The Secret Cashes In As Debate Rises

hehe. i was waiting for this to appear on your blog :) you forgot to mention that Ellen Degeneres also promoted this.

bottomline: we just have a different way of communicating our criticisms :)

~C

doh, forgot to link to this. this is my official position when it comes to the movie.

~C

and here's another critique of the Secret using the integral lingo. bingo!

i especially like its take on the “benign” side:

“On the surface, this is sensible and useful, it is basic healthy orange-achiever level behavior. Just clarifying your wants, setting specific goals, and keeping it all vividly in mind is quite useful. One sees opportunities and makes connections that would never have occurred without the presence of the envisioned goals. Extraneous busy work begins to fall away and one attends more directly to fulfilling one’s desires. Peripheral friends and contacts begin to get involved and naturally make further connections toward completion. Staying aware of what you want is an effective step toward getting it.

“For those stuck in a negative attitude, this advice could begin to shake them free and encourage healthy optimism. If one can involve others – family, friends and those also inspired by The Secret – in supporting this new outlook, it is more likely to become a lasting change. Again, on the surface, being optimistic is more effective than being pessimistic.

“When the movie begins to insist, “you create your reality,” it in part presents a possibility for a broader and deeper sense of responsibility. We can begin to own that our choices and attitudes have something to do with the circumstances we find ourselves embedded in. A number of the teachers stress how our health is deeply affected by our views and thoughts. All familiar and straightforward guidance, straddling the orange-achiever to green-pluralistic structure-stages of adult development, and preferencing the individual’s interior experience, the upper left quadrant.

thank you, julian. excellent points. keep going!

Another excellent post, Julian.  As one of the people who thanked you previously by email let me now thank you here. - Cheers!

Thanks for funneling in those various critiques.  Cool to see…

I love it.  It is Oprah, you, the secret, the shadow, the universe, the quanta….

I figure people will try it out in their lives and if it works then great.  If it doesn't they can either self organize their complexity or lay off and let someone else take responsibility for their problems.  There are people intent on influencing critical numbers of humans on both sides of the equation. 

Which choice will most benefit the planet and emerging cosmic humanity? 
hahahaha, it's a secret….

I have seen both “movies” The Secret and What the Bleep, and think the only reason why The Secret is as successful as it is is the connotation of a so called “secret”, aesthetically pleasing production (admittedly more coherent than What the Bleep), and a massive hunger for the next pop spirituality that would lift people out of a self/ego-imposed misery.

Hi Julian,

Want to say how happy I was when I found your blog with threads on “The Secret.” I was  going positively batty trying to find some smart, informed criticism of it. And now that I found your site, I feel “home safe.”

I'm a history buff, so am wondering if anyone knows where this “law of attraction” started and from whence it came. Meaning whose philosophy or idea is it? Who called it a Law first; who taught it; to whom? From what part of the world, or former idealogy was it derived, or inspired. Why did they call it a law. What other laws do they have? Who fanned the flame and made it into such a staple?

Any help in pointing me in the general direction would be most kind.

Thanks again. Your comments on this subject are my fave.

and here's Stuart Davis' take on The Secret.

~C

I thought he was blogging on zaadz…  What happened to that?

I spoke too soon ;)

Greetings, Julian.

I appreciated the various thoughts you've shared regarding The Secret, and the more recent debate over it. I, too, had been hearing about it from a variety of people fascinated by the more monodimensional 'attraction' circles (applied materially, separate from larger context, spiritual practice, etc.). I finally watched it when a friend, visiting from out of town, brought the DVD with her.

Aside from the Dr. Rev. Michael Beckwith, whose work as a spiritual leader I've long respected, the movie only intensified my concern over a purely materialistic and rather crass application of 'the laws'. And for anyone familiar with both the Law of Attraction or enduring spiritual teachings, the premises are no secret at all.

