"The Secret" hits it bigtime!

[三江源]

Yes. Thankyou Yoda. I agree and I think you articulated it very well. You get what you are, untill you become something else. That's the LOA.

 

So funny, I asked the other day, ( in a LOA way ) to meet some male energy who knows who I am in some significant way, and would give me some positive strokes. Later that week I dived into a clothes shop to avoid an old tutor of mine from Uni who was always kindly but cantankerously interested in me, amazingly he was in my local shopping centre, even though he lives in a different country these days.

 

It made me laugh. I gave too broad a brief, I guess.

 

I recall reading about a buddhist training in which the adept is given a task of manifesting a god. This well may take years. When they return to their teacher to show that after years of focus and devotion they have manifested the god, they are given a god of a higher vibration to go manifest, and so on and so and so on, untill they realise that all gods are merely manifestation of projection and desire.

 

and if gods are that, then so is everything else..

[Yoda]

Cat,

 

I'm glad you liked my report... I wanted to manifest a smile out of you!

 

gave too broad a brief

 

Just from my playing around with all this, specific is better but not crucial... "I want to dance in on the moon tomorrow first thing in the morning in my physical body" is pretty specific but since I could never really feel like that will happen no matter how good I get at positive thinking, it won't.

 

Esther is more positive about it, though... maybe the person desired is happily married or moon tourism is a long ways off, or both parachutes really are broken... ask and ye shall recieve is a cosmic law and there can be no exceptions to it. The essence of what you want will be yours in the form of a relationship with another person, joining a fun dance class, or after splatting, getting the energy of it in joyful experiences in the spirit realm.

 

I hope she's right!!

 

Cam could have his egolessness and I could have my, um, various desires fulfilled! (Mostly egolessness too, of course. )

 

Yoda

[Cameron]

Cat,

 

 

Cam could have his egolessness and I could have my, um, various desires fulfilled! (Mostly egolessness too, of course. )

 

Yoda

 

 

I think of it more like freedom from ego rather than egolessness. To me, egolessness is not really what it's about. Like if ego is a jacket..you know it's a jacket that you can take off any time..rather than never wearing a jacket..or mask..or whatever.

 

The whole freedom thing seems to be what it's all about. You know when you see those fat buddha statues who are just beaming and have there arms spread out wide..hehe.

[三江源]

<---------- for Yoda!

 

 

yep, all the conscious attempts to deny ego are a far cry from the laughing buddha, because the bliss is abundant and flowing through him. he's literally out of his head.

 

I liked the MWinn response to LOA, which I read thanks to this thread, which says how visualisation is limited, and to use your whole energy body.

 

Which really underlined what I found was happening anyway, that if I imagined something wonderful had happened to me and my family -in a LOA visulisation way - then I flipped into energy body bliss, a spontaneous and untiring smile arose, and it was undistinguishable from meditating. ( although I dont quite know, practically, how I'd use my whole energy body consciously in this process. Mine just joined in for the feelgood factor.)

 

It was partly this experience, and then listening to Esther with those experiences under my belt, that made me hear her as a buddhist teacher without her formally naming it. Focusing on the good feeling I would be living, when I got my desires met, flipped me into a laughing buddha state, energetically.

 

It's like it took me straight to the soul's purpose of it, without going through the physical process of it. ( yet. I still dont have my hot tub... but of course, I aint focussing on that, I'm happy in the process.. )

[Cameron]

[三江源]

[beancurdturtle]

[Cameron]

Lovely!

 

 

She is

[Smile]

Well, they are running ads in NYC subway cars for the movie "The Secret" available on cable "pay-per-view". To me personally, it's a great example of how information can be recycled and simplied tageting all human desires and fears, and then presented as something original, secret or unique. Here is a good review of "the Secret" taken from Amazon.com:

==========================

Catchy review title? Thought so. Robert Cialdini, renowned psychology researcher and author of Influence: The Power of Persuasion (perhaps the best book ever written on the subject) identifies six basic rules employed by politicians, advertisers and scam artists alike to persuade others. Each of them are employed quite adeptly by Rhonda Byrne in this book [The Secret].

 

Cialdini's first principle is SCARCITY; people want what's expensive, exculsive, or otherwise attainable. Byrne's mastery of this principle is clearly shown by the very name of the book: The Secret. We all learned this the first week of kindergarten as we felt the jealousy of watching two classmates, hands cupped over ears, sharing a secret out of earshot.

 

This message is reinforced throughout the book and its advertising campaign which pitches "The Secret" (whatever it actually is) as jealousy-guarded information hoarded by the happy, wealthy and successful. Whenever someone tries convincing you of something, whether it's a way to make enormous sums of money, to lose weight, etc - be wary of when it's pitched as "the knowledge THEY don't want you to have." Think about it - everything from the "secrets that Wall Street doesn't want you to know" to "uncovered - celebrities' secrets to staying young" are phrased not simply to pique your interest but to make you jealous. Appeals to our emotion are far more powerful than appeals to reason, and Byrne demonstrates mastery of this principle throughout "The Secret."

