The Law Of Attraction inaction

Some of my online pals and I were having an email discussion the other day, and my friend Tony was giving me some facetious advice about how I needed to put the Law Of Attraction to work in my life.

"Hey, Mister, don't tell ME about the Law Of Attraction," I replied. "I, sir, am the Law Of Attraction in action. And I have pictorial proof."

Which, indeed, I do. This past Sunday our dear friends Bill and Kathleen, in an effort to get us out of the house and cheer us up after a very bad week, took Ron and me on an outing. We went to Houston’s wonderful Museum of Natural Science, which includes the Cockrell Butterfly Center, a three-story glass tower with a rainforest stocked with hundreds of live butterflies.

I wore a bright orange sun dress with a butterfly pattern, and I'd only been at the butterfly center a few minutes when I attracted a stowaway who didn't want to leave. Even when a small child crouched down and tried to touch the butterfly (which I didn’t allow), my new friend wouldn’t budge. Ron and I finally had to shake it off (the butterfly, not the kid), fearing that perhaps the insect might be scoping out an egg-laying site. "Sorry, pal, we're not zoned for butterfly reproduction," I said. "Don’t let the phony butterflies fool ya."

But I was secretly pleased with my ability to attract my visitor. It's all in knowing how to dress, apparently. Or not dress, if I’m to believe the Rev. "Maybe if I wear a sun dress with dollar signs all over it I'll attract wealth beyond belief!" I wrote to my email pen-pal group, which includes Ron. To which Ron, ever the wag, replied, "And if you wear nothing at all, you will attract nothingness – the one true Source of the stillness that is the essence of enlightenment." Knowing Ron's digital camera is never far from his side, I elected to ignore the suggestion.

Amazingly enough, the LOA just kept working as the week wore on, and I didn't have to take any further action. Who says you have to "take action" to make things happen? With that single butterfly experience I attracted (or did I manifest?) a CSI New York episode that incorporated butterflies and a butterfly center! Furthermore, "butterflies" was the answer to the CSI:Q multiple-choice contest that week. And I could have won that contest! Except I didn’t enter because I am the last person on the planet who doesn’t know how to text! Still, I was pretty proud of myself for attracting (or manifesting) that episode on CSI New York .

* * * * *

Speaking of my friend Tony, he also alerted me to a cute comic about LOA and The Secret, which someone copied and pasted into a discussion forum. The discussion that follows the cartoon is also pretty interesting. (The comic, by the way, is based in part upon Michael Shermer's article in the June 2007 Skeptic, "The (Other) Secret: The inverse square law trumps the law of attraction.")

And then my pal Rob at Lesmania sent me this link, which is obviously targeted to the Scientist Bobs and others who have so passionately embraced quantum physics.

Finally, my friend Chris at Mystic Bourgeoisie sent me a funny review appearing on the Amazon page for an apparently out-of-print book called Ask and You Shall Receive: The Promise Has Become Real! by Mary Anne Thomas. ("Availability: Currently unavailable.") The apparently facetious reviewer wrote:

Those of us who are spiritual people know that it is a spiritual thing to receive. A lot of spiritual self-help literature seems to focus on finding peace or your place in the world, but getting things is sometimes under-represented. Apparently receiving is simply a matter of having the "courage" and "insight" to realise that desire for things is God-given. This is gratifying for spiritual people like myself, who already know what a wonderful thing it is to receive, or be given, things. All you need is to want them, and then ask for them. This proactive stance gives us more power over our own lives by catering to our desires, and spirituality is the winner! There are not many pages in this book, though, so I don't feel as if I've received as much as I might have. This book therefore receives 3 stars from me.

It's amazing, isn't it, how I attracted all of those emails within a few days?

And that’s it for now as I slowly get back up to speed, snark-wise. More soon.

PS ~ Here's what that unimpeachable source of misinformation, Uncyclopedia, has to say about The Secret.