Get Happy, Be Happy, Stay Happy

Okay, here is proof that the Law of Attraction doesn’t work as claimed.

For several reasons I’m “vibrating” pretty low right now. I’m in a funky mood. Stay out of my way.

I got an email this morning with a link to The Gratitude Dance. I know that the video is associated with the Law of Attraction and the belief that the attitude of gratitude creates high vibration, which, of course, enables you to attract high-vibration stuff. Due to my disdain for The Secret and the Law of Attraction, I haven’t been interested in watching it. But this morning I decided to watch it and see what the fuss is all about.

Now I’m in a worse mood.

Shake it, baby, shake it!

According to this Live Science article, “Scientists may one day be able to destroy viruses in the same way that opera singers presumably shatter wine glasses. New research mathematically determined the frequencies at which simple viruses could be shaken to death.”

Every “thing” vibrates because everything is made up of atoms that vibrate. We vibrate. Even our “thoughts” vibrate, because brain function is electromagnetic.

Sounds pretty woo-woo, doesn’t it? But this stuff comes straight from science.

Maybe one day the energy healing folks will have the last laugh. Maybe one day the Stuart Davis “thoughts are things” video (warning — R rated!) won’t be a parody. Maybe Bruce Lipton is right about his understanding of epigenetics, and that our own thoughts control certain genes.

Maybe is the key word for me. Obviously I’m very interested in woo stuff, but I need a lot more scientific evidence before accepting certain notions hook, line and sinker.

I learned from Steven Sashen’s blog that the Oprah show is looking for people who have questions about the Laws of Attraction.

Are you familiar with The Secret, (or the “Laws of Attraction”), but are unsure how to use them in your life? Are you struggling with how to implement The Secret in your life? Which part are you struggling with? Do you set-out with a positive thought but come to roadblock when it comes time to manifest this attraction? Are you wondering how you can make the law of attraction work in your life? Have you heard family or friends talk about how The Secret has worked in their own lives, but you still just don’t “get it”?

Source

If they can admit that this is indeed the case, the show should be flooded with people who are supremely manifrustrated.

I’ve said it many times on my blog and I’ll say it again: The so-called Law of Attraction as taught by the The Secret film and book is nonsense — and attempting to live by this law is harmful. I hope that Oprah will come to see the folly of promoting this garbage.

After a lull of a few months, people are googling again for information about The Secret and the Law of Attraction, and they’re finding my blog. I’ll continue to post about this topic because I believe in doing my part to make this world a better place. If you don’t know how living La Vida LOAca (hey, Connie, add that to our lexicon) is destructive, read this and this and this for starters.

I’ll also continue to point to other blog posts that reflect my views, such as this one from Chief Happiness Officer Alexander Kjerulf (an oldie but goodie).

People want to know how to control their world so they can be happy. Period.

And a lot of people aren’t happy, and they don’t know why. They want answers. Thus the phenomenal success of The Secret, which purports to give the answers. In this WebProNews article, Jason Lee Miller calls The Secret “that marketing genius.” Others have said that many times before, of course. Hard work, hooking up with well-connected people, and the power of viral marketing aimed at easily influenced people hungry for answers is the secret to its success.

Now ideas popularized by The Secret, such as “putting energy out there,” are seamlessly woven into mainstream media stories. Some of the most unlikely of sources are using the buzz to grab attention. As I noted in an earlier post, 2008 will be a year of all-things-Secret. (You’re right, I’m capitalizing on it too with this post!)

Here’s Jason’s entire article, in which he suggests an experiment to use our thoughts to stop the recession.

Searchers Want To Know About The R Word
Jason Lee Miller | Staff Writer

It should be the Frau Blucher of words and if we believe in that marketing genius that was “The Secret” we shouldn’t dare throw it out there. Nonetheless, the braver the media gets at using the “r” word, the more people are searching for it. Thus, they’re all putting the energy out there like seeds and are waiting to reap the harvest.

Recession. There, I said it, now let’s get on with it.

Yahoo’s Molly McCall at The Buzz Log reports that Yahoo searches have spiked in the past week regarding that rather unpleasant term. See, put it out there it just grows.

She writes:

“Over the past seven days, searchers propelled queries on ‘economic recession’ and ‘recession’ upwards. Lookups like ‘last u.s. recession’ and ‘recession proof jobs’ spiked. Even ’stagflation’ - a term not normally found strolling the Buzz aisles-more than doubled its numbers.”

The phrase “definition of a recession economy” is up 500%; “what is a recession” is up 260%.

Concern, according to McCall’s color-coded map, is heaviest in places you might expect, where the real financial centers are like New York, Illinois, and California. Strangely, the recession-related searches are extra-heavy in Tennessee, too.

As the for square states, the nobody-lives-there states, and the-economy’s-always-bad-anyway states, they don’t seem to be all that alarmed.

Maybe we should try an experiment. Everybody think super hard about economic expansion, repeat the words, and then go search for it. Maybe The Secret works.

(Yes, I know he’s not being serious. I hope.)

To all who stumble upon my blog while searching for answers to why your life is now a royal mess after faithfully following the laws to obtaining health, wealth and happiness promoted in The Secret film or book:

Steven Sashen over at The Anti-Guru Blog has coined a new term, manifrustration.

