Most manifestation gurus tout their wares by appealing to our desire for material gain: they purport to instruct us how to attract lots more money into our lives, as if ‘abundance’ (a trendy and overused term) exists solely in monetary terms. To boot, they often charge crazy prices for their laughable ‘wisdom’. …

‘bollocks’

/ˈbɒləks/

noun

VULGAR SLANG. BRITISH

1. the testicles.

2. nonsense; rubbish (used to express contempt or disagreement, or as an exclamation of annoyance).

‘The Secret’ (2006) is a movie and a book by charlatan-extraordinaire Rhonda Byrne. In it, she enlists a number of fellow money-grabbing ‘gurus’ to explain how the so-called ‘Law of Attraction’ works in an attempt to convince the impressionable masses that it is true. In fact, ‘The Secret’ is utter bollocks. Here’s why.

Let’s begin with some context.

What do you do when the sales of ‘positive thinking’ books stagnate? You reframe the concept as a…

Proponents of the Law of Attraction (LOA for short) have the gall and the naivety to call it a scientific ‘law’.

What is the difference between a ‘law’ and a ‘theory’? A law describes a natural force or phenomenon but does attempt to explain how that force or phenomenon works. A theory, on the other hand, is an explanation of a natural phenomenon. So, the force of gravity is an observable law, whereas Einstein’s principle of relativity — which attempts to explain a law — is a theory.

The LOA is neither a law or a theory and has zero…

It was announced on 2nd December 2020 that the UK is the first country in the world to have a COVID-19 vaccination approved by the regulating authorities. The end of this terrible pandemic is in sight and we have every reason to be optimistic that we can return to some sort of normality in 2021.

For most people, this is welcome news. For others, who hate their life and want to escape from it through the invention of conspiracy theories or through the so-called ‘awakening’ of humanity, this news is not so welcome.

For those people who don’t think the…

When it comes to logical flaws, contradictions, and downright hypocrisy, the Law of Attraction (LOA) is the gift that keeps on giving. My latest critique centres on the age-old battle between free will versus predestination.

I am not a believer in the LOA. But in its defence, I will say that this contradiction has plagued theologians since time immemorial, and so it is by no means unique to the LOA. However, given that my forte is spirituality and the world of ‘self-help’, my target (ahem, my focus) is the LOA. …

If you ‘believe’ in the Law of Attraction, which is far more make believe than it is ‘science’, then its central premise goes something like this: the Universe is impartial — neither inherently ‘good’ or inherently ‘bad’ — and manifests our desires based on our energetic frequency, so that if we have bad thoughts then bad shit happens, and conversely, if we have good thoughts then our wildest dreams magically come true.

This overly simplistic ‘philosophy’ adopted by Law of Attraction proponents becomes unstuck when we consider such disasters as floods, earthquakes, famine and, most recently, COVID-19. Law of Attraction…

Throughout recorded history, spiritual people — from whatever walk of life — have foretold some sort of great awakening, whether it’s the ‘revelation’ of St. John in the New Testament, the arrival of the Age of Aquarius amongst new agers, or the ‘moksha’ of Buddhism. But since the outbreak of COVID-19 across Europe and America in early 2020, the idea of a great awakening has been given more urgency by spiritual folk: we need look no further than the ‘spiritual’ groups on social media, or the vlogs of the self-professed gurus, to witness that we are being affronted by a…

Some of you may know Esther Hicks as the Law of Attraction (LOA for short) guru who professes to channel messages from multiple beings from other dimensions, collectively known as ‘Abraham’. Others may be familiar with Hicks from the controversy over the documentary (and subsequent book) called ‘The Secret’ (2006), where Hicks refused to be a contributor because her commission of $500,000 wasn’t enough, at least by her standards. Others may know Hicks simply as the charlatan that she is. Others may have never heard of Hicks and, quite frankly, don’t care.

But we should care, for we need to…