Worse than Islam: "The Law of Attraction".

so now that you know that manifestation
is just turning your thoughts into reality how the front flop do you even do it step number one decide what you want to manifest it sounds really obvious but you have to get specific with it for example say you want to be more financially stable instead of just making your manifestation I want more money you need to be more specific how much money do you want where would you like to get that from would you like to get it from your job would you like to get it for just being yourself Elliot knew it was his destiny to win the lottery become a millionaire and then win the heart of a beautiful blonde girl by flaunting his wealth and he knew he would fulfill his fate thanks to a book called the secrets the secret is a book that [ __ ] people read to convince themselves that their wildest dreams can come true if they just believe hard enough so Elliot spent days visualizing himself winning the lottery bought a handful of Mega Millions lottery tickets and then lost my faith was soon broken as I bought a few Mega Millions lottery tickets and visualized myself being the winner I usually visualized it by meditating on the rooftop of my mother's apartment right at the time of the dry altering your vibration because like attracts like that's like the law of attraction so to reiterate step 2 is to think feel believe that it is happening it is coming to you everything that you're trying to manifest is on its way with my whole body filled with feverish hope I spent $700 on lottery tickets for this drawing as I spent this money I imagined all the amazing sex I would have with a beautiful model girlfriend I would have once I became a man well on the day of the lottery drawing Elliot was so nervous that he couldn't bear to look at his tickets to see if he'd won he spent the next three full days sitting alone in his bedroom trying to work up the courage to check his tickets on the fourth day I decided to just go through with it the result was already decided and the amount of time it took me to check it wouldn't change anything I had to see the truth my heart was beating rapidly as I loaded up the webpage to the Mega Millions website what I saw crushed all of my hope completely my whole body shivered with horrific agony I didn't win yo what is up recording outdoors with my best girl Melissa under the trees in the beautiful Victoria BC Canada winter early winter you you could say fall but ain't none of these trees turn to turn red huh so we both did watch recently supreme bananas declaration of ardent faith for the secret also known as the law of attraction also known as wishful thinking so I'll put the camera on me I guess but if you want to jump in anytime less you can yeah look guys this is parallel to a lot of issues I've dealt with within Buddhism and a lot of people imagine that some of the kind of quaint beliefs in Buddhism have no victims have no negative impacts on people's lives because they're not obviously odious and violent and threatening in the same way that the Catholic Church showing telling you that you'll go to hell after you die is is a odious and violent and threatening but it's it's really important to sit down and unpack with people what the negative consequences are there are voices that attest you just how harmful it is to live with this cult of wishful thinking and one of the most dramatic and graphic that I encourage you guys to take a moment to hear I'll provide a link below this video is the voice of none other than Elliot Rodger Elliot Rodger the mass murderer serial killer or whatever you want to call it Elliot Rodger writes in in a very evocative tones about how he discovered this book the secret how he discovered the power of positive thinking how he became a true believer in it and how he spent hours reading these books both the secret in one other book and exactly the same genre of teaching you the power of positive thinking teaching you to in effect pray to the universe for the things you want teaching you that desiring things ardently will make them manifest in your life magically and so on and so forth and that he spent hours quote-unquote meditating to achieve these things what's unusual about Elliott Rogers testimony is that he also takes the time to describe to you how heartbroken he was when he didn't get what he wanted how time after time for example in buying lottery tickets he built up in his imagination he followed all the instructions of these books you know the books tell you not to imagine this is something you will do in the future but to think of it a thing you've already accomplished here and now they have all these very specific on a visualization exercises and then how devastated he was and self-destructive he became when these things did not come to fruition I spent the whole month meditating in my room or roaming around the park visualizing the final outcome of my victory through the power of the law of attraction which I had studied so intensely with the new book I found I felt certain that I would become the winner I love affirmations every time when I wake up in the morning the first thing I do is think affirmations to myself and then I go to the mirror and I say them out loud so I go to my mirror and I'm like I am successful I am rich money comes easily to me I live an abundant life I make enough money that I'm able to live a lavish and beautiful life but also help others my book is a huge success bla bla bla literally whatever you want to manifest turn it into I am statements and make sure it is in present tense I didn't win I looked at my ticket over and over again and then at the winning numbers no match it was just like what happened in March except this was worse because I had built up anticipation for the entire summer the winner was some guy from Riverside he took my money what a waste what an injustice I was so certain that the universe would finally grant me salvation after a life of torture and suffering that night I threw a wild tantrum screaming and crying for hours on end now it was pointed out an important element of Eliot Rogers story which we only now know recently as a fact is that he was diagnosed as having autism and this is also a recurring problem with religion on whom does religion pray especially talking about this this kind of you know cult of wishful thinking who is going to be a victim of this in general it's not going to be people who are already beautiful strong self-sufficient and wealthy it's going to be predominantly people who are weak emotionally weak mentally weak disabled people who are either really are unattractive or who feel unattractive as Elliot Rodger did people who are unlucky in love unlucky and their their work lives unlucky in terms of what they managed to make out of the educational system and so on the society they live in people who are looking for hope in all the wrong places so Elliot Rodger you know okay some of you who have clicked on this video and this is not what you were expecting here at all so let's let's just pause and and put this in perspective but we have very simple parallelism what if it wasn't the secret that Elliot Rodger had purchased read and meditated on what if instead the book he had purchased was the Quran everyone today would be calling Elliot Rodger the Muslim fundamentalist serial killer that would