The Role Of Ethics In Positive Manifestation

Many people are being drawn to the ideas behind the Law of Attraction, having seen The Secret and maybe read books on the subject.

There has been some controversy regarding the fact that The Secret is a little simplistic. I agree, it is simplistic, but then it has also popularized the subject and made it accessible, in a way that no other book or movie has done, and for that it should receive credit. In the same way that the astrology column in the newspaper doesn’t really do justice to the thousand-year-old art of astrological chart casting, I don’t think the whole idea of manifesting using the Law of Attraction should be denigrated just because the ideas were presented in a “catchy” way in this little film.

A much more important question in my opinion, is what is the role of ethics in manifestation? For example, suppose a person were to learn how to manifest a large sum of money using the Secret of the Law of Attraction, and then were to use the money for nefarious purposes? Or suppose that they gained the money by robbing a bank, or by lying and cheating someone else out of the money, or in any way violating ethical principles? Apparently the Law of Attraction doesn’t care a dime about a person’s deservingness of the money, so the money could come just as easily to a bank robber as to a saint. Are we supposed to care therefore, if the bank robber gets a lot of money and the saint doesn’t?

What I’d really like to see incorporated into some of these manifestation principles is the idea of Karma. That is, the negative events which you set in motion by harming other people, are eventually revisited on you – whether it be in this lifetime or the next.

Otherwise, the idea of bringing money into your life by whatever means and for whatever purpose, is what’s important – rather than what is really important, which is to live a life of purpose and meaning and abundance, a life which doesn’t violate anybody else’s ability to do the same. The phrase tacked on to the end of affirmations: “For the highest good of all concerned…” is one I like a lot.

I’ve discovered for myself that anything brought into my life in some kind of negative way, will eventually backfire. Either it won’t stay, or there will be some unintended and unforeseen consequence, like a bad side effect to a prescription medication.

While money is a very useful source of energy to help move us towards our goals, it should be our connection with the Divine that moves us in a heart-centered way, and our desire to bring about positive transformation, both within ourselves and in the world at large.