"The Secret": Oh, Happy Day!
My mother, a long-time follower of The Oprah, has recently purchased one of Her talismans of bestowed preference: The Secret.
The Secret is a self-help documentary from Australian producers that features an assembly of modern-day "teachers" to communicate what "Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, Hugo, Beethoven, Lincoln, Emerson, Edison, Einstein" (Disc 1, Track 1) all knew about success. They all knew The Secret, don't you know?
My mom bought The Secret on DVD and CD set and passed it on to loved ones, including me. She suggested I start with the CD's since the DVD is "pretty hokey", and I have thereby received Rhonda Byrne and Co.'s cosmic knowledge.
THE SECRET DISCOVERED
The foundation of The Secret (as I am magnanimous to share with you for free) is its touted "Law of Attraction." That is, if you preoccupy your mind with what you actually desire, those goals and achievements -- no matter how seemingly impossible -- are made possible. Likewise, if you spend most of your thoughts on what you want to avoid, worries will materialize instead.
"You are the most powerful magnet in the universe," Byrne tells you, and "the Law of Attraction says like attracts like" (Disc 1, Track 3).
I know what you're thinking: What a clever revision of natural law! As it turns out, we've all been corrupted by the obsolete dictum that opposites attract. No wonder scant few inspired minds with a 7th-grade education could master The Secret.
Still, it's easy to comprehend The Secret's advice that you focus your thoughts on the positive outcomes so to avoid life's uglier transpirings. This is what they may have told you in driving school. Should you find yourself in a skid or coming upon an obstacle, focus your sight instead on where want to go. Because if you look at the tree long enough, you'll hit it no matter what you do.
But I've hit "trees" that I'd never even seen nor thought of, you say. I've encountered freak obstacles that previously had no basis in my idealistic, Pollyanna mind. Did I attract those misfortunes, too?
Yes. Yes you did.
This philosophy implies not a little accountability for one's own satisfaction with life. What you soon learn is simple: every ill that befalls you is only a lapse in your willingness to think happy thoughts.
What a relief to find that The Secret doesn't get any more complicated than this! I mean, if it did, then it wouldn't be so damn practicable in day-to-day living, now would it?
THE SECRET APPLIED
"When I discovered the Secret, I did not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because it did not make me feel good" (Disc 4, Track 2). -- Rhonda Byrne
This is the kind of change we're talking about here -- tuning out inconveniences of any kind. The problem with hurricane victims in the Gulf Coast, war casualties in the Middle East, and AIDS sufferers in Africa, is that they don't make us feel good. These whining Winifreds are serious threats to your happiness and should be ignored altogether, or, if they absolutely insist on having your attention, you may teach them The Secret.
But what really makes us happy is money. Rhonda Byrne knows this, and undoes our finanical self-sabotage with old-fashioned common sense:
"It is as easy to manifest one dollar as it is to manifest one million dollars... The reason why one may come faster and the other may take longer, is because you thought a million dollars was a lot of money and that one dollar was not very much!" (Disc 2, Track 11)
Not me, that's not the problem (I no longer believe in the concept of numbers). It's just that other people think a million dollars is a lot of money, or else my mint-condition DVD of The Grudge would have made me a rich man on eBay last week.
The Secret really needs to get around to these tightwads. And there's something for them, too: if you want to live a life of opulance, according to The Secret, just pretend that you already do.
Millions of Americans in "debt" are already embracing this facet of the The Secret. Suppose you're too much of a pussy for their bold approach. Just use the power of positive imagination to acquire your wants.
Actual example: The key to getting that BMW you've always wanted is to visualize yourself already having it, thus eliminating the feeling that you need it. A nice Buddhist touch there, you might say -- doing away with all wants, especially those of the material nature -- but keep in mind that this is all part of the plan to snag that sweet Beamer. And so, through the Law of Attraction, you should be able to use those good feelings to obtain the BMW, which is something, if you're doing this right, that you no longer desire. The Universe will only give you what you want if you don't really want it.
It's the same for weight loss. On one hand, The Secret's contributors suggest you surround yourself with pictures of your ideal body, so binging-and-purging Cosmo subscribers are already on the right track. At the same time, however, The Secret says you must look in the mirror and feel good about the body you already have, and the positive energy produced therewith shall attract that perfect body to you. Eating right and exercising will just kind of happen... or kind of not... well, you'll have the perfect body, that's all that matters.
As one might gather at this point, achieving success in life is all about feeling good. Because if you don't feel good, then The Universe will never give you the things that make you feel good. So start feeling good.
And by the way, all its talk about The Universe may sound suspicious, but The Secret is not a cult in the traditional sense. You are to exalt yourself as a deity.
"The earth turns on its orbit for you. The oceans ebb and flow for you. The birds sing for you... Take a look around. None of it can exist without you (Disc 4, Track 23)."
All I could say was, at least somebody gets it.
Labels: creepy women, health, marketing, money, schemes
posted by pseudoSwashbuckler @ 3:06 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
You bought “The Grudge” and I’m supposed to approbate your caveat emptor? Whitman already told me to “know that nature was created for [me], for [me], the phenomena is perfect,” even admitting himself that “In the faces of men and women, [he sees] God.” Seriously though, where this big NON-SECRET is concerned, everybody knows that attraction is merely a matter of numbers: G = 6.7x10^-11 Nm^2/kg^2; that is, you’ll get what you want in life if you wish for heavier things, as given by “F(subG) = Gm(sub1)m(sub2)/r^2,” where the “m’s” are the masses of two objects, “r” is the radius of separation between their centers, and F(subG) is the force of attraction between the two objects. Here, if you were to double a single mass, you double the force. If you cut one of the masses in half, you cut the force in half. But, if you double both masses, you would quadruple the force. That is to say, if I gained an additional 135 pounds, my attractiveness would double, and say, if you were to also gain your own body weight again, we would find each other four times more irresistible than we do now. See how even your average, lay person can accurately apply REAL Physics to any real-life situation and pass it off as a scientific absolute (forgetting, of course, that in order to be considered scientific, something must be falsifiable). What’s that, you say? “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” ~Whitman.
First off, I’d like to applaud Antiope for identifying the perfect way to assail this particular entry with her opening remark. It’s gratifying to know there’s someone else to demean you should I fall ill, or decide to take a vacation. Second, I’d like to offer my personal thanks to her for mathematically proving what I’ve known all along, that I’m far more attractive then most of my friends, semantics of the word aside.
What I wonder is if this new brand of mysticism is referred to as The Secret and mentioned only in, honest to god, hushed tones on the audio CDs because if anyone realized the actual implications of the law of attraction they’d call for the loony bin. I say that not to be funny, but because denying reality and creating a new life that’s confined only to the space between your ears is a legitimate sign of psychosis. In fact, it’s the actual definition of word.
But I guess occupying your own reality, free from worldly concerns would feel so good. And hey, worse case scenario, you end up hugging yourself for a very long time, whether you want to or not. And who can argue with results like that.
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