1) The unhappiness associated with not getting what you want after attempting to influence the universe with your thoughts

2) The displeasure that occurs when the manifestation “master” says you haven’t gotten what you want because there’s something wrong with you

2a) The added confusion when this alleged imperfection is some unprovable or vague theory, such as: the level of your intention or “vibration”; unconscious “resistance”; or the type and/or number of certain thoughts that spontaneously arise in your mind

3) The depression that follows the times when, if you do somehow manage to get what you want, you find that you’re not actually any happier

4) The sadness arising when, after not getting what you want through the use of a particular manifestation technique, you go into debt to take another manifestation course that promises better results — but only delivers one or more of the 3 states listed above

Thanks, Steven!

Who else wants to cash in on The Secret and The Law of Attraction?

I do, I do! But can I do it without selling my soul?

We all knew that 2008 would bring a fresh batch of all-things-Secret. I just received an email from a group touting Happy for No Reason, a new book by Marci Shimoff. I actually sat a few feet away from her at a seminar, where she was a “no name, no position” attendee like everyone was asked to be (yet somehow she got conspicuously noted, along with other high-profile people there). She and the presenter would go on to appear in The Secret. Too bad I didn’t get autographs to sell on ebay. (Too bad I know far more about the presenter’s life than he’d like.)

Anyway, I have such an aversion to The Secret and the so-called Law of Attraction, that my first reaction to reading about Marci’s book is a big WHATEVER!

Rhonda Byrne, creator of “The Secret” wrote:

“I want to let you in on a secret to ‘The Secret.’ The shortcut to anything you want in your life is to BE and FEEL happy now! It is the fastest way to bring money and anything else you want into your life.”

You may have seen Marci Shimoff in “The Secret” movie. Marci is an undisputed expert on the Law of Attraction.

Like Rhonda, she knows that Happiness is a powerful attractor. She knows — and she teaches you in the book and on the free recordings — that happiness helps draw to you whatever you want.

That’s how she became a #1 New York Times best-selling author. People have purchased more than 13 million copies of her books. That is extraordinary considering that most books never sell more than 2500 copies. She is a mega successful author who knows that happiness is the secret to life.

And she knows how to help anyone — YOU! — quickly become happier, and remain happy for the rest of your life. And that’s what you get in her book and in the special bonus recordings that you will receive right now when you order her book.

Why was Marci on NBC’s “The Today Show” this week? Because as one magazine just declared, “Happiness is the newest fashion.” People are finally figuring out that it isn’t the new flat screen TV, or the iPhone, or the new wardrobe that makes you happy.

It’s the old chicken/egg thing. And happiness definitely came first. Marci figured out how to get happiness to naturally bubble up from within, which is why the national media is clamoring to get her attention. She figured out that to be happier all you need is your brain — and simple instructions on how to use it. And, you should, because:

Unhappiness brings early death

Ugh.

Of course I’m all for happiness! But please oh please don’t get this wonderful thing all mixed in with a gang of marketers who may be more interested in filling their bank accounts than your blessed happiness.

(Oh, and what about all those cranky old farts that live forever?)

The study of success isn’t rocket science, it’s neuroscience!

On my travels around the blogosphere this morning I discovered SharpBrains. I immediately went to the Neuroscience Interview Series and read the interview with Dr. Brett Steenbarger, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, SUNY Medical University, in which he discusses success and the importance of emotional management.

“Elite performers are distinguished by the structuring of their learning process… It is important to understand the role of emotions: they are not “bad”. They are very useful signals. It is important to become aware of them to avoid being engulfed by them, and learn how to manage them.”

The interviewer asked what differentiates elite performers from the rest. Dr. Steenbarger replied:

The elite performers are distinguished by the structuring of their learning process. From a relatively early age, they are engaged in an intensive learning process that builds upon their natural talents. They find a niche—a field that makes use of these talents—and become absorbed with a deliberative and systematic learning process that provides them with continuous feedback about their performance.

The recipe for success seems to be talent, skill, hard work, and opportunity. In contrast, many people who don’t end up performing at a high level were driven mostly by practical reasons to enter that field and are not motivated to follow the same level of intensive and systematic training. (What Brett is saying reminds me of the Learning Cycle that Professor Zull outlined a few weeks back).

Success isn’t a matter of lucky breaks or magical thinking. It may seem ludicrous to point this out, but lots of people riding the Law of Attraction Train believe otherwise and are on the track headed to disappointment.

(I noticed that this site promotes HeartMath products for stress management and emotional management. I recommend the emWave. See my related post.)

In today’s e-newsletter from LifeTrek Coaching International, Bob Tschannen-Moran shares 12 shifts we can practice to create happiness: “from control to freedom, from cynicism to possibility, from manipulation to mindfulness, from pessimism to responsibility, from distraction to silence, from exclusivity to diversity, from anxiety to mystery, from aimlessness to hope, from superiority to humility, from inferiority to beauty, from scarcity to justice, and from selfishness to love. These are the things that make life worth living. The more we incorporate them into our daily living the more we will contribute and the closer we will be to the Great Spirit of life.”

I was particularly drawn to shift number 7: Avoid Anxiety/Embrace Mystery.

We live in an age of anxiety. Troubles and terrors, both of natural and human origin, are real. But that does not mean we can afford to live from that anxiety. Not only is anxiety unproductive, it undermines creativity, obscures possibility, and negates temerity. It brings us up short in the game of life.

