The Law of Attraction (What is It + Is it Real?)
The Law of Attraction has gained popularity since Rhonda Byrne released The Secret book and documentary in the early 2000s, but the Law of Attraction has been a part of human thought since at least Ancient Greece found within the philosophy of Hermeticism with the principle that “like attracts like.”
The New Thought movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries has significantly shaped our contemporary understanding of the Law of Attraction, but it was the 2006 introduction that made the Law of Attraction easiest to understand and a popular concept to the masses.
What is the Law of Attraction?
The Law of Attraction is the idea that like attracts like. More specifically, the Law of Attraction states that your thoughts shape your reality because what you think about is what you attract to yourself. The basic components of the Law of Attraction are as follows:
Thoughts Become Things
What You Believe is What Manifests
Emotions Matter: You Attract What You Feel
In sum, the Law of Attraction posits that thoughts become things and that thoughts carry a vibrational frequency or emotion. If you choose to think about negative things and feel negatively, you believe in a negative outcome, and it manifests, and you necessarily attract more of it to you. Likewise, if you choose to think about positive things and feel positively, you believe in a positive outcome, and it manifests, and you attract more of it you.
Is the Law of Attraction Real?
The Law of Attraction, like most religions and philosophies, is a matter of belief. It seems to be universally true that beliefs are the keys to a particular world view and that we project what we believe out into reality and thus experience reality through the lens of our worldview.
Additionally, the Law of Attraction does have the support of science in the sense that it focuses on the vibration you emit. As you have probably empirically verified for yourself, oil and water do not mix. The same principle underpins the Law of Attraction: a house divided cannot stand. Put another way, your vibration is either congruent with more of the same vibratory state or your vibration will have to either lower or higher to be incongruence with any given vibratory state, but the truth remains: opposing or contradictory vibrations cannot stand together as the dominant vibration will take over the resonance field. This can occur in the sense of the high vibration working to elevate the vibration of another. It can also occur when a group is of low vibration and a high-vibration person within it gets outcasted, scapegoated, and/or bullied.
