I didn’t know how hard to click on this topic. In my head, I’m going “Yes! Yes it does!”

I don’t like the law of attraction teaching in its modern, popular form. Yes, you can say it goes back to the Buddha, but I think that actually, if you looked closely, you’d see that the Buddha was saying something quite different.

You can’t control thoughts. Even people who don’t suffer from OCD (Hi! I don’t suffer from OCD! Yay!) can have persistent, horrible, unwanted thoughts (Hi! On bad days, I can’t stop thinking about what it would feel like to have fish-hooks stuck in my flesh. It’s not very nice!). If you have this trait, and you truly believe in the Law of Attraction, you’ll be pouring a heap of misery out over yourself, because the more you fight thoughts like these, the more tenacious they become. (Hi! I’ve tried this. And I’m damn glad I knew the law of attraction for the tripe it was when I first saw it! Yay me!)

Another problem with the Law of Attraction is that it blames people for their misery. I once read a blog comment thread where a “brave, anonymous individual” talked about the horrible guilt and dread she feels about her brushes with cancer. What had she done to bring this on herself? How could she stay positive, knowing the cancer might come back? What if the terrible thought habits she had when she was younger had left her ruined for life?

She was a healthy woman, all that had happened was that some suspicious tissue had to be removed from inside her mouth. But she was killing herself over it. And the worst thing was that no one in the avalanche of encouragement that followed in that thread dared to say: Honey, you did nothing to bring cancer on yourself. Shit sometimes happens, rain falls on the just and unjust. And it’s not your thoughts that made you sick, it was a natural disease process. You are healthy now. Please live well while you are well, and know that disease and death are a natural part of life.

Instead, one after another, the commenters shared they, too, felt guilty about the negative thoughts they had. They, too, found fear to be inescapable, and heaped fear on top of fear because they believed their fears would come true if they didn’t stop directing their focus there. These people were all making themselves miserable because they believed in the law of attraction.

The law of attraction is bad teaching. It makes you miserable and then blames you for it. I will have nothing to do with it and would invite all of you who like it as a teaching to consider that perhaps, it isn’t really the key to how the universe works and perhaps, taken to its logical conclusions, it’s a cruel teaching incompatible with compassion.