Which is especially unfortunate given the mysterious way things have of working out. What may, at first, seem to be a catastrophe often appears, in hindsight, to be a blessing. Indeed, the very nature of our quantum universe argues against anxiety, which is itself a remnant of the Newtonian principles of cause and effect. If that’s the only way things happen, then we have reason for anxiety. But if the universe can jump natural barriers, respond to subtle energies, and generate synchronicities then we can embrace mystery as our way of being in the world.

This point goes right to the heart of my ongoing questioning about cosmology and the meaning of life. I don’t know if Bob is right, but it gives me something to think about. All I know is that the quantum world is extremely bizarre and almost beyond our comprehension. Quantum physicists still don’t know how it all works, yet lots of people who are not physicists, especially gurus and teachers who want to make a living teaching how the universe works (think The Secret and all the Law of Attraction teachers), claim to have it figured out.

Embrace mystery… I’ll try.

Read LifeTrek Provision #542

(If you like keeping up on quantum theory, read Quantum untanglement: Is spookiness under threat?)

Much to my extreme pleasure and relief, The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2007 does not, I repeat, does NOT, include The Secret. Woo hoo!

See the list

You’ve probably read about the recent call to investigate what the government ain’t tellin’ us about ET visitations. If you’ve been worrying about a coverup or that you may be next on the list for a very special visit, you can rest easy. Dr. David Morrison, Senior Scientist of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, provides reassuring answers here.

My two cents:

Is alien life possible? Sure. Is there evidence that ETs have entered Earth’s atmosphere? No. Is there evidence that ETs or nonphysical beings from another place or dimension communicate with Earthlings? No.

While we’re on the subject:

Does the channeling craze drive me nuts? Yes. Do we know what channeling really is? No. Should we dismiss it? No, because studying the phenomena will provide more insight into what it means to be human, ironically enough.

Does the stuff about the so-called Galactic Federation drive me nuts? Yes. And it scares the tar out of me to know that people believe it.

It never fails. Whenever I spend an inordinate amount of time reading, discussing or watching stuff about The Secret or its ilLUSTtrious stars or its debatable teachings, I start feeling depressed. Some unfinished business in play here? Most likely.

So I’m going to do my best to figure out what’s really bugging me. Deciding to “let it go” isn’t the goal right now.

Who knows what I’ll discover. Probably that I’m some kind of fruit. We’re talking about someone who thinks most of the Rorschach inkblots look like a partly eaten apple with wings.

This is a public service announcement for New Zealanders. Australian David “Squirmer” Schirmer, who appeared in The Secret, is in your country to teach how to create unlimited wealth. Before you plunk down your money to learn his secrets, be sure to watch these news programs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuGK9JnZAAw

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/497100/1445281

Bill Harris, the director of Centerpointe Research Institute, appeared in The Secret film. After I read his views about the magical thinking found in The Secret, I wondered why he agreed to be in the film. I no longer need to wonder. He explains it in his blog post dated November 9.

He also explains how the film teaches magical thinking. And he says, “And don’t even get me started on the idea that people in Africa are starving because they are thinking the wrong thoughts.” Right on!

Read the blog post

Update 11/14: Lots of interesting comments on Bill’s post.

Update 11/15: Bill continues…

It’s not all sweetness and light in the New Age community. Whether harm is intentional or not, it happens. Common themes are blaming the victim and withholding compassion.

Psychotherapist Julia Ingram writes:

I call them New Age Bullies — those who, sometimes with the best of intentions, repeat spiritual movement shibboleths, with little understanding of how hurtful their advice can be. Some of their favorite cliches are:

It happened for a reason.

Nobody can hurt you without your consent.

It’s just your karma.

There are no accidents.

There are no victims.

There are no mistakes.

I wonder why you created this illness (or experience).

A variant of this behavior is found in the self-bullying people who blame themselves for being victims of a crime, accident, or illness and interpret such misfortunes as evidence of their personal defects or spiritual deficiencies.

I first used the term New Age Bully after attending a lecture in the early ’90s. The speaker, a popular leader in the spiritual movement, recited a New Age nostrum: “We create our own reality.” A woman in the audience responded by recounting how she had taught this “fact” to her seven-year-old daughter. The child had fallen off her new bicycle and skinned her knee. When she ran crying into the house, the mother told her to sit down and think about how she had created that accident. To my shock, the speaker then led the audience in a round of applause for this woman. The message was reinforced: Even children need to learn how everything that happens to them is their own creation.

I jumped up and said, “I think the little girl needed a kiss and a band aid.” When I tried to elaborate, the lecturer cut me off. “Are you a beginner?” he asked and then told me how wrong I was. I sat down, embarrassed and confused. Only later, could I answer that question for myself: I am not a beginner, but a seven-year-old child is. And this self-appointed guru was teaching a belief, not a fact. He had bullied me that evening, and he encouraged others to do the same.

I think we’ll see more of this type of bullying as so-called New Age and Eastern philosophies enter the mainstream without the balance of compassion and wisdom.

Read the entire article.

See how simple it is? One plus one plus one equals three. Cause and effect. No need to make mystical claims about “creating” or “attracting” a destructive fire.

Read the news article.

See my related post about the San Diego fires and why I can’t stand the teachings from The Secret.

According to Joe Vitale, one of stars in The Secret and a Law of Attraction teacher, we all attracted and helped create the San Diego fires (where several Secret stars have homes).

