*WARNING* This may piss you off...

15 replies
...IF you're into "The Secret"/LOA and you're not open to any CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM of the concepts presented in the book/movie and any other LOA material you may swear by. You WILL have your beliefs challenged and it may feel uncomfortable but I encourage you to read this with an open mind.

This is an article on The Secret / LOA written by Stuart Davis, who I just found out about this morning through Barry Goss, creator of the Life Without Limits blog. I had to post this article here because I felt its author offered a view of that whole movement rarely presented in the WF. It's long but well worth the read. Here it goes. I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone thinks about this.


The Secret: The Spirituality of Narcissism
Mar 12 2007
by stuart davis

"Let me know Your enormity, and my tininess
Help me see Your infinity and my finite-ness"

-Mike Doughty, His Truth Is Marching On

The Spirituality of Narcissism.

Song of The Day: Hyper-Ballad / Bjork
Word of the Day: Lygophilia / Love of Darkness

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.

Throughout, The Secret conflates ego (the frontal structure, personality) with Self (an unbounded, unlimited reality which transcends but includes all qualities). In doing so it engineers an unabashed Spiritual Narcissism. Ego is God. The vicissitudes of your ego, its preferences, its unresolved cravings, become the vestments in a regressive ritual. See? It's MAGIC. You caste a spell, voila', the Universe responds. Cuz you're God. Why exactly an entity that IS everything would need more is not clear, why a Divine Being that is all powerful would need to appeal to another power is perplexing, but.. To cement this Kosmic Delusion, The Secret hypnotically repeats "The Universe" and "Your thoughts, your feelings" until the two are braided into a phantasm that places your Ego squarely in the Center of Reality, in control of all that comes in and out of being. What do you want to do with your Divine Power? Free all sentient beings? Awaken every sister and brother from the Dream? Dissolve the source of suffering? No. You want cars. And girlfriends, and boyfriends, and a new red bike and a big new house.

The Secret snags the self by flattering it into masquerading as the Self. As an egomaniac, I can attest to the efficacy of that strategy. And also to its disastrous results.

Allow me to pause for a confessional tangent. Before you think I am positioning myself as some spiritual fundamentalist who thinks materialism is bad and "spirituality" is good, let me set things straight. Me, Stuart Davis? I LOVE money. I LOVE sex. I want a new house. I'll take a shiny red bike. I want to be rich, powerful, and successful. And I do not apologize to anyone for that. I think the ego is good, I think it's games are legitimate and should be engaged. You know what else? I want YOU to be rich. I want YOU to be successful, powerful, and have every wish in the circus of your imagination brought into reality. As long as we're not hurting anyone else, I say let's go to town. I am the first to stand up and shout "THE EGO IS NOT EVIL!! THE EGO IS NOT BAD!! IT HAS GOTTEN A RAW DEAL FROM SPIRITUALITY! LET THE EGO BE WHAT IT ITS!!!" In fact, the ego is quite literally one of the most astonishing miracles to occur in the history of Universe. No joke. Celebrate it. It's time we ended the spiritual war with the ego, include it as another facet of the Beauty in our Being. Why would we leave anything out? The self counts. The ego matters.

I also have to say: The ego is not the Self.

The Secret is selling tools that supposedly fulfill wishes, dreams, desires. But WHOSE wishes? What LEVEL of desire? What DEPTH of dream?

Well, here's what sucks about The Secret: There are many levels of self, but only one which THINKS, and that's the Ego. Thinking, feeling, thinking, feeling, these two conductors are the hub for all The Secret espouses, and sadly thoughts and feelings (while important and valid) come from an extremely shallow dimension of the self. Because of this, the Secret deeply, sadly, entangles us further into suffering instead of liberating us from it. The source of suffering is delusion -the illusion of separateness. It gives rise to craving, longing, desire. It's the illusion that we lack something that sends us on the Odyssey of Acquisition.

