think it's like you found the holy grail and it's going to stay with you forever. When you're stuck in 98% - you're seeking again, retrying, cancelling, adjusting and wondering where's the "real secret".

    I found that whatever strong beliefs I have - usually and inevitably I find them to be just my personal stepping stone on the way to the next one. Looking back I always wondering "how can i be that silly?" back them

    Gleb
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    • Profile picture of the author Philomina
      You are right ryan.

      "God and The Law of Attraction are not one and the same"

      Never can the creator and creature be one and the same.

      Most of what is in The Secret can be found in the book of Proverbs.
      It is sad to see some use it without giving the due reverence to God the creator.
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      • Profile picture of the author Sonni
        Absolutely nothing can supersede God.
        Sonni
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        • Profile picture of the author parrott
          I totally agree!
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          • Profile picture of the author Joe's Market
            God is the law of attraction, law of gravity, law of good and bad. God is the universe and all of its laws. So guess what no matter what you call it, god or different laws it is the secret to all things.
            Everyone has seen it at work, when you do good, good is returned, when you put forth effort your efforts are rewarded, if you think anything is possible it is. How is this possible? through the laws of the laws of the universe or god or whatever youwant to call the world of spirituality.
            The universe and its powers is a wonderful place take it and embrace it, It will provide power to you if you let it and provide the initiative and effort.

            Best to evryone

            Joe
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        • Profile picture of the author havplenty
          Originally Posted by Sonni View Post

          Absolutely nothing can supersede God.
          Sonni
          What about the thing that created God, and the thing that created that thing... And so it spirals recklessly into the circular argument for the ages.

          If we accept that everything that exists is an act of creation, why do we shy away from the notion that the creator must ultimately have a creator above it?
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      • Profile picture of the author Russell Hall
        Originally Posted by ryanmacca View Post

        Are God and 'The Secret' competing for who is Lord of all.

        There is a quote in the secret that the law of attraction has been called many things, Guardian Angel, Higher Self, God.

        But I disagree.

        God and The Law of Attraction are not one and the same.

        God created the universe and all the laws that govern it. He created the law of gravity, and the law of interia. He also created the Law of Attraction.

        God created the Secret, they are not the same thing.

        The Law of Attraction is just a law that exists because God created it. Just because it appears to be a supernatural law doesn't mean that it is on par with God.

        Let me know your views
        Originally Posted by Philomina View Post

        You are right ryan.

        "God and The Law of Attraction are not one and the same"

        Never can the creator and creature be one and the same.

        Most of what is in The Secret can be found in the book of Proverbs.
        It is sad to see some use it without giving the due reverence to God the creator.
        Wow... what a post Ryan,... you really stirred the pot young man...well done.
        I just felt compelled to follow the post when I saw the challenging Title. This is something I've been quite avid about since seeing the Secret when it first came out 3 years ago. I have watched it many times and there are some compelling and powerful messages in it.
        Having said that, my overriding emotion after viewing (and then reviewing and analyzing) it was one of anger. I was angered at the apparent focus on commercial and materialistic objectives and the fact that the "universe" (small case "u" deliberate) was being used as an absolute pseudonym for God. There was only one of the presenters (the rev minister,..can't recall his name) and he seemed to be speaking into the God and Creator perspective although he refrained from making a reference to "God". I suspect that such an omission was probably at the specific insistence of the directors who seemed emphatic on delivering their message with the absence of any religious attachment.

        My perspective now is that messages akin to the Secret are a good way of motivating people to generate proper life focus and balance,..an that such messages whether by book, movie or whatever actually need to be devoid of specific references to God, and religious writings (whether Christian, Buddhist, Hindi, Taoist or whatever), because most people in general just "turn off" when religion (or anything resembling it) is mentioned or given direct reference to. This is understandable after centuries of religious dogma, manipulation and exploitation. (just for the record I do believe in and love Jesus and God,.. but I also tend to agree with what Ghandi said about Christians and Christianity when he said "I like your Christ,.. but I do not like your Christians,.. your Christians are so unlike your Christ").

        For sure there is way too much focus on and attachment to materialism and commercial intent by our modern society,.. but the Secret's producers were just appealing to an overwhelming and all pervading desire for "getting more stuff" that our modern society is so hell bent on (yes money and "stuff" is important and necessary,.. but when one's focus and spiritual alignment is purest then success will come like an avalanche anyway...one way or another).
        So,.. I'm not angry at the producers of the Secret anymore,.. they were just doing a job cranking out an awesome product that did contain more good than harm for sure.
        I'm just delighted I found this post and I'm really surprised actually to find so many Warriors that are passionate about this topic and that have some really excellent views to offer.
        I could spend hours pouring over this thread,.. but for now... got to get some work done... Need to make more money!!!:rolleyes:
        Thanks again Ryan.... and God bless you!
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        Mvlti svnt vocati, pavci vero electi - Many are called [but] few are chosen

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  • Profile picture of the author Enigma7
    There is no "God vs The Secret" argument...the Law of Attraction is a Blessing set in motion by a Loving Creator...that is the mechanism by which it "proper use", we either experience Blessing or Curses...Abundance or Lack...Joy or Sorrow...Let's Choose Wisely!
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  • Profile picture of the author X
    God and the Law of Attraction are
    one, because everything is one with
    God.

    But no, they are not the same.

    God, by metaphysical definition is
    awareness aware of all awareness.

    Or, consciousness conscious of all
    consciousness.

    (for a mind blowing experience, try
    being conscious of all consciousness
    sometime - it's pretty cool)

    As mortal beings, nothing exists
    except that which we are aware
    of - the solution to everything has
    *already* been created by God,
    but not yet in our awareness.

    There is a cure for AIDS, for world
    hunger. There is a way to levitate
    and manifest money from thin air.

    But the *how* is not yet in our
    awareness, especially when our
    awareness is so cluttered by crap.

    By faith, everything is possible.

    The law of attraction is simply our
    way, as fractions of the unknowable
    whole, of becoming aware of ONE
    thing and attracting it to us.

    While that seems like a powerful principle,
    we're really quite puny and comparing
    this principle, law, theory, whatever
    to God . . . it's silly.

    It's a sliver of consciousness compared
    with consciousness conscious of all
    consciousness - and we struggle with
    this.

    It's us attempting to behave more like
    God, but God knowing most of us aren't
    ready for those keys yet.

    X
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  • Profile picture of the author Heimir Finnson
    There is no God!
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    • Profile picture of the author Tom E
      Originally Posted by MachineHead View Post

      There is no God!
      That reminds me of what someone once found on a graffiti wall:

      God is dead.
      Nietche



      Nietche is dead.
      God
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      • Profile picture of the author shiner
        [DELETED]
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      • Profile picture of the author Tom E
        Originally Posted by gr8tocre8 View Post

        That reminds me of what someone once found on a graffiti wall:

        God is dead.
        Nietche



        Nietche is dead.
        God
        Originally Posted by shiner View Post

        I don't think so.
        If God is created by Human, God never dead..
        Just like energy, energy can be transform from one media to other media, but can't be destroyed..
        Same with god..
        God is created in people mind, he/she will always there if we need it..
        Lighten up dude, it was a joke. But while we're on the topic - since the dawn of time, we have been creating our idea of what we think God is - here's the thing: Once you reach a point where you KNOW what God is - that's when you know that you don't know. Deep enough for ya?

        There is no spoon...
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    • Profile picture of the author ThomasW
      Originally Posted by Heimir Arnfinnsson View Post

      There is no God!

      Heimer - There is no Secret!
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    • Profile picture of the author dlwebb610
      Originally Posted by Heimir Arnfinnsson View Post

      There is no God!
      I challenge you to prove that statement. And yes, I can prove there is but honestly, are we even supposed to be having this conversation here. Does it not state in the forum rules that we aren't allowed to discuss religion or politics? But then again, there is a post by the powers that be of this forum "WE THE PEOPLE STIMULUS PACKAGE". If you haven't watched it do so, then tell me if that is not political.
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  • Profile picture of the author patJ
    They are the same in the sense that they are both made up and is based on pseudoscience.
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    • Profile picture of the author Omar B
      Originally Posted by patJ View Post

      They are the same in the sense that they are both made up and is based on pseudoscience.
      And what is science? Observable phenomena that can be duplicated using theories and postulates? Then that explains why oxygen didn't exist until we were able to observe and test for it! Science is limited to the extent of our abilities at a given time. God is universal and the limitations of science only solidify the proof of God. Just because you have not been able to explain who or what God is by today's scientific standards does not make it false.
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      • Profile picture of the author patJ
        Originally Posted by Omar B View Post

        And what is science? Observable phenomena that can be duplicated using theories and postulates? Then that explains why oxygen didn't exist until we were able to observe and test for it! Science is limited to the extent of our abilities at a given time. God is universal and the limitations of science only solidify the proof of God.
        Science = Observation first, hypothesis and theory second.
        Pseudoscience = "hypothesis" first, then use logical fallacies or made up facts to "prove" your fantasy.

        Originally Posted by Omar B View Post

        Just because you have not been able to explain who or what God is by today's scientific standards does not make it false.
        Full knowledge of something is unobtainable. Anything is possible. We could live in a world generated by computers, like the matrix. However, a person that goes around believing this just because the movie "the matrix" said so, is nothing but stupid. Even if it's true.
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        • Profile picture of the author gabbydeb
          Being a Christian I find this thread fascinating. I have never found Science and Christian belief contradictory. I believe God proves Science. In my opinion, what we discover was already there. Science doesn't create something that was already there, but Science brings it to light in a logical sequence of what was already mentioned in the quote below, Observation, Hypothesis, and Theory. I also agree full knowledge of something is unobtainable, because if that were true we wouldn't make many of the decisions we do.

          I believe that one should find things out for themselves. Whether it is the "Secret" or following some influential leader be they political or religious, or someone in business, one should use the brain that God gave him or her, and study and think and observe to the best of their ability to come to a conclusion.

          I don't think that just because a person has faith in a religious belief, that they have to check their brains in at the door.



          Originally Posted by patJ View Post

          Science = Observation first, hypothesis and theory second.
          Pseudoscience = "hypothesis" first, then use logical fallacies or made up facts to "prove" your fantasy.



          Full knowledge of something is unobtainable. Anything is possible. We could live in a world generated by computers, like the matrix. However, a person that goes around believing this just because the movie "the matrix" said so, is nothing but stupid. Even if it's true.
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          • Profile picture of the author ryanmacca
            Originally Posted by gabbydeb View Post

            Being a Christian I find this thread fascinating. I have never found Science and Christian belief contradictory. I believe God proves Science. In my opinion, what we discover was already there. Science doesn't create something that was already there, but Science brings it to light in a logical sequence of what was already mentioned in the quote below, Observation, Hypothesis, and Theory. I also agree full knowledge of something is unobtainable, because if that were true we wouldn't make many of the decisions we do.

            I believe that one should find things out for themselves. Whether it is the "Secret" or following some influential leader be they political or religious, or someone in business, one should use the brain that God gave him or her, and study and think and observe to the best of their ability to come to a conclusion.

            I don't think that just because a person has faith in a religious belief, that they have to check their brains in at the door.
            Thanks for your post. It was really insightful.
            I am a christian, and a very strong believer, though I do find that some science does contradict the bible. Things like the big bang and evolution.
            This does not effect my faith, I know God created the world the way it is, but it does confuse me a little.

            The bible doesnt technically say the world is 6,000 years old, and you cannot take the poetry of genesis literally. We have a lot to learn

            I think I just confused myself
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  • Profile picture of the author Roey Pimentel
    I went to Church yesterday (Catholic) and the Priest gave a homily that was so in tune to a lot of what was in, "The Secret" - it was amazing! I truly feel that the two subjects, (God and "The Secret") are not mutually exclusive. After all, we pray in the name of, "The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit." So long we have focused on The Father and the Son, maybe now its time to meditate on the meaning of, "The Holy Spirit." We are entering into a new level of understanding and knowledge. I believe someday God and Science will come together. Imagine what someone who lived 200 years ago would thing of the idea of communicating all over the world with a cell phone, or the Internet... Lets be open minded.

    Peace,

    Roey
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  • Profile picture of the author UMRK
    God is not a separate entity outside of ourselves. God is a word used to attempt an explanation of the unexplainable. We are a part of God, inseparable. Without us there can be no God.
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    • Profile picture of the author marketinggremlin
      Originally Posted by UMRK View Post

      God is not a separate entity outside of ourselves. God is a word used to attempt an explanation of the unexplainable. We are a part of God, inseparable. Without us there can be no God.
      Respectfully I think your statement is quite impossible. Because with that statement you reducing God to a figment of our imagination. God is certainly a separate entity outside of our existence. He can live within us, but absolutely existed before us.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tor-Sigurd D.R
      Originally Posted by UMRK View Post

      God is not a separate entity outside of ourselves. God is a word used to attempt an explanation of the unexplainable. We are a part of God, inseparable. Without us there can be no God.
      I have the same view, we are our own "gods" which has been misused for so many years. What we see, think and feel is what we create.. when you think about this you will come to the conclusion that this "existence" is just a mere illusion for us to experience, whether it being a good or bad.
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      • Profile picture of the author Jonathan 2.0
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        • Profile picture of the author ryanmacca
          Originally Posted by ZigZag View Post

          We're not Gods. We're human beings. Personally I wouldn't refer to myself as a God.

          The difference between God and the LOA is that you can be concentrating on something you don't want and God will help you. That's what's happened to me throughout my life. Completely opposite of what it states in The Secret.

          Thinking that God and LOA are the same is saying that you have the power of God. But you don't. And you wouldn't want that kind of power in the first place. We're human beings who use the laws of The Universe. And whether LOA is one of them is a matter of opinion.
          I know that this is completely random but whenever I see LOA I think of LOTR (Lord Of The Rings)
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        • Profile picture of the author Tom E
          Originally Posted by ZigZag View Post

          The difference between God and the LOA is that you can be concentrating on something you don't want and God will help you. That's what's happened to me throughout my life. Completely opposite of what it states in The Secret
          You're WAY off here my friend. The Law Of Attraction clearly states that what you focus on expands.

          In other words, if you focus on what you don't want, you will get it.
          If you focus on what you do want, you will also get it. That was the most focused-upon part in The Secret - I don't see how you missed that!

          All this being said, you can't attract something in your life by merely thinking about it now and then. Your THOUGHTS do not create your reality - your emotions do - what you truly feel deep inside, at a subconscious level, is what creates your reality.

          It doesn't matter how completely sure you are of your belief about anything at a conscious level - if you have a deep subconscious belief that is contrary to that, it will always cancel out the effects of your conscious belief.

          What I just said, by the way, is LOA 101.
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          • Profile picture of the author Jonathan 2.0
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            • Profile picture of the author Tom E
              Originally Posted by ZigZag View Post

              The difference between God and LOA is that a person can be focusing on something they don't want and God will help them and they'll receive what they do want.

              (I hope that makes more sense this time.)

              I've experienced that personally. You can read about it on the first page if like you. And it's different than LOA. For example when a person is praying for forgiveness they're concentrating on something that they don't want and when they're forgiven they receive what they do want.

              When I was 18-years-old and fed up with my life I was concentrating on something I didn't want. My acute social anxiety and people thinking I was strange. And when I saw the religious image above me that night and was conscious of something loving and protective above me I received what I did want ... Emotional freedom and the ability to socialize with people and to be happy.

              Understand?

              According to LOA I would have received more of what I didn't want. Instead I received what I did want. There's a difference between God and LOA. They're not the same thing.
              I do believe in a higher power - just a different interpretation of it than yours. God can only help those who help themselves. In other words, when you pray for something - if you're emotionally ready (subconsciously), you will receive the help. If you're not, you won't.

              However, there is an exception, and I should have mentioned this in my previous post - my apologies: The one thing that can cancel out all the above is one word: DESIRE.

              If your desire for something (conscious or subconscious) is strong enough, it will supersede everything else - even if you're focusing on what you don't want. When you were 18 and dealing with anxiety/focusing on it, I can guarantee you that behind all that focus, was a burning desire to be free of it - whether you were aware of it or not.

              This burning desire is what allowed God to help you at that moment. That's the beauty of free will - God (or whatever you want to call this power) does not interfere with free will. God cannot perform any miracles in your life that you did not ask for. Of course, many times, we never ask consciously, but rather subconsciously, and because of that, it seems as if God performed a miracle just because "he decided to".

              Another example of how burning, unstoppable desire supersedes even subconsious conflict: Look at how full the world is of rockstars, actors and business moguls who have achieved unimaginable wealth. A lot of them are completely unhappy (subconscious conflict/separation from their higher power), yet their desire got them what they (thought) they wanted.

              By the way, saying that "the law of attraction and God are the same" is sort of like saying that an electrician and electricity is the same. It's a bit of a silly comparison.

              Just like the law of gravity or any other law, the law of attraction (whether you believe in it or not) is a LAW - meaning that someone created it.

              However, if you really study up on the LOA and go beyond all the hype books, you'll find that the law that really runs the Universe is the Law Of Vibration. If you don't know what the law of vibration is, post a message and I'll be happy to explain.
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              • Profile picture of the author BrianTubbs
                How many of you have read Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking? A lot of what's in The Secret is in Peale's book.

                Joel Osteen has kind of taken up Peale's legacy. Your Best Life Now and A Better You are very much a biblical (some would say quasi-biblical) perspective on the "Law of Attraction."

                For my own part, I find Osteen to be a very inspirational speaker and writer. If I need a good dose of encouragement, he's the man. But if you're looking for solid, biblically-based theology, there are other preachers I'd recommend.
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        • Profile picture of the author rlnorthcutt
          Originally Posted by ZigZag View Post

          We're not Gods. We're human beings. Personally I wouldn't refer to myself as a God.
          "I and [my] Father are one.
          Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.
          Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?
          The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
          Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
          If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
          Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?"

          I think it is useful to differentiate between the "small self" (ego) and the "large self" (buddha nature or christ consciousness or god).

          You are correct that the "small I" is NOT God, no matter how hard it tries to make it so... But, the "large I" (divine spark) IS God.

          Originally Posted by ZigZag View Post

          The difference between God and the LOA is that you can be concentrating on something you don't want and God will help you. That's what's happened to me throughout my life. Completely opposite of what it states in The Secret.
          If you have faith in God and that God will support you and care for you, then when you are praying about something you don't want, it CAN be a cleansing experience as your belief in God's help is greater than the belief in what you don't want... That is, you are attracting God's help.

          Originally Posted by ZigZag View Post

          Thinking that God and LOA are the same is saying that you have the power of God. But you don't. And you wouldn't want that kind of power in the first place. We're human beings who use the laws of The Universe. And whether LOA is one of them is a matter of opinion.
          We DO have the power of God (sort of ), but I think its important to clarify that we aren't the SOURCE of the power. For example, we can say that we have the power of the Sun and can harness it in many ways without ever using it all or draining it... and its freely available to everyone... but we can't turn it on or off, or become a SOURCE of heat/light of the sun.

          Though we can block ourselves from the sun.

          When you have a moment of true inner silence, then you are literally one with God.

          Someone else mentioned it before, but lets also remember that "God" is just a word or label that refers to an experience that can not be contained by words...

          Not trying to pick on you (as I think we actually agree more than we disagree), but your post inspired me and gave me a good platform for responding

          Ron
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          • Profile picture of the author Tom E
            Originally Posted by rlnorthcutt View Post

            There is no good or bad, there is only life... good or bad is the way we look at it.

            Ron
            Ron
            Originally Posted by BrianTubbs View Post

            I think this statement is tricky. At one level, there's truth to it. Martha Washington, for example, once said: "For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition."

            So, if that's what you mean, I'm with you.

            But if you are referring to morality or ethics, then I'm afraid we disagree. Murdering an innocent child is wrong. Hatred is wrong. Rape is wrong. The Holocaust was wrong. And on and on.

            There ARE moral truths. I'm not saying I've figured them all out. I'm a flawed human being just like everybody else, but I recognize that there are moral truths, just as I recognize that there are physical realities.
            Brian, I think what Ron was trying to say is that from an Absolute point of view, there is no right or wrong. Right now, we live in a place of absolute illusion - the reality we experience is determined by what our subconscious filters deem fit or "safe" for us to experience.

            From a human standpoint, there is absolutely good and bad - no doubt. And that's a good thing - it gives us laws, a court system, etc and prevents anarchy.

            However, from an Absolute (Spititual/God) viewpoint, there is no right or wrong - God isn't this or that - God isn't female, male or anything else - God just IS, and everything God has created, just IS. From that viewpoint, there is no good or evil - it simply IS what it IS.

            God is a lot simpler than humanity has turned it into.
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            • Profile picture of the author Jonathan 2.0
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              • Profile picture of the author Tom E
                Originally Posted by ZigZag View Post

                How would you know?

                *Confused*

                There's nothing wrong with having your own opinion and view about God however stating something like it's an absolute fact instead of your personal opinion is ... Foolish. Remember as Socrates taught: "True knowledge is knowing that you know nothing."

                Personally I'll never pretend that I've got God figured out. Because I have a human brain.

                It would be analogous to a dog understanding his master. The dog knows that his master is intelligent and loves him. And he can communicate with him from a very limited standpoint. But the dog's brain is too small to truly understand his master on an intellectual level.

                And our human brain is too small to truly understand God on an intellectual level.

                My personal view is that God is intelligent and that there is indeed a Heaven and a Hell. And I couldn't recommend strongly enough that people live an excellent life. Because it's been documented thousands of times by people who've had near death experiences that something does indeed happen when you die.

                Many people have reported being in Hell.

                The most important thing as Einstein said is to decide whether or not the Universe is a friendly place. You can trust me that the Universe can be very competitive, cruel, hostile, and unforgiving. Even the birds you hear singing every morning prey on worms from the ground. You see the Universe operates on hierarchies and the most intelligent are superior.

                That's why you absolutely must live excellent life. For me God is very real. If that dog we talked about earlier harmed another person or even another dog he'd be put to sleep no matter how much his master loved him.
                I'm not quite sure why you're mentioning all this in response to my post - I agree with almost everything you're saying, and never said anything to the contrary.

                I've spent many years studying the subconsious mind and how it dictates everything human beings do. So when I say that God is a lot simpler than what we think, I'm basically saying that, as long as we're walking around on this earth, with these physical bodies, brains and emotions, we have our heads up our asses when it comes to knowing what God is.

                If you do some (credible) research on the subconsious, you'll be shocked to find how little we actually are in conscious charge of ANYTHING we do or experience. That doesn't mean you can't get in charge - there are many methods, and both meditation and prayer tends to 'clean the clutter".

                Anyone claiming to know what God is is full of you know what. Truth is always simple and as I'm sure you'll agree - God is truth. It's just the mind that wants to make it complicated. That's all I was saying with my statement.

                Again, I agree with you on almost everything you said - the best way to live is living a great life. That is an excellent way of growing closer to your own spiritual nature - do what you love and love what you do in life. When you do that, all other things seem to fall into place.

                All that being said, even though you're a Christian and I'm not, that's the beauty of it - I totally respect everyone for what they believe in, as long as it doesn't harm others. If someone is a buddhist and it makes him happy - good for him! If someone is a Jehova's Witness and it makes her life work - more power to her! That's the beauty of diversity.
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                • Profile picture of the author BrianTubbs
                  There verses cited above about asking things in Jesus' name and receiving them are great verses. I've preached on them a few times.

                  I think we need to be careful, though, with the exegetical interpretations. It's important to understand text according to the author's intent.

                  Jesus promises that the Father will grant requests made in Jesus' SERVICE. In other words, it's not enough to ASSERT "in Jesus' name" at the end of one's prayers. We actually having to be praying WITHIN the will of God and submitting ourselves to the will of God. That's the meaning and promise of the passage.

                  I can say: "Lord, help me rob this bank. In Jesus' name, Amen." But such a request would be way outside the will of God, and would in no way be in the service of Jesus.

                  Now, my remarks are simply based on the original meaning of that text. If a person wants to assign their own meaning to the text, that's his/her right to do so, but I think it's fair to point out the original meaning here.
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                  • Profile picture of the author BrianTubbs
                    It is absolutely, positively TRUE that no human being can conceive of the fullness and wonder of God. There is absolutely NO WAY that any of us can claim or achieve mastery of the mysteries of God or the nature of God.

                    HOWEVER.........

                    The issue is REVELATION. In other words...

                    1. Has God provided any revelation to the human race? Has God revealed anything about Himself/Herself/Itself to the human race?

                    2. If God has provided revelation to the world, would He/She/It not provide said revelation in a way that we could understand?

                    We don't have to understand EVERYTHING about God. We only have to understand that which God WANTS us to understand - that which God has revealed to us.

                    p.s. To my Christian friends, I accept the biblical reference to God as a "He." I'm only saying "He/She/It" as a courtesy to those here who don't accept the Bible as divine revelation.
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                • Profile picture of the author Jonathan 2.0
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                  You're right Gr8ToCre8. I kind of went off on one there which sometimes happens when I'm discussing something that's important to me. Loving the accepting and care free opinion about religion though. Whatever helps people to grow and evolve spiritually is a good thing.
                  Signature
                  "Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem and turned it into an opportunity."―Joseph Sugarman
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        • Profile picture of the author jose13
          There is no such thing as God vs "The Secret"

          God is the the beginning and the end, THE ONE. Unity, universe wholeness and everything beyond our understanding.

          The "Secret" is just a very successful marketing strategy where they were able to focus on the law of attraction extracting many concepts of the book "Think and grow rich" from Napoleon Hill.
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          • Profile picture of the author John Durham
            Originally Posted by jose13 View Post

            There is no such thing as God vs "The Secret"

            The "Secret" is just a very successful marketing strategy where they were able to focus on the law of attraction extracting many concepts of the book "Think and grow rich" from Napoleon Hill.
            Dig deeper. I have a stack of Napolean Hill books...and a stack of "attraction books" that are thousands of years older than Napolean Hill.

            I GOTTA GET OFF THIS THREAD!! SOMEBODY HELP ME!
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      • Profile picture of the author MichaelGk
        Does anyone here promote Law of A affiliate materials. Do they convert well?

