I was out of the country when
The Secret phenomenon was going on, so pardon my late arrival to the party. My initial contact with the book caused me to dismiss it as too New Age-y for my interest. Recently I decided to give it a second glance, and while there is a lot I can say about the book (both positive and negative), I'll try to keep it brief.
If you haven't read
The Secret or seen the movie, the basic idea is this: through the Law of Attraction, your thoughts attract whatever you are thinking about. If you think a lot about making money, the universe will present you with the cues and opportunities to do so.
On the face of it,
The Secret seems to teach something very positive -- motivation is a key to your life. How you think shapes what happens. A worthy mantra (one of the few) from the book is, "Thoughts become things." I believe this is very true. However, I believe it is true for very different reasons than the author/contributors of
The Secret do.
The Secret says that your thoughts send out "vibrations" that "the universe" responds to. Another reviewer elsewhere (I believe on Amazon) pointed out that, according to this book, the universe has a language processing disorder, and even turns your thoughts of "don't want" into "want." Whatever. I believe "thoughts become things" in the Buddhist sense. Your thoughts form the foundation for
your actions,
your speech, and
your perceptions. I think it's too fluffy and cute to think that the universe (whatever that is) is actively responding to your brainwaves. I
do think that if you think a lot of negative things, you will speak and do things rooted in negativity -- and the same, for positivity, generosity, and everything else. Thoughts
do become things.
In reality, I think
The Secret can be summed up like this: avoid creating mental roadblocks for yourself, and realize that motivation and your own thoughts will shape the world you live in (for the reasons I outlined in the last paragraph --
not because of fakey quantum physics). Why, then, is a meandering book of this length necessary? I don't know. It isn't necessary for any reason I can see.
Poitive side note: I really like Lee Brower's idea of "gratitude rocks,"
described on page 78: "Every time I touch this rock, I'm going to think
of something that I'm grateful for." This is a great spiritual
practice, and could be done with anything. I wear a small gold pendant
of the Bodhisattva Guan Yin, and whenever my awareness drifts to it or
I touch it with my hand, I try to re-center myself spiritually. I think
keeping a special object with you and using it as a spiritual wake-up
call during your day is an excellent practice.
That said, I think
The Secret can be seen as either a harmlessly dreamy book, or a naively dangerous one. It's harmless if you have your wits about you and don't get taken in by all the pseudoscience, pseudospiritualism, and misused quotations that fill up the book. It's potentially dangerous if you
are taken in by those things, and aren't alert to the following characteristics of the book:
- There are repeated overtones of escapism. Something bad comes along in your mind or your world, and you must escape it! Nevermind why it came or where it came from. I believe the why and the where are pretty critical sources of inquiry for anyone on a genuine spiritual path, but they are absent in The Secret, or replaced by the aforementioned pseudoscience.
- The book is almost completely focused on material abundance and acquisition -- me, my money, my accomplishments, my good feelings. I didn't see much about giving, healing, or helping other people.
- Following on from the last point, The Secret engages in a lot of ego-stroking. As a practicing Buddhist, I've found many problems come from inflating one's sense of self. I think it's better to empty oneself of the ego as much as possible, rather than to throw more gasoline onto the flames by acquiring lots of stuff and lots of materialistic ideas.
Overall, I think
The Secret is too long and tries too hard to take its subject seriously. If it was based on such a solid and dependable "law" as it claims, why would it be composed of so many pages of quotes and "teachers" trying to prop it up? It contains no actual secret, and it detracts a lot from what could be a valuable teaching: know that your thoughts are the root of everything that you will do and become.
Don't bother reading
The Secret for anything serious. You'd be served far better by Googling for quotes by
Thich Nhat Nanh, or reading spiritually sound writing from people like my friends
Nadia,
Lori, and @
coffeesister.