The Secret gives us a cure that's worse than the disease. Its cure for craving is controlling craving. Its solution to hunger is famine. The Secret speaks to materialism, narcissism, and other afflictions of self by sanctifying them, exalting them. Rather than liberate us from the Source of Suffering, The Secret reenforces it. It anchors us in the shallowest level of our self (the Ego) and consecrates its preferences, its fantasies.

When someone asks you what you want, before you answer, ask yourself What level of me are they asking? What level of me am I going to respond from? If I had all the power to wish for anything in the Universe, what would I wish for? Who am "I" anyway?

It is dangerous to insert the ego in the place of the Self -the highest Self, the deepest Self, the one that is without a beginning or end. The ego -the subject- is a boundary. It identifies itself by what is inside or outside of it. Whatever is outside of the subject is an object. The small self is a dynamic aggregate of qualities and preferences, locating itself anew in each moment through a calculus of these subject / object distinctions ( I am this, I'm not that, I like this, I don't like that, I want this, I don't want that, this is me, that is not). The self depends entirely on boundaries.

Self, on the other hand, has no boundary. Self has no "other". It cannot be reduced to any particular qualities or characteristics, but all qualities and characteristics rise and fall within it. Self includes vertical and horizontal coordinates that stretch as deep and wide as the Universe itself. It is true that all Reality arises from and dissolves into the Self. Not the ego, not the personality, not an individual, but the Self -the Groundless Ground of all Reality.

The ego is defined by preferences, identified by desires, determined by boundary.

The Self has no preferences, no desires, no lack, no inside, no outside. It includes all preferences, but is not defined by them. Desire arises within it, but it is not identified with it. Every imaginable boundary forms and dissolves within the Self, but never parses its not-two not-one Nature. This Self -entire seen and unseen Kosmos- is the native endowment of every human being. Our greatest depth is without bottom.

The good news: You can have your cake and eat it too. You don't have to disown your self to be your Self. You have an ego. You are the Universe. But don't confuse the two, and don't let anyone else confuse them for you.

I have an ego, and it has desires, and it's healthy and appropriate for that level of my being to seek fulfillment. My thoughts are powerful, and my feelings matter. But the Universe does not reconfigure reality to accomodate the personal preferences of my ego, my frontal structure, every time an impulse comes through my reptilian brain stem. That is not just narcissism, its KOSMIC narcissism, and that is what the Secret is selling. Kosmic narcissism, spiritual materialism of the WORST kind. First, by ensnaring me in my own ego with the promise of release, liberation from desire (while addicting me to it) and second by getting me to forfeit my Self for my self. Since my ego is now Divine, since my frontal structure is now Infinite -Stuart Davis is God- why on Earth would I ever bother with finding my Self? Actual awakening requires real development, years, decades of practice and evolution. Continually moving my Subject through ever-expanding, ever-inclusive transformations takes TIME and TROUBLE. Of course there is no such thing as time, but authentically realizing that takes time. Of course there is no such thing as suffering, but profound recognition of that Fact is exquisitely painful.

Authentic spirituality is not a vending machine that spits out cars, lovers, and shiny red bikes. It is not a wand we can wave to avert discomfort, or acquire power. Actual awakening increases intimacy with all suffering (and bliss), everywhere, without exception. It does not remove struggle, but increases our devotion to and stewardship of all Reality.

Again, to be clear: I, Stuart Davis, want to be rich. I want to be comfortable. I want lots of Prada shoes. Hell, as long as my cravings are satisfied, I want that for everyone. That's not bad. I do not apologize for that, and this is not hyperbole.

But call a spade a spade. I work with my ego, but I don't presume the Universe is reinventing itself moment to moment in order to comply with the minutia of my needy personality. There is the self, and then there is the Self. I go to my therapist for one, I go to the Point of All Places for the other.

I, the Self, which also includes Stuart but is not defined by him, was here before Stuart was born, and will be here after he dies. The Self is the end of Suffering, and operates through all discrete agents as a means to Awakening to Reality as it Is. I am that Self. I am radical, absolute freedom. Incorruptible. Immutable. Every imaginable thing is that Self, equally without exception. But not all things equally realize that. Not all beings are equally awake. There is development. There is evolution toward what already Is.

