The Law Of Attraction And The Abundance Meme
The word “meme” was coined by scientist Richard Dawkins to mean a unit of cultural information, roughly equivalent to the biological gene. The word has since taken on a life of its own –maybe we could say memes of “meme?”– and I doubt if Dawkins would sanction many of the ways it is now used. But such is the life of words and cultural phenomena.
What can be considered the abundance meme can be seen with the popularity of books and films such as The Secret, What The Bleep Do We Know, and the Abraham books by Esther and Jerry Hicks such as, Ask And It Is Given. Of course, there were many others that preceded these. This movement can be traced back at least as far as the early 20th and even 19th Centuries, with authors such as Ernest Holmes, author of The Science of Mind, and religions such as Unity and Christian Science.
However, until fairly recently, these ideas were mostly segregated into certain religious sects, as well as the new age and human potential movements. That is, there was a significant but still small minority of people following a belief system that was mostly unknown to the majority. This is why I think we can speak of an “abundance meme” that began to spread a few years ago and has only been picking up momentum.
Predictably, there has been a backlash to this movement, and from several fronts. Scientific-minded people claim there is no proof for The Law of Attraction, positive thinking or abundance consciousness. Others believe that these ideas are “new age” and contradict orthodox religious teachings (though many examples from the Bible and other spiritual books can be found to support these ideas as well). Finally, some socially-minded people find the idea that we create our own reality actually offensive, seeing it as implicitly blaming the poor, sick or politically oppressed for their condition.
I don’t have space in this article to address such complex issues in detail. In brief, I will put forth the idea that the Law of Attraction is not something you can prove by the criteria of mainstream science. It is something that has to be personally experienced. Even if you started practicing such thinking and won the lottery the following week, a “rational” person could say it was only a coincidence and you could not prove them wrong. Does it really matter?
As for “blaming” victims for their circumstances, this is not the point. I think that people who take offense to this philosophy are, at some level, buying into the notion of scarcity; that, somehow, by becoming more abundant, we are leaving the less fortunate further behind. I believe the reverse is closer to the truth. The more abundant we are, the more we can help others, and the more we are a living example of the principle.
I do think that those of us in the “abundance community,” as informal a community as it may be, should focus some of our attention on the “unfortunate,” whatever our beliefs may be about the cause of their situation. Our focus should not be pity, but to use the principles we believe in to help form a bridge from whatever their problem are (e.g. poverty, illness, addiction, homelessness) to a more fortunate state. I think this is necessary, not only in terms of doing “good deeds” but in fulfilling the wider goal of spreading the abundance meme globally.
The abundance meme should ideally be a kind of benevolent virus that infects every corner of the world and every aspect of our lives. This article admittedly is not offering much in the way of specific solutions to anything; it is basically an invitation for us to delve more deeply into the notion that we can help to speed up the spreading of this virus/movement/meme. There is a need for solutions that are abstract and theoretical –philosophy, metaphysics, psychology, etc. We also need solutions in the practical realms of economics, politics, environmentalism, etc.
All of these fields can be transformed if looked at through the lens of abundance consciousness.
Larry Christopher is a writer who is currently working on a new endeavor called the Abundance Meme Project, which seeks innovative strategies for implementing the Law of Attraction on both the individual and societal levels. For more information, see http://www.abundancememeproject.com
Tags: abundance, abundance meme, law of attraction, meme, memes, prosperity consciousness