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I’d recently posted my perspectives on Law of Attraction, and how it relates to personal development. To be very honest, I was mentally prepared to take some objections from supporters of Law of Attraction with this decision.

Not surprising, the first comment I’d got was from a support of Law of Attraction; his name is Jack. If you look at the comment thread, you will see that his comment was constructive and offers a different but valid perspective. I also asked Jack for a testimony to support his argument.

Boy, was I surprised, a couple of hours later, to see a comment of 2580 words which contains Jack’s testimony.

I appreciate Jack’s contribution of time and effort. Even though our opinions defer, I feel that the best judgment on this issue should be left to you, the readers to make. Offering a new perspective certainly offers my readers more value; to make an all-rounded judgment for yourself. As such, I wrote to Jack and asked for his permission to publish his testimony as a post, and he gracefully obliged.

Other than correcting some spelling and grammars, I have left Jack’s testimony as-is. Thank you Jack.

JACK’S TESTIMONY OF LAW OF ATTRACTION

Hi, Lawrence, et al,

Sure, I can give you testimony about the “miracles” I’ve experienced. To do it thoroughly enough, I’m afraid, will be a long-winded affair. Before I begin, I’d like to say that, having seen the video of “The Secret,” there was a lot that was annoying about the presentation of the Law of Attraction. I found that amusing: there they were, presenting a very profound idea, but done with all the rank hucksterism of a late night infomercial for a device that would flatten your abs. The whole thing seemed kind of like a scam. I guess what’s important, though, is that it got the message out there….

My experience with the Law of Attraction began in the early 1990’s. There was a recession on at the time and I’d been unemployed for about a year so money was tight in my household. We could only afford red meat for one meal per week, so every Saturday, I’d cook an inexpensive cut of steak. I devised a special charcoal grill that could cook a steak using only 12 charcoal briquets. The briquets were lit by rolled up balls of newspaper. Instead of buying a newspaper, though, I’d use small “Pennysaver” type freebie publications that contained only classified ads.

One evening, I was tearing out sheets and crumpling them into balls to fire the grill. There were pages of “Blue ’88 Camaro, one owner, must sell” ads, selling the usual stuff… and then I ripped out this page of prayers. I looked at the newspaper: there were like five or six pages of prayers. I just cracked up. “What kind of idiots would pay actual money to print a prayer in a classified ad magazine! This is hysterical!” So, I stuffed the sheet I had torn out into my back pocket to look at later for more cynical laughs at the gullibility of my fellow humans.

That night, before going to bed, I remembered the page of prayers. Snickering in anticipation, I started reading the prayers. Some of them were Catholic Novenas (whatever they are) but most of them were this prayer:

Holy Spirit, you solve all problems, you light all roads so I can obtain my goals and fulfill my dreams. You give me the holy gift of forgiveness so I can release all those whom I feel have done me wrong. You are with me in every instant of my eternal life. I, in this short dialog, want to thank you for everything and confirm once more that I never want to feel separated from you, no matter how great material desires may be. I want to be with you in your perpetual peace. Amen. Thank you for your love towards me and my loved ones. Thank you for teaching me that the love I receive is the love I give.

You may say this prayer for three consecutive days without asking your wish. You don't have to understand this; you don't even have to believe in it. All you have to do is say the prayer out loud. After the third day, your wish will be granted, no matter how difficult it may be. When this happens, publish this prayer immediately, without mentioning the favor.

My prayers have been answered.

Then it hit me: all these things represented answered prayers. The people who had paid to publish them did so because their dreams had come true. I found myself utterly confused by this: I had been a programmer, so logic informed everything I did. I knew this had to be nonsense, but the evidence it wasn’t was the fact that these prayers were printed as classified ads, pages of them. Not quite believing but not able to disbelieve —laughing at myself for being an idiot— I said the prayer out loud (cringing with embarrassment) for three days.

Immediately, my unspecified wishes started coming true. The first one was: I was thinking about the first movie Sting was in. “Man, that was a cool gray leather jacket Sting wore. Wish I had one of them.” Here on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, where I live, we have to bring our garbage to the town dump. There’s a section called the “Take It Or Leave It” where people put things that may still have some utility to them. Driving past, I saw a gray leather jacket just hanging there. I put it on: it fit me perfectly.