What everyone is overlooking is that YOU attracted these fires. Me, too. Attraction is not a solitary experience. It’s a dance of energy. If you are experiencing this event, then you helped create it. Rather then blame me for showing you another way to look at it, or blaming anyone for the fire itself, we all might clean on the programming within us that has contributed to it. It’s so easy to get into blame, to think everyone is either innocent or guilty, when it’s neither. The programming is all un-conscious. No one willingly or consciously declares they want a fire. Still, the fire exisis. The meaning you give it is the belief that attracted it. As always, these events are a chance to awaken.

Read his blog post and all the visitor comments.
[Update 10/30: Joe deleted the comments because, "There were many personal attacks, insults, wild claims, and dark negativity." Read his explanation. According to the Law of Attraction, he attracted the attacks, insults, wild claims and dark negativity. What a guy!]

For my blog readers who aren’t aware of a source for such bizarre thinking, Rhonda Byrne based The Secret film and book on the teachings of Abraham-Hicks. Esther Hicks, whose voice (”channeling” Abraham) was included in the original Secret film, claims to dialog with a group of spiritual teachers who call themselves Abraham. Yep, disembodied beings from who knows where in the cosmos.

See photos of what we attracted. Shame on us!

I lived in San Diego for 14 years and have family and friends there. I’m happy to report that all are safe. My heart goes out to those who have lost their homes and dear possessions (symbols of life). No, you didn’t “attract” the destruction of your community or home! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

[Addendum 11/09: If you're interested in reading various opinions about The Secret, check out these letters to the editor of Spirituality & Health.]

Lots of people find this blog by googling “The Secret,” “Rhonda Byrne,” “David Schirmer” and other terms. Interest in The Secret is still going strong. Personally, I decided to stop thinking (obsessing!) about it. Once I said what I needed to say, I had to drop it, or else stay in a pit of negativity. Didn’t want to attract a bunch of yucky vibes, right?

However, one of my earlier posts was brought to my attention today, which I think my new blog readers will find enlightening. It is actually a post that Bob Collier, an Australian who publishes Parental Intelligence Newsletter, wrote on the now-defunct Secret versus Science forum. He describes his excitement about what he thought The Secret would popularize (the philosophy of Wallace D. Wattles), only to be profoundly disappointed in the film’s real message, intent and dubious source.

Make no mistake. The Secret is not what most people think it is!

Read the post

Last night I listened to the hyped-up Marci Shimoff (one of The Secret stars) interview with Rhonda Byrne (The Secret producer), sponsored by HealthyWealthynWise. If you’ve been reading my blog, you know that I’m not too happy about The Secret film and book and Rhonda Byrne’s teachings about the Law of Attraction.

Just when I think I’m ready to let this whole Secret thing go, something happens to stir the pot. I’m truly distraught after listening to the interview, in which Rhonda provides insight into her frame of mind and how she created The Secret based on her heartfelt mission to bring joy to the world.

“And on that spring day in 2004, when a small, old book called The Science of Getting Rich was put into her hands, and Rhonda’s whole life suddenly pulled into spectacular focus, she knew exactly what her mission was to become. She was going to take this knowledge to the world. She was going to make a movie to carry joy to every corner of the Earth. And so the great journey that was The Secret began.”

From Making The Secret - A Brief History at the official Secret web site.

In last night’s interview, Rhonda explained that it took 100 percent faith in her vision. She had to feel the joy in her heart and be absolutely certain of the outcome. She had no doubt that her vision would manifest.

When asked about the role of action in manifesting your heart’s desire, she said that the action is in the receiving what you’re asking for. She said that if taking action were required, it would have taken a lifetime to produce The Secret. Feeling what you want inside of you just two minutes a day, Rhonda says, is worth more than lifetimes of action.

Toward the end of the interview, Rhonda reiterated that unleashing the innate joy inside of you will attract every single thing.

Wow. If only life were that simple.

I don’t believe life works that way. I suspect that if we were able to objectively examine the entire chain of events in the making of The Secret and its phenomenal success, we would discover many causes and effects that were not the result of feelings or faith. And this is where I start getting more than a little upset.

Let me shed some light on why I find Rhonda Byrne’s perceptions and teachings so disturbing. Several months ago at a seminar, I met a woman who is very similar to Rhonda. She’s from Australia. She’s on a mission to spread love around the globe. She speaks using Abraham-Hicks terminology (manifesting, vibrating, you are perfect, everything is perfect, there are no judgments, etc.). She believes everything in her life happens for a reason. She believes that her intuition and inner guidance is to be completely trusted. She says she doesn’t need to do anything to manifest her vision — everything just magically comes to her. She prides herself on being able to walk into the unknown.

She’s also very good at recruiting people to join her mission. Over time I got caught up in her vision and was invited to become a founding partner in her yet-to-be formed organization. To make a long and painful story short, I was given the boot. She explained that I wasn’t properly aligned with her mission (no details given as to what she meant).

Several weeks after my dismissal, I received an email from her distraught husband and learned that this woman had left him and their 7-year-old daughter, and that her new man (who she had met at the seminar mentioned earlier and was also onboard to be a founding partner) had left his wife and daughter. The pain and suffering these two have wrought — all under the umbrella of manifesting this woman’s vision of spreading love around the globe — is enormous.

What I saw happening with this woman was, in my opinion, not the Universe helping her create her vision. Instead, I saw her cast off people whenever she thought someone or something else could further her cause better or whenever she felt threatened. One day you’d be the perfect gift from the Universe. The next day you’d be thrown away because the Universe apparently had changed its mind and provided a different perfect gift. One day you’d be brought into her life as a perfect vibratory match; the next day you’d be dismissed because she realized that not only were you on a different (lower) vibration, but you had also shown her what she is not. Huh?

