Here’s a criticism of the Law Of Attraction (and "The Secret") that I came across today:

How is an intellectually disabled person, a person with a low IQ meant know how to use the secret? You can’t expect them to understand how to ask and imagine what they want.

The way I see it, the above question is basically a re-framing of the following question/criticism that I’ve seen raised several times now in response to the LOA (including on Oprah):

What about the people that are suffering – how can they use the secret?

In both lines of questioning there is one common denominator - the person asking the question is not taking responsibility for the reality that they have created.

WOAH. Hold up. Rewind.

Did I just suggest that the person who perceives injustice and unfairness in the world is in fact responsible for it?

Yes I did.

Ok so here’s where we take the concept of self-creation, throw a microscope on it, and ask what it really means.

If it’s fathomable that through the power of repeated visualisation, faith, inspired action (an this action must be in alignment with what we ask for, not against it), and the LOA (a universal law - whether you believe it, understand it, or not) that we are able to manifest the reality in which we see ourselves - then why does it also not hold true that any negativity, pessimism, or challenges of our belief systems also stem from deep within our own psyche?

Whether we want it or not, conscious or unconscious - if we’re thinking about it we will attract it.

You can’t forgive others if the real problem is yourself.

Heal yourself in order to heal others. Read more about this extraordinary insight here (and also learn about the therapist in Hawaii that reportedly cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients–without ever seeing any of them).

We’ve all read or heard about the "victim mentality". I’ve witnessed it many times in my line of work and I also was guilty of it yesterday. Once I realised it, I immediately sought to change it. Here’s an interesting read about victim anger and psychological repetition. What it highlights is that people who have such a mentality (or those that were abused as children) often program their subconscious in such a way that attracts circumstances and situations to them that gives them more of what they want ie. to be the victim. LOA!

Your attitudes emanate from you and communicate to the subconscious minds of those around you.
[source: Get rid of the victim mentality]

There is a misconception among some viewers of "The Secret" that knowing and applying the LOA is somehow a quick fix or some kind of magic trick. Dr Joe Vitale dispels that idea and discusses the importance of inspired action on his blog.

Here is a criticism of The Secret that I found particularly engaging, and the responses were equally thought-provoking. Personally I agree with the suggestion that negative emotion is important and should not be simply ignored, however what’s more important is to understand where and possibly why we are feeling it (and it may come from an external source). One reader posed the following question:

I haven’t read the book or watched the DVD, just saw it on Oprah. Can someone who has read the book or watched the DVD explain how The Secret accounts for bad things that happen to the innocent. Did all of those Jews in Europe really create the hell of Hitler’s rule? Did a Rwandan baby really invite the "negativity" of genocide in her life?
From the very little I know of The Secret, it seems like a convenient theory to justify the enormous good luck of being born in a privileged family/society/nation.
But my take on this may be wrong.
Can someone with first-hand knowledge of The Secret clarify this?

Then another (Peter) responded with:

There are different ways to answer your question. What is taught is based on the law of attraction. For a fuller understanding of that I’d suggest books by Esther Hicks. If you don’t know much about it, it might be harder to grip yourself around possible answers.
However, to answer your question, which is commonly asked tough question about ‘the secret’: "if everything is caused by attraction, how come innocent people in such and such situations die". (people never ask how certain people escaped certain death in those situations (LOA?))

It’s impossible to understand another people’s thoughts and feelings, or point of attraction. Let alone that of people in the past. So the only way to approach this dilemma is to look at the bigger picture. And there’s a couple ways to look at it:

when you pool together the vibe people as a population generate one might understand how things come about. The great leaders in history were a product of that generation. So were the manmade disasters, like the holocaust. We attracted as a population those disasters - through our thoughts and feelings at the time. The universe does not differentiate between bad and good, immoral or moral, justified or unjustified. We’re talking about a universal law that doesn’t work by these social concepts. Looking for reasoning behind events like these are bound to be unfruitful. From the big perspective, as law of attraction states and as the secret tries to explain: everything is energy. Energy can’t be destroyed. who’s to say that innocent people dying is a bad thing from a universal perspective - the energy remains. Those that believe in reincarnation can even argue that it’s just part of the process to the path of enlightenment. Who knows? There is no way to know. All we can do is use good and bad events to learn and use as lessons. One could even take the following approach for fun: what if there is only you and everything you think to be ‘the outer world’ is really just what you thought up in your ‘mind’. In that case there really is no outer, no people really dying. It’s you doing creating all the events…maybe it’s a learning process, maybe thats how life is. One could never know.

