What's missing from 'The Secret'
The latest craze in spiritual self-help is the phomenon they call 'The Secret'. It's a DVD, a book, a series of workshops and lots more besides. It's based around the so-called 'law of attaction' which is sometimes called the 'cosmic ordering system'.
The basic principle is this: concentrate on what you want, act as if you already have it, and the universe will rearrange itself so that you actually do. It's a nice idea, of course, and the producers of 'The Secret' even bring in some 'experts' to give a pseudo-scientific explanation of how it works (although not one a real scientist would recognise or give credence to.)
The thing is that it can work, in the same way that affirmations or visualisations work: internally. It's not the universe doing all this, but your own subconscious mind. If you persist in a belief that you own a thing and you actually don't, your subconscious will set about driving your actions so that eventually you do.
It seems to me a sad and cynical world view that robs the technique of any personal power and replaces it with new age loopiness.
Ray Blake
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Reader Comments (1)
I'm intrigued by "The Secret". What is so Secret about it?
Two and a half thousand years ago, the Buddha wrote "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world." (Dharmapada)
A thousand years later, a Biblical prophet wrote "Whatever thy hand finds to do, do it with all thy might." (Ecclesiastes 9:10)
A hundred years ago, Aleister Crowley wrote "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." As in Do what your Will tells you.
I'm sure there are more references in history and literature addressing the same concept, and I'm still watching for them. Once we realise what we really want to do, deep in our hearts, all else falls into place for us.