do we shape our future with thought

We can influence what is to happen if we act on our thoughts.
The thoughts themselves don't do anything.

OK, so you are saying we have a choice in how we want to react when something happens but not make something happen by thought?
for instance if i think about something all the time do i attract it into my life?

I think both in many cases. In our created reality we find the one we want and live happily ever after. He/she is perfect for us and we grow old together.

Here's an example of shaping our future, I see men who want this happy ending posting in these forums. These men who want the happy endings really do not like women. These very same men complain that they cannot find a good woman. What woman, good or bad, wants to be with a man that doesn't like women?

So, of course, he fails. This furthers his disdain for women. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. He has shaped his future with certain failure.

I don't want you to think that this is exclusive to my gender, but clearly women, in general, are kinder and more thoughtful (and just better) than men.

A thought is produced by the firing of neurons in the brain.
That process doesn't attract anything outside of the body.

I can think about sex all the time but that doesn't mean sex is happening for me or that it is "attracting" to me..

I would have to ACT on the thinking to make sex happen...

Yup i agree with david on this topic.

If you Act on your thoughts, You shape your future.
Thoughts without action is just thoughts.

Haha, no we are looking for our life experiences before birth. And the brain will always think there is hope, because it often only decides on the basis of imprints. Intuition is nice if it includes the categorical imperative. With thoughts you can normally only influence thoughts. If you have a godchild like me, you only influence the thought, wow I do what, I'm better-but it's just ego! In the Buddha's sense, life is just a dream. Destroy your ego and live, I say goodbye, best regards Thomash
Nice marketing idea "Law of attraction"

I dont think so !

Studies such as The Global Consciousness Project have compiled substantial evidence, suggesting that when large numbers of people focus their thoughts and emotions on the same thing, it produces a measurable non-random effect.

I believe that the space between things, is more than a void filled with air or vacuum and particles. I believe there's a kind of fabric of non-physical connectivity hidden in there.

I don't care for the phrase "law of attraction". Yet, I think everyone has experienced the effects of the phenomenon.

Example: You think of someone you haven't seen or spoken to in a long while. You focus on good feelings about being connected to them, and you move on with your day. Then within a short period of time, you either get a call from them, or run into them unexpectedly.

We're conditioned to believe things like that are just happy coincidences. Sometimes, of course they are. But are they always?

Yes, but using that logic..all those people buying lottery tickets and planning what they will do with the money *should* win..right?

I've come across this idea a number of times. After trying several different approaches to dealing with it, i'm at the point where I think the best answer is, that it's very complicated and subtle.

Right off the bat, both of the extreme SIMPLE answers have proven to be wrong. The extreme simple answers are

1." It's all bunk."

2." It's all magic."

When I tried the second answer (because I was with a woman who claimed to fervently believe that we each and all LITERALLY created our entire existence, on a moment to moment basis), it was a complete disaster. Mainly because the way SHE used the idea, was to declare that since we create our own reality, anything that went wrong while SHE was having a good time, must be MY fault.

But still, I saw then, and still do see today, a seemingly endless parade of people with success stories, or who proclaim that they know the secret to success in life, and that that key is to do things like...

"Believe in yourself, believe in your vision, believe in your ability to succeed, and that belief will give you the drive to actually succeed."

That's the most common admonition we all get from those who want everyone to work hard, and craft life with their own hands. But it's already more than half the distance to the extreme of believing in magic.

I have found that no, just thinking about something, just visualizing it, doesn't cause it to come into being.

I have also found that thinking about something in a different way, in an involved way, in an active way, does cause my perceptions to change. I see things which were always there, but that I never noticed, because I wasn't aware enough. Because I hadn't thought into the subject deeply and thoroughly enough.

By now, I believe that no, you can't WILL anything to become as you wish it to be. It's not the way everything works. "Everything," a.k.a. the universe, doesn't work that way. However, it ALSO isn't as simple as what goes up must come down, or that only direct action gets results.

Reality is a collective aggregate of all manner of things, beings, feelings, ideas, space, and on and on, all rushing through time and being changed by whatever the hell time actually IS. And just as there are physical and real reasons why rivers flow in the funny back and forth, winding or churning, seemingly random back actually rigidly obeying all the laws of motion and gravity and density...so too, our lives, and our existence is subject to, as well as a cause, of all sorts of turns and flows and eddies and so on in our, and in other people's' lives.

So no. Life is NOT all rocks and hammers and nails and dirt and so on, and nothing more. And no, it's not all unicorns and happy endings, and acts of human mental will, either.

If you fail to imagine that the pavement exists, when you jump from a high place, you'll find that the pavement is there, nonetheless.

On the other hand, if you fail to imagine that someone could be wonderful, you wont ever look; and although the wonderful person really is there, you'll never bring them into your life, by recognizing them.

So yes, your life DOES VERY MUCH depend on your thoughts and beliefs. But no, you can't think your way out of a real paper bag, you have to mechanically get it off.

The Global Consciousness Project has been debunked.

I actively imagine there are wonderful guys out there..
Problem is, they don't think *I* am wonderful...
It has to be mutual for it to work...

I don't have an absolutist outlook about it. Ultimately I see it as a phenomenon that supports the belief that non harmful optimism, hope, and imagination, carry positive energy. Positive energy tends to yield more favorable results.

TIME

We experience our yesterdays and act today to change our tomorrows ~ Tom4UHere

Bingo! Easy bluegrass... change your thinking about them not thinking you are wonderful. See those wonderful men or a wonderful man embracing you with a loving hug and accepting you exactly as you are... a wonderful person!

I speak to myself as well as to you, I can relate to your statement. By thinking there are men out there that aren't interested in me or that don't think I'm all that or wonderful, then I am attracting those exact ones into my life or noticing those particular ones, thus reinforcing my thought pattern... self fulfilling prophecy kind of thing.

I appreciate your depth of thought, Igor. My sense of what your getting at is balance. An openness without blindly believing something, or summarily dismissing it.