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Thursday 26 May 2011

The Secret: The Spirituality of Narcissism




The Secret. 

It's all the rage. The book and movie have garnered the enthusiasm of millions. Everyone from Oprah to Montel is extolling Rhonda Byrne's spiritual juggernaut. The premise of The Secret is simple; The power of attraction. Like attracts like. What we think, what we feel, acts as a magnetic signal, attracting its correlate from the Universe. The Secret says our thoughts and feelings manifest that which we desire. In fact, according to the teachers of the Secret, this works 100% of the time, for 100% of the people who use it. The Universe responds to our wishes, providing whatever we desire. This is because "we create our own reality", and The Secret says science confirms this.

As with most things, The Secret is a Good news / Bad news scenario. First, the good news. The secret is (partly) true. Our thoughts and feelings are of consequence, and positive thinking and feeling can significantly characterize our experience of reality, even influence the way reality unfolds. The Secret cites everyone from Martin Luther King to Einstein as examples of people who knew -and employed- The Secret. Martin Luther King had a dream. Einstein said God doesn't play dice. And so on.

The Secret uses valid (but partial) suppositions such as:

Our thoughts and feelings are powerful
and inflates them to a Kosmic (and false) scale, giving us: Our thoughts are the most powerful things on Earth.
The secret takes a statement like
Thought can influence reality
and amplifies it to "Thoughts create reality." Not just any thoughts, but YOUR thoughts.

(By the way, are you a rape victim? I guess you created that reality with your thoughts. Was your family member killed in Iraq? I guessed you created that experience for yourself so you could learn from it. Wow. You are one sadistic cat.)

The Secret takes a truth like
The Self is one with the Universe,
and then immediately inserts the wrong self; The Ego. [...]


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