Reality is Created by Actions, Not Thoughts!

Question: 

‘Hi Roger, I read something the other day about the Law of Attraction, which basically states: you attract what you think about. What’s your view of this?’

An interesting question, which gives me the opportunity to talk about a contentious issue – that being the counterproductive influence of New Age notions. I can only hope that in what follows as I type, an answer of a kind will make itself evident.

The ‘law of attraction’ is the name given to the belief that, by focusing on positive or negative thoughts, one can bring about positive or negative results in ones physical reality. Proponents of this theory use a hotchpotch of orphaned facts from quantum physics to sell the idea that consciously driven thinking will directly ‘manifest’ as physical events. Of course, this inevitably leads to the buying of books and CD’s to teach you how to do it – and that usually entails affirmations and desperate positivism. Speaking personally, I regard ‘The Law of Attraction’, as it is popularly propagated, as a form of mental fascism, in which we consign the half of our psyche we consider ‘negative’ to the dark ghettos of the mind, in the ridiculous hope that that might make that part of our self disappear

The notion that ‘our thoughts create reality’ arose out of the New Age movement which had its origins in the writings of an English author by the name of Thomas Troward in the latter part of the 18th century. He along with Madam Blavatsky, wrote a series of works which were influenced by a mismatched mélange of Eastern mysticism conveniently lumped in with Christianity to make it palatable. Since then the general thrust of this movement has persisted in many forms, appearing most recently in films like ‘What the Bleep: Down the Rabbit Hole’ and ‘The Secret’ in which, predictably, the ‘thoughts creating physical reality theory’ has once again been mixed with badly understood quantum physics, with the purpose of commercially marketing a new kind of snake oil to desperate and lazy people.

And it’s a big market, as the advertising columns of the many New Age publications attest – because a lot of people want to believe that changing their life is that facile – that all they need to do is think positive thoughts exclusively, and wealth and happiness will duly ‘manifest’.

I suppose the attraction is that it gives people the illusion of having control over their lives – that all they need is to change their thoughts about money, and suddenly they’ll attract money like a magnet. And the purveyors of these lucrative schemes have a get out of jail card – because if it doesn’t work, it’s your fault because you didn’t try hard enough to think those positive thoughts.

This attempt to control the freeform intuitive universe of mind is incredibly harmful to the ecology of mind and can only lead to confusion and frustration in life. Because life and the mind are not so logical as to obey our wishes like machines.

Life and mind evolve from an infinite number of stimuli, through almost identical processes, as was summed up in the Pali term, ‘Karma Vipaka’ – that being the law of cause and effect, which states that for every action, there will be a reaction in kind. For every event there will be a counter-event in kind.

Or,  as the Buddha said:

According to the seed that’s sown,

So is the fruit you reap there from,

Doer of good will gather good,

Doer of evil, evil reaps,

Down is the seed, so thou shalt taste the fruit thereof.

Notice the key word here is ‘doer’ – not thinker. 

So even though Thomas Troward and the New Age occasionally try to use Buddhist theory to try to slate the original cause for life effects to our thinking, nevertheless, it remains a universal fact that the worldly dynamic of cause and effect is actions – not thoughts. That is to say, our life appears out of what we do, not what we think.  

And though intentions and thoughts do indeed precede actions, nevertheless, unless those thoughts are crystallized as action no effect will ensue.

For example, let’s say we hate someone – we hate them so much that we cannot stop thinking about how we would like to ruin them, hurt them, crush them and so on. These negative thoughts spontaneously arise from the hurt and fear we feel, perhaps created by the actions of that person to us in the past.

And for sure, if when we met that person, we were to act that out and hurt that person, the karma-vipaka would go on. They then would seek to hurt us, and a mad vendetta would ensue. 

But let’s also say we decide to change the karma-vipaka of this situation – we decide, wisely, that when we meet this person, we will act with kindness, courtesy and good will, regardless of what we think. We make that our conscious intention.

Result being, when next we meet this person, we act to that person with kindness and love, regardless of the hatred we secretly hold in our hearts – making it such that our enemy is softened, and maybe they begin to act back to us with kindness and love, which in turn soothes our hatred, and the cycle of cause and effect is changed.

So we see it was our actions that changed our reality – not thoughts.

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When I was counselling people as part of meditation training, I met so many people who, having been through the New Age carnival, had, as a result of their mindless subscription to the ‘thoughts create reality’ notion, become terrified of their internal environment.

With desperate smiles pasted on their faces, they would meticulously avoid all ‘negativity’, chanting vacuous affirmations to themselves and determining every day to ‘look on the bright side’ of everything. Meanwhile I noticed their lives were often falling apart – disaster, chaos and darkness kept blindsiding them (which was why they were coming to see me), and it was a mystery to them because after all, they were thinking the ‘right’ thoughts. So why then, was their life so thwarted and horrible?

And I would tell them, if you keep censoring and suppressing your own darkness, surely it makes sense that it will keep blindsiding you from all hidden places you have consigned it to. Just because you refuse to consciously acknowledge a stream of thinking does not mean its source does not exist.

Or, as Jung very wisely said:

“The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate.  That is to say, when the individual remains divided and does not become aware of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves.”             

To live efficiently, we must allow our internal environment to be free – to be able to express itself freely. We must be aware of everything – of all the thoughts that arise – happy, sad, peaceful, violent, insane, sane, whatever. Everything that arises in mind is as essential as any plant, seed, bug or bacteria in a healthy forest. To practice suppression of our natural darkness in favor of so-called ‘positive outcomes’ is to estrange ourselves from one half of our self, making it inevitable that, like terrorists pushed underground, tis dark side of our conditioned self will always take us by surprise.

The trick is to be aware of the full spectrum of what we think and feel, but to be mindful enough to choose which of them we act out in our life. 

Because as I said, it is only our conscious intentions and actions that create our reality.

And this is where meditation practice is essential – because it teaches us to be aware of the full spectrum of our internal environment both dark and light, while being able to choose how we act. 

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Roger’s book, ‘BEING STILL – MEDITATION THAT MAKES SENSE’  is available now. Just click on the links below:

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