I've got nothing against the Law of Attraction. I think its tenets, at their core, are exactly right and true. I know the Law of Attraction works. I know we create our reality.

So what's the problem? It's in the interpretation.

We assume, because we are human people living in human bodies on the physical plane, that life is expressed through tangibles. Through "stuff," in other words. In addition, we've just come from a good 2000 years of exploring human interaction through the lens of wealth and material goods accumulation that's led us to where we are now, in a world filled with flat-screen TVs and cell phones and cars. And all this stuff we have makes us want more. We want what others have.

And if it's not actual tangible stuff we want, we want something so ephemeral we can't even quite describe it. It seems out of our grasp. Happiness. That's what we want. We want to be happy.

What is happiness? Your answer to that is going to be different than mine. All our answers differ based on our unique lenses of perception, experiences we've had, and soul-level plans for what we wish to do in this life.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with wanting happiness. Except ... I'd much rather HAVE happiness than WANT it. Wouldn't you?

I follow other blogs avidly, which can be wonderful for connecting with people, learning, and inspiring myself with new thoughts.  One blog I read regularly is Two Crows' All That Is aka The Turtle's Back blog, in which she thinks wonderfully on the fly about both Michael and Seth concepts. (sorry I didn't do that meme there Two Crows!).  Another I've recently gotten onto is the Jungle of Life blog, which had a recent post on the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and had a lot of wonderful comments - a couple of which are mine.

(If you have a blog that is in any way related to the topics covered here, please suggest your blog or site here for our blog/site roll!)

So I thought I'd continue on with thoughts that came from that - about compassion in the face of violence.  When another is harsh.

I've written before about the problem of punishment.  Punishment and scapegoating are intertwined.  Not only that, but every time we cannot accept behavior and energy in another we are giving a very firm message to ourselves that we will not accept it in ourselves.  There's no way we can love that part of ourselves.  The standard thought in this society is that this is a good thing.  Why should we accept energy that's "bad", like anger, acting out, and violence?

It brings to mind one of my favorite stories about a Buddhist monk who was part of an experiment where scientists monitored his brain waves.

Does this sound familiar? A client recently lamented a feeling of being stuck, that things weren't changing. His exponential spiritual growth explosion had slowed to a mere trickle. Something was wrong, he said. He must be causing this. Was there something he needed to release? Something he should be doing, or shouldn't be doing? It had to be him, he reasoned. Everything was going so well. What was he doing wrong?

It is familiar, isn't it? I certainly have gone through this very same train of thought, time and again. After all, we are creatures of the physical plane. We live in a reality governed by linearness: through time and space we measure our external world. We measure distance traveled, years lived, and lives that pass through the sands of time into memory. We use linear thought to measure our inner world, too — our spiritual growth. Why wouldn't we?