 

Cialdini's second principle is LIKING. We like those who like us, and in turn, we do business with them. Positive thinking and emotional intelligence has been linked to strong interpersonal relationships, academic and professional success, and good health, but there is a fine line when positive thinking crosses over to unjustified exuberance. Instead of simply noting the substantial benefits of positive thinking (a well-accepted principle which wouldn't sell books), Byrne crosses the line so blatantly that anyone with a modicum of modesty would find it blasphemous.

 

AUTHORITY is another Cialdini principle, also in play in "The Secret" in quite subtle ways. Another technique which differentiates this book from just another book of positive thinking is the heavy use of quasiscientific language, which gives the impression that the "law of attraction" is (or will become) an accepted scientific principle, just like the law of gravity or the law of attraction of oppositely-charged particles in chemistry. Many people are both intimidated and confused by the authority of science, a fact exploited by manipulators ranging from Byrne to peddlers of magic weight-loss pills.

 

Since no respected physicist would ever publish a paper on the universality of the "law of attraction," Byrne indirectly seeks experts in other ways. She attributes the success of people ranging from Einstein to Beethoven to adherence of "The Secret," thereby manufacturing experts. After all, if Einstein and Shakespeare mastered "The Secret," who are YOU to question it?

 

The last two Cialdini principles are CONSISTENCY and SOCIAL PROOF. The success of this book should leave little doubt it will be followed by more (and more expensive) forms of media peddling "The Secret." The audio recordings, weekend seminars, advertising tie-ins, and other follow-up products certain to follow will exploit these two principles. Once people commit themselves to believing happiness will come from "The Secret," they will attribute future successes, whether a promotion or a great new relationship, to adherence to it. Conversely, setbacks will be even more powerfully in committing people to "The Secret," as people will attribute their failures to not living up to "The Secret" (and buying more of Byrne's books). Consistency dictates it will be less painful to buy more books and immerse one's self further into "The Secret" than to accept the whole premise is a quite ridiculous; while not as pernicious as a domineering cult, "The Secret" promises to charge you handsomely for a positive outlook on life.

 

Byrne's book is problematic on many levels. On it's face, it's a manipulative marketing tool meant to flatter, confuse and deceive. It's also pseudoscience at its best, the last thing we need to encourage in an increasingly technological world which requires healthy skepticism and critical thought. Most damaging, though, is how the book perverts reality by encouraging people to equate a positive outlook on life with a childish, idiotic narcissism. Ayn Rand must be rolling in her grave hearing about the modern manifestation of her objectivist movement reduced to the intellectual equivalent of canned pork.

 

If you're interested in "The Secret," I highly encourage you to read the book - yeah, READ the book - if for any other reason so not to be manipulated by its brilliant marketing. Read it with a critical eye, with a copy of Cialdini's book in the other hand. You may not learn the secret of happiness, but you WILL learn a lot about manipulation and influence from a master of the subject in Rhonda Byrne.

Edited October 29, 2007 by Smile

[Yoda]

Here's the original Secret:

 

http://www.persistenceunlimited.com/book_f...an_thinketh.pdf

 

As a Man Thinketh.

[Lozen]

Well, I still haven't seen the movie but I've been trying a little experiment to watch the mini-videos, the free ones, on the site each day. I like the Secret Of You one a lot and have noticed my attitude shift a teeny bit, but I'm mostly interested in Secret of Riches because I'm tired of my poverty mentality. However, the video bothered me a little bit because everyone in it was white and male except for the genie, and of course the money had to be American... Still I'm going to keep watching it for a while as an experiment. I noticed work didn't suck quite so bad today, and I also got this really cool free Hans Decoz numerology report (actually several) from a friend today...and a call from my exboyfriend, of all people. Not that i was dying to talk to him. But I'm keeping track of the weird and unexpected. I want to read and write more but have made a vow to shut down my computer at 9:30 on school nights.

[ZenDruid]

I first heard about "The Secret" quite a while back when the whole project was in it's early stages. It was originally supposed to appear on TV. I view its explosive success as a good example of its principles in action. Certainly nothing new here, but it is new to a lot of people.

 

As far as Abe, a lot of their teachings resonate with me and I find that the ones about "going with the flow" are not far off from the Taoist ideas of going with the advantageous. My reservations about "channeled" entities in general is that the channelers are usually not people of advanced training and are probably just channeling various astral entities rather than expressing something coming from Self or a higher, more dependable realm. Esther Hicks began contact with Abe after meditating for only a short while. Like people, astral entities come in all flavors and some can be devious and unreliable. As Dion Fortune comments in her book "The Mystic Qabalah", when people first transcent Malkut, physical reality, and experience Yesod, the astral, they may encounter various astral entities. She suggests ignoring them for the most part due to their unreliable nature and focusing efforts on ascending the tree to Tifaret, the Vision of Higher Self.

 

Richard

Edited January 30, 2008 by ZenDruid