be whatever we'll refer to him as Elliot Rodger was the power of positive thinking serial killer Elliot Rodger was the power of manifestation the secret paused the visualization serial killer that is the book he bought and paid for and read and believed in and quote-unquote meditated on and in my years of involvement with Buddhism is very often been important for me to challenge people on the notion of meditation and in what way in particular really think that this idea is different from prayer what what le Roger did in the quote-unquote meditating it is quite apt to say that he was praying for the universe to give him what he desired and that there is almost no difference between this meditation negation and praying to for example the Muslim God to give you what you desire I always know you know in German they don't have to separate verbs for pray and beg we do in English with they can pray in German praying to God is begging to God and in a sense in English we all have one of the same verb for both so you know you can say that it's not God that it's quote unquote the universe you can say that it's meditation and not prayer and you can point out that this is a I mean it's a book other than the Bible it's not necessarily a conventional religion but it's precisely in you know the format of you know people like supreme banana that you can see the pernicious way in which this religion is packaged and promoted and made popular by people who themselves are attractive successful wealthy and present to the weak-minded among us including people with autism people who are outright [ __ ] people who are struggling with serious and perhaps you know insuperable difficulties including just poverty present them with the seeming power of wishful thinking now of course another thing that makes all this more tragicomic is the element of of youth a large part of what drew elliot rodger into his self-destructive and ultimately murderous downward spiral and a large part of what draws people like supreme banana into the power of manifestation powerful thinking and draws other followers into it is of course the human desire to be loved to be admired for some people it may be purely mercenary it may just be that they want a better job but a career but for various reasons i think that's less likely because they're less likely to romanticize that's part of their lives to to this extent but whether we're talking about a job applicant for someone approaching you hitting on you we've won someone trying to initiate a relationship what is more appealing someone who is the glowing eyes of a true believer someone who is trying to manifest and believe in the notion not merely that they deserve something not remember that they want something and may or may not get it but that they already have it that they believe it's already theirs it's already there you may have never had the experience of someone hitting on this weapon some some men and women watch this video you haven't had people you know walk up on you I have I mean from an early age I remember it was like being a teenage guy and having women who were thirty trying to get me into bed and stuff at all ages I had the experience of women hitting on me in in various ways and obviously a lot of women watching this video had that experience with different guys probably the best attitude someone could have and approaching you is a kind of cool detachment a detachment is a virtue in Buddhism but it doesn't seem to do the Buddhism much of anyone is interested in if anyone uses to sell the religion which is a which is perhaps a great shame if someone is applying for a job which candidate for the job is a better candidate the person with glowing eyes and faithful zeal who tells you that they believe in this destiny that they they already have this job that you know they believe in it so much or the person who has a detached attitude of well you know maybe I'm the right person for the job maybe I'm not and I respect your decision I'm here to do the best I can maybe I can contribute something great to this company or this project and maybe I can't you know let's let's find out together and someone who's gonna leave with that same sense of that same sense of detached compassion for all all the people making decisions in those situations we all live in a crowded society I'm sorry even if you're watching this in the middle of the desert or something you know you're living in the 21st century society and you're watching this video right now your life is being crowded to some extent by your proximity to the internet and the proximity to a strange personality you know like myself all of us must face up to the fact that the most crucial decisions in our lives are not made by ourselves but are made by others and they're really beyond our power to control and that may be you know struggling with the reality of the fact that you have a crush on someone and it's up to them whether or not they even give you five minutes to make your pitch what's enough they give you the chance to take you for a cup of coffee or something okay you know we all got to grow up and deal with that some of us deal with it at sixteen seven 26 some tragically much later in life the choice of what job you're gonna get what access to education you're going to get whether or not you're led into a given university program or job training program these are decisions made by others around us in a crowded society and they may be made for very capricious reasons indeed reasons that have nothing to do with who you are your your personality or your you know your sense of Worth and some deep deep sense and it definitely have nothing to do with with any kind of supernatural destiny I closed this video by pointing out I do not describe myself as an atheist and it's rare that I describe myself as a skeptic because the meaning of the word skeptic has been dragged through the mud right here on YouTube before skeptic has really take it on some some odious meanings and it's lost some of what at once met thousands of years ago the word I use to describe myself is nihilist and this case study in many ways shows why rejecting the belief in God in any particular god or gods and the plural is not enough it's not sufficient the the belief in the power of positive thinking belief in the form of wishful thinking you know that's really a my mind been formalized into a religion by the secret that is dangerous that does frankly destroy people's lives not always as dramatically as with elliot rodger but the fundamental realization that leads me to call myself a nihilist is that it's not any one belief that's dangerous its belief itself equal this lignum from any block of wood and idle may be carved in the same way that the human imagination can fasten onto the power of positive thinking can pat can fasten on the idea that the universe is either for god sitting in judgment over you or is in some sense your servant pretty people thinks you desire if only you ask for them welcome ardently enough all of these you know self-made myths and misconceptions the mind can fasten onto them and the unfastening of the mind from them the very detachment that i'm alluding to here as being the cardinal virtue in our lives as adults that's what comes about precisely by questioning belief whether you're comfortable with calling that nihilism or no [Music] evolution