One day she’d claim that her mission “wasn’t about the money” and that she could “easily get the money.” Yet she couldn’t or wouldn’t pay me what she owed for business services. I also find it interesting that the new guy she hooked up with had recently inherited over a half-million dollars.

I don’t want to provide more troubling details here, but I think you can get the drift. I believe that this woman distorts reality (possibly unconsciously) in order to make everything fit into her vision. So while listening to Rhonda talk last night, I was reminded of this sordid mess. I started to wonder if Rhonda might have a distorted view of how she was able to create The Secret. I also wondered if there were people who she might have cast off in the relentless pursuit of her dream. We know that she cut out Esther Hicks.

(Disclaimer: These are my personal opinions, not statements of fact about character or motives. I could be completely wrong since I don’t have all the facts and can’t read minds.)

Moral of this story: Be careful about taking these Law of Attraction teachings as full truth. Please, just be careful!

The following is an excellent article from Beliefnet, written by Valerie Reiss, which shows perils and pitfalls of The Secret and the Law of Attraction.

I’m of two minds on law of attraction. Of course, like any good American, Horatio Alger-championing, magic-loving, wannabe-mystic control freak, the warm fuzzy you-can-do-it-by-wishing parts of the secret are delicious, delectable, enticing things– I can “manifest” my dream home without working more? Cool. I can wish myself to stay well without more self-care? Cooler.

I’ve experienced a taste of this before, putting lots of intentional thoughts out into the Universe and having them come back quickly, as surprise goodies, just like James Redfield said they would in The Celestine Prophecy. I’ve had amazing coincidences all over the world, thinking about people minutes before running into them. I believe in the power of positive thinking, and I believe that once we are clear in ourselves, aligned with our purpose, and going toward our dreams, magic can and does happen, miracles do occur.

And I also think we are connected to each other and God and nature more than we know, and that our minds hold huge reserves of untapped potential. I even buy the part about “anti-war” movements being less successful than “peace” movements, and that the war on drugs and terror only gets us more of what we’re fighting against.

And yet…

The Hubris of ‘The Secret’

As a cancer survivor I’m not sure I buy the ‘create your own reality’ stuff in ‘The Secret.’ And if it’s true, what about God?

By Valerie Reiss

When I was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, I was afraid to tell my New-Agey friends and acquaintances. Mainly, I was afraid they would say, “Why did you do that to yourself?” Not out of cruelty, but from a genuine desire to help me see how I had “created my own reality,” a central tenet of New Age thinking. Thankfully, no one said any such thing. (Though one woman did ask if perhaps I should have just ingested a lot of wheatgrass instead of having chemotherapy.)

This choose-your-own-adventure thinking has caught fire recently with the wild success of “The Secret” book and DVD by Australian TV producer Rhonda Byrne. There are already 400,000 copies of the book in print and Simon & Schuster just announced they’re printing two million more, which is what happens when Oprah champions your book in two separate shows and says this is how she’s lived her own life for years.

The book and the documentary-ish film are essentially the same: a compendium of talking heads””philosophers, life coaches, and authors””all talking about how the essence of our thoughts affects, nay, creates, the world around us through the power of quantum physics, energy, and our interconnectedness. It’s similar in a lot of ways to “What the Bleep Do We Know,” but without the narrative Marlee Matlin part.

Except this time the production values are better — everything looks very luxe and DaVinci-code-esque — and the heads are all hitting the same point home over and over: If you “align” yourself by feeling good, the Universe (New Age-speak for God) will provide limitless abundance. This is illustrated in numerous dramatizations: a woman wraps her thoughts around a necklace in a window, pretty soon it appears around her neck; a gay man who’s harassed for his homosexuality starts practicing the secret and soon finds people are offering him new respect.

The “secret” is kind of like prayer on steroids: Instead of a personal God processing and granting requests, a web of energy simply bounces your mindset back at you in material form. As one of the teachers in the film, Mike Dooley, sums it up, “Thoughts become things.”

I first encountered the “secret” about 13 years ago when it was much less sexily called “The Law of Attraction” or “Intentional Reality” by many, many authors and alternative spirituality teachers, from Esther and Jerry Hicks to Wayne Dyer to Deepak Chopra. Living at a yoga ashram the summer between sophomore and junior year of college, two friends and I were walking through the woods. City girl that I was, I carried a stick, hoping to fend off dangerous animals or deranged woodsmen.

My curly-haired friend Scott looked at the stick and shook his head, “What you resist persists,” he said, very much the 22-year-old sage. He explained that what we fear, we “magnetize” and manifest in our lives. So by holding the stick as defensive weapon, I was actually putting us in unnecessary peril. I reluctantly let it go. And proceeded to head-trip myself on and off for years about my negative thoughts, which were abundant.

I would realize I was thinking negative thoughts, which would trigger more thoughts about how awful I was for thinking negative thoughts and how I was ruining my life with those thoughts, and so on and so on, until my head was ready to explode with all the bad juju. The only thing that freed me from that loop was something else I also learned that summer at the ashram, meditation.

