Do not underestimate the value of your preferences, for the evolution of your planet depends upon those of you on the Leading Edge of thought continuing to fine-tune your desires. And the contrast, or variety, in which you are standing provides the perfect environment for the formation of your personal preferences. (p. 17)According to Abraham, therefore, preferences are evoked by the environment, by conditions of variety and contrast, which generate uniqueness of perspective and viewpoint. These individual desires manifest new realities, and continue the expansion of the universe.
Your current time-space-reality, your current culture, your current ways of looking at things -- all of the things that make up your perspective -- have evolved over countless generations. In fact, it would not be possible to retrace all the desires, conclusions, and perspectives that have resulted in your unique point of view right here and now. (p. 30)
This closely parallels evolutionary biology. Preferences are themselves evolved, and they play a role in further evolution. The environment selects for preferences which aid survival and reproduction. Animals have evolved preferences for various factors such as food, location, and temperature. One of the most important types is mate preference, because it directly influences which genes will be passed on. There is the rather strange fact that animals can prefer things which do not yet exist. For example, female fish of a species related to swordfish prefer males with swords (even artificial ones), even though their own males are swordless. The species that evolved swords may have done so through sexual selection: males with swords became fathers because the females liked them better -- and the females wanted swords on their mates even before the males had them!
(If Sigmund Freud ever incarnated as a fish, he might have some odd things to say about this situation.)
Looking at it in Vitalistic terms, the fish are using the Law of Attraction, imagining (in some dim, instinctual fashion) the realities they wish to manifest. Seth says that plants and animals dream themselves into being. The dreaming is the source, and the seemingly random mechanism of natural selection is the means through whch it manifests.
For humans, our preferences are also shaped by heredity, as well as by environment and learning. The hereditary component represents cumulative genetic selection over many generations, while the learned component encompasses personal experience and what we absorb from culture. Our experiences are also determined by choice. Our preferences, in turn, become the basis of further choices, the means of selection of future realities -- and so it comes full circle. Our selection is a part of Natural Selection. And, since we have conscious minds, we can be consciously selective about what we select. We can even, through choice, shape our own preferences, cultivate new desires and extinguish old ones. This gives us enormous leeway and flexibility in creating our reality.
In a Vitalistic sense, the Law of Attraction applies on every level. The creative Will within the environment itself, the Platzgeist or Place-Spirit, manifests itself as the selective forces which shape Life's evolution. The preferences within individuals, which in turn shape and select the environment, are manifestations of this same Will. The desire of the individual and species draws forth the factors needed for future growth. And so do we and the world coevolve, woven in a web of desire, attraction and joyous striving.
