I used to ponder a similar question. In my case it was magnets, I believe, since teachers often use the magnet-metaphor to explain the LoA. Why does like attract like if magnets are always attracted by the opposite pole? I didn't find a satisfying, scientific answer but here is my practical solution: LoA on one hand and electrons/magnets or whatever physical thing we like to compare it with on the other, simply do not work the same way. They function on completely different levels and are governed by different forces.

Many explanations of the Law of Attraction use particle physics to validate the scientific basis for the Law of Attraction. Therefore, one cannot use particles on one hand to validate the Law of Attraction and then on the other hand say that one is comparing apples to oranges.

I think perhaps, we must realize that the Law of Attraction is only one Universal Law that works in tandem with other Universal Laws. In addition, we must realize that we don't yet understand all the specifics of the way that spiritual consciousness creates the physical universe nor how our individual intentions interact. We often forget that we are all in this together. Every consciousness for itself has never ended well.

Vibrational resonance can change the orbit of planets. Magnetism does not operate alone, the force is actually electromagnetism. Gravity or more accurately space-time continuum is warped and affected by mass - and what is mass? Concentration of energy. Perhaps the Law of Attraction is really a form of gravity.

In addition, thought is not the most important component in Attraction. It is our Being. Our thoughts and emotions often spring from our Being, but they are not the source of our true power. Our desires are the carrot that can motivate us to change who we are Being.

But just ignoring our negative thoughts and emotions by covering them over with positive platitudes will not attract the changes we seek. It only serves to increase our dishonesty and put more distance between us and our true spirit. Feelings are the language of the Soul. We would do well to listen to the message instead of discounting a feeling that we deem as negative. If it guides us to the solution to expand our Being, is it really negative after all?

Here's the way I understand it. The thoughts you have are positive in polarity and the material manifestation or condition is negative in polarity. The polarity of your thoughts attract the opposite polarity of the material conditions. Therefore, bad thoughts attract bad conditions, and good thoughts attract good conditions. In other words, like attracts like. OR, you could say bad thoughts repel good conditions and good thoughts repel bad conditions.

I think Melchizedek1 says it best that everything is vibrational in nature. Like a tuning fork will resonate with those tones that are in harmony with it. So with our thoughts resonating with those conditions that are in harmony with them. Again, like attracts like. It is only a matter of rates of vibration to determine the polarity of a vibration. Thoughts being a rate of positive polarity and material conditions being a harmonious rate of negative polarity. Therefore our thoughts resonating or attracting those things or conditions that are in harmony with them.

In addition to the above explanation in reference to this question,If I may say that the type of attraction they are referring to is not of Magnetic attraction but of visualization process at a vibrationary level of the focal immage of the mental mind. This is akin to the inverse reflection of images to produce same image as in the refraction Law of physics.So, what this translate metaphysically speaking is to visualize positive result wherby such manifestation wiyll bring about such manifested poaitive result.

You are not comparing apples to apples. The electron attraction and repelling is dealing with magnetism. The law of attraction is with the laws of resonance. Two totally different aspects of physics.

I'm somehow finding the opposite to be true, that opposites DO attract. Here is my musical example: If you play two notes at the exact same loudness and tone then they will cancel each other out and you will not be able to hear them. Other examples: Good doesn't exist without evil, you don't exist without me, God told Adam not to eat the apple, yin and yang, and how could you read this black text if the background was black too? Also, has anyone noticed how when you talk about love you always find haters and on days you hate the world your always shown love? I'm not saying to start hating, I'm just saying that's what you'll attract, besides all those haters will just attract more love from you. I've had experiences with successful LOA but the success came at times were I wasn't trying to attract at all. I just had a lack that I knew I had and the universe filled it in. When I consciously try to attract things I really do feel like I'm repelling the universe. You want more proof: This post is going to attract some opposite reactions. The previous sentence was a paradox because you're going to have to agree to disagree.

I'm not trying to wreck anyone's beliefs or anything. This is just my opinion trying to shed some understanding as I try to understand myself. :)

-peace

this is such a good question, i have always told myself that the law of attraction is based more on your sustained thoughts and not on physics!

Like attracts like and opposites attract each other. that's the complete law of attraction. for example : if you are thinking about wealth, your actions and your thoughts would reflect what you are thinking about, that is wealth. but, does that mean if you are thinking about weatlh you will become wealthy? .. no. you may lose all money you have! .. but you still got a reaction about the same subject. wealth. like attracts like. to the second part of the law, opposites attract each other : we desire something when we don't have it. for example, we desire health when we are sick. it's in your mind ( positive ) but it's not in your experience ( negative ). that's when opposites attract each other.

Electrons exist in the physical plane, not the mental plane.

