Thursday, February 11, 2010

Spiritual Ponzi Schemes

I saw this demotivational poster design the other day, and I wondered if they were thinking about The Secret, the self-help book based on the Law of Attraction.

If you watch the film, you'll no doubt notice half of the interviews talked about "abundance" or basically making money with LOA. One guy was moved to tears because the picture of a big house he had on his vision board turned out to be the one he found himself living in some time later. Now this is really simple: If the Law of Attraction is a spiritual principle, which I would not dispute, then what does it say when you use that for things that relate to egoic desires? The thing is, I've never heard of anyone use it to feed their family when they are starving, OR more significantly, use it for anyone other than themselves.

This really speaks to the subject of evil because when you put this basic attractive principle with greed and this insatiable desire to consume, it doesn't take a genius to see that it's unsustainable. It really underlines a way that evil works in the world, because when your world view is all about me and you have to take from someone else, it is indeed very much like a Ponzi scheme, where you have to recruit new blood to feed the ones that were exploited before - it's a pyramid. Contrast this with love, where cooperation and mutual support is involved, it really shows what the typical idea of "success" in the world entails.

3 comments:

  1. LOL, I love that poster. Yeah then sell your "Secret" to others!

    What a joke, teach people that they can be given the world without anything other than a thought. Ridiculous.

    Never mind the reality of life, buy the "dream"!

    Someone in my family asked me "Do you know about "the Secret"? with a tense inquisitive look.

    I choked back the laugh that nearly burst out and gave him a knowing look, "Oh yes, I know all about "the Secret".

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  2. Well and as with all lies, there is always an element of truth - otherwise people would never buy it. But clearly it's not that simple: What if two people were holding opposite intentions? You might attract similar people and things that are in line with your intentions, but if the others have a very different intention then it just won't touch them.

    It is a spiritual truth that things constellate on a subtler level of mind before becoming material reality, whether it's just a general social trend or on the level of the individuals life. But when people try to use it for selfish and materialistic ends, they completely miss that part of the intention because they are fixated on what they want - meanwhile the kind of energy and people they attract to themselves are probably also selfish people.

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  3. "The most exquisite paradox… as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible."
    — Ram Dass

    This I believe to be true although Ram Dass says it so very nicely! :)
    namaste

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