        Michael
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      • Profile picture of the author montero
        from Scientific American, 2005-Jan, by Michael Shermer:
        Quantum Quackery
        A surprise-hit film has renewed interest in applying quantum mechanics to consciousness, spirituality and human potential

        In spring 2004 I appeared on KATU TV's AM Northwest in Portland, Ore., with the producers of an improbably named film, What the #$*! Do We Know?! Artfully edited and featuring actress Marlee Matlin as a dreamy-eyed photographer trying to make sense of an apparently senseless universe, the film's central tenet is that we create our own reality through consciousness and quantum mechanics. I never imagined that such a film would succeed, but it has grossed millions.

        The film's avatars are New Age scientists whose jargon-laden sound bites amount to little more than what California Institute of Technology physicist and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann once described as "quantum flapdoodle." University of Oregon quantum physicist Amit Goswami, for example, says in the film: "The material world around us is nothing but possible movements of consciousness. I am choosing moment by moment my experience. Heisenberg said atoms are not things, only tendencies." Okay, Amit, I challenge you to leap out of a 20-story building and consciously choose the experience of passing safely through the ground's tendencies.

        The work of Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto, author of The Hidden Messages in Water, is featured to show how thoughts change the structure of ice crystals--beautiful crystals form in a glass of water with the word "love" taped to it, whereas playing Elvis's "Heartbreak Hotel" causes other crystals to split in two. Would his "Burnin' Love" boil water?

        The film's nadir is an interview with "Ramtha," a 35,000-year-old spirit channeled by a woman named JZ Knight. I wondered where humans spoke English with an Indian accent 35,000 years ago. Many of the films' participants are members of Ramtha's "School of Enlightenment," where New Age pabulum is dispensed in costly weekend retreats.

        The attempt to link the weirdness of the quantum world to mysteries of the macro world (such as consciousness) is not new. The best candidate to connect the two comes from University of Oxford physicist Roger Penrose and physician Stuart Hameroff of the Arizona Health Sciences Center, whose theory of quantum consciousness has generated much heat but little light. Inside our neurons are tiny hollow microtubules that act like structural scaffolding. Their conjecture (and that's all it is) is that something inside the microtubules may initiate a wave-function collapse that results in the quantum coherence of atoms. The quantum coherence causes neurotransmitters to be released into the synapses between neurons, thus triggering them to fire in a uniform pattern that creates thought and consciousness. Because a wave-function collapse can come about only when an atom is "observed" (that is, affected in any way by something else), the late neuroscientist Sir John Eccles, another proponent of the idea, even suggested that "mind" may be the observer in a recursive loop from atoms to molecules to neurons to thought to consciousness to mind to atoms....

        In reality, the gap between subatomic quantum effects and large-scale macro systems is too large to bridge. In his book The Unconscious Quantum (Prometheus Books, 1995), University of Colorado physicist Victor Stenger demonstrates that for a system to be described quantum-mechanically, its typical mass (m), speed (v) and distance (d) must be on the order of Planck's constant (h). "If mvd is much greater than h, then the system probably can be treated classically." Stenger computes that the mass of neural transmitter molecules and their speed across the distance of the synapse are about two orders of magnitude too large for quantum effects to be influential. There is no micro-macro connection. Then what the #$*! is going on here?

        Physics envy. The lure of reducing complex problems to basic physical principles has dominated the philosophy of science since Descartes's failed attempt some four centuries ago to explain cognition by the actions of swirling vortices of atoms dancing their way to consciousness. Such Cartesian dreams provide a sense of certainty, but they quickly fade in the face of the complexities of biology. We should be exploring consciousness at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organization. Biology envy.

        Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic (Skeptic: Home: The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine) and author of The Science of Good and Evil.

        from Salon, 2007-Mar-5, by Peter Birkenhead:
        Oprah's ugly secret

        By continuing to hawk "The Secret," a mishmash of offensive self-help cliches, Oprah Winfrey is squandering her goodwill and influence, and preaching to the world that mammon is queen.

        Steve Martin used to do a routine that went like this: "You too can be a millionaire! It's easy: First, get a million dollars. Now..."

        If you put that routine between hard covers, you'd have "The Secret," the self-help manifesto and bottle of minty-fresh snake oil currently topping the bestseller lists. "The Secret" espouses a "philosophy" patched together by an Australian talk-show producer named Rhonda Byrne. Though "The Secret" unabashedly appropriates and mishmashes familiar self-help clichés, it was still the subject of two recent episodes of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" featuring a dream team of self-help gurus, all of whom contributed to the project.

        The main idea of "The Secret" is that people need only visualize what they want in order to get it -- and the book certainly has created instant wealth, at least for Rhonda Byrne and her partners-in-con. And the marketing idea behind it -- the enlisting of that dream team, in what is essentially a massive, cross-promotional pyramid scheme -- is brilliant. But what really makes "The Secret" more than a variation on an old theme is the involvement of Oprah Winfrey, who lends the whole enterprise more prestige, and, because of that prestige, more venality, than any previous self-help scam. Oprah hasn't just endorsed "The Secret"; she's championed it, put herself at the apex of its pyramid, and helped create a symbiotic economy of New Age quacks that almost puts OPEC to shame.

        Why "venality"? Because, with survivors of Auschwitz still alive, Oprah writes this about "The Secret" on her Web site, "the energy you put into the world -- both good and bad -- is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day." "Venality," because Oprah, in the age of AIDS, is advertising a book that says, "You cannot 'catch' anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought." "Venality," because Oprah, from a studio within walking distance of Chicago's notorious Cabrini Green Projects, pitches a book that says, "The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts."

        Worse than "The Secret's" blame-the-victim idiocy is its baldfaced bullshitting. The titular "secret" of the book is something the authors call the Law of Attraction. They maintain that the universe is governed by the principle that "like attracts like" and that our thoughts are like magnets: Positive thoughts attract positive events and negative thoughts attract negative events. Of course, magnets do exactly the opposite -- positively charged magnets attract negatively charged particles -- and the rest of "The Secret" has a similar relationship to the truth. Here it is on biblical history: "Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Jesus were not only prosperity teachers, but also millionaires themselves, with more affluent lifestyles than many present-day millionaires could conceive of." And worse than the idiocy and the bullshitting is its anti-intellectualism, because that's at the root of the other two. Here's "The Secret" on reading and, um, electricity: "When I discovered 'The Secret' I made a decision that I would not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because it did not make me feel good," and, "How does it work? Nobody knows. Just like nobody knows how electricity works. I don't, do you?" And worst of all is the craven consumerist worldview at the heart of "The Secret," because it's why the book exists: "[The Secret] is like having the Universe as your catalogue. You flip through it and say, 'I'd like to have this experience and I'd like to have that product and I'd like to have a person like that.' It is you placing your order with the Universe. It's really that easy." That's from Dr. Joe Vitale, former Amway executive and contributor to "The Secret," on Oprah.com.

        Oprah Winfrey is one of the richest women in the world, and one of the most influential. Her imprimatur has helped the authors of "The Secret" sell 2 million books (and 1 million DVDs), putting it ahead of the new Harry Potter book on the Amazon bestseller list. In the time Oprah spent advertising the lies in "The Secret," she could have been exposing them to an audience that otherwise might have believed them. So why didn't she? If James Frey deserved to be raked over the coals for lying about how drunk he was, doesn't Oprah deserve some scrutiny for pitching the meretricious nonsense in "The Secret"?

        Oprah has a reputation for doing good -- she probably has more perceived moral authority than anyone in this country -- and she has done a lot of good. But in light of her zealous support of a book that says, in this time of entrenched, systemic, institutionalized poverty, this time of no-bid contracts for war profiteers and heckuva-job governance, that "you can have, be, or do anything," isn't it reasonable to ask about why she does what she does, and the way she does it?

        Oprah recently opened, with much fanfare, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy in South Africa, and as I watched the network news stories about it, I couldn't get "The Secret" out of my mind. I kept wondering what would happen if professor Sam Mhlongo, South Africa's chief family practitioner who famously said that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, read about Oprah's connection to "The Secret" and found support there for his claim. I wondered if the students of the academy would read "The Secret" and start to believe that their parents deserved to be poor, or that the people of Darfur summoned the Janjaweed with "bad thoughts." Will the heavier girls be told, as readers of "The Secret" are, that food doesn't cause weight gain -- thinking about weight gain does? Will they be told to not even look at fat people, as "The Secret" advises? Oprah is already promoting these ideas to her television audience. Why wouldn't she espouse them to her students?

        In many ways the Leadership Academy is a wonderful project, a school that will provide impoverished girls an education they otherwise might not have gotten. But it also seems to be the product, unavoidably, of the faux-spiritual, anti-intellectual, hyper-materialistic worldview expressed in "The Secret," the book that the school's founder has called "life changing."

        The academy is a controversial enough project in South Africa that the government withdrew its support, because of the amount of money that's been spent on its well-reported, lavish design -- money that could have gone instead to creating perfectly fine schools that served many, many more students than the 350 who will be making use of spa facilities at the academy. But, when I watched Oprah's prime-time special about interviewing candidates for the school, it seemed to me that she wasn't nearly as excited about providing an education to the girls as she was about providing a "Secret"-like "transformative experience." (And not just for the girls, for herself; the first thing she said to the family members at the opening ceremony wasn't, "Welcome to a great moment in your daughters' lives," it was, "Welcome to the proudest moment of my life.")

        On the special, Oprah talked far more about what the school would do for the girls' self-esteem and material lives than what it would do for their intellects -- sometimes sounding as if she was reading directly from "The Secret." And in discussing what she was looking for in prospective students, she didn't talk about finding the next Eleanor Roosevelt or Sally Ride or Jane Smiley. Instead she used "Entertainment Tonight" language like "It Girl" to describe her ideal candidate. She praised the girls for their spirit, for how much they "shined" and "glowed," but never for their ideas or insights. Oprah puts a lot of energy and money into aesthetics -- on her show, in her magazine, at her school. The publishers of "The Secret" have learned well from their sponsor and are just as visually savvy. They have created a look for their books, DVDs, CDs and marketing materials that conjures a "Da Vinci Code" aesthetic, full of pretty faux parchment, quill-and-ink fonts and wax seals.

        Oprah's TV special about the Leadership Academy, essentially an hourlong infomercial, was just as well-coiffed and "visuals"-heavy. In fact, when Oprah was choosing her students, her important criteria must have included their television interview skills. On-camera interviews with the girls were the centerpiece of the special, but as one spunky, telegenic candidate after another beamed her smile at the camera, I couldn't help wondering how Joyce Carol Oates or Gertrude Stein or Madame Curie would have fared -- would they have "shined" and "glowed," or more likely talked in non-sound-bite-friendly paragraphs and maybe even, God forbid, the sometimes "dark" tones of authentic people, and been rejected. Sadly, the girls themselves (and who can blame them, desperate 12-year-olds trying to flatter their potential benefactor) parroted banal Oprah-isms, like "I want to be the best me I can be," and "Be a leader not a follower" and "Don't blend in, blend out," with smiley gusto.

        When the special was over, I found myself equally impressed and queasy, one part hopeful, one part worried. I was happy the school was there, but disturbed by the way it created an instant upper class out of the students, in a country that doesn't exactly need any more segregation into haves and have-nots. I was hopeful for the students but nervous about what, exactly, they will be taught in a place called the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy. Will it be more "best me I can be" bromides? Will "The Secret" be on the syllabus? Oprah herself is going to teach "leadership classes" at the school, after all.

        Has Oprah ever done anything that didn't leave people with mixed feelings?

        And at what point do we stop feeling like we have to take the good with the craven when it comes to Oprah, and the culture she's helped to create? I get nauseated when I think of people in South Africa being taught they don't have enough money because they're "blocking it with their thoughts." I'm already sickened by an American culture that teaches people, as "The Secret" does, that they "create the circumstances of their lives with the choices they make every day," a culture that elected a president who cried tears of self-congratulation at his inauguration, rejects intellectualism, and believes he can intuit the trustworthiness of world leaders by looking into their eyes. I'm sickened by a culture in which the tenets of the Oprah philosophy have become conventional wisdom, in which genuine self-actualization has been confused with self-aggrandizement, reality is whatever you want it to be, and mammon is queen.

        One of Oprah's signature gimmicks has been giving stuff away to her audience ("giving" here means announcing the passing of stuff from corporate sponsors to audience members), most notably in a popular segment called "My Favorite Things." These bits have revealed an Oprah who truly revels in consumer culture, and who can seem astonishingly oblivious to the way most people live and what they can afford. She seems to celebrate every event and milestone with extravagant stuff, indeed to not know how to celebrate without it. Oprah has explained the expensive appointments of her Leadership Academy by saying, "Beauty inspires." True enough. But hasn't the lack of beauty inspired some pretty great work? And aren't there are all kinds of beauty?

        You might expect a powerful person who thinks of herself as "deeply spiritual" to have a less worldly conception of it, and you might hope that she would encourage her followers to do the same, instead of urging them to buy books that call Jesus a "prosperity teacher."

        But, far more than "spiritual growth" or "empowerment," Oprah and the authors of "The Secret" focus on imparting the message of getting rich. Even the biographies of the authors of "The Secret" on Oprah's Web site are revealingly fixated on their rags-to-riches stories. James Arthur Ray is described as someone who was "almost going bankrupt, [which] forced him to focus on the life he truly wanted. Now he runs a multimillion-dollar corporation dedicated to teaching people how to create wealth in all areas of their lives." The bio for Lisa Nichols says, "After hitting rock bottom at age 19, Lisa prayed for a better life. Now, she has made her fortune by motivating more than 60,000 teenagers to make better choices in their own lives." And the one for "Chicken Soup for the Soul" creator Jack Canfield reads, he "was deep in debt before he made it big. Now his best-selling books have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, and Jack travels the country teaching 'The Secret' of his success."

        There's no doubt that Oprah's doing a lot of good with her South African project, and with many other charitable works. And yeah, I know, her book club "gets people to read," and yadda yadda yadda. But there's also no doubt that a lot of us have been making forgiving disclaimers like that about Oprah for years. And that maybe they amount to trains-running-on-time arguments. Maybe it's time to stop. After reading "The Secret," it seemed to me that there were basically three possibilities: 1) Oprah really believes this stuff, and we should be very worried about her opening a school for anyone. 2) Oprah doesn't believe this stuff and we should be very, very worried about her opening a school for anyone. 3) Oprah doesn't know that any of this stuff is in the book or on her Web site and in a perfect world she wouldn't be allowed to open a school for anyone.

        The things that Oprah does, like promoting "The Secret," can seem deceptively trivial, but it's precisely because they're silly that we should be concerned about their promotion by someone who is deadly earnest and deeply trusted by millions of people. It's important to start taking a look at Oprah because her philosophy has in many ways become the dominant one in our culture, even for people who would never consider themselves disciples. Somebody is buying enough copies of "The Secret" to make it No. 1 on the Amazon bestseller list. Those somebodies may be religious zealots or atheists, Republicans or Democrats, but they are all believers, to one degree or another, and, perhaps unwittingly, in aspects of the Oprah/"Secret" culture. And yes, sure, a lot of the believing they do is harmless fun -- everybody's got some kind of rabbit's foot in his pocket -- but we're not talking about rabbits' feet here, we're talking about whole, live rabbits pulled out of hats, and an audience that doesn't think it's being tricked.

        "Secret"-style belief is a perfect product. Like Coca-Cola, it goes down easy and makes the consumer thirsty for more. It's unthreateningly simple, and a lot more facile, sentimental and, perhaps paradoxically, intractable than the old-fashioned kind of belief. Like Amway, it enlists its consumers as unofficial salespeople, and the people who constitute its market feel like they're part of a fold. It's indistinguishable from, and inextricably bound up in, the Oprah idea of self-esteem, the kind of confidence you get not from testing yourself, but from "believing" in yourself. This modern idea of faith isn't arrived at the old-fashioned way, by asking questions, but by getting answers. Instead of inquiry we have born-again epiphanies and cheesy self-help books -- we have excuses for not engaging in inquiry at all. Let other people schlep down the road to Damascus; we'll have Amazon send Damascus to us.

        That "Secret"-style faith, whether it's in God, or in one's own preordained destiny to be an "American Idol," which takes all of a moment to achieve, is perhaps its most important selling point. Here's "The Secret" on arriving at faith: "Ask once, believe you have received, and all you have to do to receive is feel good." The kind of faith that couldn't be reached by shortcut, the confidence of the great doubters and worriers, of Moses and Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ, has been replaced by the insta-certainty and inflated "self-esteem" of "The Secret's" believers.

        Books like "The Secret" have created, and are feeding, an enormously diverse market of disciples, and they're thriving in every corner of the culture, in megachurches and movies, politics and pop music, in sports arenas and state boards of education. Oprah has far more in common with George Bush than either would like to admit, and so do the psychics of Marin County, Calif., and the creationists of Kansas. The believers come from all walks of life, but they work the same way -- mostly by *******izing and warping source materials, from the Bible to the Bhagavad Gita, to make them fit their worldview. On Page 23 of "The Secret" you'll find this revealing doozy: "Meditation quiets the mind, helps you control your thoughts." Of course, the goal of meditation is precisely the opposite -- it is to be conscious, to observe your thoughts honestly and clearly. But that's the last thing the believers want to encourage. The authors of "The Secret" sell "control" in the form of "empowerment" and "quiet" in the form of belief, not consciousness.

        The promises of Oprah culture can seem irresistible, and its hallmarks are becoming ubiquitous. Believers may be separated into tribes according to what they believe, but they do it in pretty much the same way, relying on a "Secret"-style conception of "intuition" --- which seems to amount to the sneaking suspicion that they're always right -- to arrive at their tenets. Instead of the world as it is, constantly changing and full of contradiction, they see a fixed and fantastical place, where good things come to those who believe, whether it's belief in a diet, a God, or a Habit of Successful People. These believers may believe in the healing power of homeopathy, or Scripture or organizational skills -- in intelligent design, astrology or privatization. They all trust that their devotion will be rewarded with money and boyfriends and job promotions, with hockey championships and apartments. And most of all they believe -- they really, really believe -- in themselves.

        For these believers, self-knowledge is much less important than self-"love." But the question they never seem to ask themselves is: If you wouldn't tell another person you loved her before you got to know her, why would you do that to yourself? Skipping the getting-to-know-you part has given us what we deserve: the Oprah culture. It's a culture where superstition is "spirituality," illiteracy is "authenticity," and schoolmarm moralism is "character." It's a culture where people apologize by saying, "I'm sorry you took offense at what I said," and forgive by saying, "I'm not angry at you anymore, I'm grateful to you for teaching me not to trust shitheads like you." And that's the part that should bother us most: the diminishing, even implicit mocking, of genuine goodness, and of authentic spiritual concerns and practices. Engagement, curiosity and active awe are in short supply these days, and it's sickening to see them devalued and misrepresented.

        Not that any of this is new. Aimee Semple McPherson, "The Power of Positive Thinking," Father Coughlin, est, James Van Praagh -- pick your influential snake-oil salesman or snake oil. They were all cut from the same cloth as Oprah and "The Secret." The big, big difference is, well, the bigness. The infinitely bigger reach of the Oprah empire and its emissaries. They make their predecessors look like kids with lemonade stands. It would be stupidly dangerous to dismiss Oprah and "The Secret" as silly, or ultimately meaningless. They're reaching more people than Harry Potter, for God-force's sake. That's why what Oprah does matters, and stinks. If you reach more people than Bill O'Reilly, if you have better name recognition than Nelson Mandela, if the books you endorse sell more than Stephen King's, you should take some responsibility for your effect on the culture. The most powerful woman in the world is taking advantage of people who are desperate for meaning, by passionately championing a product that mocks the very idea of a meaningful life.

        That means something.
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        • Profile picture of the author Tom E
          Originally Posted by montero View Post

          from Scientific American, 2005-Jan, by Michael Shermer:
          Quantum Quackery
          A surprise-hit film has renewed interest in applying quantum mechanics to consciousness, spirituality and human potential

          In spring 2004 I appeared on KATU TV's AM Northwest in Portland, Ore., with the producers of an improbably named film, What the #$*! Do We Know?! Artfully edited and featuring actress Marlee Matlin as a dreamy-eyed photographer trying to make sense of an apparently senseless universe, the film's central tenet is that we create our own reality through consciousness and quantum mechanics. I never imagined that such a film would succeed, but it has grossed millions.

          The film's avatars are New Age scientists whose jargon-laden sound bites amount to little more than what California Institute of Technology physicist and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann once described as "quantum flapdoodle." University of Oregon quantum physicist Amit Goswami, for example, says in the film: "The material world around us is nothing but possible movements of consciousness. I am choosing moment by moment my experience. Heisenberg said atoms are not things, only tendencies." Okay, Amit, I challenge you to leap out of a 20-story building and consciously choose the experience of passing safely through the ground's tendencies.

          The work of Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto, author of The Hidden Messages in Water, is featured to show how thoughts change the structure of ice crystals--beautiful crystals form in a glass of water with the word "love" taped to it, whereas playing Elvis's "Heartbreak Hotel" causes other crystals to split in two. Would his "Burnin' Love" boil water?

          The film's nadir is an interview with "Ramtha," a 35,000-year-old spirit channeled by a woman named JZ Knight. I wondered where humans spoke English with an Indian accent 35,000 years ago. Many of the films' participants are members of Ramtha's "School of Enlightenment," where New Age pabulum is dispensed in costly weekend retreats.

          The attempt to link the weirdness of the quantum world to mysteries of the macro world (such as consciousness) is not new. The best candidate to connect the two comes from University of Oxford physicist Roger Penrose and physician Stuart Hameroff of the Arizona Health Sciences Center, whose theory of quantum consciousness has generated much heat but little light. Inside our neurons are tiny hollow microtubules that act like structural scaffolding. Their conjecture (and that's all it is) is that something inside the microtubules may initiate a wave-function collapse that results in the quantum coherence of atoms. The quantum coherence causes neurotransmitters to be released into the synapses between neurons, thus triggering them to fire in a uniform pattern that creates thought and consciousness. Because a wave-function collapse can come about only when an atom is "observed" (that is, affected in any way by something else), the late neuroscientist Sir John Eccles, another proponent of the idea, even suggested that "mind" may be the observer in a recursive loop from atoms to molecules to neurons to thought to consciousness to mind to atoms....

          In reality, the gap between subatomic quantum effects and large-scale macro systems is too large to bridge. In his book The Unconscious Quantum (Prometheus Books, 1995), University of Colorado physicist Victor Stenger demonstrates that for a system to be described quantum-mechanically, its typical mass (m), speed (v) and distance (d) must be on the order of Planck's constant (h). "If mvd is much greater than h, then the system probably can be treated classically." Stenger computes that the mass of neural transmitter molecules and their speed across the distance of the synapse are about two orders of magnitude too large for quantum effects to be influential. There is no micro-macro connection. Then what the #$*! is going on here?

          Physics envy. The lure of reducing complex problems to basic physical principles has dominated the philosophy of science since Descartes's failed attempt some four centuries ago to explain cognition by the actions of swirling vortices of atoms dancing their way to consciousness. Such Cartesian dreams provide a sense of certainty, but they quickly fade in the face of the complexities of biology. We should be exploring consciousness at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organization. Biology envy.

          Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic (Skeptic: Home: The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine) and author of The Science of Good and Evil.

          from Salon, 2007-Mar-5, by Peter Birkenhead:
          Oprah's ugly secret

          By continuing to hawk "The Secret," a mishmash of offensive self-help cliches, Oprah Winfrey is squandering her goodwill and influence, and preaching to the world that mammon is queen.

          Steve Martin used to do a routine that went like this: "You too can be a millionaire! It's easy: First, get a million dollars. Now..."

          If you put that routine between hard covers, you'd have "The Secret," the self-help manifesto and bottle of minty-fresh snake oil currently topping the bestseller lists. "The Secret" espouses a "philosophy" patched together by an Australian talk-show producer named Rhonda Byrne. Though "The Secret" unabashedly appropriates and mishmashes familiar self-help clichés, it was still the subject of two recent episodes of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" featuring a dream team of self-help gurus, all of whom contributed to the project.

          The main idea of "The Secret" is that people need only visualize what they want in order to get it -- and the book certainly has created instant wealth, at least for Rhonda Byrne and her partners-in-con. And the marketing idea behind it -- the enlisting of that dream team, in what is essentially a massive, cross-promotional pyramid scheme -- is brilliant. But what really makes "The Secret" more than a variation on an old theme is the involvement of Oprah Winfrey, who lends the whole enterprise more prestige, and, because of that prestige, more venality, than any previous self-help scam. Oprah hasn't just endorsed "The Secret"; she's championed it, put herself at the apex of its pyramid, and helped create a symbiotic economy of New Age quacks that almost puts OPEC to shame.

          Why "venality"? Because, with survivors of Auschwitz still alive, Oprah writes this about "The Secret" on her Web site, "the energy you put into the world -- both good and bad -- is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day." "Venality," because Oprah, in the age of AIDS, is advertising a book that says, "You cannot 'catch' anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought." "Venality," because Oprah, from a studio within walking distance of Chicago's notorious Cabrini Green Projects, pitches a book that says, "The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts."

          Worse than "The Secret's" blame-the-victim idiocy is its baldfaced bullshitting. The titular "secret" of the book is something the authors call the Law of Attraction. They maintain that the universe is governed by the principle that "like attracts like" and that our thoughts are like magnets: Positive thoughts attract positive events and negative thoughts attract negative events. Of course, magnets do exactly the opposite -- positively charged magnets attract negatively charged particles -- and the rest of "The Secret" has a similar relationship to the truth. Here it is on biblical history: "Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Jesus were not only prosperity teachers, but also millionaires themselves, with more affluent lifestyles than many present-day millionaires could conceive of." And worse than the idiocy and the bullshitting is its anti-intellectualism, because that's at the root of the other two. Here's "The Secret" on reading and, um, electricity: "When I discovered 'The Secret' I made a decision that I would not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because it did not make me feel good," and, "How does it work? Nobody knows. Just like nobody knows how electricity works. I don't, do you?" And worst of all is the craven consumerist worldview at the heart of "The Secret," because it's why the book exists: "[The Secret] is like having the Universe as your catalogue. You flip through it and say, 'I'd like to have this experience and I'd like to have that product and I'd like to have a person like that.' It is you placing your order with the Universe. It's really that easy." That's from Dr. Joe Vitale, former Amway executive and contributor to "The Secret," on Oprah.com.

