About "The Secret"

The Secret by Australian Rhonda Byrne is the latest self-help book (and DVD!) to become a bestselling American phenomenon. From Newsweek:

The "secret" is the law of attraction, which holds that you create your own reality through your thoughts. You can, if you wish, take this figuratively, to mean that by changing your thoughts you can feel better about your situation in life. Or you can view it as a source of inspiration—that by believing you will succeed, you will perform better in the race or the test or your relationships.

But that's not what "The Secret" is saying. Its explicit claim is that you can manipulate objective physical reality—the numbers in a lottery drawing, the actions of other people who may not even know you exist—through your thoughts and feelings. In the words of "author and personal empowerment advocate" Lisa Nichols: "When you think of the things you want, and you focus on them with all of your intention, then the law of attraction will give you exactly what you want, every time." Every time! Byrne emphasizes that this is a law inherent in "the universe," an inexhaustible storehouse of goodies from which you can command whatever you desire from the comfort of your own living room by following three simple steps: Ask, Believe, Receive.

Byrne writes on losing weight:

Whether people have been told they have a slow thyroid, a slow metabolism, or their body size is hereditary, these are all disguises for thinking “fat thoughts.” If you accept any of those conditions as applicable to you, and you believe it, it must become your experience, and you will continue to attract being overweight....

Make it your intention to look for, admire, and inwardly praise people with your idea of perfect-weight bodies. Seek them out and as you admire them and feel the feelings of that-you are summoning it to you. If you see people who are overweight, do not observe them, but immediately switch your mind to the picture of you in your perfect body and feel it.

As Peter Birkenhead at Salon writes, this drivel wouldn't matter so much if Oprah, arguably America's most influential celebrity, hadn't been championing The Secret as inspirational and useful truth each person only need follow to make their life's dreams come true.

The problem, of course, is if you're actually and already fat or unsightly or poor or disabled or whatever. Then, according to the law of attraction as expressed by Byrne you should avoid all mirrors and seek out people who do not have your personal experiences and challenges and do not look like you. If you can't find those people, then basically you're screwed.

The Toronto Star's recent analysis includes this exchange between another self-help author, Marie Diamond, touting the law of attraction and people trying to understand the illogic of it all:

[Publisher] Burman hosted Diamond at an event at Indigo Books on Bloor last weekend, where she took some questions from a packed audience. "I'm a really big believer in The Secret," said one, a young black woman. "But I also believe that discrimination and racism are real. How can you harmonize those things?"

Diamond, a middle-aged Belgian woman with a welcoming air, nodded knowingly. "You just said you believe in discrimination. You be-live it. I'm going to ask you to stop believing it, because if you focus on the negative, you project it yourself."

Another, from a young man. "I really love what you're doing," he says. "But how, for example, was 9/11 attracted to the people in those buildings? That's something I can't understand."

Another thoughtful pause. Diamond, in her madras blazer and jeans, furrows her brow and speaks softly, breathily. "Sometimes, we experience the law of attraction collectively," she says. "The U.S. maybe had a fear of being attacked. Those 3,000 people – they might have put out some kind of fear that attracted this to happen, fear of dying young, fear that something might happen that day. But sometimes, it is collective."

Except for Byrne's quote above about losing weight, which asserts that overweight people are not overweight due to medical conditions they've been specifically informed of but rather negative "fat thoughts," I've not seen specific references to disability in this most recent law of attraction craze. But it's implicitly there, and has been explicitly part of the law of attraction in many of its other incarnations.

This is the new age version of "You're not praying hard enough." Faith and belief will fix your life and if your life does not improve then it is your fault for not having sufficient faith and belief.

Ask. Believe. Receive.

"Be-live it!"