The Law of Attraction and Child Abuse
The law of Attraction provides that you attract into your life whatever you focus your thoughts on. That means that our life today is a product of our past thinking and our future life will be a product of our current thinking (putting aside for the moment the concept that there is only one time – Now). So if everything in our life today is exactly as we wish it to be, then our thoughts have been well focused and the Universe has rewarded us. But if there are parts of our life that do not give us the joy or satisfaction we would like, then we have some learning to do. Learning about the Law of Attraction can be one of the most exciting and rewarding undertakings we can do. Learning what has caused your current state of affairs and learning how to move from that state to a blissful state opens a door of limitless opportunities.
However, learning it also raises some hard questions that are not easily answered. These are questions that the Law of Attraction does not seem to address. Nor has The Secret addressed them.
The first such question that seemed so blatant to me stems from my years of work as a social worker. I have studied and worked in the field of child abuse and child protection. I have seen countless children who have been subjected to varying degrees and varying types of abuse. (I also was abused as a child.)
How does the child attract this abuse into her life? A child cannot focus on abuse until after it becomes a pattern. A child does not know punishment; a child does not know physical abuse until after it occurs repeatedly. A child does not know emotional abuse until after it has been experienced for a period of time. A child cannot focus on the punishment, abuse or neglect until after it comes to understand it at some level. This is when the child’s expectation of the treatment and fear of it set in.
And that fear and expectation cannot occur until after the child has knowledge of the possible treatment - which can only occur after experience. The younger the child, the less able to focus on the abuse; the less able to focus on what might happen. So how does the Law of Attraction explain the experiences of the child? The child can’t focus on what she doesn’t know – if, depending on her age, she is able to grasp any of the experiences at all. A child expects innately love, nurturing and protection. How does she attract it into her life? So far, I have seen the Law of Attraction to be silent on this issue.
People who believe in reincarnation might offer the explanation that the child attracted the abuse in a past life and karma is now catching up. Of course, there is no way of proving this to be or not to be a plausible explanation. Most things in our lives could be explained by such a focus. If you accept the philosophies of karma, reincarnation, karma bridging from one life to another, and intentions and attractions bridging from one life to another, then the explanation would be acceptable. If you don’t accept these philosophies, the explanation falls flat.
Another explanation is found in the concept that, since the child can’t invoke the Law of Attraction, the abuser intends and attracts the abuse. But is that possible? Does the Law of Attraction allow one person to attract actions that will directly hurt, possibly maimed, and in some instances kill another person? Will the law of Attraction work for one person while destroying another? If so, that is difficult to swallow.
Another explanation is that a child is just born unlucky. In other words it is the luck of the draw as to whether or not a child will be born into a family where she will be abused. This would be like a lottery, a random draw. That I also find unacceptable.
Although I can give many theories of and reasons for child abuse that do not relate to the Law of Attraction, I am at a loss to explain child abuse from The Law of Attraction perspective. In fact, I am just at lost if I try to explain any development or preference of any young child or baby.
Maybe I don’t understand The Law of Attraction completely enough. I have no difficulty applying it to adult – even teenager and preteen children. I accept its working but I have difficulty wrapping my mind around its application with young children. I have the same difficulty when applying it to people with diminished intelligence or brain functioning. So I am struggling with these issues and I appreciate any discussion and enlightenment that might be directed my way.
3 comments:
Hello
This is very interesting, I have had people asked me the very thing you mention in your blog.
It seems as children we only know unconditional love, we expect those around us to love back. Of course we do not understand however, why people would want to hurt another human being, I do not believe at such a young age we attract this behaviour upon ourselves, it seems we are drawn within their karma with the inability to protect ourselves.
I myself was abused, I have loved and forgiven those who hurt me as a child, acknowledging those ones who are still on this plane.
Once we are adults we have choice to either dwell or find strength to overcome it. Seek those who have overcome and come together in love.
Love and forgiveness is the healing that is required. Without this you are doomed. Would it not be bettter to have peace and harmony within ourselves, this draws more good towards us. Than to have doom and gloom that would draw unforgiveable consequences.
For those little ones, we can only send much love for healing and love and forgiveness to the creator of such an act. To under-stand why in the first place, perhaps the person was in the same situation, and had no help what-soever. Its all they know if this is the case.
As a child I was a creator of abuse to a girl younger than me because I was treated in this manner. From the loving words of my grandmother, once she under-stood the nature of why I was doing this, it was all sorted, I apologised to the girl and her mother, and all was forgiven.
On that note I send out love and forgiveness for everyone who needs healing. For this is the only way to heal our world.
This appears to be a very difficult question but in my study of thought forces and reincarnation I have found an answer that makes sense to me. Maybe it will to you.
I believe we reincarnate with groups of souls who have chosen to work together with us on something specific, such as love, trust, prosperity, etc. So we learn ALL about any of these topics both by experiencing them and BY EXPERIENCING THE LACK OF THEM. Who can truly know what love is who has known nothing but love? Don't we also have to experience not being loved, being loved only conditionally, loving with reciprocation, loving without reciprocation, and so on? Only when we have experience from every conceivable viewpoint can we say we truly know what love is. And I add that the souls that seem to cause us the most harm and pain are our greatest teachers, who have voluntarily taken on this difficult role, to play a part in our spiritual advancement. If we can look at it that way, we can even learn to love the abuser while, of course, protecting ourselves from more abuse. Lessons learned do not have to be repeated.
It seems to me that concepts such as reincarnation and karma are the inquistive and intellectual byproducts of a brain struggling to make logical sense out of the often times illogical game of life. We seek justice, fairness, and understanding in a world oftentimes devoid of such things so we invent our own reasons...regardless if they are true or not. A made-up Fantasy, even if its untrue, is always more appealing than an unjust reality, even if it is true. My question has always been, why has such an absurdly complex system(life and the universe)been constructed for such seemingly simple aims(spiritual lessons)?? If the only reason we are here is to learn some sort of metaphysical lesson, then surely a more efficient, less ambiguous system could have been constructed. I.e. If you want to teach a child mathematics you put him in a classroom, outline the objectives, and work with him until he gets the point. If life is a classroom, then why do we have such a bad teacher? The coursework is ambiguous(everybody has a different meaning of life)the aims are chaotic, we're left entirely on our own to make sense out of it, so how can karma even exist in a world where we make our own rules and beliefs? How can some divine force punish us or reward us for being ignorant of the course material if it was never clearly laid out or explained to begin with? Socrates once said, "Noone can KNOWINGLY commit a wrong action" because knowledge is a form of virtue. You can't karmically punish someone for being ignorant, just as you can't punish a child for not comprehending a math theorem. If human beings are such ignorant creatures, and if there is such a thing as a God(or non-ignorant deity) then surely it would be an act of cruelty not to enlighten the less knowledgeable.
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