          Oprah Winfrey is one of the richest women in the world, and one of the most influential. Her imprimatur has helped the authors of "The Secret" sell 2 million books (and 1 million DVDs), putting it ahead of the new Harry Potter book on the Amazon bestseller list. In the time Oprah spent advertising the lies in "The Secret," she could have been exposing them to an audience that otherwise might have believed them. So why didn't she? If James Frey deserved to be raked over the coals for lying about how drunk he was, doesn't Oprah deserve some scrutiny for pitching the meretricious nonsense in "The Secret"?

          Oprah has a reputation for doing good -- she probably has more perceived moral authority than anyone in this country -- and she has done a lot of good. But in light of her zealous support of a book that says, in this time of entrenched, systemic, institutionalized poverty, this time of no-bid contracts for war profiteers and heckuva-job governance, that "you can have, be, or do anything," isn't it reasonable to ask about why she does what she does, and the way she does it?

          Oprah recently opened, with much fanfare, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy in South Africa, and as I watched the network news stories about it, I couldn't get "The Secret" out of my mind. I kept wondering what would happen if professor Sam Mhlongo, South Africa's chief family practitioner who famously said that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, read about Oprah's connection to "The Secret" and found support there for his claim. I wondered if the students of the academy would read "The Secret" and start to believe that their parents deserved to be poor, or that the people of Darfur summoned the Janjaweed with "bad thoughts." Will the heavier girls be told, as readers of "The Secret" are, that food doesn't cause weight gain -- thinking about weight gain does? Will they be told to not even look at fat people, as "The Secret" advises? Oprah is already promoting these ideas to her television audience. Why wouldn't she espouse them to her students?

          In many ways the Leadership Academy is a wonderful project, a school that will provide impoverished girls an education they otherwise might not have gotten. But it also seems to be the product, unavoidably, of the faux-spiritual, anti-intellectual, hyper-materialistic worldview expressed in "The Secret," the book that the school's founder has called "life changing."

          The academy is a controversial enough project in South Africa that the government withdrew its support, because of the amount of money that's been spent on its well-reported, lavish design -- money that could have gone instead to creating perfectly fine schools that served many, many more students than the 350 who will be making use of spa facilities at the academy. But, when I watched Oprah's prime-time special about interviewing candidates for the school, it seemed to me that she wasn't nearly as excited about providing an education to the girls as she was about providing a "Secret"-like "transformative experience." (And not just for the girls, for herself; the first thing she said to the family members at the opening ceremony wasn't, "Welcome to a great moment in your daughters' lives," it was, "Welcome to the proudest moment of my life.")

          On the special, Oprah talked far more about what the school would do for the girls' self-esteem and material lives than what it would do for their intellects -- sometimes sounding as if she was reading directly from "The Secret." And in discussing what she was looking for in prospective students, she didn't talk about finding the next Eleanor Roosevelt or Sally Ride or Jane Smiley. Instead she used "Entertainment Tonight" language like "It Girl" to describe her ideal candidate. She praised the girls for their spirit, for how much they "shined" and "glowed," but never for their ideas or insights. Oprah puts a lot of energy and money into aesthetics -- on her show, in her magazine, at her school. The publishers of "The Secret" have learned well from their sponsor and are just as visually savvy. They have created a look for their books, DVDs, CDs and marketing materials that conjures a "Da Vinci Code" aesthetic, full of pretty faux parchment, quill-and-ink fonts and wax seals.

          Oprah's TV special about the Leadership Academy, essentially an hourlong infomercial, was just as well-coiffed and "visuals"-heavy. In fact, when Oprah was choosing her students, her important criteria must have included their television interview skills. On-camera interviews with the girls were the centerpiece of the special, but as one spunky, telegenic candidate after another beamed her smile at the camera, I couldn't help wondering how Joyce Carol Oates or Gertrude Stein or Madame Curie would have fared -- would they have "shined" and "glowed," or more likely talked in non-sound-bite-friendly paragraphs and maybe even, God forbid, the sometimes "dark" tones of authentic people, and been rejected. Sadly, the girls themselves (and who can blame them, desperate 12-year-olds trying to flatter their potential benefactor) parroted banal Oprah-isms, like "I want to be the best me I can be," and "Be a leader not a follower" and "Don't blend in, blend out," with smiley gusto.

          When the special was over, I found myself equally impressed and queasy, one part hopeful, one part worried. I was happy the school was there, but disturbed by the way it created an instant upper class out of the students, in a country that doesn't exactly need any more segregation into haves and have-nots. I was hopeful for the students but nervous about what, exactly, they will be taught in a place called the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy. Will it be more "best me I can be" bromides? Will "The Secret" be on the syllabus? Oprah herself is going to teach "leadership classes" at the school, after all.

          Has Oprah ever done anything that didn't leave people with mixed feelings?

          And at what point do we stop feeling like we have to take the good with the craven when it comes to Oprah, and the culture she's helped to create? I get nauseated when I think of people in South Africa being taught they don't have enough money because they're "blocking it with their thoughts." I'm already sickened by an American culture that teaches people, as "The Secret" does, that they "create the circumstances of their lives with the choices they make every day," a culture that elected a president who cried tears of self-congratulation at his inauguration, rejects intellectualism, and believes he can intuit the trustworthiness of world leaders by looking into their eyes. I'm sickened by a culture in which the tenets of the Oprah philosophy have become conventional wisdom, in which genuine self-actualization has been confused with self-aggrandizement, reality is whatever you want it to be, and mammon is queen.

          One of Oprah's signature gimmicks has been giving stuff away to her audience ("giving" here means announcing the passing of stuff from corporate sponsors to audience members), most notably in a popular segment called "My Favorite Things." These bits have revealed an Oprah who truly revels in consumer culture, and who can seem astonishingly oblivious to the way most people live and what they can afford. She seems to celebrate every event and milestone with extravagant stuff, indeed to not know how to celebrate without it. Oprah has explained the expensive appointments of her Leadership Academy by saying, "Beauty inspires." True enough. But hasn't the lack of beauty inspired some pretty great work? And aren't there are all kinds of beauty?

          You might expect a powerful person who thinks of herself as "deeply spiritual" to have a less worldly conception of it, and you might hope that she would encourage her followers to do the same, instead of urging them to buy books that call Jesus a "prosperity teacher."

          But, far more than "spiritual growth" or "empowerment," Oprah and the authors of "The Secret" focus on imparting the message of getting rich. Even the biographies of the authors of "The Secret" on Oprah's Web site are revealingly fixated on their rags-to-riches stories. James Arthur Ray is described as someone who was "almost going bankrupt, [which] forced him to focus on the life he truly wanted. Now he runs a multimillion-dollar corporation dedicated to teaching people how to create wealth in all areas of their lives." The bio for Lisa Nichols says, "After hitting rock bottom at age 19, Lisa prayed for a better life. Now, she has made her fortune by motivating more than 60,000 teenagers to make better choices in their own lives." And the one for "Chicken Soup for the Soul" creator Jack Canfield reads, he "was deep in debt before he made it big. Now his best-selling books have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, and Jack travels the country teaching 'The Secret' of his success."

          There's no doubt that Oprah's doing a lot of good with her South African project, and with many other charitable works. And yeah, I know, her book club "gets people to read," and yadda yadda yadda. But there's also no doubt that a lot of us have been making forgiving disclaimers like that about Oprah for years. And that maybe they amount to trains-running-on-time arguments. Maybe it's time to stop. After reading "The Secret," it seemed to me that there were basically three possibilities: 1) Oprah really believes this stuff, and we should be very worried about her opening a school for anyone. 2) Oprah doesn't believe this stuff and we should be very, very worried about her opening a school for anyone. 3) Oprah doesn't know that any of this stuff is in the book or on her Web site and in a perfect world she wouldn't be allowed to open a school for anyone.

          The things that Oprah does, like promoting "The Secret," can seem deceptively trivial, but it's precisely because they're silly that we should be concerned about their promotion by someone who is deadly earnest and deeply trusted by millions of people. It's important to start taking a look at Oprah because her philosophy has in many ways become the dominant one in our culture, even for people who would never consider themselves disciples. Somebody is buying enough copies of "The Secret" to make it No. 1 on the Amazon bestseller list. Those somebodies may be religious zealots or atheists, Republicans or Democrats, but they are all believers, to one degree or another, and, perhaps unwittingly, in aspects of the Oprah/"Secret" culture. And yes, sure, a lot of the believing they do is harmless fun -- everybody's got some kind of rabbit's foot in his pocket -- but we're not talking about rabbits' feet here, we're talking about whole, live rabbits pulled out of hats, and an audience that doesn't think it's being tricked.

          "Secret"-style belief is a perfect product. Like Coca-Cola, it goes down easy and makes the consumer thirsty for more. It's unthreateningly simple, and a lot more facile, sentimental and, perhaps paradoxically, intractable than the old-fashioned kind of belief. Like Amway, it enlists its consumers as unofficial salespeople, and the people who constitute its market feel like they're part of a fold. It's indistinguishable from, and inextricably bound up in, the Oprah idea of self-esteem, the kind of confidence you get not from testing yourself, but from "believing" in yourself. This modern idea of faith isn't arrived at the old-fashioned way, by asking questions, but by getting answers. Instead of inquiry we have born-again epiphanies and cheesy self-help books -- we have excuses for not engaging in inquiry at all. Let other people schlep down the road to Damascus; we'll have Amazon send Damascus to us.

          That "Secret"-style faith, whether it's in God, or in one's own preordained destiny to be an "American Idol," which takes all of a moment to achieve, is perhaps its most important selling point. Here's "The Secret" on arriving at faith: "Ask once, believe you have received, and all you have to do to receive is feel good." The kind of faith that couldn't be reached by shortcut, the confidence of the great doubters and worriers, of Moses and Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ, has been replaced by the insta-certainty and inflated "self-esteem" of "The Secret's" believers.

          Books like "The Secret" have created, and are feeding, an enormously diverse market of disciples, and they're thriving in every corner of the culture, in megachurches and movies, politics and pop music, in sports arenas and state boards of education. Oprah has far more in common with George Bush than either would like to admit, and so do the psychics of Marin County, Calif., and the creationists of Kansas. The believers come from all walks of life, but they work the same way -- mostly by *******izing and warping source materials, from the Bible to the Bhagavad Gita, to make them fit their worldview. On Page 23 of "The Secret" you'll find this revealing doozy: "Meditation quiets the mind, helps you control your thoughts." Of course, the goal of meditation is precisely the opposite -- it is to be conscious, to observe your thoughts honestly and clearly. But that's the last thing the believers want to encourage. The authors of "The Secret" sell "control" in the form of "empowerment" and "quiet" in the form of belief, not consciousness.

          The promises of Oprah culture can seem irresistible, and its hallmarks are becoming ubiquitous. Believers may be separated into tribes according to what they believe, but they do it in pretty much the same way, relying on a "Secret"-style conception of "intuition" --- which seems to amount to the sneaking suspicion that they're always right -- to arrive at their tenets. Instead of the world as it is, constantly changing and full of contradiction, they see a fixed and fantastical place, where good things come to those who believe, whether it's belief in a diet, a God, or a Habit of Successful People. These believers may believe in the healing power of homeopathy, or Scripture or organizational skills -- in intelligent design, astrology or privatization. They all trust that their devotion will be rewarded with money and boyfriends and job promotions, with hockey championships and apartments. And most of all they believe -- they really, really believe -- in themselves.

          For these believers, self-knowledge is much less important than self-"love." But the question they never seem to ask themselves is: If you wouldn't tell another person you loved her before you got to know her, why would you do that to yourself? Skipping the getting-to-know-you part has given us what we deserve: the Oprah culture. It's a culture where superstition is "spirituality," illiteracy is "authenticity," and schoolmarm moralism is "character." It's a culture where people apologize by saying, "I'm sorry you took offense at what I said," and forgive by saying, "I'm not angry at you anymore, I'm grateful to you for teaching me not to trust shitheads like you." And that's the part that should bother us most: the diminishing, even implicit mocking, of genuine goodness, and of authentic spiritual concerns and practices. Engagement, curiosity and active awe are in short supply these days, and it's sickening to see them devalued and misrepresented.

          Not that any of this is new. Aimee Semple McPherson, "The Power of Positive Thinking," Father Coughlin, est, James Van Praagh -- pick your influential snake-oil salesman or snake oil. They were all cut from the same cloth as Oprah and "The Secret." The big, big difference is, well, the bigness. The infinitely bigger reach of the Oprah empire and its emissaries. They make their predecessors look like kids with lemonade stands. It would be stupidly dangerous to dismiss Oprah and "The Secret" as silly, or ultimately meaningless. They're reaching more people than Harry Potter, for God-force's sake. That's why what Oprah does matters, and stinks. If you reach more people than Bill O'Reilly, if you have better name recognition than Nelson Mandela, if the books you endorse sell more than Stephen King's, you should take some responsibility for your effect on the culture. The most powerful woman in the world is taking advantage of people who are desperate for meaning, by passionately championing a product that mocks the very idea of a meaningful life.

          That means something.
          I didn't have the 2 weeks or so it would have taken to read all that, but I skimmed and got the gist of it.

          I have three words for you: Reticular Activating System (RAS). Look into it. You don't even have to believe in God or any higher force to know that your thoughts affect your reality. To say that what Oprah is doing is taking advantage of people by inspiring them to visualize/focus on their goals, is misguided at best.

          Every time you focus on something you want, your RAS goes to work for you. The more you do this, the more your RAS works to get you what you want - it HAS to, in order to make sense out of things. If you keep this going over an extended period of time, you will start achieving things you didn't even dream were possible before.

          It works every time my friend - even if you don't believe in the law of attraction.
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          • Profile picture of the author montero
            My three words would be: "read the articles." People skim too much these days, and imagine they have understood. As for your thoughts influencing your life in many different ways, that has been obvious ever since there have been human beings. That is not what "The Secret" is about. "The Secret" was "channeled" by a medium. That is its origin.
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            • Profile picture of the author Tom E
              Originally Posted by montero View Post

              My three words would be: "read the articles." People skim too much these days, and imagine they have understood. As for your thoughts influencing your life in many different ways, that has been obvious ever since there have been human beings. That is not what "The Secret" is about. "The Secret" was "channeled" by a medium. That is its origin.
              If you read an earlier post of mine in this thread, you'll see that I'm in no disagreement about The Secret - it's a shameless marketing machine, no doubt about it.

              At the same time, it did do some great stuff, as it opened millions of people up to start using their minds to actually be proactive in this world and create their dreams. I think very few people watch The Secret and leave it at that.

              I think most people watch it, follow its advice for "achieving success", realize that it doesn't work, and THEN start digging deeper to find methods that work. The proof's in the pudding - there are literally hundreds of sales pages online touting "The secret behind the secret" because they know that most people are smart enough to move past that movie.

              Of course, this has created a plethora of programs that don't really work, but if you're truly thirsty for change, you'll eventually move past that - I know I did.
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              • Profile picture of the author dannycapri
                Originally Posted by gr8tocre8 View Post

                At the same time, it did do some great stuff, as it opened millions of people up to start using their minds to actually be proactive in this world and create their dreams. I think very few people watch The Secret and leave it at that.
                Agree with most of what you've said. Except I think most people don't take any action at all. It may give them a slight high while they remember it, but most will not look any further than that.

                If it inspires you to reach further and be better than before than it can only be a good thing.

                All IMHO of course
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      • Profile picture of the author Jasim
        Well there is lots of food for thought here but is it not most important how we manage ourselves each day, I have a strong belief but have seen too many "church goers" never miss a Sunday service and then not be very religious the rest of the week with others. So for those of us that do believe maybe items like the Secret that went unnoticed for such a long timeare put in our path to teach us something about human behaviour and to question if we could behave better everyday
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        • Profile picture of the author Saul
          Originally Posted by jcisme View Post

          After all weight is a health issue why isn't she able to just think herself thin? What am I missing here?
          I don't know Oprah or see her programs (I live in Italy) but I would guess she says she
          wants to be thin again, but maybe in reality she wants something else more... Also there
          could be a thousand of different health issues involved and not all can be solved by just
          "wishing". The Law of Attraction (and all that is related) is *not* the Holy Grail ;°)

          Originally Posted by Dustin Anderson View Post

          We are all one conciousness experiencing itself subjectively.
          I love this view... I recently read a book "the self-aware universe" (or something similar, I
          read too many ;-) which explained pretty much what you said in a single sentence... A very
          interesting point of view that did not contradict either religion or science... it was a neat
          bridge between the two. Recommended reading :°)

          ciao,
          Saul
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      • Profile picture of the author Cornelius G
        Originally Posted by Tor-Sigurd D.R View Post

        I have the same view, we are our own "gods" which has been misused for so many years. What we see, think and feel is what we create.. when you think about this you will come to the conclusion that this "existence" is just a mere illusion for us to experience, whether it being a good or bad.
        Sorry that is a confusing statement to me. Hope that making money online is not an illusion too...:confused: Or is it too deep for me... I agree with the threat owner [first post]. Sorry, I dont want to start WW III, because of my post...
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        • Profile picture of the author DaleP
          when you think about this you will come to the conclusion that this "existence" is just a mere illusion for us to experience, whether it being a good or bad.
          Agreed. The only reason why we EXPERIENCE is to reveal our unto ourselves. Our outer experiences in life are simply a reflection of our inner state.
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    • Profile picture of the author Uncle Zimmerman
      Originally Posted by UMRK View Post

      God is not a separate entity outside of ourselves. God is a word used to attempt an explanation of the unexplainable. We are a part of God, inseparable. Without us there can be no God.
      I sure hope you SEEK out the truth in what you are saying because it is far from it... Please continue to look for the truth. Here is a good place to start. www.wayofthemaster.com. Go give it a shot you might be suprised. Cheers! ;-)
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  • Profile picture of the author Conrad Blomberg
    It is useless to argue about God . . . either you believe or not.
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  • Profile picture of the author StevenW
    We all have the rights to our own beliefs, like it or not, we have to learn to accept the beliefs of others as well.

    There is no right or wrong.

    I strongly believe there is no competition between 'The Secret' & 'God', each of them are masters of their own universe, and we as the followers choose the path that suits us best.
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    • Profile picture of the author ryanmacca
      Originally Posted by StevenW View Post

      We all have the rights to our own beliefs, like it or not, we have to learn to accept the beliefs of others as well.

      There is no right or wrong.

      I strongly believe there is no competition between 'The Secret' & 'God', each of them are masters of their own universe, and we as the followers choose the path that suits us best.
      I disagree, there is right and wrong. To say there is no right or wrong is to say there is no absolute truth. The statement that there is no absolute truth is an absolute statement.
      What I am saying that if it is true that there is no right or wrong then someone who says that there is a right and wrong would be wrong. Therefore there is a right an wrong.

      There is only one universe, so God and The Secret cannot be masters of their own universe because there is only one. Otherwise people who use the secret would exist in a different universe than those people who commune with God.

      I am sorry but your statements do not make sense.
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      • Profile picture of the author Sonni
        If not for God there would be no secret or anything else for that matter.
        Sonni
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      • Profile picture of the author patJ
        Originally Posted by ryanmacca View Post

        I disagree, there is right and wrong. To say there is no right or wrong is to say there is no absolute truth. The statement that there is no absolute truth is an absolute statement.
        What I am saying that if it is true that there is no right or wrong then someone who says that there is a right and wrong would be wrong. Therefore there is a right an wrong.
        Of course there is a right and wrong, but it is entirely subjective.

        Originally Posted by Sonni View Post

        If not for God there would be no secret or anything else for that matter.
        Sonni
        You mean, if not for the giant pink elephant there would be no secret or anything else for that matter!
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      • Profile picture of the author StevenW
        Originally Posted by ryanmacca View Post

        There is only one universe, so God and The Secret cannot be masters of their own universe because there is only one. Otherwise people who use the secret would exist in a different universe than those people who commune with God.

        I am sorry but your statements do not make sense.
        That is however in a general manner Ryan. One universe is correct, but how about the many "sub-universes" created by the different mind sets of people, hence the many types of "God" that has existed over time through many other civilizations around the world.

        We cannot prove there is one God, and we cannot prove there are multiple Gods at the same time. It is your choice, to choose the faith/belief that suits you best. Maybe i used the wrong term to explain it, but when i mentioned "Masters of their own universe" means that the belief itself is a universe, existing within our world but not without.
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        • Profile picture of the author ryanmacca
          Originally Posted by StevenW View Post

          That is however in a general manner Ryan. One universe is correct, but how about the many "sub-universes" created by the different mind sets of people, hence the many types of "God" that has existed over time through many other civilizations around the world.

          We cannot prove there is one God, and we cannot prove there are multiple Gods at the same time. It is your choice, to choose the faith/belief that suits you best. Maybe i used the wrong term to explain it, but when i mentioned "Masters of their own universe" means that the belief itself is a universe, existing within our world but not without.
          Thanks for clarifying. I understand that everyone has their own beliefs and I will not try to force mine upon people. It is up to us to decide what is right and what is wrong, but I definately believe that right and wrong exist.
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          • Profile picture of the author mrdomains
            By posting the question you are engaging the community on the topic you have chosen. In a way, that is forcing, ok not forcing... placing your belief in front of others. Baiting.

            I fail to understand why people try to start discussions on religion and at the same time wave the "No, no, I´m not marketing anything" flag. Their own belief and faith should be enough for them. Private. Why the constant need to market and spread and try to convert those around you.. or is it just a way of crowd-sourcing affirmation? That you are not alone in your faith?

            Have you ever considered that most people who do not believe in gods very seldom start discussions on this topic and very seldom actively put it in front of others who belong to another ideology? Why? It´s called respect. Let people have, or not have, whatever faith they want. By propagating your own, (whether it be a faith or the lack of any) you are intruding. Which is not respectful.
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      • Profile picture of the author wlowrey
        ryanmacca - I stumbled into this part of the WF, and had no idea what to expect. This post is awesome and the conversation is incredible.

        First off - I appreciate everyone's respect of each others views and beliefs. As for me - I believe in 1 God, 3 parts - and that the Law of Attraction is an attempt to explain an even replace God as the giver of all things.

        As for creating greatness in your life through positive thinking - I would recommend that you all check out Noah St. Joseph's book - The Secret Code of Success. He defined a new term - Afformations. They replace affirmations and honestly - they are kicking my butt into gear! It is awesome how fast it has changed things in my life.

        The other great thing about Afformations - I do not have to put my 'hope' into some concept that the universe cares about me. I know that my Lord and Savior care about me - and that is enough.

        As for the concept that there is no 'right or wrong' -Ryan you did an awesome job answering that. I have talked with others about this concept in terms of 'Subjective Relativism' - whatever you believe is right. I highly disagree with that and believe there is an absolute truth - the source of that truth is God - and God is an external, separate from ourselves.
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      • Profile picture of the author Omar B
        Originally Posted by ryanmacca View Post

        I disagree, there is right and wrong. To say there is no right or wrong is to say there is no absolute truth. The statement that there is no absolute truth is an absolute statement.
        What I am saying that if it is true that there is no right or wrong then someone who says that there is a right and wrong would be wrong. Therefore there is a right an wrong.

        There is only one universe, so God and The Secret cannot be masters of their own universe because there is only one. Otherwise people who use the secret would exist in a different universe than those people who commune with God.

        I am sorry but your statements do not make sense.
        Whereas I agree with your post in general, God and the Law Of Attraction are not one and the same. In fact, the Law of Attraction stands as a proof of the Creator, in that it functions in accordance with how Divine Providence programmed it! However, things that are relative or subjective don't hold the same gravitiy. There are no absolute truths except that there is only one creator. Your sematics are not balanced for "there are no absolute truths" do not balance out with "The statement that there is no absolute truth is an absolute statement", for a statement is not a declaration of truth, but the very opposite, a declaration of opinion. Thereby only supporting the latter "there are no absolute truths", by issuing the ultimate statement! At any rate right and wrong are relative, which make them absolutely lacking in universality. Due to their subjectivity, they are again supporting the latter "there are no absolute truths!" For example, what was true in 1000 B.C. would still be true today. Now whereas some things still hold true, or are still held as societal norms, there are many examples of things that were considered to be true then, that are now scoffed at as being mere falsities. Just think of it this way, in order for a river to flow freely it must be unrestricted. Restrictions break the flow of the water. Well life is similar in that it is and will always be highly adaptable. A world with absolutes, rights and wrongs, is a world that has a limit. If ideas cannot change to support the wills of the people, then it will be those very ideas that will destroy them.
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        • Profile picture of the author ryanmacca
          Originally Posted by Omar B View Post

          Just think of it this way, in order for a river to flow freely it must be unrestricted. Restrictions break the flow of the water. Well life is similar in that it is and will always be highly adaptable. A world with absolutes, rights and wrongs, is a world that has a limit. If ideas cannot change to support the wills of the people, then it will be those very ideas that will destroy them.
          A river, however, must be restricted by its banks in order to flow freely. Without the restriction of the banks it would become nothing but a large puddle.
          The world does have limits, it does have right and wrongs. But these right and wrongs are like the banks that allow a river to flow in the way it was meant to.
          I am not saying we know all absolute truths because we don't (even the river shifts the bank sometimes), but there are some that we cannot deny and should not try to because then we will fail to be freeflowing like the river
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          • Profile picture of the author patJ
            Originally Posted by ryanmacca View Post

            I am not saying we know all absolute truths because we don't
            We don't know anything.

            Originally Posted by ryanmacca View Post

            but there are some that we cannot deny
            Like? Kill all homos? Yep, i agree. That's an absolute truth right there. I mean, it's says so in a book.
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      • Profile picture of the author Tim Whiston
        There is no proof that anything like absolute truth exists in this universe. It might be available, but proving this would be quite difficult.

        Contradiction is everywhere, and we (humans) have such a tiny perspective of reality it is beyond hilarious that we could ever think we have life, the cosmos, etc. figured out.

        I'm all for finding one's truth. I certainly have mine.

        But "truth" is subjective.

        Most people are just incapable of living with the discomfort of uncertainty, too afraid to admit they don't have the answers to life's mysteries, and so forth, and the result is...

        (drumroll please)

        Religion and Dogma! Hooray!

        In my opinion, finding your own truth should be enough. Observation proves to me that two people can have extremely different truths and both be quite correct.

        Too much of the ego often enters a discussion about so-called "truth". Yet even our most cutting-edge science is unable to prove conclusively the most basic tenants of what we refer to candidly as "reality".

