In the spiritual system of the money-minting hit book and DVD “The Secret,” negative thoughts are a no-no. Freak out about your bike being stolen, and you can kiss it goodbye. Think “fat thoughts,” and you put on pounds. Some mental health professionals are complaining that “The Secret” may convince less stable readers–those who are awash in largely involuntary negative thoughts all the time–that they are to blame for any troubles that might befall them, including sexual abuse, incarceration, and other typical problems of the disturbed.
It comes as a shock to see Rhonda Byrne, the Australian television and film producer behind “The Secret,” coolly confirm the basis of this criticism. Asked about the victims of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, Bryne told the Associated Press recently, “If their dominant thoughts and feelings were in alignment with the energy of fear, separation, powerlessness and having no control over outside circumstances, then that is what they attracted.” She gives herself a backdoor by calling the universe’s energy “impersonal” and pointing to the “miraculous stories of survival” in wide-scale tragedies, but she never gets pushed off-message.
One of spirituality’s great quests has always been to explain suffering in the world. Sin–call it negative thinking in “Secret”-speak, but in Byrne’s system it amounts to the same thing–has long been one of the usual suspects. When the Old Testament Israelites fell out with God, he usually sent them off to exile until they thought better of it. Jesus cured the lame and the blind by forgiving their sins. Jerry Falwell resurrected this theological tradition when he blamed the 9/11 attacks on homosexuals and abortionists. Byrne replaces these Christian Right targets with negative thinking. But for all her New Age gloss, the view of suffering in “The Secret” appears to be the same old, same old.
Beliefnet
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posted June 29, 2007 at 3:01 pm
“The Secret” is NOT New Age nor Old Testament. It’s simply a rerun of “The Power of Postive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peal rewrapped for a new generation. They are the same points and even some of the same anecdotes from Peal’s and other similar motivational books from the 1950′s.
This article here is correct about the pitfalls of “positive thinking”. Many people can take the idea of negative thinking and run themselves into the ground with guilt. However, I think another danger is using positive thinking as a means of denial and an escape from having to deal with loss, grief, pain, etc.
Mr. O’Donnell is right about Christians not having any room to stand judgmentally over “The Secret”, though, as Christinity has never come up with a reasonable answer to the theodicy problem– why bad things happen if God is good and all-powerful.
I think one of the strengths of Paganism is that polytheism doesn’t have the problem of One God being responsible for good and evil.
Anyway, I think “The Secret” can be helpful in an inspirational and motivational way, while recognizing that it isn’t a cure for all of life’s problems.
blessed be,
Cernowain Greenman
http://members.aol.com/cernowain9/cern.html
posted July 1, 2007 at 2:01 pm
I found the book healing for someone who worries all the time is wrought with anxiety and depression /I put on my headphones at night and feel I can be successful and am capable to do all I seek to do in a positive manner
posted July 2, 2007 at 6:54 pm
in my estimation the secret should have stayed secret!
Laura
posted July 3, 2007 at 7:58 am
Take religion out of the equation of “The Secret” and what you are left with is “focus”. What we focus on we work towards. I believe that is the true message. I am a pianist and that is my passion. I succeed because I seek out and attract people who can further my learning. It is more about personal goals then about the great Divine.
posted July 4, 2007 at 12:20 am
The Secret adds making sure your emotion is in line with your thinking, something that the previous books, including Peale’s, did not address. This actually works for me, while just thinking did not. I have also been very aware of people’s positive or negative “Vibes” and now I understand them better. So I think the book has much to offer to those of us not encrusted in theological ruts.
posted September 6, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Lets say for the sake of conversation there is no God, now what is the source of evil? Is it just an outflow of the evolutinary scheme. The law of reciprocity or as it’s called in the Bible the law of reaping and sowing. That is totally different from the question of evil in the world. what a person focus on has to do more so with thier accomplishments and failures rather than them attracting good or evil to themselves. So say that one believes in evolution and another believes in God, now the dilemma is where does evil come from either a product of evolution or God. Jesus was asked a similar question in John the 9th chapter verses 1-3 there was a fallacy in the thinking of the questioners concerning the man’s blindness and the cause of it. Jesus said niether the man or his parents was responsible for the man’s blindness. In logic There formal and informal fallacies, formal fallacies are errors in the way an argument is put together which have to do with relationships between propositions and the construction of the argument, and informal fallacies are errors in clarity of soundness of the reasoning process. Albert Camus constructs the dilemma in his novel “The Plague” Example of informal fallacy: The plague is a punishment from God. If the priest fights the plague, he is fighting against God. If the priest does not fight the plague, he is cruel and inhumane. Now all possibilities the priest’s actions have been exhausted, but the third explanation might be that since man is responsible for bringing evil into the world (the plague), then he need not worry about fighting God while trying to remove the effects of evil, hence, the priest can fight the plague and still serve God by doing good in the evil circumstances. It is not an either/or, but a both/and situation.
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