The Secret

Do you know The Secret????


I do. I have been experiencing it and doing my best to live by it for about ten years. Half of my life I had no clue I was doing it. Sometimes my uncanny ability to know exactly what was going to happen to me next was slightly unnerving. At times I thought perhaps I had a little sixth sense thing going.

Once I started reading up on it I was surprised they even called it a secret. I mean, I figured it out with the help of many different popular speakers and authors so how secret could it be? Every time I studied any great philosophical thinker I noticed they all seemed to believe in it. From Socrates to DaVinci to Newton to Edison to Enstein to Carnegie...well you get the idea. ALL of the biggies. Quite an amazing group of people who agreed on one key theory- the law of attraction.

For those of you who have not heard of it, The Secret is a new book and DVD by a woman in Australia who was drawn to research the key common element of every great philosophical teacher in history. They all had in common one key idea, whether they related it to God or physics. She also has included many new age gurus in the book, who have been writing about the law of attraction for the past twenty years.

This is Conversations with God , When God Winks, and One Day My Soul Just Opened Up stuff. The main difference in The Secret book and DVD is now many of these or similar authors have all come together in one package. And it is picking up marketing momentum much faster than the other authors and teachers did by themselves.

Before I go further I will say that I believe there are a few faults with The Secret. For instance I do not believe people co-create every tragedy or trauma in their lives, though they could attract a downward spiral from that tragedy depending on how they handle it. If people did bring every experience into reality that they focused their attention on, then I know quite a few who's children would have been "lying in a gutter somewhere" a million times by now. I feel this attitude brings way too much grief and guilt to any parent who has lost a child.

Secondly, I don't believe that The Secret was all that secret. The author herself found out about it by reading a book published in 1910. And many great teachers like Socrates, Buddha, etc shared this philosophy in one form or another with all their students. Critics have complained that there are many statements in the book and DVD (which I haven't seen yet) that are not backed up with historical fact. Such as claiming that there was a group of rich and famous men who buried the secret to keep it to themselves and that "the church" found out about it and banned it at one point. I haven't done my research on that, but some of it does sound a little on the sensationalized side.

Lastly, the declaration that any philosophy is an "absolute truth" I cannot support. I believe there is only one absolute truth... that we will never be able on this earth to know an absolute truth.

All that being said there is a lot of good that can be accomplished by using the law of attractioin. Using positivity to affect one's life and one's ability to find happiness is an exceptionally empowering tool, as is taking responsiblity for your own happiness. So overall I do support The Secret's main messages. Your thoughts are the most powerful energy you possess in life and like attracts like. Therefore you better be thinking happy thoughts as much as possible!

I first saw The Secret and it's panel of teachers on Oprah along with millions of other people who all rushed out to buy it. It intriqued me. Imagine a book that summed the secret of happiness in about 180 pages of quotes, bullets, and outlines. It has mass appeal for several reasons. First of all the name. "If you want to get someone's attention...whisper." Such amazing wisdom from a 30 second commercial. (Although I did a search online and it must not have been a good commercial. Every site that quoted it couldn't name the product.) So the law of attraction applies to whispering secrets- hence the reason the name was chosen. We all like a secret and we all like to keep it to ourselves. The other highly intriquing aspect of the book is the cover. It looks right out of the Divinci Code. So we WANT to read what's inside. And lastly, unlike the other books I mentioned before it is a very quick read. Hopefully it will help those with less time and patience get in on the message and start attracting wonderful lives to themselves. But I wonder...

It seems that these things can't be taught to people who aren't in the right place to hear or learn. Some will get hung up on religious bias. One woman struggled on the Oprah show with it being "unchristian." Being a Unitarian Universalist I don't have that struggle, and I believe many other religions including Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and so on can incorporate co-creation without it challenging their faith or belief system. But I can also understand how someone telling you that you can have a say in co-creating your life with a divine being is contradictory to what many churches have preached. So that will make some people uncomfortable with something that challenges God having sole control of their destiny.

So what IS The Secret? For those of you who missed it on Oprah and don't want to shell out the 20 some bucks for the book or 30 some bucks for the DVD, in a nut shell The Secret is this:


The universe operates on the law of attraction. What you believe, think, live- you attract. Thoughts are actually units of energy and very powerful. If you feel you deserve to be happy and live it then you will be. If you don't... well you won't. If you are so tired of waiting for something good in life to happen that waiting for it is all you focus on...then you will attract more waiting. If you can identify what you are "waiting for" and instead focus on "having it" then you soon will.


And it works.

To be continued...