        Life appears to be paradox. It can be both up and down, black and white, right and wrong, at the very same time but the primitive parts of our brain need comfort and validation so we cling to the notion that our truth might be more easily proven and thus superior to the truth of another.

        God created everything and is everywhere. Or there is no god and it's all just nonsense.

        Either idea can be backed with substantial "evidence" and myriad personal experiences. And either stance can be held with the utmost of personal conviction and intuitive resolve.

        So take your pick, smile at the person next to you, and derive maximum pleasure and fulfillment from this phenomenon we call life.
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        • Profile picture of the author ryanmacca
          Is truth really subjective? or are just some truths subjective?

          I think some are subjective and some are absolute
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        • Profile picture of the author ryanmacca
          Is truth really subjective? or are just some truths subjective?

          I think some are subjective and some are absolute
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          • Profile picture of the author Chris Cho
            It's really funny because I was just talking to my girlfriend about this. I think when you're asking the universe and praying... it can almost seem like it's the same thing.
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            • Profile picture of the author ryanmacca
              Originally Posted by choson View Post

              It's really funny because I was just talking to my girlfriend about this. I think when you're asking the universe and praying... it can almost seem like it's the same thing.
              If you read 'The Science of Getting Rich", which is the book that inspired The Secret you will see that 'The Universe' is infact referring to God. The Secret is written for a secular audience and therefore does not include the notion of God, but he is involved
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        • Profile picture of the author SP11
          Originally Posted by Tim Whiston View Post

          There is no proof that anything like absolute truth exists in this universe. It might be available, but proving this would be quite difficult.

          Contradiction is everywhere, and we (humans) have such a tiny perspective of reality it is beyond hilarious that we could ever think we have life, the cosmos, etc. figured out.

          I'm all for finding one's truth. I certainly have mine.

          But "truth" is subjective.

          Most people are just incapable of living with the discomfort of uncertainty, too afraid to admit they don't have the answers to life's mysteries, and so forth, and the result is...

          (drumroll please)

          Religion and Dogma! Hooray!

          In my opinion, finding your own truth should be enough. Observation proves to me that two people can have extremely different truths and both be quite correct.

          Too much of the ego often enters a discussion about so-called "truth". Yet even our most cutting-edge science is unable to prove conclusively the most basic tenants of what we refer to candidly as "reality".

          Life appears to be paradox. It can be both up and down, black and white, right and wrong, at the very same time but the primitive parts of our brain need comfort and validation so we cling to the notion that our truth might be more easily proven and thus superior to the truth of another.

          God created everything and is everywhere. Or there is no god and it's all just nonsense.

          Either idea can be backed with substantial "evidence" and myriad personal experiences. And either stance can be held with the utmost of personal conviction and intuitive resolve.

          So take your pick, smile at the person next to you, and derive maximum pleasure and fulfillment from this phenomenon we call life.

          Great post! I am not a believer in God or in Ghosts until someone proves it to me!!

          But I believe I read somewhere in a self help book that our view of the world in which we live is subject to how our experiences have created our internal mind maps and how our "Mind Filters" sieve out the bits of info that fit with our views to give evidence to support our internal mind maps/world views! Our filters reject things that don't fit in with our past learned interpretation of experiences and accept those that fit!

          An example of this was that a large number of people were once sent to open a door and told they would receive a reward once they got through. The door was not locked but only 3 people got through. Why? because the handle was on the same side of the door as the hinges so they kept pulling it and assuming it was locked but they could have opened it from the other side!! It didn't fit with the mind map so few people got through!! We get these mind maps to survive as we need to generalise to learn how to deal with so many things in life!

          My views on the law of attraction and religion are really that we are all spiritual beings and part of a whole spiritual world where if we are genuinely good and kind to people and give people the benefit of the doubt that eventually Karma will give back to you. If you are constantly thinking bad things and badly of others you will get bad things as that is the filters you will be using!! Equally with positive thinking you will eventually reprogramme your mind to filter in the positive not the negative!

          I guess it's just another perspective from a spiritual person who also believes in science and in the fact that we have so much yet to discover that we have no clues about yet.

          And on that note we should try to live positively Law of attraction/God or not because to live positively is the only way you can enjoy as much of your life as possible as you can only be truly happy if you are happy with yourself!

          So be happy everyone and always strive to improve yourself and be good to others!

          Sandra x
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  • Profile picture of the author brandonhess
    I beleive in a creator, whether it be god or what other name you go by. Depending on beliefs. The Law Of Attraction and the Creator are not the same. That is basically what I believe with out going into great depth.

    You do create what ever comes into your life, that is what the law of Attraction is. Also goes hand in hand with free will. You can only create in your life, not any one elses.
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  • Profile picture of the author PowerWealth247
    God is Man's greatest manifestation and the LOA is simply one way to explain how things are as they are.
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  • Profile picture of the author thelastmuse
    God is so great to create a law that gives man the ability to achieve whatever he wants in life. God indeed is a master of all things great.
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  • Profile picture of the author GODSWEIRDSON
    I'm not sure if this discussion concerns the Spiritual Law of Attraction, or the Spiritual Law of reaping and Sowing.
    Both are equally powerful, when used the way they were designed to be used. Our Creator placed within this world, certain Spiritual Laws that even HE cannot supercede. That's why even large corporations that practise giving, are blessed. That's the law.
    As we, as His creation, begin to align ourselves with Him, these Laws become easier "tap" into, and we can recieve expected results.
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  • Profile picture of the author Najat Engineer
    God has created the Law of Attraction because he wants us to be positive to get the things we want in life, he is so generous

    Happy moments, praise God.
    Difficult moments, seek God.
    Quiet moments, worship God.
    Painful moments, trust God.
    Every moment, thank God.
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  • Profile picture of the author Warriorcoach1
    The debate between Law of Attraction people (who represent a very broad spectrum of belief) and the "God" people (usually evangelical protestants) has become quite pollarized.

    And like all pollarized debates, it obscures the real issues, so the two sides often talk past each other.

    If we put aside for the moment the deeper questions of both theology and quantum physics, we're left with an obvious and observable phenomonon.....

    ...If you're passionately intent on an outcome and really believe it's already a done deal, then you're usually right.

    Conversely, if you have doubts, if you act in a weak and hesitant way, it will likely all fall apart on you.

    I'm guessing I'm the only marketer on this thread who's also a clergy person (Eastern Orthodox - a tradition all about guarding the mind). I see this in pastoral life all the time. People set an emotional "tone" to various areas of their lives and reap accordingly.

    If not the only clergy person, I'm guessing I'm the only person here who's co-author of a mindset program that's been actively promoted by several stars of "The Secret".

    Bottom line? The theoretical issues of the LOA won't be solved for a long time to come. So we may not know why it works, though we all have our theories. However, we do know that it does work.

    The real question is how to make it work in your own life, and that's the challenge!

    And probably all of us here know by experience how absolutely critical mindset is to business success. If I get around to a later post on this subject I'll share some of the methods that made a huge difference for me personally and for my clients.

    - Dr. Symeon Rodger
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    • Profile picture of the author ryanmacca
      Originally Posted by Warriorcoach1 View Post

      The debate between Law of Attraction people (who represent a very broad spectrum of belief) and the "God" people (usually evangelical protestants) has become quite pollarized.

      And like all pollarized debates, it obscures the real issues, so the two sides often talk past each other.

      If we put aside for the moment the deeper questions of both theology and quantum physics, we're left with an obvious and observable phenomonon.....

      ...If you're passionately intent on an outcome and really believe it's already a done deal, then you're usually right.

      Conversely, if you have doubts, if you act in a weak and hesitant way, it will likely all fall apart on you.

      I'm guessing I'm the only marketer on this thread who's also a clergy person (Eastern Orthodox - a tradition all about guarding the mind). I see this in pastoral life all the time. People set an emotional "tone" to various areas of their lives and reap accordingly.

      If not the only clergy person, I'm guessing I'm the only person here who's co-author of a mindset program that's been actively promoted by several stars of "The Secret".

      Bottom line? The theoretical issues of the LOA won't be solved for a long time to come. So we may not know why it works, though we all have our theories. However, we do know that it does work.

      The real question is how to make it work in your own life, and that's the challenge!

      And probably all of us here know by experience how absolutely critical mindset is to business success. If I get around to a later post on this subject I'll share some of the methods that made a huge difference for me personally and for my clients.

      - Dr. Symeon Rodger
      I am a very strong believer in the christian faith and have done 2 and a half years at bible college. I am no clergy man, that is not my way of worship, I am pentecostal...so no clergy men in my movement.

      I believe that in my lifetime I will come up with theology to support the workings of the LOA
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  • Profile picture of the author RobRamos
    I believe that FAITH combined with ACTION to create wealth and empower yourself is a very powerful thing. Some people put their faith in God, some put their faith in LOA, some in Buddha. There are many names for this "Life Force" that drives people. I believe that you may be right, God is the creator of all. But that's not the question to ask. Do you have enough faith to empower yourself to build your dreams. Where ever that faith is placed. think about it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Wizardofwisdom
    The question would seem to be in deciding whether God is everything, or whether He is separate from everything that He created.

    If God is everything then he is both the LOA and the attractor - i.e. you! (And me). If He is not everything, then he is something other than his own creations - and I personally can't get my head around that!

    In the end, does it matter? There is clearly an intelligence that is way beyond our feeble IQ intelligence - and it makes both metaphysical and nowadays scientific sense, (quantum physical), that a shift in energy - which is what changing your emotional state is causes a change in the surrounding environment by collapsing energy into what we call "reality."

    Which is a long-winded way of saying the Law of Attraction works. I don't really mind too much who or what made it!
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  • Profile picture of the author MatthewPope
    Has anyone read "The Answer" by John Assaraf from the secret? It's pretty good, gives a scientific basis for the idea of the law of attraction. It's more about how to influence the subconscious mind through autosuggestion.

    Personally I think "The Secret" is a shoddy production that will only confuse you, make you think you can dream of a lamborghini and have one in your driveway the next morning. You have to work for this stuff you know.

    I think the best book ever written on the subject is the old classic "Think and Grow Rich" Notice how he doesn't mention the phrase law of attraction one time in the book.
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  • Profile picture of the author longleyr
    I find it interesting that The Secret is based on a book which essentially went unnoticed for almost 100 years. Timing is everything I guess. The fact that people are even questioning the relationship between God and The Secret tells me we have reached a new level of understanding our universe.
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  • Profile picture of the author James12C
    Check out Esther and Jerry Hicks for the low down on LOA and God... they're very relaxed about it, which is possibly more empowering than a binary on/off, there is/there isn't, stand point.
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    • Profile picture of the author mojojuju
      Originally Posted by James12C View Post

      Check out Esther and Jerry Hicks for the low down on LOA and God... they're very relaxed about it, which is possibly more empowering than a binary on/off, there is/there isn't, stand point.
      Yeah, but has it ever occurred to you that Esther & Jerry Hicks are also bat s*** crazy?

      Just something to think about.
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      :)

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  • Profile picture of the author bellis160
    You can't separate the Law of Attraction from God.

    To begin with, the Law of Attraction is what we call God's creative force. We don't completely understand it and we give a label. It's been called different names by other cultures and at other times in history.

    In recent years there has been a lot of attention given to this universal principal. It is surrounded with hype and misinformation.

    The Law of Attraction is not God. The Law of Attraction is God's creative aspect. It is part of what makes Him God.

    You see, God is a spiritual being and the creator of the physical universe. We are created to be like Him, created in His image. When we bring our energy vibration closer to that creative aspect of God, we take on some of that creative power. This is what allows us to create (manifest) in the physical universe.

    This problem is, and I believe this is where this discussion topic comes from, belief in the Law of Attraction has taken on a cult like quality.

    Fed by our culture's focus on material wealth and poor work ethic. Many people are looking for an easy way to attain things. The Law of Attraction has become the religion of manifesting abundance.

    However, these folks are missing the real power of the Law of Attraction. It's not what the material wealth that you acquire that's important.

    It's who you become as a result of learning to use this principal that is truly amazing.

    To make the Law work you must learn to become a better person. To think positively, to forgive others and yourself. You must give freely of your talents and material wealth to help others. You need to develop self-discipline, to control both body and mind.

    And where did this idea come from that all you need to do is believe and it will be yours? Yes we are promised abundance. But it also implied that you will be doing work to get it, sowing and reaping.

    Jesus was talking to farmers and fishermen when he made promises of over flowing storehouses. These people were out there working hard everyday. They were providing value for their communities.

    This subject gets me very riled up. I see too many people being duped by false promises and easy solutions.

    Yes the Law of Attraction works. But you need to enter at the narrow gate to learn its secrets.

    (climbing down off soapbox now.)
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    • Profile picture of the author BrianTubbs
      Hey everyone!

      As a Christian and pastor, I've enjoyed reading this discussion. As is the case whenever religion is discussed, you tend to have several tangents, more than a few misunderstandings, some controversy, etc. I offer the following thoughts humbly, with no intention of jamming anything down anyone's throat. But here we go...

      1. Proverbs 18:13 -- "He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him."

      So many of the world's problems and so many disagreements would be solved if people LISTENED and UNDERSTOOD -- before they tried to speak on the subject(s) in question.

      2. Neither the reality of God nor the existence of the Law of Attraction can be proved or demonstrated by feelings.

      Something isn't true, simply because we WANT it to be true. I'm sure Cardinals fans WANTED their team to win the Super Bowl, but alas, those desires didn't control the score board. Desire (even strong desire) doesn't automatically equate to reality. Desire is an important component of the equation, but it's not the only part.

      Yet many times, people that reject the existence of God do so because of emotional anger or even hatred for "God" or their concept of God. They hate the Bible, religion, Christianity, "God," whatever - and then they refuse to believe in God.

      While I understand the pain and suffering that people can go through and while I sympathize with the strong feelings and anger people feel re: religion, NONE of it has anything to do with the TRUTH or REALITY of the issues being discussed in this thread.

      Either God exists or God does not exist. Period.

      3. Establishing the existence of God depends on one's standard of proof.

      There are three levels of proof --- a) Absolute, verifiable, irrefutable proof, b) Proof "beyond a reasonable doubt," and c) Likelihood.

      If it's your position to believe in God ONLY IF it can proven to you via "absolute, verifiable, irrefutable" observation and evidence, then I'm afraid that's not going to happen anytime soon.

      Why? Because God calls us to faith. Once you have absolute, irrefutable proof, faith is impossible. That's like me asking you on a sunny day: "Do you have faith that the sun exists?"

      According to the Bible, God WILL reveal Himself at some point, and if you want to wait until then, that's your perogative. Your right. And I'm not going to force anything on you, nor should anyone else. It's your choice.

      The second level of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt." A few years ago, I went through my second of two periods of deep doubt and soul-searching. I put my entire faith on the table - not wanting to believe a myth or fairy tale. After months of exhaustive research - reading Christians, Jews, Buddhists, atheists, etc. - I came to the conclusion that God is real, Christianity is true, and the Bible is credible and authoritative. I now hold those convictions "beyond any reasonable doubt." I believe evidence to that standard of proof can be achieved.

      The final level of proof is "likelihood," which is basically just laying the evidence on the scales and seeing which way it tilts. Even in my period of doubt, I recognized that the evidence FOR God outweighed the evidence against God.

      4. Read the Bible

      Don't decide you disbelieve the Bible or believe in the Bible, without reading it! It amazes me the number of people who say they believe it, and they've never read it. If you're a Christian, read the Bible and study it.

      And likewise, there are those who make ridiculous claims about the Bible - like someone earlier in this thread who said the Bible tells us to "kill all the homos." Read the Bible - and, here's the key, take the time to study and understand it! Don't just dismiss it.

      And with respect to "The Secret," I like what one of the earlier posters said. A lot of what's in "The Secret" can be found in Proverbs. In fact, if you want a great book on personal development and how to make money or achieve success, read Proverbs! Great stuff in that book!

      Indeed, even if you don't believe the Bible to be the Word of God, there's still a tremendous amount of wisdom in its pages.

      5. For more Information...

      Some of you reading this thread may be seeking more information on this. Most of you have probably already made up your minds. If you're in the latter camp, that's your right. Again, I'm not forcing anything on you. But if you're seeking, then I would encourage you to read...

      The Real Face of Atheism by Ravi Zacharias
      No Doubt About it by Winfried Corduan
      The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright
      Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
      What's So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D'Souza
      The Secret Things of God by Henry Cloud

      And then just about anything by Gary Habermas, C.S. Lewis, N.T. Wright, etc.

      If you want something lighter (the above books aren't), then Lee Strobel's The Case For Faith, The Case for Christ, and The Case for the Real Jesus are good INTRODUCTORY overviews. But you'll want to go deeper in your exploration, if you're serious.

      I've also read Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and plan to read God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I don't agree with these books, but I'm not afraid of what they have to say. I've watched/listened to Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens a lot - as well as Daniel Dennett and so many other atheists out there. And, I've gone back and read some atheistic and anti-Christian literature from the Enlightenment period. Trust me, when I say, that I understand pretty much ALL the major arguments against God, Christianity, and the Bible.

      I've written a few articles on this subject, that you can find at...

      Protestantism @ Suite101.com: Denominational issues for Anglican, United, Methodist, Lutheran, Adventist, Amish, Baptist, Christian Reformed, Christian Science, Doukhobor and other Christian Protestant churches and clergy.

      Wrapping up this long "two cents" , please don't flame this post. I'm not forcing anything on anyone. If you disagree with me, fine. But let's maintain civility.

      I understand that MOST of those reading this post have already made up their minds, and that's fine. I type the above mainly for that 1, 2, or 3 people who are searching. To them, I hope this helps.
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      • Profile picture of the author rsteadm2
        Originally Posted by BrianTubbs View Post

        Hey everyone!

        As a Christian and pastor, I've enjoyed reading this discussion. As is the case whenever religion is discussed, you tend to have several tangents, more than a few misunderstandings, some controversy, etc. I offer the following thoughts humbly, with no intention of jamming anything down anyone's throat. But here we go...

        1. Proverbs 18:13 -- "He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him."

        So many of the world's problems and so many disagreements would be solved if people LISTENED and UNDERSTOOD -- before they tried to speak on the subject(s) in question.

        2. Neither the reality of God nor the existence of the Law of Attraction can be proved or demonstrated by feelings.

        Something isn't true, simply because we WANT it to be true. I'm sure Cardinals fans WANTED their team to win the Super Bowl, but alas, those desires didn't control the score board. Desire (even strong desire) doesn't automatically equate to reality. Desire is an important component of the equation, but it's not the only part.

        Yet many times, people that reject the existence of God do so because of emotional anger or even hatred for "God" or their concept of God. They hate the Bible, religion, Christianity, "God," whatever - and then they refuse to believe in God.

        While I understand the pain and suffering that people can go through and while I sympathize with the strong feelings and anger people feel re: religion, NONE of it has anything to do with the TRUTH or REALITY of the issues being discussed in this thread.

        Either God exists or God does not exist. Period.

        3. Establishing the existence of God depends on one's standard of proof.

        There are three levels of proof --- a) Absolute, verifiable, irrefutable proof, b) Proof "beyond a reasonable doubt," and c) Likelihood.

        If it's your position to believe in God ONLY IF it can proven to you via "absolute, verifiable, irrefutable" observation and evidence, then I'm afraid that's not going to happen anytime soon.

        Why? Because God calls us to faith. Once you have absolute, irrefutable proof, faith is impossible. That's like me asking you on a sunny day: "Do you have faith that the sun exists?"

        According to the Bible, God WILL reveal Himself at some point, and if you want to wait until then, that's your perogative. Your right. And I'm not going to force anything on you, nor should anyone else. It's your choice.

        The second level of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt." A few years ago, I went through my second of two periods of deep doubt and soul-searching. I put my entire faith on the table - not wanting to believe a myth or fairy tale. After months of exhaustive research - reading Christians, Jews, Buddhists, atheists, etc. - I came to the conclusion that God is real, Christianity is true, and the Bible is credible and authoritative. I now hold those convictions "beyond any reasonable doubt." I believe evidence to that standard of proof can be achieved.

        The final level of proof is "likelihood," which is basically just laying the evidence on the scales and seeing which way it tilts. Even in my period of doubt, I recognized that the evidence FOR God outweighed the evidence against God.

        4. Read the Bible

        Don't decide you disbelieve the Bible or believe in the Bible, without reading it! It amazes me the number of people who say they believe it, and they've never read it. If you're a Christian, read the Bible and study it.

        And likewise, there are those who make ridiculous claims about the Bible - like someone earlier in this thread who said the Bible tells us to "kill all the homos." Read the Bible - and, here's the key, take the time to study and understand it! Don't just dismiss it.

        And with respect to "The Secret," I like what one of the earlier posters said. A lot of what's in "The Secret" can be found in Proverbs. In fact, if you want a great book on personal development and how to make money or achieve success, read Proverbs! Great stuff in that book!

        Indeed, even if you don't believe the Bible to be the Word of God, there's still a tremendous amount of wisdom in its pages.

        5. For more Information...

        Some of you reading this thread may be seeking more information on this. Most of you have probably already made up your minds. If you're in the latter camp, that's your right. Again, I'm not forcing anything on you. But if you're seeking, then I would encourage you to read...

        The Real Face of Atheism by Ravi Zacharias
        No Doubt About it by Winfried Corduan
        The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright
        Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
        What's So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D'Souza
        The Secret Things of God by Henry Cloud

        And then just about anything by Gary Habermas, C.S. Lewis, N.T. Wright, etc.

        If you want something lighter (the above books aren't), then Lee Strobel's The Case For Faith, The Case for Christ, and The Case for the Real Jesus are good INTRODUCTORY overviews. But you'll want to go deeper in your exploration, if you're serious.

        I've also read Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and plan to read God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I don't agree with these books, but I'm not afraid of what they have to say. I've watched/listened to Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens a lot - as well as Daniel Dennett and so many other atheists out there. And, I've gone back and read some atheistic and anti-Christian literature from the Enlightenment period. Trust me, when I say, that I understand pretty much ALL the major arguments against God, Christianity, and the Bible.

        I've written a few articles on this subject, that you can find at...

        Protestantism @ Suite101.com: Denominational issues for Anglican, United, Methodist, Lutheran, Adventist, Amish, Baptist, Christian Reformed, Christian Science, Doukhobor and other Christian Protestant churches and clergy.

        Wrapping up this long "two cents" , please don't flame this post. I'm not forcing anything on anyone. If you disagree with me, fine. But let's maintain civility.

        I understand that MOST of those reading this post have already made up their minds, and that's fine. I type the above mainly for that 1, 2, or 3 people who are searching. To them, I hope this helps.

        Finally, Someone actually quoted scripture.

        All this talk about God and no scripture started to make me a little nervous. Since there this whole book that tells us all about God. We really don't have to "guess" or give our "thoughts" about who or what God is since he gave us our own instruction manual to read that tells us who he is and who we are, how he loves us and how we are to live our lives.

        BTW: The LOA appears to have been published already a few thousand years back by King Solomon. Read Proverbs 23:7 "For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he..."

        Great post and thank you from finally bringing out some scripture to solidify the discussion of our Creator and His laws.

        Ray S.
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        • Profile picture of the author Jonathan 2.0
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          • Profile picture of the author DuaneF
            The post title "God vs. 'The Secret'," caught my attention and I must say I've thoroughly enjoyed reading all the comments the subject generated.

            Having been raised in a Christian family and required to go to church regularly while still living with my parents, I thought I knew quite a bit about Christianity. I learned more about the true wisdom of the Bible however, when I quit going to church and buying into the "circular reasoning" of Christians. By that, I mean; I was told that the Bible was the divine word of God. When I asked how I could know that was true I was told that it said so in the Bible.

            I went through a period when I considered myself agnostic. All the while, I was curious and questioning. Like Pastor(?) Brian Tubbs said above, I couldn't accept the whole thing on faith but had to find something that I believed or it, whatever it was, would be worthless.

            Without writing a book here, what I finally concluded (and am comfortable with) is that there is a great deal of wisdom in the Bible especially in the Gospels (stories of Jesus's life.) I see too a great deal of wisdom in the Old Testament. I do NOT however, believe that it's possible for any rational human being to take every word as literal truth. Jesus said that he spoke in parables and I believe he often did so at times when he didn't identify his teachings as parables. He did this to try to make profound thoughts understandable to the people of his time.

            But I digress...

            The point I wanted to make here is I don't see any reason to put God for or against "the Secret." That's like saying is God for or against the law of gravity.

            First of all, "The Secret" as it has popularly come to be known, is not a secret at all. Hundreds of philosophers and and religious people have told us about it for thousands of years.

            To you Christians, does "If you have as much faith as a mustard seed, you can tell the mountain to get up and move and it shall." ring any bells? If that's not the Law of Attraction by another name (faith) I don't know what I'm missing.

            The Law of Attraction or whatever you choose to call it is not in question any more than the Law of Gravity. It's a natural law! When it seems not to work it's because of our misunderstanding of how it works.

            If you want something very badly (need) you are concentrating more on what you don't have or lack than you are on what it is that you desire. Again Jesus warned us about taking thought for the morrow. The secret of using the Law of Attraction is to realize that it IS a natural law. Not only does it work, it can't fail to work any more than gravity can fail. We've been told that "whatsoever you desire believe you will have it and you will."

            That's just some of the wisdom from the Bible. There have been myriad other examples and instructions from prophets, sages, and other notables over the centuries. In short, the law of attraction works the way you want it to if you have complete faith (like Jesus said) that it will. If you doubt - it still works but instead of manifesting your desires, it manifests your doubt, or what you are fearing.

            As far as Christianity or any other religion is concerned. I have no quarrels with any. I've come to believe that what anyone believes, and completely believes, will work. It's an individual thing and because of differences in beliefs, what works for me may not work for you at all. Therefore, I don't try to convince anyone of my belief. I only try to explain it in a way that, hopefully, is helpful to you in making your own decisions and understanding what you "really" believe and why.

            Duane

            P.S. Jesus also said, "if they're not against us, they're for us."
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  • Profile picture of the author MARLENA
    WOW ! What a clear distinction you've placed in the spotlight
    I just learned about Warrior Forum last night stumbled on your free offer Thanks
    At this point I'm in a starvation mode condition It takes $ to make $ so it's a little like catch 22 right now However I am trusting that God is faithful and that His laws are immuable. Blessings upon your house forever
    Sincerely Mihael J
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  • Profile picture of the author BradCarroll
    A) It all depends on which God you're asking about. LOA is more the province of Thoth, Mercury, Tahuti, and Papa Legba than it is of Mars, Tyr, Set, and Jehova.