Another approach is to realize we are all connected. You are part of a larger whole. When somebody else is hurting, you are hurting. The world is mostly an abundant place: you are mostly manifesting an abundant life, but not all areas. There is also war, unhappiness etc etc. It’s all part of you. But people confine their awareness and reality to what they see on a daily basis, from one viewpoint. They view outer as outside themselves. If you view everything that is happening in the world as part of you, as a result of you, you will make a powerful shift in your thinking. Try expanding this just for fun and you look at things with a different perspective. There’s an interesting story about a man that utilized this concept. He healed an entire ward filled with criminally insane patients- without treating the patients face to face. He asked ‘the universe’ for forgiveness and expressed love and gratitude, over and over. Every single patient in the ward got released within 1-2 years. He worked on himself to change reality. It’s a mindblowing true story. (there’s a book about it coming out soon)

What bothers me about the above posts is the focus on how this movie doesn’t satisfy them. I don’t see a real reason to waste energy on something that doesnt appeal to oneself. Maybe they take themselves a little too seriously. The blogauthor goes about his/her way to place him/herself in the mind ‘of the masses’. You can’t think for another person, that’s why questions like ‘how come it doesnt work for this and this person and how come that and that happened’ really are impossible to answer. You can never comprehend what another person feels and thinks and thus attracts with full understanding: so why even try.

The secret brings about a shift in thinking into a lot of people. Many are leading happier lives. Many might even embark on a more thoughtful ’spiritual’ journey like the above posters ‘think’ they are. We are not all wanting to lead inhibited lives pondering about how to balance our ‘dark side’ and grind over whether other people are doing the spiritual thing. Everybody is on a spiritual journey. It just differs from person to person. to say the secret is dangerous and even satanic is simply idiotic. Why try to think for other people. Most of you go about explaining away why this whole ’spiritual’ doing is so complex to understand and hard to live, yet some try to generalize the masses and yet some judge over how a thoughtprovoking movie is being transmitted. It’s sad that there are people that even make judgements about the people that are in the movie without finding out what they are truely about. Have you even read their books? Since when can you make a decent judgement about a 90 minute clip. And this is coming from ‘intelligent’ people on a spiritual path, it makes me giggle. They do not profess to be GURUS. But what you think is what you get. We are all one when you get down to it, scientifically, spiritually and universally.

"human beings aren’t having a spiritual experience. We are all spiritual beings having a human experience." Wayne Dyer

Great response Peter.

Refer here for Dr Joe Vitale’s response to the critics.He raises some good points, especially the one about forgiveness:

Most people who criticize The Secret are doing so because they want it to work but can’t seem to make it work. One of the biggest reasons The Secret doesn’t instantly work for someone is due to lack of forgiveness. An entire culture can experience this. But it can be changed with one person forgiving. Namely you. I’m doing this myself, and constantly going through my mental files to see who or what needs forgiven in my life (including me).

Going back to the A-HA moment I had earlier in this post, regardless of where it manifests, WE need to look at the mirror, accept that we are all connected, dig deep and heal ourselves first.

Forgive. Be grateful.

I’ll end this rather long post with a gem from chapter three of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich:

Not only thought impulses which have been mixed with FAITH, but those which have been mixed with any of the positive emotions, or any of the negative emotions, may reach, and influence the subconscious mind.

From this statement, you will understand that the subconscious mind will translate into its physical equivalent, a thought impulse of a negative or destructive nature, just as readily as it will act upon thought impulses of a positive or constructive nature. This accounts for the strange phenomenon which so many millions of people experience, referred to as "misfortune," or "bad luck."

Take responsibility today.