The Self is absolute freedom. The self is relative delusion. The Secret is appealing to the relative self and pretending it's the absolute Self.

The Secret crowns the Ego as God (I mean, YOU create Reality, isn't that amazing? YOUR THOUGHTS are INFINITELY influential), then makes two disastrous leaps.

#1, Now that you know YOU create your own reality through the spiritual enterprise that is "thinking, feeling", what do you, the Creator, want to create with your thoughts? Wealth. Money, power, influence, status, and the luxury afforded the elite who amass fortunes. The Secret will teach you how. Odd, isn't it, that your self is so spiritual and powerful, but what it chooses to Attract with its Law is money, houses, lovers. Not the liberation of all sentient beings, not relief for every creature, not the cessation of that which is the Source of Suffering (clutching, desire, greed arising from the illusion that there is an "other"), but a refinement of the Source of Suffering. A manipulation of it. The Secret turns Desire and Clutching into a technology you can wield, AND its Spiritual! The cure is worse than the disease.

#2, Since YOU create your own Reality (Oprah went to pains to stress and emphasize this point, and had Rhonda explicitly confirm precisely that phrase "we create our own reality") you are responsible as the Source of whatever arises in your Reality. Every thing in your experience, you created (merely using thoughts and feelings! Wow). Many of you reading this right now may be astonished to finally understand you gave yourself cancer. You caused yourself to be raped, robbed, murdered, stricken with every malady in the canon of illness, beset with each kind of strife imaginable. The Holocaust? Just something Jews brought on themselves, as they each apparently created their own Reality. The Rape of Nanking? Bad Chinese, with their bad thoughts and feelings, simply created their own reality and thus caused the unspeakable murder of 350,000 innocent children, women, and men. Weird, the Reality people create for themselves, ain't it?

Of course, it's hard to overstate how cruel and insulting such a notion is. The impossibly sick premise that people in such situations create their own Reality is so obviously wrong, so self-evidently false to our basic intuition, that we can almost laugh it off. I mean, we could if Oprah -perhaps the most influential woman in the Western World- hadn't gone to pains to repeatedly emphasize and confirm it with Rhonda Bynre to an audience of tens of millions. Tens of millions of people who literally orient their lives according to these sorts of "discoveries".

There are not just many levels of smaller self (the ego is but one), but different spheres, or dimensions. The Secret is not only selling a shallow dimension of self, but it is also only acknowledges one aspect of self.

The Secret is working in one realm (interior individual). And it actually does a useful thing in that realm. Positive thought is important. We can change the way in which our thoughts and feelings symbiotically produce healthier behavior. That's good. But there is so much more to the story. We have an inside, and an outside. We are individuals, and we are also social beings. These realms are all part of who we are. All four realms come together at once, they tetra-arise as Reality. No one domain "creates" the others. Each is indispensible. The interior of an individual (where thought occurs) does have correlates in the exterior of the individual (manifest as measurable biological change). We are beings with an inner and an outer worlds. But Reality is not composed of individuals. We are also collective beings, with shared interiors, or inter-subjective domains. Such as culture, collective consciousness, and all that goes with the inner World of We. That shared inner world is complemented by the outer world, the inter-objective domain of Nature, the biosphere, and all that can be seen and observed in corporeal form. These FOUR domains:

*The Interior of an Individual (where thought occurs, for instance)
*The Exterior of an Individual (the body, what can be measured and seen objectively)
*The Interior of the Collective (Culture, invisible features of mutuality, inter-subjective social)
*The Exterior of The Collective (Biosphere, planet, infrastructure, the inter-objective realm)

While The Secret promotes itself as the magic wand for everything, it actually deals with one part of one realm, and misrepresents itself while doing it (by substituting self for Self).