    B) This is a more popularly-palatable version of various occult teachings. All the occult magic I've ever studied operates on the same principle, using ceremony and symbols instead of a new-age, "universal catalog" approach. But the same basic teaching/mechanic is going on here.

    As an occultist friend once said to me, "I don't necessarily believe in God, but man this ceremonial magic stuff really does work!"

    C) The Golden Rule might be just another way of stating the law of attraction.

    D) Ask Joe Vitale.
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  • Profile picture of the author chris_surfrider
    "God vs. The Secret"...

    ...wouldn't be much of a fight.

    A slight mismatch, if you ask me.

    One is a deity. The other is a philosophy of the alleged correlation between thought and matter.

    That's not just "apples and oranges".

    That's like comparing apples with freight trains.

    -Chris
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  • Profile picture of the author Woody C
    God is a word. Experiencing the present moment is Truth.

    My favorite explanation was by the Buddha (who was neither atheist, nor theist):

    "A man was shot by a poison arrow in the chest. People ran up to help him, and they discovered the only way to save him was to take the arrow out before too much poison got in his system.

    'No! Before you take the arrow out, I must know who wants me dead. Who shot the arrow? I must know everything about him. Does he have kids? How old is he? What race? I must know before you take it out,' he said.

    They replied, 'The only was to survive is to take the arrow out now. That is your true problem. You can find the man later.'

    'I must know before you take the arrow out.'...were his last words."

    Why argue and debate about something that doesn't concern the immediate problems affecting you now?
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    • Profile picture of the author Jonathan 2.0
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      • Profile picture of the author Woody C
        Originally Posted by ZigZag View Post

        Because this is a discussion forum.

        I don't see anyone putting off immediate problems that are affecting them now. Just a bunch of good people having an interesting discussion. Personally I enjoy discussing the deeper things in life. Much better than idle gossip and talking about the news.

        You took that waaaay out of context. I meant that the Buddha was saying that talking about whether there was a God or not is not as important as if we were actually out there doing good works that directly affect those around us.

        We all suffer and yet we look at something outside of ourselves to heal us without addressing the problem head on.

        It is like using the LOA without taking action.
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  • Profile picture of the author Woody C
    Also, if you are interested in someone that blended God with the Law of Attraction then I highly recommend anything by Walter and Lao Russell.

    Check out www dot philosophy dot org for information. The Home Study Course looks awesome and they have some great articles. (Sorry, this is my 11th post and I can't post links yet lol).
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  • Profile picture of the author DougBarger
    He who dwells in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the almighty.
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  • Profile picture of the author chrismitchell
    Are God and the Law Of Attraction separate?... well things can get a little bit tricky once you start looking at the quantum physics and different ideals about spirituality.

    God is the creator, the source of all creation I agree. God always was and will always be. The Law of Attraction is one of many universal laws that we are bound by in this universe and this reality. Our thoughts and intention literally create the quantum matter that makes up our own realities. The stronger your belief and the stronger the positive emotions that you attach to your intention, the quicker your desires will manifest into reality. That is how I understand the Law of Attraction. (Quantum Matter is the smallest possible bit of energy in the universe, that is literally effected by us - the observer) Now if you belief that the collective consciousness and unconscious energy of humanity is God, which some believe. And with that basis as a foundation, you understand that our thoughts (as the observer) is attracting and literally creating our reality (LOA). Then one can gather that God and the Law of Attraction are indeed one in the same. However, if you believe that God is a seperate entity - existing completely seperate from humanity and the energy that happens on this earthly plane. Which if true, creates an individualism for God and a completely seperate individualism from us humans. Which consequently, would mean our energy and us using the LOA is completely seperate from The Source/ God. So with that being said, one could also gather that God and the Law of Attraction are indeed seperate.

    From my own personal beliefs I like to think that we are all one and our energy is connected to God, which would mean at some level (even on the smallest level)... that God and the Law of Attraction are connected.

    Yours in Success,

    Chris
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  • Profile picture of the author rlnorthcutt
    A few interesting quotes:

    "I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."
    From the Bible


    "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world."
    "All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him."

    From the teachings of Buddha




    "Three are the dwellings of the sons and daughters of Man. Thought, feeling and body. When the three become one, you will say to this mountain "move" and the mountain will move."

    The Kabbalah




    Science does back this stuff up. We know that our brains are pattern matching machines that are constantly "Guessing" about what we are seeing/hearing/feeling/etc.



    We also know that our brains will "match" the patterns we emphasize the most... so if you imprint the pattern that life is difficult, your brain will pick up the results that "prove" this to be true.


    If you imprint the pattern that money flows easily into your life, then your brain will pick up the results that "prove" this to be true.


    I know people that are always complaining... and they never run out of things to complain about. Even when I point out the good things in their life or the opportunities available to them, they reply with a "yeah, but...." Its never ending.


    They are so strongly imprinted with complaints and seeing the negative that they find it really difficult to see anything else.


    There is no good or bad, there is only life... good or bad is the way we look at it.


    Ron
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    • Profile picture of the author BrianTubbs
      Originally Posted by rlnorthcutt View Post

      There is no good or bad, there is only life... good or bad is the way we look at it.

      Ron
      I think this statement is tricky. At one level, there's truth to it. Martha Washington, for example, once said: "For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition."

      So, if that's what you mean, I'm with you.

      But if you are referring to morality or ethics, then I'm afraid we disagree. Murdering an innocent child is wrong. Hatred is wrong. Rape is wrong. The Holocaust was wrong. And on and on.

      There ARE moral truths. I'm not saying I've figured them all out. I'm a flawed human being just like everybody else, but I recognize that there are moral truths, just as I recognize that there are physical realities.
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  • Profile picture of the author mr2020
    Hey mate,

    This could get interesting.

    All answers will either come from "experience" or "opinion".

    Native Americans talk about "the power" and "the spirit that moves through all things".

    Neville Goddard said something about our "Imagination" being "Jesus Christ".

    Over 200 Neville Goddard Talks - Instant Download

    My question about all this is...

    Is your conduct improving you and your world?

    And if not... shift something. Change what you believe, change what you do.

    Have a great day!

    Twenty Twenty
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  • Profile picture of the author Woody C
    I'm surprised that no one has quoted John 14:13, "And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son."

    Nor Matthew 7:7, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."

    Both of this scriptures sounds like Jesus was telling you how to use the LOA. He said ask and it will be given to you. No ifs, ands, or buts. Be direct and know what you want and it will be given.
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  • Profile picture of the author DeontaWalker
    Maverickwec, you are so right, it's so good to see that the warrior forum is a place to speak one's mind and belief on ones religion.

    The bible does say ask and you will receive, but, before that it say's and those who walk in my name will be able to ask and they will receive. It's more than just asking, it's beliving that when you ask and believe in what you ask then you will receive it.

    I believe that staying positive and keeping your eyes to the sky will lead you to many places. Like the warrior forum, we all come here beliving that we will find the answer to our question and that our lives will change if we follow what we have learnt. And I believe that this is also a part of the great secret: seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open.

    Well as you can see I am a very godly person and believe that by being positive and sticking to your dreams you will accomplish many things and your life will change.

    Deonta Walker
    Signature
    " I have come so that they might have life,and that they might have it more abundantly."
    John 10:10 Holy Bible
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  • Profile picture of the author ThomasW
    The "Law of Attraction" was known a couple thousand years prior to the Secret or Esther Hicks or Napoleon Hill or any of the others claiming ownership. Read some of the earliest writings in history - the Upanishads and you will find the law of attration references.

    As the bible says - "There is nothing new under the sun" "Nothing can be added, nothing can be subtracted."
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  • Profile picture of the author Anthony Leonard
    Definitely check out Esther and Jerry Hicks (Teachings of Abraham & The Secret Behind The Secret)...
    As far as "God vs. The Secret", it's just a touchy subject.

    I feel we are God... and just need to be in tune with our higher consciousness to really act in that Godly manner.

    The Law of Attraction is definitely real... and is a method in attaining that necessary focus.

    Just my thoughts...

    Anthony Leonard
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    • Profile picture of the author Tom E
      For those of you who don't know this: Esther & Jerry Hicks originally agreed to be in the movie The Secret (after all they were the original inspiration for it). However, when they saw the movie and learned about the "machine" behind it (see other posts in this thread which explains this), they took legal action and made sure that their segment, or any reference to them was taken out of the movie.

      If you were lucky enough to get an early copy of the Secret (2006), like I was, you'll enjoy the intro by Abraham, as well as tons of added footage, which, in my opinion, was better than any other contribution in that movie.

      The point is: If you really want to learn about the Law Of Attraction, don't learn it from The Secret. Sure, it has some useful things in it, and thanks to that movie, it brought a lot of awareness to the world about the LOA, but all that said, The Secret is a shameless marketing machine.
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  • Profile picture of the author Meanna Blog
    God was the first marketer
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  • Profile picture of the author saintemp
    There is no way that the secret is on par with God. I believe in God who created what is seen and unseen in the universe just like I believe there is a painter behind every painting. The principles underlying the secret may be useful but if so, they have been put in place by the God who created everything.
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  • Profile picture of the author dome28
    what a question my ohh my !!!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author littlewebmaster
    'The Secret' it's a big lie.
    In these days you won't get anything for thinking that X could be yours.
    Have a nice day.
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  • Profile picture of the author RayAndLisaJ
    The Law of Attraction is just a law that exists because God created it. Just because it appears to be a supernatural law doesn't mean that it is on par with God.

    Let me know your views
    And I agree with you. My company and our entire product suite is wrapped around the Law of Attration and the vast majority of rep's, at least that I know believe in God.

    I firmly believe in the Law of A. It has worked for me my entire life. That is what led me to my business but the two are not one in the same. I have a hard time with some of the teachings in that movie myself.
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  • Profile picture of the author rlnorthcutt
    Which "version" of the movie did you see?

    The original version heavily featured Abraham-Hicks and their teachings (which have influenced many current "gurus")... But, the Hick's didn't like the commercialism or the get rich quick feel of the movie (along with some other disagreements), so they pulled out.

    The producer then just "replaced" Abraham-Hicks with someone else and the second version is not as powerful IMHO.

    I think too many people are looking for a "shortcut" to success, and LOA is just another trendy shortcut like fad diets, exercise machines, IM "secrets" etc...

    Its not a question of whether or not they work - its a question of whether or not YOU will work. Any change requires effort, and the greater the change, the greater the effort.

    FACT: Changing the way you think WILL change your perception of the world. It often takes effort to undo the habits and programs that have gotten you where you are.

    I have found that Divine Openings (or any truly spiritual practice) can get your results faster, but its only when your desire is aligned with your spiritual path. Some people came here to make money, so when they align with making money it happens fast.

    Some people came here to heal or learn or teach or just have fun... so when they align with making money they get mixed results.

    The #1 goal is to get clear and connect with Divine Source... everything else will follow.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brad Fisher
    God created the law of attraction. Very interesting. I guess I never gave it too much thought. While I have studied the law of attraction, I must admit I never came to that conclusion. Great Insight.

    Brad
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    • Profile picture of the author CyndiHester
      What an interesting thread.... so many types of people and belief
      systems here.

      That is what makes this such a wonderful world, because we all get
      to choose our own faith of choice while respecting others.

      Personally I am a christian and live with God in my life and believe
      in his son Jesus. I did read and watch the secret and it did fascinate me.

      I think most people do not use the power of the mind, and I think the
      mind has great gifts when used properly.

      But for me, every day I wake up and look at the beauty of the world,
      I am reminded how great God really is....and I choose him.
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  • Profile picture of the author judyrey
    The Law of Attraction is not anymore supernatural than the Law of Gravity. There essential idea of the law itself is found in both the Hebrew and New Testaments, although not names The Law of Attraction..
    The movie, The Secret certainly did not discover the Law or idea. It did an excellent job of making the idea well known.
    When a person seems to be worshiping the Law of Attraction, usually it has little to do with positive prayer, belief, envisioning, etc. Rather the problem is what the person is focused on attracting, which is something(s) that are purely based in fulfilling egotistical desires. Often this has to do with "getting" luxury items to impress others, fill a void or bring a happiness (that will not last).
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  • Profile picture of the author judyrey
    Also, I want to stick up for Oprah Winfrey.
    On Oprah's official web site she is super tolerant. As long as a person follows general rules that are held by most sites where the pubic can freely post, anyone can say anything.
    I have read amazing posts on the site from people who definitely disagree with Oprah. There are discussions among people as to whether Oprah is a Christian or enough or one, or a misguided one, etc. People allowed to share their own religious and spiritual views, whatever they are
    Oprah allows this on her site. I think that this is magnificent and generous of her. It is her sirte and she could certainly limit the views and edit thoe who critisize her, but she toletates it.
    That's very loving and turn the other cheek behavio -- at least on my screens.
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  • Profile picture of the author Napa
    I just recently checked Oprah and Eckhart Tolle webcasts about the New Earth book, I had no idea that Oprah was into this. She surprised me with her knowledge of God.
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  • Profile picture of the author WealthBluePrint
    yup, if there is a god you've gotta go with the idea that god created the law of attraction, along with everything else
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  • Profile picture of the author a1journo
    I think law of attraction is excellent, in this world where so many people have so many different beliefs, it just puts thing sinto perspective. this form of believing lets people understand that they can achieve their dreams and goasl and they can have what they want as long as the put in effort and are clear.
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  • Profile picture of the author msjoyce
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    • Profile picture of the author Saul
      As a person whos' always been fascinated by religions and theology, and also as one who
      has studied quite a lot (although far less than many others) of self-improvements guides,
      amongst which quite a few books explaining the Law of Attraction, I'd like to give my
      contribution to this very polite and civilised debate (which unfortunately is something very
      rare to see when topics like politics and religion are involved, so Kudos to everyone!), in
      the hope that at least someone will find them helpful or insightful.

      I have not yet seen The Secret (although I do have the dvd at home and I might watch it
      tonight) so I will not comment on the film itself, but I would like to quote the posts that
      impressed me the most and that out of all the thread I found most interesting, either because
      I strongly agree with them, or because I'd like to point out my different point of view, all
      in the hopes of adding something useful to the discussion :°)

      I'd like to specify that what I write is not always a direct reply to the quoted person, I just
      use their words to "launch" my considerations, so when I say something different from what
      I quoted don't take it personally

      To begin with an answer to the opening post:
      Originally Posted by chris_surfrider

      "God vs. The Secret"...[...] One is a deity. The other is a philosophy of the alleged correlation between thought and matter. That's not just "apples and oranges". That's like comparing apples with freight trains. -Chris
      I agree very much, the two subjects of the comparison are way too different, in all their
      aspects, to be compared. They do have some similiarities but, although I'm not strictly
      a christian believer, I understand that for christians God is a LOT more (way way more) than
      just a "tool" to obtain what you want (which is what many think of the Law of Attraction).
      In fact defining God as just something that will let you have what you want I think might
      be borderline with blasphemy... I understand God is so much more in the Christian faith
      (as well as in other faiths with their divinities) that comparing him/her/it with a simple
      principle might not be what the Pope would recommed to do ;°)

      To add more to my argument I also agree with WealthBluePrint:
      Originally Posted by WealthBluePrint

      yup, if there is a god you've gotta go with the idea that god created the law of attraction, along with everything else
      If you (you reader, not you WealthBluePrint ;-) believe in God and the teaching of the Bible,
      and in the Bible (I think) it says that God created everything, it means that God created
      the Law of Attraction as well, and there is a creator/created difference...but then one
      should choose if God is separated from what he creates: then he is different from the LoA
      principle; if instead God is everywhere and everything he created then he is the Loa as
      well...

      Personally it makes more sense to me to think that (if God exists and is...a godly thing
      all powerful, omnipotent etc etc) we should not impose human limits on him and there
      should not be a place where he can't be, so he is in all his creations too... a kind of
      pantheist view. I feel it makes more sense to say that he is anything and anywhere he
      cares to be, i.e. making him one and the same with the LoA as well...

      Originally Posted by bellis160

      However, these folks are missing the real power of the Law of Attraction. It's not what the material wealth that you acquire that's important. It's who you become
      as a result of learning to use this principal that is truly amazing. To make the Law work you
      must learn to become a better person. To think positively, to forgive others and yourself.
      You must give freely of your talents and material wealth to help others. You need to develop
      self-discipline, to control both body and mind.
      This is what I agree with the most: too often people think that the LoA is about making
      money. I understood it as a way to improve myself and be a better person - which is what
      christian religion often does too. Or would do if there wasn't so many crazy people around
      doing ugly stuff in the name of god...rather than being "honest" about it and admitting to
      doing ugly stuff in the name of personal power (power, money, control whatever...). Case
      in point: any war waged in the name of a christian god is a contradiction in terms. I believe
      one of the commandments says "you shall not kill" or something like that, and Jesus was
      teaching not to do to others what you wouldn't want them to do to you... or something
      along those lines. Killing people certainly contradicts these "rules" and cannot therefore
      be justified as something done in the name of a christian god... Anything said to go around
      the main rule "do not kill" is a way to justify personal gain without wanting to admit it's
      for personal gain. So shame on any religious person trying to justify the infraction of one
      of God's commandments in any way - someone who believes in god should not think they
      know better than him and should respect his commandments no matter what. Or go
      to hell I guess, except I don't think hell exists... and I'm going off topic anyway


      Originally Posted by BrianTubbs

      Something isn't true, simply because we WANT it to be true. I'm sure Cardinals fans WANTED their team to win the Super Bowl, but alas, those desires didn't control the score board. Desire (even strong desire) doesn't automatically equate to reality. Desire is an important component of the equation, but it's not the only part.
      Although I mostly agree with Brian, I do see a mistake in the above paragraph that is
      often done when explaining that desire is not enough. Sure the fans wanted the Cardinals
      to win and their desire might have not been enough... but what about the desire of the
      opposing team's fan? They wanted to win... and they did... But, like you, I don't think it
      was just for the fan's desire. The game was played (and won) by the players and the coach
      as well... maybe their desire to win was strong enough to win the game... however
      I do agree that desire in itself is not enough: training and good tactics help a lot as well.
      But training and coaching with no desire to win probably works less well than having a
      passionate, burning desire to win (which probably generates sufficient motivation to train
      harder and more than what somebody with no desire to win would be willing to do).
      What I'm saying, using a different example, is that no Olympic athlete would win if they
      didn't desire, and more specifically, believe, that they can and will win... so, as you
      said, desire is a very important component of the equation, but it's not the only part (no
      olympic athtlete, whatever s/he wishes, will ever win without some serious training ;-)

      Originally Posted by rlnorthcutt

      FACT: Changing the way you think WILL change your perception of the world. It often takes effort to undo the habits and programs that have gotten you where you are.
      I agree very much with this, although I'm not sure it's a FACT as much as a subjective
      impression. In my experience it works just like you've worded it (like it does for so many
      other people), but in many other people's experience it doesn't...if it were "just" a fact it
      would be easier to understand and apply... On some level, in some way (which I still can't
      identify) there's more to it than just being a fact... it's also a question of faith, it's more
      intangible that just being a plain simple fact. In my opinion anyway ;°)

      Last but not least I end with a word of warning about a pet peeve of mine...
      Originally Posted by rsteadm2

      We really don't have to "guess" or give our "thoughts" about who or what God is since he gave us our own instruction manual to read that tells us who he is and who we are, how he loves us and how we are to live our lives.
      Apparently he did give us guidelines, but they were originally written in aramaic if I remember
      correctly. They were then translated in Greek (with all the errors that ancient greek translator
      could do). It was then translated in Latin (around 300 or 400 AD) to make it more available
      to a wider audience when a roman emperor decided that christianity made more sense to
      him than paganism. However in the council which was set up to organize the translation a
      lot of things that didn't go too well with the local authorities were skipped, lost, or plainly
      ignored. Some others were added to make the transition from paganism to christianity a
      little more easy for the people (like eggs and bunny rabbits -obvious fertility symbols- as
      an easter theme... which is the same period as pagan fertility symbols. Ok, I don't think
      the bible says "celebrate the death of jesus with eggs and bunny rabbits" but such habits
      were tolerated and in some cases integrated with the "official" version of the christian faith).
      Then, as if all these translation weren't enough, King James decided to have his version,
      in english, "published" for the Church of England (which is different from the Church of
      Rome which, supposedly, should be the closest to the original version of christianity) and
      therefore enriched (or depleted) of the various tidbits of information that helped (or not)
      their view of God at the time.

      So... NO, the Bible cannot be taken literally and the messages it gives (often positive,
      good messages) should be interpreted like BrianTubbs very wisely put it:
      Originally Posted by BrianTubbs

      It's important to understand text according to the author's intent.
      Not to how all the various translators in time decided it was to be understood according
      to their style of life, local politics, social and cultural situation, which are obviously lightyears
      of difference from our own today.

      Finally, having almost wrote a short essay rather than just a post, I strongly reccomend
      anyone to study quantum mechanics. I've been reading popular scientific books (where
      by popular I mean written in laymen's terms, described in an easier to understand fashion
      with very little math formulas to understand) and I find that quantum mechanics is the
      branch of science that comes closer to explaining how life and the world around us "works".
      It's also the science that least of all contradicts any religious teaching... so I strongly
      suggest even to the people who believe a lot more in religion than in science to read about
      quantum mechanics. Go on Amazon and buy some books - you'll be fascinated.

      Happy living to everyone, I hope my way-too-long post will stimulate more thought on the
      matter :°)

      ciao,
      Saul
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  • Profile picture of the author Orion777
    Many of God's laws work for non-believers as well as believers, i.e. the law of gravity, positive thinking, etc. The difference is that believers give all credit and glory to God for the good in their lives, whilst non-believers think they created something or attracted something all by themselves. God created the entire universe, including all the laws that govern it.

    If someone wants to be successful, all they have to do is to diligently apply the Bible principles for money and success. You have to be consistent in whatever you do, this is a key. You can't try one thing one week and something else the next week. You need a plan to accomplish your goals. It is okay to tweak and re-adjust the plan along the way. But without a plan, it is hard to arrive at your destination/goal.
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  • Profile picture of the author Saul
    mmhhh... I know it's off topic but... that wayofthemaster website... it's odd how
    they ask for money upfront... I mean... It's the most blatant money-seeking preaching
    business i've ever seen... On the main page they have a 4-step process to be closer to
    jesus (I guess) and the third step costs "just" $600, while the fourth is about visiting the
    online store! And just under that they invite you to see a preaching program... you just
    need to pay 99$ !! they're asking for almost 1000 bucks upfront on the main page!

    I don't want to say more than I know, and maybe the people managing this website have
    the best intentions, but from a marketing point of view this website should be studied:
    it's fascinating how they create "stepping stones" to invite the prospect to give them
    more and more money... online store... 99$... 600$... by the time you've spent some
    time with them you'll find out you've spent... not just time ;°)

    It would be very interesting to see how well this website converts prospect into money
    making customers... But this "website review" is way off topic, sorry for that...back to
    God Vs the Secret

    ciao,
    Saul
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  • Profile picture of the author sanders9632
    I agree that if god really did create the universe then definitely he created all of its laws along with it including Attraction. So yes the law is not "on par" with god but part of the rules he sets with the universe and everything in it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Clintonio
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author Saul
      Originally Posted by Clintonio View Post

      the secret is that there is no secret
      isn't that a secret? ;°)
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    • Profile picture of the author jcisme
      Originally Posted by Saul View Post

      isn't that a secret? ;°)
      Originally Posted by Clintonio View Post

      Forget God, forget all you know, and then and only then will you know that the secret is that there is no secret
      That does seem to be exactly where I am now and I must say it is not the most comfortable place to be. I'm not sure as to where the quote came from or who qoated it 'The dark hour of the soul' is what it feels like.

      The first time I heard about 'The Secret' was a couple of days ago but I think I've gotten the gist of it from reading this thread. It does seem to be a rehash of a book that came out in the 60's just wish I could remember the title of that book as it was about thoughts and attraction and that your thoughts is what attracts or repels money.

      After reading through this thread and Oprah's involvement in pushing, believing, accepting as gospal truth what 'The Secret' espouses, I am left with a burning question: Why isn't Oprah using the lessons of the secret to attract being thin back into her life. I mean she does say she is ashamed and embarassed about gaining all her weight back so what's the problem if 'The Secret' is a cure-all for money, relationships, and HEALTH issues? After all weight is a health issue why isn't she able to just think herself thin? What am I missing here?
      Signature

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  • Profile picture of the author RoseRabbit
    We are co-creators, the many voices of God.
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  • Profile picture of the author JLRuffin
    Since everything emanates from God, including natural or supernatural laws, there is no way "The Secret" as a force or power in the universe is equal to God Himself.
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  • Profile picture of the author Charan Saini
    I have similair view to Umrk, God resides within us, we are the creater, we create our own lives.....thats the secret
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  • Profile picture of the author Dustin Anderson
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author vencedor08
      It doest not matter what people call God, but if they put Jesus-christ out of the picture
      they are missing the missing link.
      Signature

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  • Profile picture of the author michellec
    I would have to watch it again to be sure, but I don't believe the comparison was between God and the LOA.

    Invoking the Law of Attraction was being likened to the process of PRAYER. Ask, Believe (Faith), Receive.

    It was your higher-self, guardian-angel etc. that was being compared to the 'label' of God.

    That's what I took from it at least.
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  • Profile picture of the author NikkiM
    Throughout the years many religions have been created, but all originated from one higher power, God. Not every religion accepts God as the highest being, but if you compare all religions you will see much similarity amongst them all.

    All religions are based upon a person's personal beliefs and their interpretations on the lessons guided by their religion. It is virtually impossible to dispose of any one religion over the other, just as it is impossible to say that one's beliefs are higher than the other.

    It is just that, a person's beliefs. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, just as they are entitled to follow their own religion.

    If you break it down, religions have been born throughout time and all created to fit the needs of certain groups with slightly different perspectives of the original religion. Every religion has a higher power that cannot be explained, but we know that it exists.

