I was perusing my Catalog of the Universe the other day, trying to get clear about what I really want. Would I like to be healthy, wealthy and thin? Sure, I want all of those, but I want something more. What I truly desire, this week anyway, is for us to carefully consider “The Secret.”
The best-selling book by Rhonda Byrne (Beyond Words Publishing, $23.95) tells me that I can have this and anything else. “The Secret,” you see, is like a mail-order catalog. As marketing specialist Joe Vitale happily informs readers, “You flip through it and say, “‘I’d like to have this experience and I’d like to have that product, and I’d like to have a person like that’ … it’s really that easy.”
“The Secret” is the “law of attraction,” which states that our thoughts, positive and negative, create our reality. The book posits that humans are like television transmission towers, and we choose the channel (the frequency) with our thoughts. What we choose, we receive on the screen of our life.
This self-help book is enjoying its 15 minutes and then some. With 3.8 million hardcover copies in print in the United States, it appears to be headed toward record-breaking sales for its genre.
Along with its audio version, the book tops best-seller lists in the U.S. and abroad. It held one of the top two spots on The Post’s local best- seller list for 15 consecutive weeks (it dropped to No. 5 this week, ironically replaced by Al Gore’s “The Assault on Reason”). The briskly selling DVD version is shown in churches and yoga studios. “The Secret” has been enthusiastically promoted by Oprah Winfrey and has been the subject of at least two of her shows.
As a culture, we’re spooning it up.
There are some noble, though ancient, ideas in this book. Think positively! Give money away! Cultivate an attitude of gratitude! Carry this cynical “law” to its extreme, though, and the implications are frightening.
Suppose I am overweight, and I wish to be thin. “The Secret” tells me that it is not the fatty foods I consume but the fatty thoughts I think, that make me overweight. So, I can whip out my catalog, order up the perfect weight, and it will be given to me.
Furthermore, if I see people who are overweight, I am advised, “Do not observe them, but immediately switch your mind to the picture of you in your perfect body.”
It’s the same when I confront a sick person. If I listen to someone talk about an illness, I could tune in to that frequency, focus on sick thoughts and attract sickness to myself. If I want to help that person I should “change the conversation to good things, if you can, or be on your way.”
These New Agers contend that the victims of mass tragedies were “on the same frequency” as the event. In other words, if people think they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, those thoughts “can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
In challenging times, we all want to know the secret. But let’s be clear about some of the concepts in “The Secret:” Victims of horrific events somehow brought it on themselves. Turn away from those who are less than your idea of perfect. Shun the sick.
Here’s what I want. As humans, we remember compassion. I’m placing an order now.