To claim any one of them "creates" the other is a disaster, and unfortunately fairly common occurance. Any time you find a discipline which FOCUSES on a particular domain (which is good) you find it is tempted or seduced into claiming that ONE quadrant is the only "real" one, or the only "true" one, or the only important one (which is bad). That is another of The Secret's defects.. It takes one realm, one perspective (The Interior of an Individual) and claims it creates all the others. Wow. YOU, your thoughts, create your body. And the biosphere, and the entire culture, and history of the planet, origin of species, all the cities you could visit, all the planets in the Galaxy, all the Galaxies, all the... and so on. And its wrong. Sorry. Your thoughts, your feelings, while being important and valuable, are but two coordinates in one Quadrant.

Your thoughts and feelings are not the Source of Reality, but two of its features. You do not "create" your reality, you participate in it, and in certain circumstances, under particular conditions, you can influence it. And it is good and useful to cultivate that influence, to positively nurture those portions as much as possible, in the interest of love.

Rhonda Byrne's Secret is bad Self-Help masquerading as mysticism. Broadly, "spirituality" can mean anything. So when we say spirituality, what level of spirituality are we talking about? What altitude of awareness are we coming from, what level of "spirit" are we referring to? I'm not saying The Secret is not spiritual. I'm saying it's a very low-level of spirituality masquerading as a high one. What it uses as enticements (become wealthy, get a better job, get a lover) are very telling. It is appealing to a person's desire to attain, acheive, and better their personal station. It is promising you a better STORY. And that is indeed one altitude of spirituality. But it's the bottom, and inflating it can end up keeping people stuck in the cycle of suffering even longer. Because the self is addicted to its STORY. The Self is the end of all stories.

Now contrast The Secret with The Mystery. The Mystery, to me, includes all four domains (inner, outer, individual, collective) and does not privilege one over the other. It engages them as tetra-arising. It includes them as inextricably inter-woven, yet distinct in important ways. The Mystery includes every altitude in every domain, and values each of them, but also understand their differences. The Mystery includes every methodology, every ontology or Way of Knowing, but it also understands what they do, and what they don't do. The Secret is but a method, and it will not set you free from The Story. In fact, it will probably suck you deeper into it. It promises money, power, increased attraction, and tells you it is "spiritual" practice. Your story could become so comfortable, why would you ever forfeit it?

Here is an important question: What level of YOU wants to get rich? What altitude of YOU wants a new house, a better lover, an improved Story?

Here's what I feel is a healthier approach. Use the right tool for the right job. The right decoy for the right level. I think it is GOOD to improve our financial station. I think it is GOOD to have an exciting love life. That's why I have a financial advisor. That's why I see a therapist. I need to work on my self. I want to improve my relative reality. But I don't need to invoke "the Universe" or quantum mechanics or magical-narcissistic mysticism to do so. That's tremendously misguided. Want to find your Self? See Swami Sally. Want to get a new house? A better blow job? See Suze Ormon and Dr Ruth. Stop it with this Secret delusion. It's offensive and detrimental to our work in the Mystery.

Perhaps worst of all, until we are truly FREE -free from the Source of Suffering, free from desire, clutching, the assault of our false identities and all their Stories- until we are that FREE, we cannot really be available to help others become FREE. And that my friends, is the hokey pokey.
#piss #warning
  • Profile picture of the author Steve Diamond
    Hi, Shariyf. I haven't visited this part of the forum in quite some time. One of the big reasons I stayed away was the prevalence of a lot of "power of positive thinking" (aka "The Secret") stuff. So I find it very refreshing to have encountered your post when I stopped by here today.

    I think that Stuart Davis's critique is spot on. If anything it doesn't go far enough.

    Where I agree with him completely is in the importance of not empowering the small self, especially under the guise of empowering the Self. But there's a distinction that almost no one ever makes, and that's the distinction between working with your thoughts and identifying with your thoughts.

    There's nothing wrong with doing mental work in the thought realm to replace more limiting kinds of thoughts with more universal ones. But the moment you start to believe that by changing your thoughts you've affected anything fundamental about Being, that's the moment you've bound your identity to your ego rather than your Self.

    IMO the key is to maintain a standpoint in awareness of observing your thoughts, from the outside as it were, rather than being entrapped in them. Then in one sense it doesn't matter whether they're positive or negative, universal or limiting. They're just thoughts. They aren't Reality.

