by Tony Harrington
New age mystics have long believed in the ability to warp the world to their benefit by the simple act of meditating on a specific outcome.
There are many different names by which the “phenomenon” is known such as “The Law of Attraction, but I will coin a phrase here; I call it “Forced Reality”. Primarily, I feel this title is appropriate because the belief is that if you focus on something long and hard enough then it shall come to pass and you in turn forced something into reality.
With that said, I should add, that as a skeptic of all things paranormal, the idea that someone can actually think something into existence seems a far stretch, but who am I to cast aside someone’s belief with such reckless abandon. Instead, I will say that I have yet to experience any life-changing event that has been brought about by my simple wishing for it to be so.
In my many years as a paranormal investigator, and as a student of the supernatural, I have encountered many people who adhere to this philosophy. An entire book and culture was born from it when Oprah brought the world of “The Secret” to the masses.
In “The Secret”, author Rhonda Byrne goes on to explain how positive thinking can manifest positive changes in your existence; be it willing a new job to manifest, or acquiring untold wealth. Even more dangerous is the belief that using “Laws of Attraction” can even cure cancer and other diseases. Basically, someone has penned a book all about karmic comeuppance and passed it off as reality. The irony is not lost on me that the author has undoubtedly stated that they used “Laws of Attraction” to garner the very success they received from the book. Clearly, my opinion on the matter skews toward skeptical.
That is not to say that there isn’t anything to the power of suggestion. I myself have longed for a new job before and attained one with relative ease. Sometimes I have been surprised with just how easy it was, almost as if I willed it to happen. I have also wished for negative people to get what they deserve and in turn, they received what was coming to them. Are these instances of “Karma” brought about by the fact that I willed them into existence or would they have happened regardless?
The phenomenon of “Forced Reality” is one wrought with an even darker side. In addition to people willing bad things to happen to another and believing that they wield such a power when something unfortunate befalls their intended victim, I have also witnessed something even darker in my years conducting paranormal investigations.
One particular case stemmed from a couple who had been using a Ouija board for quite a few years. They believed that they were in contact with a malicious entity. After years of “communicating” with this dark spirit they decided to sever contact with it and destroy the board. They promptly conducted some type of ceremony and set fire to the board. Shortly thereafter they both began wondering if they did the wrong thing, thinking that the board was a portal to a ghostly realm, perhaps the spirit had not crossed back over and because they burnt the board without ensuring the spirit had left, maybe they had trapped an evil force on this side of the veil.
They had obsessed over their mistake and constantly searched out signs that something was trapped here.
For a while nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but slowly, over time something began to manifest. Soon they were experiencing shadow figures, objects moving on their own, horrible screaming in the middle of the night, and attacks against their bodies with scratches and bite marks showing up.
Things escalated to the point that the husband had been fired from his job because he could simply no longer function.
In my investigation of the residence I found no sign of a presence. EVP sessions yielded no results, no photographic or video evidence was captured, and even a team psychic was unable to discern any type of paranormal anomaly.
When we left, the activity allegedly began.
To the homeowners they believed that they performed an action that trapped a dark spirit in their world and as a result they began to experience things that seemed to support this belief. To this day I am not sure what was causing the biting, scratching, shadow figures, and moving objects that these homeowners encountered. They may have willed something into existence, but it was most likely mass hysteria, and not a ghost. Again, I am not discounting them completely, simply offering a real world alternative to the supernatural.
I can’t say for certain whether the Laws of Attraction are real. There certainly seems to be, on some verifiable level, something to it. For example, one year after the September 11th, 2001 terror attacks, there were many residents, 5,631 to be exact, who played a New York state lottery on September 11, 2002. They played the numbers 9, 1 and 1. There were two drawings that day and the evening winning numbers were 9-1-1 netting each winner a 500 dollar payday.
Could that many people playing one particular set of numbers sway the universe to their favor, resulting in them willing something into existence from thin air? Could be, or it could simply be the 1 in 1,000 odds that those numbers would have been drawn anyway.
Either way, it is a tough call. Skeptics will write it off as coincidence while those with mystic leanings will find comfort in knowing the world wants to bend to our whim and on occasion, it just might.
My question is: who willed me to write this article and did it meet your expectations?
S.P.I.R.I.T 