Bear in mind, this was just an idle thought I’d had about Sting. I didn’t even realize it was connected to that ridiculous prayer. One day I was thinking about how much I like oriental rugs. “I’d like one here in my room. It’d make it feel kind of like a gentleman’s club.” About two days later I was dumping my garbage. A dump truck backed up and dumped out a full load of stuff. When it drove away I pulled out a huge, gorgeous old oriental rug. (I later had it appraised at two thousand dollars.) After a few more of these minor miracles occurred it suddenly struck me: when I would have an idle thought, kind of in the background of my consciousness… the object of that thought would materialize at the dump like three days later. I realized my prayers were being answered… so I published the Prayer to the Holy Spirit on the Internet.

I have probably a hundred or more of these thoughts-that-materialized that I could share, but here are some of my favorites: I had been worrying about a legal action my writing partner and I were trying to start (we were going to sue TriStar Pictures for plagiarism.) I was in a thrift shop and in the back of my mind I was thinking this kind of stream of consciousness deal: “the lawsuit, the suit, suing those bastards that ripped us off, the suit… hey wait a sec, if I’m going to testify in court, I’m going to need a suit, a business suit.” So, I started toward the clothing section of the thrift shop. I took about one step then laughed at myself: “Jeez, you don’t even have a lawyer yet! Also, I don’t think a thrift shop suit is going to cut it, okay?!”

Sure enough, one or two days later I was out at the dump. There in the Take It Or Leave It pile, draped carefully over a piece of furniture, was a beautiful worsted wool gray pinstriped business suit. I took it home: it fit me as though it was tailored to my body. I could hardly believe it.

There were minor “miracles” as well as major ones. It appeared that, as I have read, “there is no order of difficulty in miracles”. That is to say, when relying upon human agency, benefits are commensurate with effort. It’s ten times harder to earn four thousand dollars than four hundred dollars. That only makes sense. However, if there is a transcendental element to the benefit as happens when it is gained by means of “attraction”, four hundred, four thousand or four million dollars are all equally possible. During the tail end of the recession, there were foreclosures here on Nantucket. My wife and I found a house to buy, and the bank was eager to get rid of it; they didn’t seem to care that I was unemployed. It’s a sweet little place, about an eighth of a mile from the ocean, and much nicer than our old house. I knew I had been to the place before; we had come here to a sort of cocktail party. One day, after we had been here for a few years, I was on the front porch, and I remembered our earlier visit. I had dropped my wife off, then parked the car down the street. I walked back, and went up on the front porch. Before going into the house, I stood there and smelled the air. I looked out over the water to a distant little island. I thought to myself, “What a sweet little place. This is the house I should have…..” Evidently, I had set into motion a desire to own that house. It took years to fulfill, but after having recited the Prayer To The Holy Spirit for three days in a row, the house became yet another thing that an idle thought of mine had attracted.

One evening I went to the fish store to get some fish for dinner. I passed a bicycle shop. “Man, I ought to get a mountain bike. I could use the exercise, plus it would be fun.” The next morning, I was throwing out my trash at the town dump. A guy pulled up next to me and threw out an almost brand-new mountain bike.

I picked it up and tied it to the roof of my Subaru. “The thing doesn’t work, ya know,” the guy warned me as he was leaving. I took it back to my house, adjusted the seat, then went for a ride to check it out. Sure enough, the bike wouldn’t shift gears. I looked down, and saw that the chain was rusty! “These damn clueless yuppies! A bike’s chain gets rusty and they throw it out!” I thought. “All this thing needs is a squirt of WD-40.”

I rode down to the little harbor and walked out to the end of the dock. I looked down into the water and there, bobbing up and down, was a can of WD-40. I picked it out of the water, walked back to the bike, squirted the chain and the shifters and the brake cables… and off I rode on a fully functional mountain bike.

