By Brian Nzomo
An year ago I was reading this book by Esther Hicks, a major player in the New Age spiritual movement linked with personal development in wealth and health. Like all motivational books I have read so far, the law of attraction is of essence to this movement. That good things happen to you because you attract them with your positive mental vibrations. And that bad things happen to you because you attract negative energy.
But there was a passage in the book that roused in me reason to view the whole thing in spurious light. Hicks who claims that a divine entity called Abraham communicates with her, writes in the book that Abraham clarifies for her that a victim and an oppressor are equal actors fulfilling the mental vibrations of a victim. The entity lucidly states that the Jews in the Holocaust attracted the negative energies that led to the mass brutality perpetrated by the Nazi regime. And that their low vibrations(negative thoughts) ultimately became fulfilled by what befell them. The same theory is applied to the people who suffered the American invasion in the middle East.
Clearly one can already see the farcical nature of this. It seeks to exonerate a wrongdoer by mellowing the situation as a consequence of a victim’s mental vibration(thinking). And in this case, a victim is likely to blame themselves for actually thinking negatively and therefore deserving of the cataclysm that strikes them.
The New Age movement finds its origins in the Flower Power era of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States and Great Britain. The movement is defined by a professor of American religious history at Baylor University, J. Gordon Melton, as one that “looked forward to the ‘New Age’ of love and light and offered a foretaste of the coming era through personal transformation and healing.”
The idea behind personal transformation is channeled to the mind. It is an idealist movement that borrows a chunk of its ideas from Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. That the mind is connected to the universe. Any thoughts or attitudes forcefully cemented in the mind will in turn transmute themselves into rewards. The idea behind this is that everything exists on a hierarchy of vibrations, with ‘good’ things having high vibrations and ‘bad’ things having low vibrations; therefore, in order to manifest something, one must be on the same vibrational frequency as the thing they wish to manifest.
But there is a raging problem with seeing something as complex as wealth and health as mere idealistic realms which can simply be accorded to us based on what our minds are geared to. And that success in them can only be attained in the mind. To be fair, most of these self-help motivational books with a pinch of spirituality don’t claim overtly that action is useless. What they opine is that action can only be viable if the mind is in higher vibration. But is that always the case? I doubt.
Action itself is not a guarantee for success. Action simply proliferate our probability of attaining something. But it too can fail. Positive thoughts, positive actions. One can still fail. Because matters such as wealth and health are too mysteriously detached from our manipulation to determine whether they will work. You may have positive thoughts about never getting sick, and eat a balanced diet occasionally. But the universe, contrary to our ‘feel good’ supposition is not tailored to be seamless for us. You can still get cancer. Or thaw out in a heated pestilence.
Affirmations may be fluffy pillows on which we imagine will help siphon out our negative energies and formidably solder a positive outlook in our minds. But in this promising endeavour, lies a disconcerting problem.
Human emotions are natural. And they are not abstract. They are consequences of what we actually feel. A reaction to our state of minds. In as much as happiness is a desirable emotion because it helps us bear the harsh realities of life, it is self-defeating viewing it as an end game. Happiness should not be seen as the ultimate end, but rather yet another emotion in the bevy of emotions that each and every one of us is bound to experience in the course of our lives. Just as we validate happiness, the same must be done with less pleasant emotions, in order to remind ourselves that the way we feel is completely natural, thereby taking away the pressure and any/all inherent shame we might feel for experiencing them.
By simply ignoring the factors causing our sadness or anger or worry, in order to view positively at life, we are cogently solidifying them in our mind and actually deceiving ourselves that we are solving our problems. Confronting those emotions is the first battle in nurturing our mental health.
So, be appreciative of the so-called negative thoughts or emotions you portray. Let no new age spiritual guru tell you that it detracts you from good tidings. Imagine telling someone who has been raped or robbed violently that their negative energies attracted the unfortunate actions that inundate them. Or telling them to stop worrying and just think positively because the universe won’t let them heal with their low vibrations. I know. You’ll sound like an a$$hole. Minds are the center of human perception and interaction, but whatever happens in society is a complex affair not reducible to the vicissitudes of your thinking and emotions.
Now think critically before falling for all these pseudoscience rubbish pervading the mainstream. It is the new quail egg business.
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