The teaching that inside of us is a “witness” who is not our thoughts, not our body, but just a still, silent observer, soothed me. I could find that perspective when I quieted down and simply did as I was told: watched the thoughts roll by like unimportant clouds””not clinging no matter how great or terrible they seemed, just watching. Buddhism also teaches this, of course, non-attachment to thoughts good or bad; in one of many out-of-context quotes whispered sotto voce throughout the film, “The Secret” cites Buddha as saying “All that we are is a result of what we have thought” to back-up its claims.

The secret, a.k.a. law of attraction (LOA), works, goes the theory, because our bodies and thoughts are made up of the same vibrating matter as the air, the trees, and God. According to a segment of quantum physics, each thought has a vibration that the Universe can somehow respond to, and each thought, especially those charged with emotion, helps to manifest every experience, person, or object in our lives. And, the LOA-teachers say, we can use this knowledge to create lives we want and intend. It’s supposed to be empowering. It supposed to point out how we’ve been unconscious victims of our own undirected intentions and allow us to become victims no more.

To some this seems laughable, like the Tooth Fairy or Ouija boards. To others it’s downright offensive””where does God fit into this DIY existence? Fate? Karma? Destiny? Are those disposable as paper plates? And what, of course, about genocide? Did Anne Frank just not “align her desires with the Universe” well enough? Were Rwandans’ thoughts too focused on what they didn’t want (”Don’t slaughter my family”) instead of what they did want (”Give me peace”)?

Rhonda Byrne actually addresses this seemingly gaping lack of compassion in a recent Newsweek article: “‘The law of attraction is that each one of us is determining the frequency that we’re on by what we’re thinking and feeling,’ Byrne said in a telephone interview, in response to a question about the massacre in Rwanda. “‘If we are in fear, if we’re feeling in our lives that we’re victims and feeling powerless, then we are on a frequency of attracting those things to us … totally unconsciously, totally innocently, totally all of those words that are so important.’”

It’s difficult, when you follow this line of thinking to this ultimately icky conclusion, to not feel sort of gross about wishing yourself a new plasma TV. And yet. This is hard. But what. If. It’s. True? What if Darfur is getting worse because we’re focusing energy on stopping the violence instead of emitting requests for peace? What if we do end up electing presidents we don’t want because they’re the ones everyone’s thinking about, as one man says in “The Secret”? What if, nothing personal, I did create my own cancer by being afraid of cancer? Then what?

I don’t even want to ask these questions, but if we’re going to be buying into this law of attraction stuff, we must take a legitimate look at its ugliest parts, in the same way that if you’re going to eat meat you should be willing to spend a day at a slaughterhouse.

I’m of two minds on law of attraction. Of course, like any good American, Horatio Alger-championing, magic-loving, wannabe-mystic control freak, the warm fuzzy you-can-do-it-by-wishing parts of the secret are delicious, delectable, enticing things — I can “manifest” my dream home without working more? Cool. I can wish myself to stay well without more self-care? Cooler.

I’ve experienced a taste of this before, putting lots of intentional thoughts out into the Universe and having them come back quickly, as surprise goodies, just like James Redfield said they would in “The Celestine Prophecy.” I’ve had amazing coincidences all over the world, thinking about people minutes before running into them. I believe in the power of positive thinking, and I believe that once we are clear in ourselves, aligned with our purpose, and going toward our dreams, magic can and does happen, miracles do occur.

And I also think we are connected to each other and God and nature more than we know, and that our minds hold huge reserves of untapped potential. I even buy the part about “anti-war” movements being less successful than “peace” movements, and that the war on drugs and terror only gets us more of what we’re fighting against.

And yet. When “metaphysician” Joe Vitale says in the film that the Universe is like “a catalog” that we can flip through and shop, my stomach churns. When Lisa Nichols says at the film’s end that, “It’s not your job to make the world a better place,” I want to sit her down for a good long chat with Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, Jr. And when the weirdly out-of-it looking woman says she cured her breast cancer in three months with affirmations and funny movies, I want to hit the TV for all the false, dangerous hope it’s transmitting.

When I had cancer (and I carefully choose the past tense though the doctors never will, no matter healthy I am, because I want to send my body a happy message), I made sure to lower my stress levels, think nice thoughts, listen to an affirming CD, and ask my friends and family to pray for me. The mind-body connection is real to me. My thoughts may or may not affect the Universe, but I know they affect my body; I have willed warts away, calmed myself when fearful, visualized love pouring into me and felt a shift. Energy is real to me too.

I’m just not so convinced that a woman peddling borrowed ideas (and that’s the generous word for how Byrne has ransacked the work of people like Esther and Jerry Hicks, authors of “The Law of Attraction” and other books) about wishing ourselves fabulous is for real. If it gets people thinking more positively, great. If it gets people clear and making strides to do good things for themselves, even better. I’m just patently suspicious of something that’s a) so slickly marketed and obviously co-opted and b) is supposed to be about feeling good yet doesn’t mention the word compassion or seem to take seriously the idea of harnessing this great law (if that’s what it is) to help others.

In other books on LOA, the materialism isn’t quite so bald, the hubris and lack of humility much less egregious. But no one to my satisfaction addresses the blame-the-victim issue at the slippery heart of this; in a culture that’s already not too fond of “losers,” do we really need another reason to disdain or pity those who suffer because they’re not “manifesting” the right reality? In a culture that already likes to look away from systemic political and economic oppression (bo-ring!), do we need another excuse to walk away from it all and say, “not my problem”?