I not sure but I think + poles of magnets repel. I also heard in romance opposites attract. in other words the rocks in your head fit the holes in hers hehe. Think of it in a Karmic way. You reap what you sow. Put out positive and receive positive.

Harmonic Resonance is the answer. Same as Sympathetic Resonance. Nicola Tesla did extensive work in this field but because his findings did not "resonate" with the perceptions of Newtonian physicists his ideas were ignored. Today, we have the same problem with this question. LOA does not resonate well to those indoctrinated in the dogma of Newtonian physics. Galileo ran into a similar problem - if you recall.

One word of warning though - to those believing that thoughts are not "things" WRONG! Look at any modern up to date chart of electromagnetism and you will see that brain wave frequencies account for a very large amount of "stuff" on that chart. Every single thing consists of energy vibrating at specific frequencies. That's what e=MC2 means!

Truth is that this is at the very heart of this debate. Thoughts ARE "things". They have weight and mass. In the 50's and 60's the Russians built machines to record AND decipher thoughts. Successfully. This fact had far much more to do with the "Cold War" than most Americans can ever imagine.

Read "Psychic Discoveries" by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroder and also "The Field" by Lynne McTaggart. All women I might note. These are science researchers talking to leading edge scientists. NOT philosophers as the Newtonians would have you believe. Stretch yourself - read this stuff. It is PROOF.

OUR life depends on it.

like attracts like. Because the negetive is always in competition with the positive. But they both from the same power, and they understand each other

dont be logical in questioning....s...its true that like attracts like...then y does a man attract a woman????r they alike??? its the passion or deep desire to become united and transform themselves to a higher consciousness...is the likeness between them that makes them feel attracted to each other....the same way are the protons or electrons or etc... the thing just happened a few millenniums back...was that a few people who observed the reluctance shown by the protons / electrons made use of his observation ...named it as repulsion and used it for a better mankind... There after every one followed it blindly as it was found something newly beneficial...

LIFE IS JUST A WOMB OF ULTIMATE COMMON SENSE....

I think of your question in terms of a magnet that will attract everything, and anything that it come into contact with, but is limited to things that it does not comes into contact with. So in terms of life experiences, although we may attract something thing, it may not in fact, be good for us, or we may at first think so, but on second thought finds it repulsive, and would disregard it totally. So although we have made the initial contact to bond, perhaps there would be no bonding in the future!

in magnetism or electricity similar repel and opposite attract, like male and female. magnetism is alignement of electron in the same way. and when you move magnet near a wire you produce electricity electron moving in the same direction(i would say that it makes a cooperation from the electron from the magnet to cooperate with the electron in the wire and give them the same alignement in the same direction). magnetism and electricity can be convert one to the other. from magnet you can produce electricity and from electricity you can produce electro-magnet. law are more then dead stone. try to produce a child from a male to a male or a female to a female. you know that nature does not work that way.but you can make a child from a male to a female. so if they teach that like attract like i would say that is not the law of attraction but the law of repulsion. the law of attraction would be a cooperation of similar align element in the same way. yet those 2 law can work together they are use in electro-magnetism. so basically it is how you applie those law in unity with your free will that makes the appropriate result.

There's a tendency to want to reconcile science with spirituality. Science is but a subset of spirituality which has infinite perspectives and all leading to One-ness. Science is not the baseline by which to measure spirituality even though we sometimes lean on it for the benefit of those who are interested in spirituality but are still stuck with some scientific desires. Spirituality precedes science. The better way to think of the Law of Attraction is that your physical conditions correspond or are an output of your state of consciousness. You're not actually attracting i.e. pulling something distant toward you, you are manifesting from the Infinite Potential within you. The distance is vibrational not physical. When they say "Like Attracts Like" they're saying a state of mind will produce it's corresponding physical equivalent beginning with an emotion and then on to full blown manifestations. I really don't think we should be working with scientific analogies it will make things more complicated because science requires phenomena to be explainable on scientific terms and I wouldn't wait for all of that when I know that without my awareness science could not exist in my experience. It's all about your experience.

Also visit this: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/73953/is-it-correct-to-say-like-poles-attract-unlike-poles-repel-while-two-magnets He seems to suggest that what is attraction or repulsion is actually something (: I don't fully understand this from a scientific perspective and quite frankly don't care to :) about things aligning in the direction of the magnetic field. Sometimes, the words used like "repel" and "attract" and "like" etc. make us attempt to create analogies using the magnet thing but do we really understand what's happening there i.e. what exactly is meant by the word "like", "pole", "attract", "repel" in the in-depth scientific detail? I doubt it. We are looking at things from a level perceivable by the senses but I'm not sure about the intricacies of what's happening in those magnets. Here's another: http://startswithabang.com/?p=1643

Personally, I stick to spirituality because everything else is sub-ordinate to it. This is a dream and in a dream anything goes depending on the dreamer.