    This is also the key to staying conscious in the present moment and accepting it for what it is, which many masters have called the fundamental spiritual practice. "The Secret" and other similar illusions teach you to grasp for some brass ring in the future. That's the antithesis of being present now.

    Thanks for posting this.

    Steve
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    Mindfulness training & coaching online
    Reduce stress | Stay focused | Keep positive and balanced
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    • Profile picture of the author thezone
      Originally Posted by Steve Diamond View Post

      Hi, Shariyf. I haven't visited this part of the forum in quite some time. One of the big reasons I stayed away was the prevalence of a lot of "power of positive thinking" (aka "The Secret") stuff. So I find it very refreshing to have encountered your post when I stopped by here today.
      Oh my gawd.....THE SECRET DOES WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!

      You stayed away....you came back .....and you saw this.....open your eyes, and you heart to the universal magnet.....you have experienced "the secret" in action!

      Let me share how the secret impacted my life.

      I woke up one day, and I think to myself, "I feel like a baloney sandwitch" (I think in quotes and misspell stuff in my head). A thought comes over me, go for a walk.....I ignore it....the thought gets stronger and stronger....so I go for a walk.....within minutes I pass this building (highland farms)....another thought comes to me...."go inside....go inside"....so I go inside....it's a SUPER market (how super I wouldn't find out until later).

      I go to the deli section, and see sandwiches, turkey, chicken, and a lonely baloney (which I hate), but that same nagging thought..."baloney...baloney".

      I now have this baloney sandwich and walk back to my place wondering why the hell did I buy this thing (since I can't stand the stuff).....

      I get back to my place, enter (doors not locked...weird thought I locked it), walk towards the living room, and hear the unmistakable sound of an TEC-9 bolt being pulled back and released, I turn to find a guy holding this semi-automatic weapon at me.

      He looks at my hand, and sees the sandwich, and asks "what kind of sandwitch" (the guy can't spell either)....I answer "baloney"..."total baloney", he asks..."yeah", I answer.

      He drops the gun and starts weeping....

      Anyways, to make a long story tolerable .... I find out that as a child growing up, his recently dead mama used to make him baloney sandwitches, and when he saw my sandwitch, he saw his dead mama in my sandwitch.

      So you see, the law of attraction is real. Only the universe and a SECRETarian can experience baloney stories like that.

      Join the secret movement, help spread my baloney story!


      The Zone
      Attractioneer
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      • Profile picture of the author mobiusman
        Originally Posted by thezone View Post

        Oh my gawd.....THE SECRET DOES WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!

        ...He looks at my hand, and sees the sandwich, and asks "what kind of sandwitch" (the guy can't spell either)....I answer "baloney"..."total baloney", he asks..."yeah", I answer.

        He drops the gun and starts weeping....

        Anyways, to make a long story tolerable .... I find out that as a child growing up, his recently dead mama used to make him baloney sandwitches, and when he saw my sandwitch, he saw his dead mama in my sandwitch.

        So you see, the law of attraction is real. Only the universe and a SECRETarian can experience baloney stories like that.

        Join the secret movement, help spread my baloney story!


        The Zone
        Attractioneer
        That IS a lot of baloney indeed. I hope that sandwich had mustard on it with a dash of mayo, a slice of German butter cheese, and a sprinkle of fresh sprouts mmmmmm.

        Watdaya think? Maybe that's why the guy dropped the gun eh?
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        Mobiusman talks about the Head Brain/Gut Brain system. Did you know you have two different brains?
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        • Profile picture of the author Jack J
          Some people try to figure out existence, how life works, what it's for, what the point is. Some of them come up with a model of life that works for them. Some of them don't.

          Some people give a running public commentary on what they've figured out, and why, and how. They figure that knowing which models work for them and which models don't, will possibly be useful to other people. Heck, some people even sell their commentaries!

          Some people figure that 'their' model is the only valid model which will work for other people too.