“The Secret” feels like white rice to me — stripped of its nutrition for maximum palatability and fluffy appeal. And I’m all for fluff, with the Entertainment Weekly subscription to prove it. But not when it comes to something as serious as creating genuine joy and peace. That should be sacred””done with a combination of faith in a force that knows better than I do and compassionate free will to make my life and the world a better place. Manifest that, Universe.

Beliefnet

This entry is from The Secret Versus Science forum. It’s a response written by Bob Collier from the Parental Intelligence Newsletter. I think he touches on many of things I have a problem with as well.

Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 3:13 am

Essentially, I agree with you, so perhaps I can attempt to explain as clearly as I can what my particular beef with The Secret is.

Going back to I think it was middle or late 2005, I read the story of Rhonda Byrne discovering Wallace D. Wattles’ book The Science of Getting Rich and being inspired by it to make a movie, apparently to be called The Secret. I was thrilled.

Why? Because The Science of Getting Rich is a book that’s played a very significant - and very positive - part in my life. You can read all about that in the current issue of my online newsletter.

So. At the time I first read about The Secret, I assumed it was going to be a movie about the philosophy of Wallace D. Wattles, right?

Now, in The Science of Getting Rich, first published in 1910, Wattles presented his philosophy in a metaphysical context (which has been a problem for me - more on that in a minute). He was part of the ‘New Thought’ movement and believed, essentially, that we’re all connected to each other, not figuratively but literally, at a subconscious level and that our thoughts can go out into the world and influence the behaviour of other people at a distance.

At the time I first read The Science of Getting Rich - that was 1985 - I believed in such things. These days, I believe that the fact that everything is energy doesn’t necessarily mean that ‘we’re all one’.

It seems to me that most people on this planet are entirely ignorant of how relatively small our personal consciousness is compared to our brain’s activities overall. Our present moment awareness may often seem like ‘the whole world’ to us, but, in the big picture, it’s a pinprick of light in an ocean of darkness. I estimated once, very roughly, that for every brain cell involved in producing our personal consciousness, there are about ten million brain cells doing something else related to our behaviour in our immediate environment. Furthermore, recent research has found that our brain not only absorbs huge amounts of information moment by moment that we’re never aware of, but also the information is absorbed at an unconscious level first, before our brain then transmits to our conscious awareness the information deemed important enough for our attention (see the work of Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, for example).

Anyway, getting back to The Science of Getting Rich and The Secret. Because of the metaphysical context of the ideas I read about in The Science of Getting Rich, I’ve always been somewhat reluctant to discuss them with other people (and I didn’t get rich, but that’s another story). That was despite the outstanding success I achieved by applying the philosophy presented in the book to parenting my daughter throughout my years as her full-time stay-at-home dad (from when she was a baby until she started school). My wife - the mother of our two children (who have both benefitted over the years from what I learned from The Science of Getting Rich) - has never read the book. I published my parenting newsletter for two years before I wrote about the book’s importance in my life - the book that had been the source of my own parenting philosophy! - and that was only because I came into contact with a guy called Tony Mase, a “serious student” of the work of Wallace D. Wattles (www.constructivescience.com), who talked me into it; otherwise I might never have mentioned it to this day.

So, when I read that somebody was making a movie about The Science of Getting Rich (so I thought at the time), I was really looking forward to sitting my family down in front of the TV in due course and sharing with them the philosophy of Wallace D. Wattles, so that they might understand what the ideas are and how they work and that they’re not that weird after all. Which, in themselves, they’re not, because, regardless of the metaphysical context in which they were presented to me, they all have perfectly rational neuro-psychological explanations. In other words, you don’t have to ‘believe in God’ or anything like that for the concepts in The Science of Getting Rich to generate positive results in practice. They do that anyway if you apply them.

When The Secret was finally released, I went straight to the website to watch it. That’s when I discovered that I couldn’t because I live in Australia. But I was able to order the DVD, which I did, and I noticed there was a forum where people could discuss the movie. It was called Powerful Intentions. So, while I was waiting for my DVD (which I didn’t get in the end, but, again, that’s another story), I joined the forum to find out more about what was in the movie. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that The Secret forum was dedicated to the teachings of Abraham-Hicks.

So, naturally, I wanted to know what had happened to The Science of Getting Rich and the philosophy of Wallace D. Wattles. Apparently, they’d been totally discarded. The Secret was all about Abraham-Hicks and something called ‘The Law of Attraction’.

And The Law of Attraction was what exactly? I never found out. In answer to my questions, all I got was hippy dippy stuff. Until, that is, the Abraham-Hicks Fan Club started ignoring my questions and I left.

Such woolly mindedness is not unusual, I’ve since learned. It seems that every single member of the Abraham-Hicks Fan Club ‘kind of knows’ what ‘The Law of Attraction’ is when they see it but they can’t explain it to me in a way that makes sense.

But, they insist, it’s still a ‘law’. “Just like gravity.”

Do we know exactly what the Law of Gravity is? You bet we do. And the precise action of that law can be demonstrated for everyone to see - and that demonstration can be replicated endlessly by anybody, anywhere at any time. You don’t have to choose whether to ‘believe’ in it or not.

Can we do anything remotely like that for ‘The Law of Attraction’? Pigs might fly. So, what kind of ‘law’ is it really? A somewhat amorphous one, apparently.

Now, as Kevin Hogan has written, it’s “pretty impossible to talk about something that you don’t have a definition for.”

And I would add to that that it’s pretty impossible to talk about what The Secret movie is actually telling us when its ‘message’ is being constantly fudged according to the questions that are being asked about it.

