First of all, I hate these names. There is no secret. There is no law. It’s not like gravity. Shut the hell up about it.
What they’ve actually done is repackage the power of positive thinking (PPT) and cloaked it in psuedo-spiritual nonsense.
Why I really hate The Secret is that it’s taken a perfectly good concept and corrupted it beyond all redemption.
- Are you better off focussing on the positive rather than the negative? Yes.
- Are there tangible benefits to strongly and viscerally imagining your ideal outcome? Absolutely.
- Are you likely to “attract” luck and opportunities if you have the right mindset? I truly believe that’s true.
But shut the hell up about vibrational frequencies. Just… stop.
I won’t get into whether the “science” behind it is reliable. Just because the findings are valid doesn’t mean they support the interpretations.
Everything about PPT/LoA/Secret is explainable purely by the shift in your focus. Why muddy the waters?
The sad truth is that people want to believe in magic. They want to believe in peace, love, and goodwill as driving forces in the universe. They want to believe that there is benevolent power that gives them what they want. This even describes me. But I really think it’s disingenuous to flick your magic wand around and conjure up the illusion of mysticism for the benefit of gulling the masses.
Part of the reason the Secret spread like wildfire is because it tied in with what people already believed, in their childlike hearts. Like Santa Claus. The tooth fairy. Genies in bottles and friendly hobs. It gave people a magic they could accept, because the science said so.
I am all for magic! Let me be clear. I love magic for the sense of possibility it implies, and invites. But … don’t throw common sense out the window. The Holocaust attracted Jews? Lets not even go deep. How bout poverty? Poor people attracted poverty? All of them?
That being said, there are several useful frameworks I use, even in practice, because they make sense to people on a visceral level: e.g. You get sick when you focus on sickness. You get fat when you focus on your weight. This is always a hotbutton one, because people are like, “Yeah? Yeah? Well I have cancer. How dare you say that’s my fault?”
I’m not. If you think you’ll get sick, you’ll feel like you’re sick more often. If you weigh yourself, you’ll feel fat more often. (Be honest. Percentage-wise, how many times have you gotten on a scale and thought “Damn, that’s good!”)
It doesn’t matter what the facts are. Reality is almost wholly a subjective assessment. If you are a healthy person, and you get cancer, for instance, your perception of yourself, and health, and this situation are very clearly mirrored in the words you use. Are you ‘coping’ with cancer? ‘Battling’ it? Dying of cancer? Or living with cancer? Even though it’s New Agey, I always prefer to refer to it as “experiencing a condition,” just to kind of take the focus off the condition, and onto your experience of it.
Again, that’s the power of focus. As I was busy hunting fruitlessly for the exact damn statistics that I know I have, Angela Artemis was writing a whole article on the topic. Go, read! Noticed how even though she references a genie (coincidence! Iswear!) there is no mention of the universe bending itself to your will as soon as you get clear on what you want. That is YOU bending the universe to YOUR will.
Heady knowledge, isn’t it? Kinda makes you sit up straighter. Kinda forces you to take responsibility. Between you and me, I think that’s why people prefer “The Secret.” It puts that buffering layer of mysticism in there so that people can still tell themselves that there is a benevolent power outside of them, telling them it’s okay for them to have what they want.
Whether there is or there isn’t is irrelevant. You can only control what’s inside.
End Rant.
Did any part of this push your buttons? What are your thoughts on this debate? Anyone brave enough to speak up on behalf of Rhonda Byrne?
Talk to me people!
Next week’s topic:
The fallacy of control. I’ll expand this topic all week so you can tear into me on Friday. Sharpen your knives!
[ssbp]
