The Accidental Decedent: Untimely Death and The Law of Attraction

While I wonder if my mother holds herself accountable for devoting several of the last seconds of her life to shooting the skunk eye at a hapless volunteer because he interrupted us, I also wonder if she blames me for attracting the interruption.
          Like I said before, I’ve been interrupted so many times in my life that I’ve begun to believe that it must somehow be my fault. I don’t know if Mom shared my view on this, but she never in her life hesitated to take me to task for whatever she thought I had done wrong. It was not in her nature to allow flawed behavior to go unmentioned or uncorrected.
          She gave me a lecture on her 90^th birthday for something I did 45 years ago. Personally I didn’t believe that I had that one coming, but I wasn’t about to deny her this small pleasure on her birthday. Nor would I have denied her the satisfaction of one last scolding from her deathbed.

          The concept of attracting unpleasantness is one for which I must thank the disciples of the Law of Attraction. Principal among these is Dr. Joe Vitale, who, because he loves me (really...he says so repeatedly), sends me an e-mail almost every day telling me how I can clear my mind of negative notions and begin to attract the success and possessions that I so richly deserve. Usually finding the key to this abundance involves first sending Dr. Joe or one of his affiliates some money. I imagine that if I did this, Joe would love me even more than he already professes.

My collection of bicycles, which I bought with money that I worked for rather than manifesting through attraction. Dr. Joe Vitale has a collection of very nice cars that he manifested through attraction. For $5,000/person you can take a ride with Dr. Joe in his Rolls Royce Phantom, have dinner, and discuss ways to get rich. For a mere $500 you can ride my road bike (the blue one above on the left that was designed by Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada) and accompany me to a Starbucks drive-up window for a delicious espresso beverage while we discuss ways to avoid attracting collisions with Rolls Royce Phantoms.

          The gist of the law of attraction can be found in a slim little book titled The Secret, written by Rhonda Byrne. Dr. Joe is quoted in it with some frequency. The Secret was made into a movie, and now there is a sequel publication called The Power. Their website is here in case you are overwhelmed by curiosity about how to make yourself a magnet for all the good things you think you want. Many of these people also believe that Jesus was a prosperity teacher and lived a life of opulence and ease. You can read my take on this incredible twist on Christianity here. If you are not overwhelmed with curiosity—enough to click on the link at any rate—I will tell you the law of attraction in a nutshell. This is easy because it is a nutshell concept.

To get anything you want you only need do three things: 1) specifically wish for it, 2) believe and expect that you will get it, and 3) accept it when it comes. If you do those things the universe will hear you and provide you what you ask. Nothing could be simpler. It's a law of nature. It's scientific. (for a look at the real science behind the law of attraction, click here)

          The truth is that it’s not simple at all. It’s extremely simple to say, but it’s quite difficult to do. If it were easy, Dr. Joe and his affiliates and compatriots, imitators, fellow disciples and co-conspirators would not be making money selling secret keys to facilitate the process. It doesn’t stop with wish, believe, and accept because there are very specific and yet incredibly nebulous adjuncts to each of those steps. There are any number of outs that all work in favor of the people who are selling programs to make the simple accessible to simpletons. Here are a couple of examples:

          Didn’t get what you wanted? Well, you didn’t wish for it specifically enough. Your wishing needs to be very concrete and definite. You need to visualize yourself enjoying what you wish for with great regularity. We can help you with our special program of exercises, word cues, and self-hypnosis techniques to make specific wishing integral to your daily existence. Just send $89.95 to…

          Didn’t get what you wanted? You probably weren’t believing enough. Maybe you have a nagging doubt in the inner recesses of your mind that is blocking your access to what you want. Maybe you don’t believe that you deserve it. Maybe you think it would be wrong for you to get what you want. Maybe, horror of horrors, you think that what you want is an evil thing. We can help you clear yourself of these impediments to self-realization. For just $119.95 we will show you how to eradicate guilt from your psychic make-up and change your inbred attitudes about what it means to be rich and famous and privileged. We will put your sense of entitlement on steroids. When we are finished teaching you to remove all moral and ethical constraints on the accumulation of wealth and the artifacts of leisure, you will free yourself to amass an epic collection of homes, cars, yachts, and companions.

