The Secret's Out

Seen Oprah lately? I haven't...as benign as that woman may be, she frightens me a little. Name one other person who can singlehandedly turn an obscure tome into a national bestseller overnight. At least she seems to be concentrating (for the most part) on using her power to empower others...which is, of course, what having power is supposed to be all about. Still, I do wish more people would act on their own, without waiting for her approval. There almost seems to be this notion that "Oprah says it's okay, so it's okay." I think that's what disturbs me.

One of her latest pet extravaganzas is something called The Secret. Like Oprah herself, The Secret is everywhere. It's a book. It's a DVD. It's online. And the backlash against it is a phenomenon in itself.

I'll be honest...I haven't seen the movie and have no intention of doing so. I haven't actually read the book, either (though I did skim it, looking for the noted contribution of my favourite spiritual author, Neale Donald Walsch). Nevertheless, having read a great many books more developed and considerably more profound (though not, I confess, as beautifully illustrated), I feel somewhat qualified in discussing its themes.

The Secret is basically The Power of Positive Thinking for the modern age, stripped of all reference to God and imbued with a New Age sheen in its place. The recipe is deceptively simple: think nothing but positive thoughts, you are told, and you will attract positive outcomes. Likewise, thinking negative thoughts produces negative experience.
This seems to make a sort of surface sense. Most of us know somebody who never seems to suffer, who always seems to have a smile. And I suspect pretty much all of us know at least one person who can find a dark cloud around any silver lining--and who, oddly enough, never seems to run out of dark clouds to fixate on. Me, I can think of about ten people I know in that latter class, and every one of them can sap me of energy and kill my Happy Thoughts if I let him.

But what of the person who falls victim to tragic circumstances...the child whose parents are murdered before her eyes, the woman walking home one night who is dragged behind some bushes and savagely raped, the man who loses his job and his home and ends up living on a park bench? Are we really supposed to believe that these people simply weren't thinking hard enough about the Good Things In Life? I find that sort of thing rather sickening, myself. It's little different than some holier-than-thou sanctimonious goody two-shoes telling you that you simply didn't have enough faith.

Of course, on a very high, esoteric level, I do believe our thoughts attract events and even matter. What's more, I suspect within my lifetime science will back me up on this. After all, thoughts, words, deeds, matter, events...all these things are various forms of energy. As of right now we know very little about the energies our brains run on. Is it so farfetched to believe, for instance, that all those energies can and do mesh in utterly prosaic and yet miraculous ways? Is that sort of belief more or less farfetched than belief in a Supreme Being who never stops loving you, but demands you never stop loving Him, and who will punish you eternally if you step too far off His chosen path?
You know what? If I had to simplify "the energy of the Universe" into one three letter word, I figure "God"'s as good a word as any.

Now, I'm not sure if The Secret is written in such a way as to encourage the backlash it's receiving, or whether the vast majority of its naysayers have simply chosen to misread and misinterpret what it says. I have read several columns mocking the entire idea behind The Secret..."I sat down and visualized a million dollars! I thought about it really hard! For, like, an hour! And...drumroll, please....nothing happened!"

Well, duh.

If there's one thing I have learned and applied after having trolled through what seems like an entire library of spiritual tomes, it's that wanting something and getting it are pretty much polar opposites. The Rolling Stones said it: you can't always get what you want. "The more you get, the more you want" was a proverb in the 1300s. Hell, even in my Christian days I was made to understand that the proper attitude for prayer is never supplication but always gratitude. If you truly desire to be rich, by all means imagine yourself rich...but if your mind's eye insists on painting a picture that is in any way different than the one you get with both eyes wide open, brother, you're doing it wrong. The fact is, you're already rich. If you don't believe it, look around for someone poorer than you. Then give him some of the riches you have, that he doesn't. In the giving will you realize the truth: that you had something to give. Apply that lesson often enough and you'll be thinking of yourself as rich in no time. And yes, The Secret is correct: like attracts like. Think you are rich--and think it genuinely, by which I mean think often of all those things you have to give--and you will become the richer for it. Trust me, it works.

It works with love, too, incidentally. Looking for love? It's been said often that you should look first at yourself: if you don't love you, why should anyone else? But I'd argue that love is a circle: the way to love yourself is to love another. In doing so, you become aware of the love within yourself, and thus make yourself more lovable.

That's what the Law of Attraction means to me. From what little I have seen, the mistake in The Secret is its preoccupation with the physical: the money, the luxury car, and so on. These things are simply things. They are not wealth; thinking they are is perhaps the most common error in our society. Those who are truly wealthy have no need of trinkets and baubles to prove it. Pining for status symbols without a sense of self-worth (acquired, of course, through the ascribing of like worth to others) will get you nowhere.

And that's all I have to say about that.