So, I went from “I’d like a mountain bike” to “I have a mountain bike” in about twelve hours, then I went from “I need a can of WD-40″ to “I have a can of WD-40″ in, like, five minutes. These minor miracles would be enough to dissuade skepticism, but anybody could argue they were mere coincidence. But consider this: if I’d been riding that bike and happened to see the can of WD-40 on the side of the road five minutes after having the thought that I needed it, that would be cool enough, and still within a reasonable field of mathematical possibilities. But… I walked out onto a dock I had never walked out on before (or since, now that I think about it) and found this can in the water. Time and tide had brought the can to my exact location… and time and tide would have carried it away with equal certainty. That can and I were in the same location together for only the briefest window of time! I would have moved on, and the tide would have carried the can out of the harbor and off into Nantucket Sound. The mathematics of the probabilities involved here are too vast to be mere coincidence.

Consider playing a game of poker. You think to yourself: “Gee, I’d like to win this game. The ante is up to ten thousand dollars.” Five minutes later, the dealer deals you a royal flush. That’s nothing compared to the math of me finding that can. Why? Because if you’re sitting at a card table, it’s only natural that you’d have a thought about winning a game of cards. And even though the odds of you being dealt a royal flush are astronomically high, they’re still fairly reasonable because you’re playing cards, and being dealt cards, and inherent in sequences of cards is the possibility of getting a royal flush.

When I went out on that dock, the odds were I’d find nothing floating there. If I were to find something, there’s an almost infinite number of things I could have found: a floating tire, a fishing lure with a broken leader, a plastic soda bottle, etc. For me to find the exact thing I had thought about was way more improbable than being dealt a royal flush. A more equivalent scenario would be: you think, “Gee, I’d like to win this game. The ante is up to ten thousand dollars.” Five minutes later, you get up and go outside to get a breath of fresh air, stumble over a crumpled paper bag, look inside, and find ten thousand dollars in cash.

Infinitely more important than me getting a bicycle, a leather coat, a business suit, a house, two Stratocasters… (the list is endless) is that by receiving things that I ask for in the back of my mind shows that we live in a rather interesting universe, far more interesting than my rational mind could ever have imagined.

My friend Cody –who had the most nightmarish childhood you could imagine– is a very skeptical person. After six months of watching me get my most idle prayers answered, she finally said, “Okay, I’ll try your stupid prayer. But here’s the deal: I’ve lived on Nantucket for twenty years. I’ve been going to find arrowheads here and have never found a single one. I’ll say the prayer for three days, but I’d better find a damn arrowhead, okay?!!”

“Jeez, Cody, I don’t know if you can ‘place an order’ like that. I don’t think this is a Burger King Drive-Thru window. But hey, what do I know? Try it.”

She said the prayer for three days. Within minutes of finishing saying it the last time, she went out into the woods arrowheading. Fifteen minutes later she found her first arrowhead. She went out the next weekend and found two arrowheads. The next four times she went looking for them, she found arrowheads, spear points, and hide-scrapers. She now had, not just one arrowhead, but a collection of them!

I asked her why finding an arrowhead was so important. She told me that when she was a kid, one of her favorite things was to hop up on her Dad’s lap and have him show her his collection of arrowheads in an old cigar box. When he died, all she wanted of his stuff was that arrowhead collection, but it vanished in the chaos of a dysfunctional family. So, unbeknown to her, her prayer was actually not just to find an arrowhead but to replicate that collection of them which made her feel connected to her father.

So, that really rocked my world. All these minor miracles happening to me just by opening the possibility for them to happen… then seeing that they –and I– were all perfectly choreographed in this beautifully ordered reality, full of intelligence and organization. In other words, full of consciousness. Well, that sure didn’t match my current world view, my belief structure at the time. The only logical conclusion was: my belief structure must be wrong and I must be wrong about everything I thought I understood. So, I scrapped my belief structure. Scrapped the whole thing. And what a relief it was, too! –to realize that I didn’t truly understand a blessed thing about reality. Apparently, we can function perfectly well in a state of near ignorance.

I apologize for the wordiness of this post. A better writer could’ve expressed it all in a paragraph or two. Just for clarity, my sharing this story is not intended to convince anybody of anything. I hardly think my reality is any more valid than the next person’s.

Thanks for your indulgence.

—Jack

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