I’m sure you get the picture. Near as I can tell, the only people who are succeeding through the law of attraction are those who are selling the law of attraction. The rest of us are failing, one way or another, to apply the principles correctly. Shame on us.

          One danger in trying to use the law of attraction without adequate guidance is that you will accidentally attract the opposite of what you want. Dr. Joe and his like-minded friends are happy to tell you this much for free. They talk about it at length in The Secret. They like to give a lot of information away for free. They make a big deal of this. For instance, Joe’s book is available at no cost through his website.
                    Who gives a book away for free? Someone who has written a book that is a cover-to-cover sales pitch, that’s who. Joe’s all about making you a believer. When you’re a believer you won’t mind paying Joe a little money to get access to the super secret stuff that's not available in the free program—the stuff that you need to make the incontrovertible law of the universe actually work once you realize that you have somehow controverted it.

          The absolute worst way you can controvert the law of attraction is to sidetrack yourself into the negative law of attraction. This is accidentally attracting the opposite of what you are trying to attract.
          Here’s the way negative attraction works. Say you notice a little lump under your armpit. You go to the doctor. The doctor says it’s probably nothing, but he takes a sample to send to the lab just in case. Better to err on the side of caution. It’s a pretty sure thing that you are going to worry about this until the lab results come back. You turn to the law of attraction. The Secret says you can attract good health. You can use the law of attraction to heal yourself. This is excellent news. You just have to visualize yourself as completely healthy. BUT, if instead of just wishing yourself to be healthy you start wishing for the tumor to go away or for the lump to be benign, that will only attract what you fear most.

You have to be very careful not to think about that tumor because the universe is not capable of differentiating between what you want and what you don’t want. The universe is only going to bring you what you are thinking about. So you have to think about being completely healthy without thinking about the potentially malignant tumor at all. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT SHIT! I mean really, do you honestly think it will be possible not to think about a malignant tumor until the lab results come back. This instruction is fraught with peril. There is no way to not think about what you fear most in a case like this. It would be better for you not to know anything at all about the law of attraction because, knowing it, you are screwed.

Of course you could pay a law of attraction guru to teach you how to forget all about the fact that you are now dying of cancer. You pretty much have to do this at this point. If you are a believer you are going to attract cancer unless you can figure out how to stop thinking about cancer. Unless you pay someone to teach you this little secret, you are going to die.

There is another way out. You just need to stop believing in the law of attraction. Believing it is killing you. You need to quit. It’s just that simple. If you quit believing bad stuff is going to happen, bad stuff will stop happening. If you find that you are having difficulty suspending your belief, I believe I can help.

My amazing new series of CDs, Turn off the Magnet and Survive: the New, Super-Secret Guide to Becoming Unattractive, provides a guaranteed step-by-step program to eradicate pesky beliefs in the law of attraction. My mind-blowing program will elevate your unbelief to monumental proportions or you get your money back—all of it. I’ll even pay the return postage.

Here’s what you get for the incredible introductory price of just $49.95:

1.     6 CD set

a.     the 1^st CD contains my personal experiences becoming an unbeliever and thus liberating myself to die in my own time…instead of by some accident of attraction action

b.     the 2^nd through the 6^th CDs each begin with a different meditation, led by me, on a variety of topics that point out the futility of wishing for stuff you only think you want and the perils of thinking in general

c.     following the led meditation each CD then goes on to repeat a specially composed mantra, tailored to that CD’s particular meditation, and backed up by a custom mixed soundtrack of alternating heavy metal music and Barry Manilow songs calculated to elevate your inner nihilist

2.     A companion book, beautifully bound in 200 lb. recycled card stock, and suitable for display on the finest glass and chrome or pressed board coffee tables

3.     A lifetime membership in The Faithful Unfaithful, my super secret survivors club, entitling you to a daily inundation of e-mail appeals to purchase whatever new hair-brained idea I come up with to separate you from the money you attracted when you still believed

Trust me. This stuff is the real deal—just the kryptonite you need to render even the most super-charged faith limp and useless. When you are finished with my program, you won’t even be able to attract a cold in a day-care center.  $49.95 (plus shipping and handling) is a small price to pay to avoid being killed by The Secret.