    I believe that the Law of Attraction is as real and on the same level as that of God, Budda, Alah, or any other type of higher being. Beliefs are born and the mind can perceive anything. Mind over matter. Law of Attraction is real, and I do believe that God and the Law of Attraction are one of the same.
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    • Profile picture of the author aapillc
      I find this whole thread both enlightning and compelling. I have spent a LOT of time visiting many different denominations of religious beliefs. I was amazed at the overall similarities, yet some would condemn other belief systems for their differences. They had never really looked at the other systems and saw the good in the intent, only that there were differences. Every religion began because of differences of opinion, no matter if they were a spin off of an existing belief, or a new concept all together. That is just one of the things that makes this thread so interesting. As one warrior put it, he was happy to see such a civil conversation being conducted about what has ALWAYS been a topic to avoid in large gatherings. That is why churches came to be, so that like minded people could get together and share their beliefs with out persecution. Therefore it is moving to see the attention this thread has gotten and that everyone has participated so openly. Thank you all for giving me a little boost to the morale.
      As for the Laws of Attraction, it is NOT about money, it is about the possibilty of obtaining happiness in EVERY aspect of your life. It is all about maintaining a constant outcome in your thoughts, until THAT outcome is obtained. You are what you think and if your thoughts are ALWAYS on the negative side of the equation, that is where your results will be. It can and does work, I have made it work. It has not been 100% of the time yet, but there in lies the challenge of being alive, or just existing.
      I will stop myself from rambling further at this point. Thank you for reading.
      Ken
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanmacca
    Wow, this thread has become really valuable and really interesting
    Thanks everyone for contributing. Lets keep it going
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    • Profile picture of the author Tor-Sigurd D.R
      Here is something for all of you to chew on.

      If god is so almighty and all knowing, why should we worship him? The answer here is, the one perceived god is a false god. That was either made by man, or made by a source not by man, to control us with the goal to lock our spiritual evolution to the material world. That is what these belief system where crated for.

      Everything is energy and as energy we are infinite, our bodies are just a conduit in the material world for our souls, our true self to experience good and bad.

      If you can't understand this then you are bound to the material world and belief systems, that perceive us as evolved apes - which is false. This is my observation of it all i am not trying to force this on you but seriously, think about it. If our perceived god want's to be worshiped, then he is a false one because he is not whole - ego.
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      • Profile picture of the author 1 Marketing
        I am feeling stunned after some really unique views....

        No doubt the discussion is getting too hot on this thread.
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      • Profile picture of the author dlwebb610
        Originally Posted by Tor-Sigurd D.R View Post

        Here is something for all of you to chew on.

        Everything is energy and as energy we are infinite, our bodies are just a conduit in the material world for our souls, our true self to experience good and bad.
        Can you say "New Age"? I knew that you could.
        "Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that He IS God."

        Now that's something to chew on friends.
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        • Profile picture of the author Tor-Sigurd D.R
          Originally Posted by dlwebb610 View Post

          Can you say "New Age"? I knew that you could.
          "Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that He IS God."

          Now that's something to chew on friends.
          God is neither a he or she, it just is and exists everywhere and in everyone because "it" crated this place for us to experience something, whether it is good or a bad one.

          New Age? Oh that, another roadblock.
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  • Profile picture of the author ken_p
    my friend has a copy of the book, and i am going to borrow it, and read it. i agree with you, that God is not equal to the Law of A. But i think he is in the law of attraction, as well as in everything in this earth.
    now, im really excited to read the book.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dave Z
    There is no such thing as God!

    I am really sorry to burst that bubble, but the whole God thing is a hoax.
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  • Profile picture of the author dlwebb610
    It's really a shame that there are so many closed minded people here. I used to believe there was no God but actually it is very easy to prove the existence of God (and I can do it scientifically) but unfortunately you would not believe. I do not want to argue. I'll tell you what we should do here. You continue believing as you do and I will do the same and in the end, we shall see who was right.
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    • Profile picture of the author Dave Z
      Originally Posted by dlwebb610 View Post

      It's really a shame that there are so many closed minded people here. I used to believe there was no God but actually it is very easy to prove the existence of God (and I can do it scientifically) but unfortunately you would not believe. I do not want to argue. I'll tell you what we should do here. You continue believing as you do and I will do the same and in the end, we shall see who was right.
      Can you show me that proof please, because science is passing God by left and right, there is no such thing as God and if there is a God don't you think he is a sadist? look around you, nuff sad about God.

      But please if you have proof that God is out there show it, i would love to see it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Daniel E Taylor
    The important thing that most people miss is that it's not about This VS That belief. It's about a true connection with the universal spirit which is inside of all of us. Which is all of us.

    Because of the nature of this time space reality there has to be duality. That is the only way ANYTHING can exist, if the complete opposite is also available.

    Spirit, God, Higher Presence, SuperSubconscious, The father, or whatever term you can come up with is infinite. But in order for the infinite to exist so does the opposite which is limitation. So this is what being human (Small I) is. The small I is POWERLESS, and the omnipresent spirit is ALL POWERFUL.

    What you experience in your human incarnation on a physical level is the Small I. That is why you experience fear, hate, aggression, etc...

    Your job is to do the best job you can to bring the small I in harmony with the Big I. This is what meditation, prayer, etc, is doing. You aren't changing reality. Reality already IS. Everything you want as far as material objects is already here.

    Everything is vibration. So you are here to elevate your vibration to be in harmony with the spirit. That is what CONNECTING with God does. Then you can manifest anything outside of time with no limits.

    Nothing can manifest in the psychological time of the mind. God can only work (Which is omnipresent in all of us) in the present moment, because all else is an illusion. God knows nothing about your future, nor your past. Your mind does, and it's keeping you captive.

    Jesus, Buddha, Ghandi, Muhammad, are all pointing you to the same thing. The present moment which is where all your power is because it's the only place God is.

    So the arguement about God being an outside Deity, or we all ONE... A man with true understanding realizes both sides are correct. How is that possible? Because of the duality of this time space reality.

    Most people who argue on the side of God being an external being, are speaking from the perspective of the small I. So in that context, yes God is an outside force, because the Small I (physical self) has no power.

    People who argue oneness are speaking from the perspective of the Big I which is the omni present spirit which is in everyone of us. And it's the same spirit. It's the infinite... Life itself... Creator of all. But it IS the same spirit omnipresent within all of us.

    So neither is wrong, both philosophies are just talking from 2 different perspectives. But the ignorance of man is that there has to be a RIGHT and WRONG (Which are nothing more than perspectives).

    I'm sure there will be people who argue with me. But I will say this. If you can truly comprehend what I'm saying, you are one of the exceptional few on this planet who really GET IT.

    Blessings to everyone.

    And Jesus said it best, "Be ye not afraid, Just Believe".

    That one principle has the power to transform anyones life instantly.

    Great Discussion
    Daniel
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    Self Actualization is one's true purpose. Everything
    else is an illusion.

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  • Profile picture of the author Phoebe
    I love this (#3)
    syn⋅er⋅gism

    /ˈsɪnərˌdʒɪzəm, sɪˈnɜrdʒɪz-/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [sin-er-jiz-uhm, si-nur-jiz-] Show IPA -noun
    1. the interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual elements, contributions, etc. 2. the joint action of agents, as drugs, that when taken together increase each other's effectiveness (contrasted with antagonism ).
    3. Theology. the doctrine that the human will cooperates with the Holy Ghost in the work of regeneration.


    With this view we are synergistically working with god and our own minds (LOA) to create - I like this because it means that we have some say AND it allows for miracles and grace to descend and touch out lives in unexpected ways.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dave Z
    So this LOA is only working if you believe in a invisible man in the sky that keeps score of what you do all day? well i don't believe in that guy for a second and the LOA seems to work fine for me to.

    So could it be that God or buddha or Allah has nothing to do with it, and this power is just coming out of yourself?
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  • Profile picture of the author johnpetrov
    Ryan, you are right: "God and The Law of Attraction are not one and the same" Never can the creator and creature be one and the same."

    ---------------------------------

    PS: Here's a sweet little story:

    An old man died and came to God. When he stood in front of Gods throne, he asked:
    "Where were You God, when I needed You most in my life, when I suffered most, when I could not manage myself?"
    God answered him with a loving smile:
    "I was always by your side, I never left you alone."
    The dead old man did not believe that and said:
    "How come that when I look down at my footsteps on Earth, there are two pairs during the good times but only one pair during the bad times?"
    "Well my precious and beloved child", God answered, "it is because I carried you in my arms."
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  • Profile picture of the author dlwebb610
    1 Corinthians 2:13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
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  • Profile picture of the author Pnigro
    LOL both God and The Secret are fairytales.
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  • Profile picture of the author jgand
    We are all the same. It's not important how you define it. Its only important that you believe in something that is powerful for you. No matter what you name it.
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  • Profile picture of the author genieofwealth
    the law of attraction is as real as all the other laws in the universe.

    the law of attraction works because you believe it works (people say "i'll believe it when i see it; it should be "i see it because i believe it).

    some time ago i went through a spiritual awakening which apart from thinking i was losing it when i adjusted to new frequencies and awareness the world is now so obvious to me.

    we are programmed to think in our 3D world and 5 sense reality when the true us is part of God our spirit and soul.

    everyone man and woman on earth has chosen to be here and each one of us can resonate and get in tune to create the real experience and the find the reason why you are here however, we covet, steal, get ego's become materialistic etc.....

    there are also other factors around that makes people behave this way but i won't go into details here as some information is too much for people to understand. (that isn't a dig it's to make sure that people sleep at night).

    simply question your actions, add value to everyone and anything that you do and be grateful and use your limited time wisely.

    good luck to everyone

    Genieofwealth
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    • Profile picture of the author John Durham
      Originally Posted by genieofwealth View Post

      i adjusted to new frequencies and awareness the world is now so obvious to me.... each one of us can resonate and get in tune to create the real experience...simply question your actions, add value to everyone and anything that you do and be grateful and use your limited time wisely.
      When the lack frequency is abandoned and the abundance frequency is resonated with...then we begin adding true value to the world.."

      Personal abundance equals = adding positive value to the world (See Mazlows Pyramid).
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  • Christians do not have an image of God. Because every image would be incomplete and one would serve a false God. Saying God created this or that, God is a creator and so on is making an image of God and is wrong. How can you believe in something unimaginable? Well, if you really understand why you can´t imagine God, you know why God really exists. This question cannot be answered/solved by philosophical theories/debates. It´s a spiritual thing. It cannot be learned from a book, one has to experience it. Like Zen Boeddhists that do not have a book that contains their belief. (Not that I am a Zen Boeddhist)

    Imagine there is this guy who never saw a lion. Is it possible to tell him with words what kind of an animal a lion is, how a lion looks like etc., so that it would be the same as if he had seen a lion with his own eyes? No it´s not. To really know a lion one has to see him, experience his presence. The same with God. You can go on debating for ever and will never find God.

    How can one experience God or the Mystery of our existence? People around the globe used/use different techniques to get in touch with the spiritual. Meditation, bringing yourself into a trance, certain drugs and more. Critics will say that´s all a crap, but I don´t think they have an argument.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Durham
    I have also studied the law of attraction since around 2000. The secret is a very watered down version.

    Most people who learned it from "the secret" are in the same category to me as the people who learned about the "bohemian rhapsody" from waynes world! (sorry had to throw that in).

    I have a stack of material on it a mile high, some dating back to the 1980's and some dating waaay back to the 1800's... it's not a new concept.

    Anyway:

    The law of attraction is a deep multi leveled subject. It is not God though. It is simply what I call "The science of Faith".

    God designed us to use faith, and an understanding of the law of attraction is just a breakdown of how creating by faith can be mastered.

    There's my two cents from a man who was raised by pentecostal pastors, and later studied "Abraham Hicks" for 6 years DAILY like a sponge , and has been to the ashram 3 times...

    I have seen the whole spectrum. The law of attraction ain't God.

    Jerry and Esther Hicks are the truest authorities on the subject. Whether they are evil taboo channelors, or wether they are just damn smart philosophers, they cover every aspect of it from the inside out. They have maybe 200 hours of recorded material on it as opposed to the 2 hours of "icing" in the movie. Too bad they got knocked out of the credit.

    Try digging a little deeper than "The Secret".
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark 2
    I am strictly against the "SECRET" mentality. It contains just guide lines or tips for self motivation. You imagine, you keep on watching things working and you get it. I can bet 99.9% of the people who used the secret methodology would have failed...

    I have read a good quote "I recognized God from the destruction of my intentions..."

    If every one gets what he wants, then there may be situations a lot of times, if 10 gentle men are willing to marry same lady. Only one will accomplish and what about the remaining...
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    • Profile picture of the author John Durham
      Originally Posted by Mark 2 View Post

      I am strictly against the "SECRET" mentality. I can bet 99.9% of the people who used the secret methodology would have failed...
      I must be the 1 percent, because I was broke all my life (never made more than $500. or $600 per week) and could never get anything to work at age 30... I picked up the law of attraction teachings at age 31, became engrossed in them and that year,I was struck with a brilliant idea and made over $600,000.!! This happened within months.

      You are correct that it is a different spin on formulas that have been taught many times over the years in many diverse ways, however it is so comprehensive that it encapsulates all of those formulas in one easy to swallow pill.

      It takes alot of the "self discipline mentality" out of it, enabling those trapped by the belief that they "lack self disciplin" to break out of the box and succeed.

      So I must beg to differ.

      As stated in a previous post. Dig a little deeper. The secret is just the icing on the cake, but it aint the cake!

      Note: I had been through all of Zig Ziglars work by age 25, and through Tony Robbins Personal Power course twice by 27, and by age 21 had memorized almost every word of the scrolls in "Og Mandino's greatest Salesman In The World" (which BTW was the most growth producing of the three).

      I wasn't raised with a success mentality so I spent alot of time searching for answers when I was younger. I spent my teens being force fed Robert Tilton, and Kenneth Copeland...you know the religious prosperity teachers... we studied them, and went to their services, and gave in their offerings, paid our tithes, listened to their stories of five star dining, chauffers, and first class airline tickets... but in the end it just left us feeling like "our faith must not be good enough...".

      The Law of attraction (an' I'm talking bout a "deeeeep" study), was the thing that finally annihilated the deeply rooted poverty mentality in my life and helped me to overcome all of my mental road blocks. Helped me overcome all of the thoughts that "I must not be disciplined enough...".

      As we say in Nashville "The proof is in the Pickin". Call it a coincidence if you like, but I and others know how intentionally, and how deliberately these teachings were used to achieve this. It would be one hell of a $600,000. coincidence!
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    • Profile picture of the author John Durham
      Originally Posted by Mark 2 View Post

      If every one gets what he wants, then there may be situations a lot of times, if 10 gentle men are willing to marry same lady. Only one will accomplish and what about the remaining...
      The one who gets the girl is the one who is in the most vibrational harmony with the girl and "her" wantings. The law of attraction is about achieving vibrational harmony with that which is wanted...that's why it's called ATTRACTION.

      The others who want the girl will end up getting whatever girl they are in vibrational harmony with.

      "Wanting" is only the beginning.

      It's just like practicing a race "in your mind", or the "perfect golf swing..." even Tony Robbins talks about being in vibrational harmony as opposed to simply "desiring", he just uses different words. He calls it "Anchoring yourself" to the desired outcome.

      The Secret is only an introduction to the basic principle.

      In an effort to not sound like a "Know it all" on the subject , I will stop posting and leave you with this:

      Read William Walker Atkinsons "Thought Vibrations/The law of attraction in the universe" It was published as far back as 1906 and shows that this idea was around over 100 years ago they even called it the same thing back then.

      It's free. Doesn't cost a dime.

      Note: This is not an affiliate link, nor is it attached to anything I am associated with... just a free pointer:

      http://www.askjeevesuk.net/thought_vibration.pdf

      Sorry for unintentionally hijacking this post.

      "No" I dont believe it's God.

      Once again, everything has a science and this is simply the "science of faith".

      Ps. Take this from a guy who "Got the Girl" ... lol
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  • "Of Course God created everything in this world
    anything other tan this then this is bullshit"

    Since you seem to be a Christian you probably know the story of Abraham and his contact in the desert with an entity we call God. When Abraham asked him who he is, he did not answer: I´m God. Creator of the world, father of mankind etc. He answered (according to the original hebrew text) "I am what I shall be."

    What does it matter who created the world? (If the world was created. If there is a beginning and an end) What has this to do with our souls?
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  • Profile picture of the author Igor Kheifets
    Originally Posted by ryanmacca View Post

    Are God and 'The Secret' competing for who is Lord of all.

    There is a quote in the secret that the law of attraction has been called many things, Guardian Angel, Higher Self, God.

    But I disagree.

    God and The Law of Attraction are not one and the same.

    God created the universe and all the laws that govern it. He created the law of gravity, and the law of interia. He also created the Law of Attraction.

    God created the Secret, they are not the same thing.

    The Law of Attraction is just a law that exists because God created it. Just because it appears to be a supernatural law doesn't mean that it is on par with God.

    Let me know your views
    Hey Ryan,

    sorry to burst your Bubble, but there is no so called
    God. God is you, you are your own God. You create your
    own miracles using the Law of Attraction.

    Law of Attraction is only one of the 10s of other Laws
    that occur and govern the Universe. However, the "God"
    concept is mistaking.

    Igor
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  • Profile picture of the author FemmeFilmmaker
    Originally Posted by ryanmacca View Post

    Are God and 'The Secret' competing for who is Lord of all.

    There is a quote in the secret that the law of attraction has been called many things, Guardian Angel, Higher Self, God.

    But I disagree.

    God and The Law of Attraction are not one and the same.

    God created the universe and all the laws that govern it. He created the law of gravity, and the law of interia. He also created the Law of Attraction.

    God created the Secret, they are not the same thing.

    The Law of Attraction is just a law that exists because God created it. Just because it appears to be a supernatural law doesn't mean that it is on par with God.

    Let me know your views
    Hi Ryan,

    You've stimulated a lot of diverse thought with your initial post, which is a good thing. The question you ask, though, along with the first statement that follows it, are based on what may be an inaccurate interpretation of what was stated in the film, "The Secret."

    The reason I say it may be inaccurate is because there are two different versions of the film, and the DVD I have is the original release. I've not seen the second version.

    In the first version, the actual quote is completely different than what you've stated. To put it in its full context, here is exactly what is said in the film:

    Let's use this metaphor. If you think about Aladdin and his lamp--you've probably heard of that one. I mean, Aladdin picks up the lamp, he dusts it off, and out pops the genie.

    The genie always says one thing.

    "Your wish is my command."

    If you trace the story back to its origins--you know, we now think that there's three wishes--but if you trace the story back to its origins, there's absolutely no limit whatsoever to the wishes. Think about that one.

    Now, let's take this metaphor and blow it out and apply it to you and your life.

    Remember, Aladdin is the one who always asks for what he wants. Then you've got the Universe at large, which is this grand genie. And traditions, you know, have called it so many different things: Your holy guardian angel, your higher self. I mean we could put any label on it, and you choose the one that works best for you. But every tradition has told us there's something bigger than us.

    And the genie always says one thing: "Your wish is my command."


    As far as God and "The Secret," or Law of Attraction, being in some kind of competition over "who is Lord of all," the answer can only lie within you. If you find discomfort in believing in LOA, then you can choose not to believe in it. Your choice will not make it any less real, but what ultimately matters is that you feel good about whatever it is that you believe. Of course, it's not a good idea to expect everyone else to share what are your beliefs. First, it will never happen. Second, what a boring one-dimensional world THAT would be! (No offense intended. )

    Challenging yourself to learn more about ANY subject you know little about and that you have questions around is an effective way to gain insight and to expand your world, both inner and outer.

    If you're interested in having a fuller understanding of the Law of Attraction, then I can think of no one better to guide you than Abraham, through Esther Hicks. They have been mentioned a few times in this thread.

    Abraham was really the catalyst for the movie "The Secret." Rhonda Byrne may have read the book, "The Science of Getting Rich" by Wallace D Wattles, and been inspired by it, but it was the teachings of Abraham that she originally decided to create a television show around. Of course, her vision grew from that basic idea on to something much bigger than almost anyone could have imagined.

    Below is the start of a basic primer on the Law of Attraction from Abraham, shared with the understanding that some people will be open to what's being said and who's saying it, and others may not be. And that is perhaps as it should be, for we are all at different degrees of receptivity to what might be considered new ideas and bold concepts. (As Abraham states, there never is a crowd on the leading edge.)



    There are many more Abraham-Hicks videos on YouTube that you can check out, if you're compelled to do so, as well as free materials at their website:


    One last thought... you do not have to choose between God (aka "Source," "The Universe," "Higher Self," etc.) and the Law of Attraction. Though they are different, they are not mutually exclusive.

    Just some more food for thought.


    Kathleen
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    • Profile picture of the author DaleP
      I have always wondered whether people have thought about this the way I do....if not then Im going to write a book! Lets see if you agree...

      The problem with 'the secret' is the way it is marketed. For those that are not already into self help/improvement it comes across as this magical concept, something which takes a lot of energy and 'will' to start believing in. Its almost like telling someone to immediately believing in fairies (hey you might already but thats beside the point).

      I believe if people actually understood the underlying reasons as to HOW 'the secret' worked it would make it more believable and less fairy tale like. If you have been studying self help for a while you will have read in almost every single self help book, the concept of first visualising something that you would like to achieve, and ultimately you will reach that goal/achievement. You will also have read that by visualizing something constantly you are training the subconcious mind to believe that you are capable/able of reaching this goal and hence allowing your 'body' act accordingly.

      Once you have imprinted these beliefs into your subconcious mind by constant visualization of reaching your goal, you will naturally find yourself moving towards your goal. why? Because us as humans BEHAVE and ACT based on what our subconcious believes. If you act like a poor man, and speak like a poor man and THINK a poor man's thoughts....well yes you probably are poor as this is what you have trained your subconcious to believe, and now youre simply acting out based on these core beliefs. It's simply a self fullfilling prophecy. We determine who we are and what we become, but most people dont know we have this power at our finger tips...they dont know how to USE their own subconcious mind to get them anywhere they want to go in life.

      NOW HERES MY THEORY: all the secret is, is the act of training the subconcious mind through visualization (as mentioned above), the only difference is that it is marketed to the public in a glorified and fairly tale like way. Simple as that. It is purely an echo of what is written in almost every single self help book that I can think of.

      Also, I dont believe one actually visualizes and then attracts 'things' to yourself as such...its the other way round...you train your subconcious mind and as a result find yourself moving toward those 'things'. Remember we need to act in order to receive/achieve, nothing is magically attracted to us by pure thought. Yes thought/visualization is the start, but this simply results in us taking the right ACTION which is what takes us closer of further away from our goals.
      Signature

      \"Successful, happy and fulfilled people have three things in common: someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to.\"

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  • Profile picture of the author genieofwealth
    spot on post and precisely that.

    be in action as well as using visualising and affirmation techniques to program your sub conscious.

    regards
    genie of wealth
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  • Profile picture of the author VMN
    I believe God is everything or if I may quote:
    All There Is.
    We are all contained within, along with everything else.
    The Conversations With God books discuss this is great detail.

    I just finished At Home With God (The final book)
    In a Life That Never Ends...
    It is an incredible book.

    Victoria
    Signature

    Inside Wealthy Affiliate
    Follow VictoriaNTC On Twitter!

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  • Profile picture of the author kayvee
    I disagree with people who say that we are "gods" or that we are "creators"

    God is the only one who can create

    And I mean create in the literal sense of the word
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    • Profile picture of the author John Durham
      To Kathleen Donaghyz:

      Dear Kathleen, thank you for saving me from writing a book on this post! You said it all.

      To others:

      The REAL "secret" is that you should be checking out Abraham if you want the most hard core education on the law of attraction. While they are not the ONLY teachers on the subject, they are ABSOLUTELY the most comprehensive.

      Once again: If you want to know the "true" secret: "That's it".

      While it's not my job (or "prob") to sell the concept to anyone, it is certainly my PLEASURE to (ironically) assist in helping as you go about "collecting data" through the very process of which we are speaking.

      Why?

      Because this knowledge has changed my life for the better for almost 10 years now, where other (orthodox) teachings had failed. Maybe you are like me, and it takes something really special and unique to help you unlock your potential. Something outside the box... or maybe not... if not then more power to you, keep doing what you are doing.

      Stop me Kathleen!

      As for the original question posted by the op:

      Quote ME as saying this: "THANK GOD FOR THE ABRAHAM TEACHINGS"!!!!!


      Thanks Kathleen for the wonderful videos. There is great love here for you!
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      • Profile picture of the author John Durham
        Originally Posted by actionplanbiz View Post

        God is not understood like how it use to be.

        the Name of God is Yahweh, which means the Source of Existence

        Thats were we get HallelluYah

        and the Son's name is Yahushua, which means Yahweh is Salvation

        God Bless
        Allen, I dont think that everyone condoning the law of attraction, is opposing God.

        He told Abraham in the bible his name was "I am that I am", that settled it.

        In many cases he is called omnipotent. I think of God as "The all that is"...this is after much Biblical theology and also the study of other religions...

        Jesus himself said "I have other sheep that are not of this fold..." many books were deleted from the Bible because they were considered agnostic teachings of Jesus. Some of Jesus "agnostic" teachings were largely about Quantum Physics. Reading a few verses in the "Book of Mary" , you can see that he leans very much toward saying "all is energy".

        This conversation with Mari took place alone with just her, and no one else. Why?

        Remember, if he would have spoken more Bluntly to his followers in those days, both he and the followers he loved would have been murdered onsite...before his time... He had to be very careful about choosing his words.

        Even though he went a bit outside of the box with the Scribes and Pharisee's ... and left them scratching their heads a little, he was wise not to speak too PLAINLY and obviously against their grain (too far out), that would have meant that his followers would have suffered hardship, and his messages would have been squashed before they had a chance to be spread.... He had to be wise to deliver his message. With all thy getting he said "Get understanding".

        "He that hath ears to hear" means "You know I cant say what I'm trying to say out loud so listen hard and try to read between the lines".

        I think everyone believes in God although they dont always call him by the same name.

        Everyone cries out for help in desperate times, even when they know there's no one around to hear them.

        My grandfather used to say , referring to the War..."There's no such thing as an atheist when you are in a foxhole and bombs are going off all around you.

        It's about balance and never ending growth. Being dogmatic inhibits growth. Closing the case means no more truth can come forward.