Though the critiques I've read have often seemed to mask a deep cynicism which I don't think is much better than the more superficial New Agey avoidance of anything 'negative', they're a welcomed contribution to a more thoughtful debate.

Visualization does work (ask any high-performance athlete, and the scientists who've studied their approaches). One's perceptions and predominant thoughts and habits do form a filter through which we conceive, perceive, and experience.

But a frenzied focus on repeating affirmations only for the purpose of getting a new car or some other 'keep up with the Joneses' acquisition – without shifting the underlying beliefs, patterns, habits, self-absorption, etc. – is not, from my view, something that is particularly helpful.

But then, I've often felt that when reading 'integral' writings, with the focus on categorizing people into convenient little color-codes and denying the elitism that can very easily be woven into such an approach for those who aren't mindful of that potential.

Irene asked about origins of the sort of thinking that is presented in 'Law of Attraction'. Ernest Holmes work provides a good synthesis of the origins in both philosophy and spiritual traditions, or you can go straight to the sacred teachings of the traditions themselves.

For example, this is attributed to the Buddha:

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world.”

Or you can turn to the Wisdom literature in the Old Testament, and the Jesian New Testament teachings stemming from it. Ultimately, a focus on service and embodying qualities such as loving-kindness, compassion, faith in goodness and life, awe, and so on can have a much more significant – and positive – effect on the quality of thought and life. Be the change…

Thanks again, Julian, and to all who have contributed to a thoughtful, spirited dialogue that can only help guide people towards the more substantial aspects of wisdom residing under the surface-gloss of movies, etc., like The Secret. It's a great contribution.

Sincerely,
Jamie

…just heard you chat with Ken, and I just wish you had said ‘bong-hit metaphysics’ at least once. That is a t-shirt waiting to happen. Thanks for clearing up the Secret, I knew there was something wrong, and now I have clarity.
Merci Buckets
GB

I like it.  guess that puts me in the “idiot category”… been called MUCH worse.  LOL

Didn't realize there was such a “philosphy jihad” in the “spiritual community”

I suspect the Secret and similar material are so popular because both mainstream science and mainstream religion have shut the door on attempting to explain or even acknowledge the existence of strange phenomenon that happens to everyday people  short of calling them insane, stupid or full of sin(/shit?).  There is still a LOT of room for new agey, what the bleep, abraham hicks, thesecrets, green stuff that, the Integral movement LOVEs to hate.

btw:  love ken's work.  the chat with Ken was devistating.

Julian, many thanks for your continuing exposition on all this. I'm new to your blog and have a deep appreciation for your efforts and message. I heard your interview with Ken Wilber about the Secret and then moved on to your blog posts.. It has added sorely needed depth to the discussion. Your points on the Secret's deficiencies in the areas of critical thinking, the “shadow”, the pre-trans fallacy, and  the ethics of the practice, were particularly illuminating. Speaking of ethics, it's interesting that the movie depicts a sinister group of powerful men in smoke filled rooms controlling the wealth of the world, keeping “The Secret” to themselves, and exploiting the unenlightened masses for personal gain. How ironic and telling it is that this is portrayed as the legacy of The Secret. And, for me wherever John Haglin (Maharishi U professor, former Presidential candidate for the Natural Law party and propagandist in chief for the TM movement) shows up, as he did in “What the Bleep”, we have to consider the real motivations for all this. What is fascinating to me is how closely the issues with The Secret, map the underbelly of the TM movement, it's leaders and it's message. Slick packaging, idealist goals, enlightenment, secret teachings, personal empowerment, world transformation, etc. And above all we never ever dwell on the negative or consider anything but the most positive outcome for all these endeavors, or question Maharishi or the movement or teaching. To do so means you are immediately on a black list (I have some experience with all this). When control is at the heart of a teaching, and only through the specific ordained practices (“purity of the teaching”) can we bring the age of enlightenment or salvation or world peace, and conversely without this intervention we will all go to hell, we have the classic set up. There is enough semblance of truth in the message to resonate at a deep level within us, it sounds good, and everyone seems so enlightened and friendly, but scratch the surface and we find another reality.

