You Asked For It

Overweight? Stop looking at fat people. Want a new car? Visualize yourself sitting behind the wheel.

Last week Newsweek had an article on a book and DVD titled The Secret by Rhonda Byrne that Oprah and Ellen Degeneres have featured on their shows. Oprah actually devoted two shows to The Secret.

(Please read the article here before you continue. What follows I have written assuming that you have.)

Let me begin by saying that I haven't read the book and am only commenting on what I learned while reading the article in Newsweek. But something appeared obvious to me that the article either failed to mention or intentionally avoided. It is the biggest conceit within The Secret.

As mentioned in the article, The Secret can be boiled down to the three word mantra: Ask. Believe. Receive. But I believe that this "Secret" has been around for thousands of years. According to the article, Oprah claimed to have been living by this philosophy her entire life without realizing it. And look how successful she is! It must work!

I suggest that the majority of people on this earth live by this creed already. I think that it has been around for thousands of years because "Ask. Believe. Receive." is the basis of most, if not all, religions of the world. It's called prayer: Ask God. Believe God is listening. God will answer your prayers.

The difference between prayer and what The Secret promises is that while practicing the Law of Attraction you hold all the responsibility for your fate. If you don't get what you want it's your fault for thinking negatively. Bad things happen to you? It's because you worry too much. In contrast, prayer puts the granting of your wishes in God's hands. If your prayers aren't answered it's because it's not part of God's plan. The Secret puts everything in the lap of the person using it. This self-help philosphy seems to hold the potential for destroying the person practicing it.

Aside from the fact that this "new" way to live isn't new, the most disturbing part of the article for me is this passage:

"The law of attraction is that each one of us is determining the frequency that we're on by what we're thinking and feeling," Byrne said in a telephone interview, in response to a question about the massacre in Rwanda. "If we are in fear, if we're feeling in our lives that we're victims and feeling powerless, then we are on a frequency of attracting those things to us ... totally unconsciously, totally innocently, totally all of those words that are so important."

If an infant is murdered is Byrne suggesting that the infant was thinking negatively? Therefore the infant had it coming? Or is it a parent's fault that they weren't visualizing good things for their child?

I can't properly put into words how worked up this article has gotten me. It makes me wish that some horrible fate befall the author, Byrne. I find myself wanting her to physically suffer to the point that she truly regrets hawking this crap. I want her to suffer until she publicly abandons her own "convictions" and returns the money she has made as penance.

But apparently I'm in the minority. Nearly 1.5 million of her DVDs have been sold and 1.75 million of her books are in print. Here's hoping none of them read this and try their mojo on me. Here's hoping I'm not wrong.