        God has so much truth for us, that we will never understand it in this lifetime. The book never closes. The learning never stops, as long as you allow it to continue.

        I really gotta get off this thread now! It's 6am, been up all night, and just closed and $7,500. deal via email with a person from China and hour ago. Just thought I'd check in on this thread. Now I'm gonna go reward myself by sleeping till 3 in the afternoon!!
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        • Profile picture of the author Tor-Sigurd D.R
          Here is my view of religions and why i believe they are pure fiction or something else - If you are easily offended, then please read no further.

          I'll start from the beginning when our race was born, according to Christian beliefs - Everything started with adam and eve and the tree of eden. But on the scientific side, we evolved from "lucy" the first pre-human to humans which is another lie. Why this is so you ask?

          If you really want to know, please look this up on youtube before you continue: Human Origins : Intervention Theory by Lloyd Pye 1/8, watch them all or you wont get it.

          So my conclusion from Lloyd Pye's findings is that we were made by E.T's in a lab (Eden), by god in his image (The E.T's).

          Genesis 1-27
          "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

          All this leads me to the "why" we have all the diseases and a growing genetic degradation (And not to mention the atrocities the drug companies have done for PURE $$$, yes, AIDS was made by MAN), because they made us inferior or as i would call it - a prototype... Now tell me, who makes prototypes? Man does, not the creator of all things.

          So basically, we are worshiping the E.T's as gods. Most of the religions we have now are theirs and centuries of manipulation of the biblical scriptures, by the elites for their own personal agendas and to chain us to this vicious system.

          This Is not helping us try to heighten our contact with the spiritual world (The BigI) BECAUSE, we are so obsessed with money and pointless objects whilst living in fear of our own shadow. I guess this is why most are here to create an income online, so we can break from the evil cycle that sucks the life out of you.

          Sorry that is a confusing statement to me. Hope that making money online is not an illusion too... Or is it too deep for me... I agree with the threat owner [first post]. Sorry, I dont want to start WW III, because of my post...
          My point is, we are here to experience what there is to experience. Sounds strange i know, so have fun while doing it and learn as much you can. When you pass on, the knowledge you have learned will stay with you.

          It is just that we can't tap into this source with these bodies, ever heard about these "freak of nature" that have incredible skills in one thing and completely inept in everything else? Well these are the ones who are more connected to the source. Just try to imagine, what you could do if you where fully connected?

          Sorry for my ramblings, my bed awaits. =)
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  • Profile picture of the author dlwebb610
    Kadensnga: He told Abraham in the bible his name was "I am that I am", that settled it.

    Actually friend He said that to Moses.
    Exodus 3:13-14 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? 14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
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    • Profile picture of the author John Durham
      Originally Posted by dlwebb610 View Post

      Kadensnga: He told Abraham in the bible his name was "I am that I am", that settled it.

      Actually friend He said that to Moses.
      Exodus 3:13-14 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? 14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

      I stand corrected. You are right it was Moses. Don't know what I was thinking.

      Thanks.
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  • I Have an no-view if you will. Quoting Sri Nisargadatta loosely in so many words "When you can perceive that the sense of self is no more than memory or anticipation then the search ends and you stand aloof knowing the false as false." It is nice to hear you speak of causality but in a universe where everything causes everything nothijng is the sole cause of another. Maharaj has some very inspiring stuff especially for warriors!!!!!!1
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  • Profile picture of the author paulwoodley
    At first when I began reading this thread I was a little bit offended by some of the blasphemous talk of God and I too was considering contacting the moderator to remove such a post.

    However, this post has grown into a very good read and I want to thank "kadensnga" specifically for his comments and thoughts to this thread as he spoke very respectfully, tactfully, and was informative.

    I am one whom believes in God and believes he controls everything. I am a Christian. And I follow Christian beliefs. Yes, I ave been "saved" too.

    I also believe everything I have and everything I do not have is in direct proportion to my faith or lack of.

    I wonder for those that are both doing well nor not so well a. do you give "thanks" to the Lord for what you have and b. do you blame him for what you do not have?

    And if you "do not have" riches, success, etc AND you are not faithful could it be that there is a "reason" for that? And that reason, perhaps, be that God wants you to submit humbly and meekly and aka destroy your material misguided lusts and sin so that he can build you anew?

    I think there is a direct correlation between ones faith and success. And I believe it is very dangerous to believe that there is no God.
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    • Profile picture of the author blackcpa
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      • Profile picture of the author John Durham
        Originally Posted by blackcpa View Post

        Sadly your statement "direct correlation between ones faith and success"

        From those false teachers like Joyce meyer who pockets 93 million a year off foolish people seeking Wealth . Benny Hinn another false teacher who gains millions and lives in 10K a night Hotel rooms .

        They say if you give you will get 100 % back Hmmm

        Scripture say do not seek after things that rust or can be stolen
        but seek Jesus and those thing about Jesus and Heaven.


        Jesus came to save us and give us forgiveness to gain heaven ...


        First off:

        I find it interesting that a person who is a member of a forum where the main goal is to "seek wealth" would be saying such a thing.

        Secondly:

        I can see that your resentment for others living in abundance is an issue for you... from the Biblical "perspective", the Bible says that your prayers can't even be "heard" by God when you come to him with unforgiveness in your heart... sorry but all that resentment leads me to believe that there is some unforgiveness to be dealt with... Most ALL religions teach that!

        While I said earlier that prosperity teachers in church didn't hold the key for me... I didn't use the words "false teachers". That's a pretty extreme statement don't you think?

        The truth is relative to your perspective in many cases.

        Thirdly,

        Joyce meyers makes money off the books she writes...not off of peoples donations...while I may or may not suscribe to everything she says, I believe her heart is in the right place.

        It's not like she is making a million dollars off kidnapping children and selling them on the Black market...also it's not off selling "Money making reports..." while our goal is to help people in this very post (I believe you mean to help...?) We certainly don't help as many people as she does...so what if she's blessed? Just means she has more opportunity to BE a blessing than you or I do.

        Jesus said that if you seek first the Kingdom of God then all these things shall be added unto you. Was he lying? Did Jesus Lie when he said that? Do you think he's mad at Joyce because his teaching worked for her?

        She is proving his words more than most of us.

        Maybe Joyce meyers has truly sought first the kingdom of God more than we have does that make sense?

        Jesus had a treasurer by the way, and when he came into a town the most rich and astute people begged for the chance to entertain him in their homes...I'm sure that also meant they wanted to lavish him with gifts in many cases...

        In closing:

        Those who are conflicted about the morals of the wealthy surely are pushing wealth away from themselves... I guarantee that Joyce Meyers gives away millions of dollars per year to places where it is needed... just because she didnt give it to YOU is no reason to accuse her of greed.

        She has sooo much that she probably gives away each year more than most of us will make in our entire lifetime... can you do that?

        Maybe it doesn;t seem so miraculous to you, but to a village of mothers watching their children starve to death, her ability to attract wealth is greatly appreciated I'm sure.

        On another note: I'm sure Jerry and Esther Hicks are no different in that aspect. When we give it signifies that we believe in "enough-ness".

        Can you say that the fruits of YOUR work is substantial enough to feed millions of hungry children?

        For most of us is it only enough to feed our own family. The very Bible of which you speak also says that "even the heathens take care of their own..." there's no glory or spiritual rewards in that according to christian teachings.

        Once again I say: "I find it interesting that a person who is a member of a forum where the main goal is to "seek wealth" would be saying such a thing.

        Thank you Paul for you kind comment. I hope it contributes something good to someone. I certainly am no religious authority, however I hope to help someone.

        Religious teaching did not reach me the way some other teachings have though I studied for years, however I dont think that makes it less valid, I think that we all have different "anchors" that need to be overcome, and I am thankful for the things that have helped me, I also believe that just because some things didn't work for me that doesn't mean they are wrong... my brothers were very financially blessed by what they learned in church later in life, both are very prosperous and they attribute it directly to the teaching they learned from people like Joyce.

        Hey ADWORDS didn't work for me either, but 100 people on this forum probably are millionaires from it...I just have a different aptitude, or maybe I don't truly understand it the way they do. Can't say it's a scam though, just because it didn't work for me...

        To each his own, but in any event I think one thing is for sure: Resentment works for NO ONE!
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        • Profile picture of the author blackcpa
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          • Profile picture of the author John Durham
            Black CPA:

            No offense intended. Just trying to bring about some balance, and just so you know, according to Christian teachings , even if the IRS is saying things about Joyce ( what rich person "dont" they accuse?) you are taking the word of an auditor who is ticked because she makes 93 million and he makes $50,000 a year. Of course he will look for ways to discredit her.

            Fact is: Even if all that's true , she is still able to do more good with her wealth than we can.

            You should support your "sister" Joyce, instead of helping to spread negative rumors about her. The Bible say love "covers" all sins, not "uncovers them". Dont be a part of unvieling her shame, if that is true (which I doubt).

            All is good my friend. You are passionate. That's a good thing.

            I just wanted to help you understand that your post came across as resentful. I'm sure you didn't mean to.

            My two cents wont even buy you a soda, just throwing it in because enough peoples two cents put together can add up to alot of value!!
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  • Profile picture of the author paulwoodley
    When I speak of success I speak of "happiness". Unfortunately, if money causes you to be unhappy that is something to be looked at as well. Of course the deeper question of that kind of unhappiness (lack of wealth) should be asked. Why does lack of money cause you to be unhappy? For some they merely want to give more!

    What I mean is you reap what you sow.

    We all know you can not take your riches into heaven. You will receive whatever you receive when you are ready to receive it! And when you receive it (including wealth and prosperity according to earthly values) make sure you do with it righteously. But more importantly live righteously.
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  • Profile picture of the author blackcpa
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author John Durham
      10% of 93 million (in tithes alone) , and she used her success to help her children...? You're right she's a bad apple!

      Oh and she's providing $10.00 per hour jobs to people that need work...what a terrible person!

      I give up. You're right, I'm foolish.

      Hey while she's giving away all that money to good causes, maybe you can pray for the hungry children instead, and tell them "God Bless you". I'm sure that will help more than a million dollars worth of food and supplies (per year)!

      ATTN MODS: Please block me out of this thread!
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  • Profile picture of the author Janet Sawyer
    I'm not sure how I managed to stumble upon this thread here, but thank you, to whowever made it possible. It's like the light at the end of the tunnel.

    Maybe I've just trancended into a paralell universe, but, I'm willing to take the chances on that.......

    kadendnga

    Famous last words: I could make money from an "out house" if I had a computer with internet access an a phone.
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    • Profile picture of the author John Durham
      Originally Posted by Janet Sawyer View Post

      I'm not sure how I managed to stumble upon this thread here, but thank you, to whowever made it possible. It's like the light at the end of the tunnel.

      Maybe I've just trancended into a paralell universe, but, I'm willing to take the chances on that.......
      Ha! No you're still here on earth, and yes you can!!! Hopefully I'll never have to live up to that statement!
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  • Profile picture of the author Marc Jager
    and when 'God' created the law of attraction was 'he' male? Was he an old man in a white gown? Was he sitting on a cloud? *L*
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    • Profile picture of the author dlwebb610
      Originally Posted by Marc Jager View Post

      and when 'God' created the law of attraction was 'he' male? Was he an old man in a white gown? Was he sitting on a cloud? *L*
      John 4:24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.

      God is not mocked my friend.
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  • Profile picture of the author Adrian Cooper
    Originally Posted by ryanmacca View Post

    Are God and 'The Secret' competing for who is Lord of all.

    There is a quote in the secret that the law of attraction has been called many things, Guardian Angel, Higher Self, God.

    But I disagree.

    God and The Law of Attraction are not one and the same.

    God created the universe and all the laws that govern it. He created the law of gravity, and the law of interia. He also created the Law of Attraction.

    God created the Secret, they are not the same thing.

    The Law of Attraction is just a law that exists because God created it. Just because it appears to be a supernatural law doesn't mean that it is on par with God.

    Let me know your views
    Everyone is "God".

    There are only two types of people - those who know that and those that don't. Those that don't suffer.

    Of course we are not talking about the deity who is depicted as a elderly gentleman in a white robe, white beard, flanked by choirs of Angels plucking harps, we are taking about Source Mind and Source Energy.

    No religious arguments please. If you are religious please do not respond.
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    • Profile picture of the author dlwebb610
      Originally Posted by apc01 View Post

      Everyone is "God".

      There are only two types of people - those who know that and those that don't. Those that don't suffer.

      Of course we are not talking about the deity who is depicted as a elderly gentleman in a white robe, white beard, flanked by choirs of Angels plucking harps, we are taking about Source Mind and Source Energy.

      No religious arguments please. If you are religious please do not respond.
      LOL I find it odd that you would make such statements in an open forum and request that no one respond if they believe in God is ridiculous. Sorry I can't oblige. I believe in God as spoken of in the bible and I boldly claim Jesus Christ as my LORD. If you disagree, fine but to ask me to not stand up for what I believe is quite frankly insulting. No argument here, just a difference of opinion.
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      • Profile picture of the author TimStephens
        Wow!

        We seem to have hit a nerve here!

        What is so fantastic about the internet and the time we are living in is that we all are entitled to our own opinion. Whether they are right or wrong is not for me or you to decide.

        It is above all of our pay grades.

        Here is the greatest "Secret" of all..."Love your neighbor as you love yourself."

        The "Law of Attraction" is a Law...just like the "Law of Gravity" is a law. They where created for our enjoyment and our prosperity.

        I claim Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and do so boldly. Let's do as he would do and love people where ever they are and what ever they believe.

        Live the Dream!
        Tim
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        • Profile picture of the author Adrian Cooper
          Originally Posted by TimStephens View Post

          Wow!

          The "Law of Attraction" is a Law..
          Tim
          Well actually it isn't, and that is why so many people are disillusioned when they do not enjoy success using methods associated with it.
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      • Profile picture of the author Adrian Cooper
        Originally Posted by dlwebb610 View Post

        LOL I find it odd that you would make such statements in an open forum and request that no one respond if they believe in God is ridiculous. Sorry I can't oblige. I believe in God as spoken of in the bible and I boldly claim Jesus Christ as my LORD. If you disagree, fine but to ask me to not stand up for what I believe is quite frankly insulting. No argument here, just a difference of opinion.
        I guess I could have phrased that better.

        What I really meant is that while I fully respect the right of everyone to believe in whatever they wish, it is not worth getting upset about.

        During the many years I have written about these subjects, religious people tend to singularly refuse to entertain anything not supported by the Bible.
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  • Profile picture of the author Clint
    Originally Posted by ryanmacca View Post

    Are God and 'The Secret' competing for who is Lord of all.

    There is a quote in the secret that the law of attraction has been called many things, Guardian Angel, Higher Self, God.

    But I disagree.

    God and The Law of Attraction are not one and the same.

    God created the universe and all the laws that govern it. He created the law of gravity, and the law of interia. He also created the Law of Attraction.

    God created the Secret, they are not the same thing.

    The Law of Attraction is just a law that exists because God created it. Just because it appears to be a supernatural law doesn't mean that it is on par with God.

    Let me know your views
    what are we our minds, our arms or hands if we lose our arm, or we not whole? Do we pump our blood or does it just pump? once we find out what we are who we are then maybe we can understand who god is. until then, be humble and live your life.
    Signature

    How do I quickly go from $0 to $500 a day?....
    =====> Click here to find out how (VIP)

    You only have a week to stay ahead of your competition, System To Secret Wealth is here
    =====> Click here to grab your spot (WSO)

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  • Profile picture of the author Adrian Cooper
    I write extensively on these subjects - both included in my book. This discussion is doomed to be inconclusive because it is too emotional.

    I can and have proved that Christianity has no basis, so let us get that straight for a start, because quoting the Bible in general terms is totally inadmissible.

    There is no "Law of Attraction" for many reasons I prefer not to go in to here, and in any case I am writing a book on the true nature of reality.

    In very broad terms, everyone is an aspect of the One, Whole and a projection of Source Mind - "God" if you prefer.

    Simply put, everyone is God and a projection, aspect and extension of "God" with the same powers as God. We only differ in the extent to which we can Express these powers which are infinite.

    One thing I will say is that Quantum Mechanics totally supports everything I say.
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  • Profile picture of the author dlwebb610
    apc01: Simply put, everyone is God and a projection, aspect and extension of "God" with the same powers as God.

    This statement is a prime example of "new-age" thinking, which isn't new at all.
    Genesis 3:4-5 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

    This statement also acknowledges that there is a God and to esteem ones self as equal to that God is a very dangerous thing indeed.

    Belief in God takes faith. What is faith?
    Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

    All of us have faith in something, you have faith that you are a god, ("Simply put, everyone is God"). I have faith that there is only one God. (The God of the Bible.)

    apc01:One thing I will say is that Quantum Mechanics totally supports everything I say.

    Gee that's funny, the Bible supports everything I say. In the end we'll see who was reading the right book.
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    • Profile picture of the author Adrian Cooper
      Originally Posted by dlwebb610 View Post

      apc01: Simply put, everyone is God and a projection, aspect and extension of "God" with the same powers as God.

      This statement is a prime example of "new-age" thinking, which isn't new at all.
      Genesis 3:4-5 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

      This statement also acknowledges that there is a God and to esteem ones self as equal to that God is a very dangerous thing indeed.

      Belief in God takes faith. What is faith?
      Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

      All of us have faith in something, you have faith that you are a god, ("Simply put, everyone is God"). I have faith that there is only one God. (The God of the Bible.)

      apc01:One thing I will say is that Quantum Mechanics totally supports everything I say.

      Gee that's funny, the Bible supports everything I say. In the end we'll see who was reading the right book.
      You see that is exactly what I mean.

      How can you respond to my assertion that the Bible is false by quoting the Bible?

      The only answer religious people ever give is "because the Bible says so".

      Faith is probably the most important power a human can invoke, but this is not blind faith in some deity. Faith is invoking the Divine Power within without question, knowing the outcome is absolute.

      I do not want to get in to a religious "discussion" - I have had plenty of those in the past, and religious people will never expand their thinking beyond the Bible, but suffice it to say that I can prove that the Bible is not what people think it is and have - many times.

      I can also prove the truth through Quantum Mechanics.

      I will say that the person known as "Jesus" did exist, but the story woven around him by the Romans, and his actual teachings have distorted his words so much as to be almost meaningless.

      I have researched the original sources of the gospels, and I assure you they do not have much resemblance to the modern bible.

      That said, the teachings of the person known as Jesus - real name Yehoshua - are most profound, but at a level the church could not even begin to understand.

      His teachings fully support Quantum Physics, and in particular the absolute truth that we are all One, there is no separation, and we are all aspects and expressions of "God", where God is Source.
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      • Profile picture of the author John Durham
        Originally Posted by apc01 View Post

        You see that is exactly what I mean.

        How can you respond to my assertion that the Bible is false by quoting the Bible?

        The only answer religious people ever give is "because the Bible says so".
        Answer to your question: "Because the Bible say's it", and in his mind "that settles it":

        As you can see above, I routinely respond to religious people's arguments by showing that I am as well versed in what "they believe in" , as I am in the things I personally believe in. As you can imagine it still never gets very far.

        It still always ends with the same statement.

        I believe that religious people (Christians and otherwise) 'can' be really great people, however dogmatic, and/or 'misguided'... they operate via the same laws as everyone else does , and some like Joyce Meyers are quite masterful at it.

        Many refuse to be open to the fact that "yes", their power comes from source energy, but "no" that does not make their belief system superior, or even "correct"!

        Very simply (on the positive side) they have created a set of parameters for themselves which helps them to "wrap their mind around" and thus 'harness' their own sense of 'personal' power.

        The philosophies expressed in the Celestine Prophecies, say that the need for these parameters is based on a need for 'polarity', which , for them, can only exist by having a sense of superiority.

        In other words "I cannot be 'good', unless someone else is 'bad', or I cannot be rewarded unless someone else is 'punished' for how else would I measure my level of "deserving"?

        Unfortunately you are correct that the "rubber meets the road" when you have argued as far as it can possibly go (above) only to yet again find that the ultimate reason for all of their "absolute" truth is because the "Bible says, and thus it is fact".

        Over time and 'with ever evolving mastery', I have learned to do this:

        "Hey, if that's what you believe, then when I'm with you. If it comforts you to believe that I believe it, then by all means 'be comforted'...you are not gonna see my point anyway. No need for me to annihilate your sense of empowerment, I may as well encourage it".

        You might say I have mastered the art of dealing with my own family that way, while behind the curtain I am working my own kind of magic in their life, on their behalf, in ways that they would never comprehend.

        Hypocrisy? Compromise?

        No. It's not a lack of authenticity.

        It's rather a more highly evolved consciousness that works with you wherever you are at for your own safety and betterment. Being dogmatic is simple mindedness, blissful ignorance. Who am I to steal your bliss?

        Fact is, my truth will never win, because "The Bible says", and in many peoples minds that represents "fact".

        So What do I believe?

        I believe that whatever you believe is true... to "you", and that's ok.

        I believe that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the very "evidence" of things not seen.

        I do believe in God. I believe God is energy, the all that is, the omnipotent source, universal mind substance. If it comforts you to call God a "he", then by all means let's call God a "he".

        Said I'd get off this thread. Sorry, couldn't resist coming back for more. I LOVE the subject of increasing our awareness of universal mind substance in whatever form it presents itself!

        In truth so do all the different religions represented on this thread, they believe they came to argue on the behalf of "Their Interpretation of God" ( a noble motivation indeed).

        However, in my own belief, they are here searching for an opportunity to "see themselves in the mirror of contrast", in an effort to gain a sense of unique identity. For how can we be something if there is no such thing as nothing? By what standard would we measure our "something-ness"?

        The Bible says that there are secrets within man that he cannot even UTTER. Why? I believe that's because it would tear down our collective sense of individuality which is so important in experiencing our self (singular) as an 'identifiable' entity.

        One thing is for sure to me "Love exists", and I love all of you!

        I am that which I am. You are a a part of me that assist's us both in experiencing a "sense" of our self, I love myself, and therefore I love you!

        "With all of thy getting; get understanding".


        Namaste'


        Ps. On a marketing note: What a HHHHHHOOOOOOTTTTT topic this is!!!! While we are debating someone is reading and figuring out a way to capitalize on this!

        Personally, I wouldn't have a clue, the truth is sooo relative that while we can easily disprove one another's theories, who is there that can prove in concrete what the ultimate truth is, and call themselves an authority? We can philosophy at best, and at best this searching is a cool experience! Life is a journey not a destination!
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        • Profile picture of the author Adrian Cooper
          Originally Posted by kadensnga View Post

          Answer to your question: "Because the Bible say's it", and in his mind "that settles it":

          As you can see above, I routinely respond to religious people's arguments by showing that I am as well versed in what "they believe in" , as I am in the things I personally believe in. As you can imagine it still never gets very far.

          It still always ends with the same statement.

          I believe that religious people (Christians and otherwise) 'can' be really great people, however dogmatic, and/or 'misguided'... they operate via the same laws as everyone else does , and some like Joyce Meyers are quite masterful at it.

          Many refuse to be open to the fact that "yes", their power comes from source energy, but "no" that does not make their belief system superior, or even "correct"!

          Very simply (on the positive side) they have created a set of parameters for themselves which helps them to "wrap their mind around" and thus 'harness' their own sense of 'personal' power.

          The philosophies expressed in the Celestine Prophecies, say that the need for these parameters is based on a need for 'polarity', which , for them, can only exist by having a sense of superiority.

          In other words "I cannot be 'good', unless someone else is 'bad', or I cannot be rewarded unless someone else is 'punished' for how else would I measure my level of "deserving"?

          Unfortunately you are correct that the "rubber meets the road" when you have argued as far as it can possibly go (above) only to yet again find that the ultimate reason for all of their "absolute" truth is because the "Bible says, and thus it is fact".

          Over time and 'with ever evolving mastery', I have learned to do this:

          "Hey, if that's what you believe, then when I'm with you. If it comforts you to believe that I believe it, then by all means 'be comforted'...you are not gonna see my point anyway. No need for me to annihilate your sense of empowerment, I may as well encourage it".

          You might say I have mastered the art of dealing with my own family that way, while behind the curtain I am working my own kind of magic in their life, on their behalf, in ways that they would never comprehend.

          Hypocrisy? Compromise?

          No. It's not a lack of authenticity.

          It's rather a more highly evolved consciousness that works with you wherever you are at for your own safety and betterment. Being dogmatic is simple mindedness, blissful ignorance. Who am I to steal your bliss?

          Fact is, my truth will never win, because "The Bible says", and in many peoples minds that represents "fact".

          So What do I believe?

          I believe that whatever you believe is true... to "you", and that's ok.

          I believe that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the very "evidence" of things not seen.

          I do believe in God. I believe God is energy, the all that is, the omnipotent source, universal mind substance. If it comforts you to call God a "he", then by all means let's call God a "he".

          Said I'd get off this thread. Sorry, couldn't resist coming back for more. I LOVE the subject of increasing our awareness of universal mind substance in whatever form it presents itself!

          In truth so do all the different religions represented on this thread, they believe they came to argue on the behalf of "Their Interpretation of God" ( a noble motivation indeed).

          However, in my own belief, they are here searching for an opportunity to "see themselves in the mirror of contrast", in an effort to gain a sense of unique identity. For how can we be something if there is no such thing as nothing? By what standard would we measure our "something-ness"?

          The Bible says that there are secrets within man that he cannot even UTTER. Why? I believe that's because it would tear down our collective sense of individuality which is so important in experiencing our self (singular) as an 'identifiable' entity.

          One thing is for sure to me "Love exists", and I love all of you!

          I am that which I am. You are a a part of me that assist's us both in experiencing a "sense" our self, I love myself, and therefore I love you!

          "With all of thy getting; get understanding".


          Namaste'


          Ps. On a marketing note: What a HHHHHHOOOOOOTTTTT topic this is!!!! While we are debating someone is reading and figuring out a way to capitalize on this!

          Personally, I wouldn't have a clue, the truth is sooo relative that while we can easily disprove one another's theories, who is there that can prove in concrete what the ultimate truth is, and call themselves an authority? We can philosophy at best, and at best this searching is a cool experience! Life is a journey not a destination!
          I am well versed in the Bible as well and often quote it to religious people to illustrate my point.

          I also teach the inner meanings of the Bible.

          As for the Ultimate truth?