Taking another point of view on this, we do need to guard against an absolute renunciation of  the “law of attraction” or the “power of intention” and even “we create our own reality” as truths. Certainly the one dimensional approach portrayed by the The Secret and it adherents is wholly inadequate and even dangerous, but there is something at the heart of this. I have to admit that I was a bit taken back by some of Ken's comments. To wholly dismiss the idea that we create our reality through our thoughts, because there are obvious examples (Auschwitz, Rwanda, or Darfur) where individuals are clearly not to blame or responsible for their situation, is to miss the point. There is truth in statement of the Buddha when he said, “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world.” We have to see this not only in how we may individually overlay or project into a situation with fear, worry,envy, pride, etc, and recreate these thoughts  in our dualistic experience. The universe is a duplicating machine, “As you think in your heart so shall you be”. We can even understand in the case of the “Auschwitz test”, that the “thought” present in these situations is collective thought arising and expressed as a culture, government, religion, etc. And to understand that our thoughts are not “our” thoughts, most in the realm of what has been described as the “sea of mental garbage” or “the pain body” or the “shadow”, and thoughts consistent with particular psycho-social (meme) development (that can be, of course, both healthy and pathological). The point here is that there is a larger dimension of thought, which as we begin to awaken is understood as the illusion, dream we are awakening from. This happens through normal meme development (each presents an entirely new reality),  in second tier progression,  and ultimately in spiritual awakening. This whole side of the discussion seems to be missed. Ken was particularly off the mark when he was rightly mocking the idea of the spontaneous “quaffing “of our physical reality in refuting the “we make our own reality” concept.  The true understanding of this idea (“we make our own reality”) has to do with necessity of the stripping away or the seeing through our conceptual framework, our beliefs, assumptions, projections, etc , about reality,  “what is”. It's really the wrong argument to focus on whether we have certain powers to quaff the universe or should obtain certain powers of controlling our world. I agree with you and Ken that the individual has no such power, always just the illusion of both power or powerlessness. In truth there is a larger domain in which we can act in which our doing is not doing.  Although it's a worth discussion on it own, the question of the physics of this or the validity of the physics in this issue is a bit of a side show.

So, enough for now. Just thought I would add another perspective on the discussion. Again many thanks.

Ed

I think that most of us are at a pretty high level of cognitive intelligence. And this affords us a perspective that not all have. We know this. When the magical gets passed off for something it's not or for something that it just cannot produce, it drives us a bit bonkers. I can't seem to locate my original post on “the Secret” but what I was attempting to get across was that orange / second tier could salvage the partial truth in the movie( that we all know is there) and get on with the injunction.  There was no injuction in “What the bleep$%&^(%? Aka: What the fuck?
                In 'the Secret ' there seems to be an inherent injunction, and not an outcome that is subjective, (did I have a satori?)although it could be. But usually in the objective domain, ie. I want the car, the house, the new job….And if the thing eventually doesn't materialize, people will know they have been hoodwinked. But if the thing does come about, what then will they think, that it was all magic? Or will they think something else, Jesus gave it to me…..It seems the level of development would define how people would interpret the experience. It's all so easy to shoot fish in a barrel, we can do that all day long, while “The Secret” passes into the consciousness of millions.  We should spend some of our time on P.R. work…………let's make a movie!!!!!!!
Or a P.S.A , “This is your brain, this is your brain on Ken Wilber, got any questions?”

But I also think  we have to balance a critical mind without becoming dogmatic, after all we don't know everything yet.
                    I'm optimistic about the fact that people are hungry for this flatland. It means more people will move, just in alittle bit, and some backwards. But some will also move forward. Maybe stumble upon Zaadz and learn by talking with someone.  Becoming a member. Changing the world. Having a magical time.