          Some people figure that as 'their' model is the only valid model which will work for other people too, that they must work at destroying all other models, and any associated commentaries. They figure that whilst they've worked things out for themselves, other people should not have the option to figure things out for themselves, but should automatically accept 'their' model of how things work.

          Some people figure it better to have the freedom to attempt to figure things out for themselves even though they may come up with a model that doesn't work.

          Funny old world isn't it?! Well, it is in my model of existence. How about yours?
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  • Profile picture of the author MemberWing
    The guy bubbled a but didn't offer anything better but his views spiced with a few -ism's.
    ...Yawn...

    Gleb
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  • Profile picture of the author DavidParsons
    It's funny how those that have truly awakened choose to help the impoverished rather than manifest cars and mansions.

    "Let me know Your enormity, and my tininess
    Help me see Your infinity and my finite-ness"

    One of my favorite Doughty songs.
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  • Profile picture of the author PowerWealth247
    Altrhough I think he has completely misstated the ideas in "The Secret", I certainly agree with his thoughts on the ideas he seems to have gleaned from the film. Those ideas are wrong but since they were not espoused in the film (or in Napolean Hill's book or W.Waddles')I see this criticism as merely trying to capitalize on the fad, not further anyone's understanding of it.
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  • Profile picture of the author GodsGeneral
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author Bart Loos
      Originally Posted by GodsGeneral View Post

      The positive thinking nonsense is what makes people fail. You literally have to know, and not think. "Positive thinking" can have the absolute opposite effect.

      You have to literally feel the outcome, and not care if it happens, and then it will.
      Hey there,

      Exactly 'positive thinking' can have the absolute opposite effect, even worse it can be dangerous as hell. And there's a biological reason for this.

      Let us first give a few different circumstances where people use PT:

      - something bad happens and you get in a negative mood, .people tell ya to use PT, "..it's all gonna be better soon"...this is mainly used to get out of a temporary negative mood.

      - I'm broke and I use PT every day to get out of my situation, I'll get the work, money I need...

      - I start a project, but it doesn't really work out... let's PT, it will eventually...

      - I'm still in love with my ex, .. let's keep PT.. and they will come back one day...

      - I'm depressed and life sucks, but they say I need to PT and that will help me..

      - ...


      What basically happens is that PT makes people feel good..it gives you a serotonin rush, which if you know a bit about how the brain functions, pulls you into the upper layers of the brain (neocortex), often called the creative/adaptive area of the brain.

      Now what happens next .. is that people use this part of the brain to come up with some excuses which will make them feel even better. ..it could be as simple as "well now i'm PT, it will all get better" "don't worry, it will be ok", "I'll manage to get through it", "I'll do that later.", "I would, but I can't...", ...

      This results in a serotonin loop where people get stuck in. It's that part of the brain, where you are creative/addaptive, but it disconnects you from any movement or action.

      They are basically in denial of what is really happening, since they are stuck in this feel good loop.

      And I guess everyone does fall for this trap, an example can be as simple that you clean up the room, stiff all the mess in one closet, with the result that the mess is still there and probably will there for quiet some time, but that you feel good that the room is cleaned up.

      Or avoid working on a certain project because there might be fear of failure getting in your way and you'll assure yourself that you'll get that project done after you've done these other 2 projects first.. and then when it's time to work on the project you're avoiding, you'll find an excuse to work on something else first...

      These are mere examples of how people can keep themselves stuck while thinking positively and getting in a feel good rush.

      And people can get stuck in this loop for minutes, hours, days, even weeks or months..

      And the Secret is a good feel movie.. it will get you in a rush of what's possible,it gets you dreaming, PT and stuck in a serotonin loop.

      Ask yourself what the Secret/LOA is gonna do for you that you can not accomplish yourself?

      If you come up with something, then take a good look at it.. and realize that almost certain you are just fooling yourself and using an excuse.. .and it's making you feel good that you can trust the divine to come up with a solution...so you have no reason to take action yourself.


      SO instead of PT you might ask yourself the following question:

      What's the excuse that you are using that helps you to avoid what you need to do?.