          Well have written a best selling, 560 page paperback book on the subject, which, according to the reviewers on Amazon is the ultimate guide to the truth, so I guess that is close.

          There is ultimately only one truth however - known only by the Supreme Intelligence of which we are expressions, an truth people will only know at the end of the path and unity with Source Mind is achieved once again.

          Actually this is the true meaning of "Lucifer".

          Lucifer is the Ego Mind that separated from Source Mind to incarnate on Earth and other planets. So everyone is Lucifer.

          It is the ultimate object of Ego Mind to reunite with Source Mind and the circle will be complete.
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          • Profile picture of the author John Durham
            Originally Posted by apc01 View Post

            I am well versed in the Bible as well and often quote it to religious people to illustrate my point.

            I also teach the inner meanings of the Bible.

            As for the Ultimate truth?

            Well have written a best selling, 560 page paperback book on the subject, which, according to the reviewers on Amazon is the ultimate guide to the truth, so I guess that is close.

            There is ultimately only one truth however - known only by the Supreme Intelligence of which we are expressions, an truth people will only know at the end of the path and unity with Source Mind is achieved once again.
            Hello friend, something told me you couldn't resist.

            A: I shall no doubt check out that book. Always open to learning deeper meanings of the Bible.

            B: I am positive that the Ultimate truth is greater than we can comprehend (you can have knowledge without fully comprehending it)

            C: It would make my journey alot less exciting if I felt that my search for truth could not be rewarded till death.

            D: On the other hand it is also exciting to think there is great enlightenment to come on the other side. Hopefully that equals greater bliss.

            Didnt know you had written that book by the way when I said "Who can call themselves an authority on the ultimate truth..."

            Purely coincidence. Seriously. Almost spooky. Must have something to do with being tuned into the frequency of "collective consciousness".

            Do you agree?

            Another example of collective consciousness that I noticed today: The very same day Jeremy Kelsall posted a thread about duplicate content penalties being a myth, another guy (newby) posted a thread about how he copied and pasted clickbank product descriptions into a web page (having never marketed anything before) and began instantly receiving traffic and sales..., and suddenly others chimed in and said they had recently discovered the same things...

            The strange thing about it was that they all discovered it at the same time, and independently of one another, nor with anyone teaching them. Totally "out of the blue" these things started popping up simultaneously.

            Not to overly mystify, but I immediately said "That is collective consciousness" in action. I could see a new stage of IM evolution occurring before my eyes as I read.
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            • Profile picture of the author Adrian Cooper
              Originally Posted by kadensnga View Post

              Hello friend, something told me you couldn't resist.

              A: I shall no doubt check out that book. Always open to learning deeper meanings of the Bible.

              B: I am positive that the Ultimate truth is greater than we can comprehend (you can have knowledge without fully comprehending it)

              C: It would make my journey alot less exciting if I felt that my search for truth could not be rewarded till death.

              D: On the other hand it is also exciting to think there is great enlightenment to come on the other side. Hopefully that equals greater bliss.

              Didnt know you had written that book by the way when I said "Who can call themselves an authority on the ultimate truth..."

              Purely coincidence. Seriously. Almost spooky. Must have something to do with being tuned into the frequency of "collective consciousness".

              Do you agree?

              Another example of collective consciousness that I noticed today: The very same day Jeremy Kelsall posted a thread about duplicate content penalties being a myth, another guy (newby) posted a thread about how he copied and pasted clickbank product descriptions into a web page made (having never marketed anything before) and began instantly receiving traffic and sales..., and suddenly others chimed in and said they had recently discovered the same things...

              The strange thing about it was that they all discovered it at the same time, and independently of one another, or anyone teaching them. Totally "out of the blue" these things started popping up simutaneously.

              Not to overly mystify, but I immediately said "That is collective consciousness" in action. I could see a new stage of IM evolution occurring before my eyes as I read.
              PM me for the details about my book. Read the Amazon reviews.

              It is not about the Bible - it is about reality.

              At the end of my book I tell readers that what I have written I know to be true - I am "well connected" - but each person must find their own truth. My book is a guide.

              We will all know the ultimate truth eventually, but Earth is only the first tentative step on the path. The first year at kindergarten.
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              • Profile picture of the author John Durham
                PM sent. Looking forward to reply.
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  • Profile picture of the author saintemp
    No way is the LOA the same or on par with God. The LOA is a secular version of having the faith that Jesus talked about in Mk 11:24. The Science of Getting Rich (upon which the Secret is based) puts it in a secular way i.e. no mention about 'prayer', 'faith' or 'God'. But I personally believe in prayer, faith and God more than I do the LOA and Secret.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
      I think the Secret is more based off of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It is just a modernized version to help people in our time understand his principles. Na poleon Hill clearly believes in God, or a higher power. I think God, and the Law of Attraction kind of go hand in hand. Both of them preach some of the same concepts...the main one being faith.
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  • Profile picture of the author AwesomePossum
    I believe they are the same thing just used in different ways.
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  • Profile picture of the author veeco
    I highly disagree when those teachers in the secret tell us that we are "Gods" (in the chapter "the secret of you")... it's a big NO NO to me...
    Signature

    i work on web consultant and creative agency in indonesia..

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  • Profile picture of the author chayil
    I believe they are different. And i agree God created the law of attraction.

    The law of attraction is basically extracted from the bible. In Proverbs 23:7, it states as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. If someone focus on the positive, he will get positive results. And the like for negative results.

    We live in a world. universe govern by laws i.e. law of gravity. Though one cannot just depend on law of attraction and say, " I will float and fly when i jump down a building..."

    In the law of attraction, we are just using laws that God created, laws that relate to our brain waves - our thinking. So before things manifest in its physical form, it must first exists in the form of thought. God Himself too, when He created the world, first thought then spoke. So there's power in thinking and words.
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  • Profile picture of the author AwesomePossum
    I don't think many people fully grasp underlying principles.

    God created the law of attraction but the fact of the matter is if we're still here, he is.
    When we tap into our subconscious(and ultimately the superconscious(god!) are tapping into god's resources if that makes any sense. It would be foolish to say that god doesn't have any power over us; this concept then would indicate that we always have a connection with him that we can learn to tap into at will.(This isn't just the concept of manifestation. It's deeper. But ultimitely this is the power we tap into with the law of attracion. If it's not god, it's certainly a higher source of power.)

    The Law of Attraction isn't just about changing into your thoughts but tapping into the resources that God provides to every individual. This gets lost in translation through all of the hype that surrounds this law. That's why I believe they are the same thing, they are just used in a different manner.
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  • Profile picture of the author wemakeiteasy
    God is in everything, and everyone. So yes, God is the law of attraction
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  • Profile picture of the author joedwi1
    God is the creator and we are is god creature remember that
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  • Profile picture of the author f4ll3rs
    I think the Law of Attraction is a way to let God knows that we want the things we want so bad. We want it so much that we keep thinking about it.
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  • Profile picture of the author retirein12
    What is to compare? You cannot compare God to anything. All I will say is he is God!
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  • Profile picture of the author Geenius
    Originally Posted by ryanmacca View Post

    Are God and 'The Secret' competing for who is Lord of all.

    There is a quote in the secret that the law of attraction has been called many things, Guardian Angel, Higher Self, God.

    But I disagree.

    God and The Law of Attraction are not one and the same.

    God created the universe and all the laws that govern it. He created the law of gravity, and the law of interia. He also created the Law of Attraction.

    God created the Secret, they are not the same thing.

    The Law of Attraction is just a law that exists because God created it. Just because it appears to be a supernatural law doesn't mean that it is on par with God.

    Let me know your views
    Wow, that is so profound. I never actually thought of it like that.

    As a christian and beliver in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, ive always been a bit confused as to how the two correlate or if they are indeed competing as 'The Lord of All'

    Thanx for that post Ryan.
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    • Profile picture of the author nickb
      I like what Ryan had to say. God is the alpha and omega.
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  • Profile picture of the author Andrew Davis
    Hi everyone,

    The Secret = The Law of Believing.
    It is already written and repeated so many times in the Bible.

    ---------------------------------------------------

    Mark 11: 23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

    Mark 11: 24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. [KJV]

    ---------------------------------------------------

    In many cases in the Bible, the Law of Believing is mentioned.

    TO BELIEVE:

    Positive VS Negative

    Confidence VS Doubt

    Trust VS Worry

    Faith VS Fear

    BELIEVING VS UNBELIEF

    ---------------------------------------------------

    There is no (God vs. 'The Secret')

    God is above All,
    he Created 'The Secret', it is just another one of his Laws of Life.

    All the best to everyone!
    -Andrew
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  • Profile picture of the author tylerdrun
    I don't think GOD created any of these laws. I think that God is under a personal obligation to obey these laws. These laws have no beginning or end. They are just there waiting to be discovered.

    God has to ensure that these laws are followed. That's why we have Avatars, Messiahs coming down to the planet... The laws in order of their power:
    Law of Karma (Physical Action)
    Law of Attraction (Thoughts And The Mind)
    Law of Gratitude(The Soul)
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  • Profile picture of the author Mary McLean
    Wow,
    This is a great thread, thanks to everyone contributing!

    I found a beautiful custom when in Nepal a few yrs ago, to climb the Himalayas.
    The custom was for the Nepalese people to greet you by putting their hands together in front of them & bow to their heart level & say..."Namastee" which means...I bow to the God in you"
    It is the most beautiful expression of love & gentle respect for the soul of man I have ever seen or experienced & that has huge impact on me in regards to this debate...

    Exactly Who or What is your "GOD"?

    See me & you see my God...
    see a.......??? & you see their God...

    Interesting

    Thanks again for this immortal debate!

    In closing...An ex Russian President once said..."I'm an atheist, thank God!"

    Kindest,
    Mary/Poppie
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  • Profile picture of the author KrisMainieri
    WOW !!!! - This is an amazing post !!! - I love the topic and the energy here. Thanks to the original poster for stirring the pot on the WF. Below my humble view on this topic.

    I sincerely believe that is a person wants to follow the tenets of Christianity and simultaneously use the Law of Attraction, he must recognize the Law of Attraction as one small component in a larger body of Christian teachings.

    Reconciliation should be for all of us a very personal journey.

    In his service and at yours,

    Kris
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  • Profile picture of the author Mo Goulet
    This is a huge subject but I will try to keep it as simple as I can here. You can read a more detailed explanation on my blog at www.TheSecreFog.com

    The natural laws of the Universe were established after the destruction of the first earth. When that occurred we do not know.

    In the replenishing period, God established the principles of Quantum physics for the Universe we are now experiencing. This is stated as "Let there be light" in the bible.

    All natural laws fall into this "yin yang" category. I was a balance system which gives all soul life a fair ground with which to live in an alien world (This world is alien to our natural environment).

    You create your existing world by the thoughts you hold in your sub-conscious mind. The outer mind with which you and I have daily control over is the vehicle with which we program or in most cases, reprogram the inner man.

    This law was and is what the bible refers to as "The tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil"

    Unfortunately the immortals who were placed here to begin the replenishing, chose to believe the lie and made the decision that ultimately placed all mankind in an environment where we could not walk and live by the immortal principles that are higher than the laws of "Physics". The replenishing of the life that was planned in Eden was held in abeyance until mankind could be purchased back from the deceiver who convinced the immortals placed in Eden that they could be equal to God and live their lives according to their senses.

    It took over 4000 years for a woman to be born into the senses world who believed to conceive a super-natural child who would be called the "Son of God".

    This child grew to sacrifice his life to redeem mankind and 50 days after he was raised back to life, God returned to mankind the immortal status and a new spirit which in reality is Christ in each and every believer.

    The ability to put on the new mind of the spirit is possible as people change their thought pattern to the truth of what the bible calls the Gospel of grace.

    All religions that look to mankind and/or religious laws and not to the completed works of Christ and the benefits of his completed works are founded on the same lie of Eden.

    The higher law of the mind of Christ is over the law of attraction.

    Does the law of attraction work? Absolutely

    Can it raise someone from the dead? NO

    Can the mind of Christ who is living in this world raise the dead? Yes

    Can the secret and the law of attraction help you? Absolutely. Simply replace "I can" with "I can through Christ..." Start claiming what is yours by birthright. The deception is remarkably close to the truth yet it can keep a believer from truly living in the glory that Christ made available.

    The Tree of Knowledge is once again being offered in these last days before the return of the Christ. (Love the Lord of the rings trilogy).

    Every man and woman has the opportunity to choose what is truth.

    1 Timothy 2: 4, 5 is the truth.

    Christ asked Peter who he thought he (Jesus) was.

    Peter's answer was the foundation of this truth in Matt 16: 16

    People either believe it or not. When you see a church, ask who the builder is?

    Those who are called of God Will believe these words, those who are not, can't.

    1Corinthians 2: 14 tells us..But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

    Revelation 1:3 tells us..Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.

    Join me at my blog

    The Secret Fog Of Religious Deception
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  • Profile picture of the author Phillips Pierce
    I do not believe in God yet I believe in the secret. That should be an adequate answer enough.
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  • Profile picture of the author travlinguy
    With over 200 posts in this thread I'm sure this has been covered but I'll keep it short: God Is The Secret. Earl Nightingale put it in very simple terms about 60 years ago with his essay titled, The Strangest Secret. That is: you become what you think about. It doesn't get any simpler than that and no matter what any analytical, smart-ass know-it-all has to say, it's the truth!
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    • Profile picture of the author Mary McLean
      Thanks Proapc!

      For your beautifully written article.

      I guess it's all about if one is aware or not!

      The sun is made to shine on all.

      How good is that Love?

      Yup, I believe because it's easier to experience true peace and for me, IT works!

      Thanks again,
      Kindest,
      Mary/Poppie
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  • Profile picture of the author MelanieandMiles
    God is....


    The Law of Attraction is...

    I am that, I am.
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  • Profile picture of the author Nicholas Kemp
    There is no major difference. God is an external focus to release us of responsibility and to make life easier for people. People feel they can find answers in God, when really they should be looking within themselves. Also, the God concept makes it easier for people to be be controlled and manipulated.

    The secret is also an external concept that suggests can attract fortune, success in an idea or concept we can't really define. That is why they called it the "secret".

    There is no God, but the belief in God or a God works for some people. The secret and God are about belief. Belief is very powerful.

    I feel an internal focus and the control of your mind will bring you more understanding about life and the meaning of love.
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    • Profile picture of the author MarketingZen
      Good thread, only had chance to scan through but my thoughts...

      Everything Is Energy (God, Man , The Stars) We are all made of the same stuff, hence why it is said we where made in gods image, we are god.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mo Goulet
        Originally Posted by Labno View Post

        Good thread, only had chance to scan through but my thoughts...

        Everything Is Energy (God, Man , The Stars) We are all made of the same stuff, hence why it is said we where made in gods image, we are god.
        AHH...That's the rub...Look in the mirror. Do You see yourself or the physical manifestation of the body that is currently housing the real you?
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  • Profile picture of the author Mary McLean
    "AHH...That's the rub...Look in the mirror. Do You see yourself or the physical manifestation of the body that is currently housing the real you?...ProApc Quote"

    I'm being a bit crude here in response to the above quote.....but James Ray says...:Oh, this meat tent"
    ...

    Love this saying though...
    "See me...See my God"
    I think that's the pure essence of it all.
    Regardless of what or how we believe, there are some basic truths while ever we are on this human level.
    Jump off a building...
    You'll always go down!
    Basic truth.
    You can say that you don't believe in the Law of Gravity, but you'll still go doooooown...fast!

    Mary/Poppie
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  • Profile picture of the author mogulmap
    God created the Law of attraction!
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    Rus Sells says...
    Your signature is all that matters!
    and
    Cat's = PROFIT"S
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  • Profile picture of the author USGTMauthor
    I am writing a new article on the Secret and the LOA. The LOA definitions in the books about it make no sense. In one place they will say things such as like attracts like but what they really mean is thoughts attract the thing. The first statement is different. We are humans so we attract humans ok. But thoughts of money attract money? Again this contradicts. Thoughts of money are not money anymore than thoughts of steak are steak. The LOA people have gone so far as to say sick people attracted their sickness. Quite frankly I think the LOA is BS and has taken a great book in the Science of Getting Rich, which is a book about action and turned it into new age babble. There is no proof of the LOA.

    Now onto god. If there is a god that still does not mean you can not take responsibility for yourself and take action toward your goal. Most religions promote the concepts of self responsibility and in fact the author of the SOGR was a preacher. Great debate
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  • Profile picture of the author Danny_C
    Until I can find at least a single shred of evidence (or even logic) to support either God or the Law of Attraction, I'll just rely my my own personal power to change the world around me by doing things and creating things.
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  • Profile picture of the author Danny_C
    Black Magick: I'm sorry, but your argument about the reason prayer works has one problem: prayer doesn't work. Several years ago a man wanted to prove the power of prayer, so he setup a large experiment in which there were three groups:

    Group 1: Randomly selected terminally ill people were prayed for by massive amounts of church goers during service, and the patients were not told they were being prayed for.

    Group 2: This group of terminally ill patients was also prayed for, and they were told (to find out if maybe knowing they were being prayed for would help them survive).

    Group 3: These people were not prayed for on this massive scale.

    The results were that Group 1 and Group 3 had statistically identical mortality rates, demonstrating that prayer has no intrinsic power - no "vibrations" that resonate with the universe. Group 2 was even more surprising - their mortality rate increased - to the surprise of believers and skeptics alike. The theory is that when you tell a person that everyone is praying for them, and it raises their fear level, and in turn they have a higher chance of dying from the illness.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mr. Subtle
      Originally Posted by Black Magick View Post

      There was an experiment conducted a while ago where a guy took some really ill people and gave them a pill that he told them was a cure to their illnesses. Little did these people know, these were sugar pills. These people took these pills and for a while, and began believing they were cured. They lived happily as if they were actually cured. Then when they went to be examined for illness -- THEY WERE GONE! Only thing the doctor did was gave them sugar pills. But the fact that they believed they were cured and felt great, that caused them to be cured.
      Please post a link to the scientific journal this study appeared in.
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    • Profile picture of the author Snypa
      Originally Posted by Ken_Caudill View Post

      A number of other studies show that prayer does work. Look them up for yourself.

      Prayers are always answered. Sometimes the answer is no.

      There are a number of rational, logical arguments for the existence of God.

      Those, too, are readily available for anyone who cares to look for them.
      Really, there are? Let's see them. Fundamental brain change when closing your eyes and thinking of something up in the sky isn't proof that there is some higher being. While I do give it credit that it provokes atleast some form of brain change but only within limited concepts. Let's break this down..

      Prayer/Meditation is simply finding the "higher being" in YOURSELF. Taoism practiced this many years ago and still do, to this day. It has nothing to do with a higher power but only your improvement of your OWN perception of reality, ridding the world of your inherent perceptions and stripping away your materialistic possessions.

      This is the purpose of meditation, it's not to connect to a higher being. It's to rid yourself of the ego and contemplate on things without a biased opinion. This lets you see and examine the world in a completely different light.

      This is brain change, similar brain change scans were found in people who pray. The correlation here is that with or WITHOUT a god this brain change occurs.

      Atheists meditate on religion to clearly analyze it without a biased opinion. Does this make them religious? I'm sure the same brain scans were found to be true with these group of atheists. Maybe someone will do an experiment with this, their might be one already.

      Praying and meditation are ALMOST the same thing, however - when people pray it's usually for support of something and it involves the ego which completely misses the point and also at the mercy of some "higher being" they know nothing about. How can someone live with such flawed concepts of logic?

      Praying, in my opinion is detrimental BECAUSE of this and it's perception and what people automatically assume about it but that involves a whole separate philosophical debate involving the destruction of our language system and how we incorrectly categorize ideas / perceptions based on our limited language.

      Who knows, there is a possibility that there IS a god who created everything.

      All we really know however is that we must exist because we have thoughts, these thoughts come from something. I think therefore I am. Descartes hit it spot on.

      We DON'T know how we arrived to be where we are today. Nobody knows, so when people automatically say there's a god without any empirical evidence whatsoever.

      Which brings you to another question, what is "evidence". We base and structure our ideas through a limited view set, a limited language system and a very categorizing brain uses those foundation sets to provoke different ideas.

      Evidence, to us is OUR perception of how our brain takes sense data (thanks Bertrand Russell) and applies it to predefined concepts. We use systems like mathematics and biology and science to try and figure out OUR perception as humans what the world is. What if we were to entirely use a different set of measurements where would we be to this day?

      I think language and the above concepts completely distort our view of what is REALLY real.

      When you think of the word "drugs" for example. People completely disregard the notion that prescription drugs are in this category. Same goes with Nicotine and Alcohol. The common person tends to define drugs as "marijuana, extacy, heroin, mescaline, LSD, etc" but forget that if you're thinking of drugs as anything that's mind altering then the very food that we eat are considered drugs. This is why language has issues.

      Because we have a categorizing brain that inherently uses those predefined limits such as language, and a flawed perception of "right and wrong" we automatically without even thinking categorize drugs into this "wrong" category. This is the result of a government abusing language to set standards for a society. It's really genius when you break it down, but sad really.

      Which brings us to our final question, what is "prayer"?

      I know I completely went on an abstract journey detailing all of this. But alot of these epistemological questions arise when the notion of "God" comes into play because those philosophical questions are much deeper than a "God" in the sky and the mathematics and science we use to explain our own perceptions of reality.

      I hope this atleast provoked some form of brain change.
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  • Profile picture of the author Colin Palfrey
    This is a very interesting thread, and the sort of long read I love.

    I think the reason in my opinion that the L of A works, is because of the connection we still have to god. The universe wasn't made of mars bars so I assume it was made of himself.

    In my opinion which is all I am giving, the L of A works because it is that part of us that is suggesting to the universe the intended change.

    Obviously this is just personal opinion, but I have had a lot of success with manipulating the world around me by reaching for the part of me that is still connected. Unfortunately the more you talk about this subject the more people think you are mad, so its better I feel just to work at making the world better without talking about it too much.

    Cheers,
    Colin Palfrey
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
    I feel that God created all.

    That being said, God is in harmony with the law of attraction. God - like the LOA - does not judge. The One Force is absolute, just like nature. The LOA behaves very much like God but is probably not the same thing. But who knows for sure? God


    Ryan
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    • Profile picture of the author Mr. Subtle
      Originally Posted by ryanbiddulph View Post

      That being said, God is in harmony with the law of attraction. God - like the LOA - does not judge. The One Force is absolute, just like nature. The LOA behaves very much like God but is probably not the same thing.
      YHWH doesn't judge? Yet another who hasn't read the old testament.

      MYTH + MYTH ≠ TRUTH
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  • Profile picture of the author Colin Palfrey
    Hi Black Magic,

    There have been many studies carried out like you described above, and yes it does work provided they think they are getting real medicine.

    It is actually chalk they use as that is the base for most pills anyway. It is called a "Placebo" if anyone does want to look it up.

    Cheers,
    Colin Palfrey
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  • Profile picture of the author wiscrown
    Originally Posted by ryanmacca View Post

    Are God and 'The Secret' competing for who is Lord of all.

    There is a quote in the secret that the law of attraction has been called many things, Guardian Angel, Higher Self, God.

    But I disagree.

    God and The Law of Attraction are not one and the same.

    God created the universe and all the laws that govern it. He created the law of gravity, and the law of interia. He also created the Law of Attraction.

    God created the Secret, they are not the same thing.

    The Law of Attraction is just a law that exists because God created it. Just because it appears to be a supernatural law doesn't mean that it is on par with God.

    Let me know your views
    Actually "The Secret" is Love. Not a human love but Divine Love. Rhonda Byrne admitted it on Oprah's show.

    The creator created all the laws, yes.
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  • Profile picture of the author IM Listing
    as for as the title goes I do not believe in God versus the secret I believe God is the secret he is hidden within each and every one of us and it is up to us to find out where he is and what he represents to us.
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  • Profile picture of the author wendymay1
    Heavenly Father created the universe and all that exist. We are his children. All goodness comes from him,even a positive mental attitude towards others is a characteristic from him.
    The secret is a positive book for those who may not want to read the bible. The Secret is a pattern that brings our minds in a more understanding threshold next to a spiritual understanding.
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  • What many call LOA today was just good old fashioned "faith" back in the day. They're not mutually exclusive.
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  • Profile picture of the author vivifoster
    i read the secret and i actually got disappointed. i was looking for a better boost and that book didn't provide it for me.

    with you dillema, law of attraction and god are definitely not the same not even close. i guess, for the non believers, law of attraction is more worthwhile of an idea but in my case i believe that it can be furthered by god.

    we can never take everything for its literal meaning, convert it to what you believe in. but never forget to keep your mind open. with this, i hope we all grow to be better each day.
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  • Profile picture of the author ivanadee
    It's just about the perception.
    To me personally, I just assume that "the universe" in "The Secret" is God.
    Just take the good things and it will be fine
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    • I don't comment much on the forums....I usually just like to read but today I feel like commenting on this subject.

      I don't really know much about the religious aspect of things even though I went to church as a child up till about 15. I never really bought into it I guess.

      Instead...I believe we all have a supreme inner force. Not really sure if it's our mind, heart and blood working together but I do know as a now 39 year old man that I have felt it many times.

      Many of you may chuckle but I'm sure some of you will know what I'm talking about.

      There are certain days in life where you absolutely know you could conquer the world if you wanted to and feel as powerful as an ox. Everything makes sense and your life has clarity. Then there are other days when you feel like a weak and small insignificant statistic.

      For humans...harnessing our inner force seems to be the problem.

      It obviously has much to do with exercise, proper nutrients(food) and meditation. I should preface that statement by saying that I'm no doctor and certainly not as health conscious as I could be.

      However, more likely than not, this is why the mega wealthy such as Madonna, Clooney, Trump and many others focus on those 3 areas.

      Some call it eccentricity.

      I say it makes perfect sense!

      We know that our blood is the lifeline because it carries nutrients but it also carries oxygen to the brain and heart. The more oxygen those components get.... the stronger, smarter, faster and more powerful we become.

      I guess what I'm really trying to say is that we just might be our own Gods and instead of talking to a greater presence above it may serve some of us better to talk to our self.

      and furthermore....take any and all necessary steps to condition the mind and the heart which equals the soul.

      As I get older and occasionally wiser I've learned that I control much more in life than I thought I did.

      Just my thoughts....I know there will be disagreement.
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