Fudging the movie’s message is what the Abraham-Hicks Fan Club is outstandingly good at. I had weeks of it at the Powerful Intentions forum. Joe Vitale did nothing but fudge in our exchange of views at his blog in I think it was July last year.

In the article he wrote in response to the Kevin Hogan article that stirred up this current hornet’s nest, Joe’s doing it again. Now, apparently, the movie isn’t The Secret. It’s just one secret out of an undisclosed number of secrets. Really? And I thought it was The Secret to everything. Isn’t that what it says on the movie website’s home page and in the movie itself?

Now, apparently, the movie “may be guilty of leaving out some important extra steps”. Tell me about it. And what else?

One of the most important things the movie left out was its true intention. Which is to promote a perception of reality ‘channeled’ from a group of ‘higher beings’. Only it couldn’t say that, could it? The Secret is supposed to “change humanity”, and a sizeable proportion of humanity might just laugh if it knew the true origin of the movie’s ‘Law of Attraction’. So, we had the concealment of that and got the ‘quantum flapdoodle’ instead. Turning The Secret into What The Bleep Do We Know’s baby sibling.

So, is Joe Vitale a quantum physicist? Or Bob Proctor? How about Bob Doyle or Mike Dooley? Nope. But they can certainly talk about quantum physics as if they know what they’re talking about. There are two actual quantum physicists in the movie. One of them is Fred Alan Wolf, the larrikin boffin from What The Bleep. If anybody was going to say something daft about quantum physics, it would surely be him. Surprisingly, he didn’t say anything daft in the movie itself, but it turned out that one thing he (reportedly) did say after the movie was released was, “I don’t believe in a law of attraction. The first I heard of it was in the film.”

In other words, here we have a quantum physicist who appeared in The Secret telling us that quantum physics is nothing to do with any ‘Law of Attraction’. How can this be, when The Secret is telling us that it’s quantum physics that has proven the existence of ‘The Law of Attraction’?

Well, the answer to the conundrum of ‘The Law of Attraction’ is that it’s a metaphor. That’s why it means different things to different believers and why there can be no agreement on a precise definition that would make sense to a third party non-believer.

One way of looking at a metaphor is that it’s a story our brain conjures up to explain events for which it has no existing explanation. ‘The Law of Attraction’ is a useful metaphor for all those events that come into our experience that seem to correlate with our thoughts but we don’t actually know how they occurred. So, maybe you’re thinking about money and you happen to find a ten dollar note in the street. Nothing wrong with anyone saying “It’s the Law of Attraction”. Other people might say things like “It’s a gift from God” or “Lady Luck is smiling on me”, without necessarily taking those statements seriously or feeling the need to justify the use of such terms to the world, but simply using them as a means of communicating ideas that would otherwise take too many words to describe.

The human brain thinks in metaphors A LOT. More frequently than most people realise. And metaphors, by their nature, are often highly symbolic.

Problems occur, however, when we mistake our metaphors for real things. Unfortunately, the kind of person who believes that the experiences that more or less match their thinking come into their life from outside of the self (as in ‘The Law of Attraction’) - rather than simply from outside conscious awareness, until they notice them (as in the ‘Attraction Principle’) - is the kind of person who’s prone to making that kind of mistake.

It’s been very telling in my experience of the Abraham-Hicks Fan Club that, every time somebody suggests a more rational explanation for an event attributed to ‘The Law of Attraction’, the response is virtually always that the explanation is somehow an effect of ‘The Law of Attraction’. Selective awareness? That’s ‘The Law of Attraction’. Law of large numbers? That’s ‘The Law of Attraction’. Coincidence? That’s ‘The Law of Attraction’. It’s a total no win situation for rational people.

Since, according to the Abraham-Hicks afficionados, we’re all creating our own personal universe as we go along, how could any sane person ever demonstrate that any event is independent of ‘The Law of Attraction’? It’s impossible. According to The Secret, whatever happens to us, we’ve ‘attracted’ it into our experience. Even though, in objective reality, this is saying nothing more than “If something happens, something happens.”

That’s why Kevin Hogan is right when he says The Secret is a dangerous, dangerous movie. It deceives the viewer into believing things that simply aren’t true. And though you might well come away from watching it feeling great, do you have any idea exactly what you’re supposed to do next? Apart from hand over some money to one of the so-called ‘teachers’ for ‘further information’, that is.

And where has it all left us?

We have a feel good movie that has all the right ideas totally lost in a fantasy context.

We have a movie that’s deceiving the public by pretending to be scientifically based when, in fact, it’s based on New Age tosh.

We have a movie that set out to “change humanity”, screwed up completely and will probably only be remembered in the end for the divisive controversy it generated.

We have a movie that skeptics will crucify, thus making it more difficult for non Abraham-Hicks proponents of ‘positive thinking’ to communicate genuine ’success techniques’ to the world.

We have a movie that has alienated people like myself - who are NOT the negative-minded losers that some people would have you believe are the only people criticising The Secret, but people who should have been ‘fellow travellers’.

In the beginning, I would have been more than happy to help promote The Secret to the world, if it had been what I had once anticipated it would be. Now I don’t want to be associated with it in any way, shape or form, and I would suggest that any sensible person should cross the road when they see it coming.

Thanks for posting your point of view, which, as I say, I essentially agree with, and I hope my response wasn’t too long!

Bob

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