      Hope this helps!

      BTW let me credit Tom Vizzini, Kim McFarland and Dr Kenneth Guiffre for this model.. they came up with the "denial circuit" model

      Have fun

      Bart
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  • Profile picture of the author hayfj
    Banned
    why would it Piss one off? We can each choose how we react to any given situation. The experience combined with the reaction to the experience will surely determine the outcome. You are what you become, when you choose to be....



    Fraser
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  • Profile picture of the author hayfj
    Banned
    good one
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    • Profile picture of the author vossman
      After reading this thread and agreeing with it, I just so happened to stumble across another thread on people's top 10 motivational book lists. The one I decided to check out right away and have read through more than half of, was The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles. This book completely correlated with this thread. In short, you not only have to focus on your positive thoughts, you have to act on them too and believe you will get what you want. Everyone knew that already thought, right!

      Vossman
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  • Profile picture of the author BB-Eats
    You had me at Bjork - Hyperballad
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    • Profile picture of the author CurtisSWN
      It doesn't piss me off, but I do kind of laugh at what people can rationalize to themselves what is truth.

      I disagree with the writer on one or two points. I think subjects like the Secret and the whole positive-thinking movement is rather exploitative to those of us who feel inadequate or deprived in life. To me positive thinking and positive acting are one in the same.

      I do feel however we literally create our reality, even the physical part of it. There is a cosmic ultimate accountability to the universe and it is embodied in the law of karma, that is, you get what you put out.

      Correllary to this (and I really push the envelope here) is the law of reembodiment, that is, you are here because you have unfinished business and you have messes to clean up. Some may say that the families, nations, and environment we are born in are arbitrary; but I wholly disagree: it is because we were responsible for the very mess we find ourselves in.

      If we're born with mean parents it is because we were mean to them in a previous embodiment, the universe is returning to us what we gave out so we can see how in error it was. The same for people living now in Iraq, there's a level of karmic accountability to the equation; not all of course, but sure thing that the perpetrators of said dastardly deeds will not avoid the karma thereof.

      The article seems to take a materialist approach, which seems to limit human potential to a certain level. I have no fundamental problem with spiritual energy being focused to materialize cars, houses, and trinkets; just as long as those things can maybe help to larger world around us.

      As so many people repeat here: "what the mind can believe, it can achieve."

      The Secret was a way to sell a lot of books to the trendy new age crowd, but it's not all together in the wrong.

      I do think we create our reality ultimately and for every misfortune that happens in our life, a corresponding psychological "magnet" can be found in our psyches going back more than our eyes may immediately testify.

      Yeah I got pretty esoteric here, but I saw this post and I had to go for it!

      Curtis
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  • Profile picture of the author CurtisSWN
    Originally Posted by RonLaden View Post

    which positive thinking book would you recommend?
    How about the whole Warrior Forum with their exact descriptions of how they made their money. It's not in the thinking, it's in the doing.
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  • Profile picture of the author Karen Blundell
    there is nothing wrong with having an opinion as long as you realize that your opinion is just that and is not fact...

    I considered the movie the Secret as a tool. Everyone has their own uses for any tool. What I mean is, to some the Secret is bogus, to some it is everything, to others it is just part of the equation, and to others it means nothing at all.

    In my humble opinion, there is no right and wrong here. I believe, the problem with our society today is that it is all based on collectivism. We are all supposed to be a part of this group or that group, and I don't think that's how we should live.

    To Thine Own Self Be True
    Yet here, Laertes! Aboard, aboard for shame!
    The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
    And you are stay'd for.
    There ... my blessing with thee!
    And these few precepts in thy memory
    Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
    Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
    Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
    Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
    Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
    But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
    Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
    Of entrance to a quarrel but, being in,
    Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
    Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
    Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.
    Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
    But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
    For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
    And they in France of the best rank and station
    Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
    Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
    For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
    And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
    This above all: to thine own self be true,
    And it must follow, as the night the day,
    Thou canst not then be false to any man.
    Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!

    -- William Shakespeare
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