A dirty little secret about "The Secret"...and "The Secret Behind The Secret."

While we like positive thinking here at Interfusion Publishing (as long as it's tied to positive "do-ing")...and there's no doubt that the more one focuses on something and acts upon that focus with positive and emotionally driven belief, the more that thing will tend to manifest in one's life...even so, I'm a bit disturbed by the more cultish aspects of the overly zealous adherents of "the law of attraction" and a certain film and book now selling like hot cakes and touted by Oprah Winfrey. Their demonization of "negative thinking" reminds me of Christian fundamentalists who harp too much on "sin" and label anything they disagree with or don't fathom as "the work of the devil." When I consider the logical contortions required to justify this belief system in the face of explaining, say: slavery, the Holocaust, or 9-11 ("They must have attracted it into their lives by their beliefs") , I'm also ironically reminded of die-hard skeptics who, in the face of any corroborating evidence for the paranormal, twist their minds into logical pretzels and cry "irrational" or "poppycock." Any such adherents of "The Secret" who are too uptight to take in a little dead-on parody best leave now, or else darkness will overtake them. Those with stronger wills and more resilient critical thinking skills -- and senses of humor -- are invited to watch the following video, courtesy of You Tube:


"The Secret on Oprah" Parody by Saturday Night Live





A few links, pro and con:

'The Secret': Does Self-Help Book Really Help? - From MSNBC.com and Newsweek

Discovering The Secret: Rhonda Byrne Uncovers The Secret - From Oprah.com

From Biblicalsprituality.org - by Donald S. Whitley, Associate Professor of Biblical Spirituality and Director of Applied Ministry at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, founder and president of the Center for Biblical Spirituality.

"In the final analysis, The Secret is nothing more than Name It-Claim It, Positive-Confession, Prosperity Theology (without God and the Bible), built on a foundation of New Age self-deification. In other words, the book is just another version of what some TV preachers have taught for decades, namely, if you will sustain the right thoughts, words, and feelings, you will receive whatever you want. But The Secret adds this important twist: your thoughts can bring anything into your life because you are god."

'The Secret' - Spiritual Cinema? - From Rense.com, by Julian Walker. " Julian Walker is a contemporary integrator of Eastern and Western traditions of self-inquiry. He is a yoga, meditation and ecstatic dance teacher, a body worker, a DJ and a philosopher who writes on the relationships between spirituality, psychology and reality. Julian's central premise is that in a post-911 world neither old world religion nor naive New Age spirituality are sufficient or appropriate to the human condition."

The Secret Cashes in as Debate Rises by Julian Walker

"Two months ago I finally got around to watching The Secret and I had a secret - I was appalled. How could it be that this piece of work that was lighting up the eyes and kindling the knowing smiles of half the people I knew, was so incredibly bad? Bad philosophy, bad psychology, bad spirituality, bad relationship to reality, bad principles to tout as the secret to happiness - so i wrote a review and put it out there to the small community of people who surf the small community of zaadz blogs. I thought I might take a little heat, might offend a few people, but that would be OK, I like to invite people into critical thinking and debate - it's what is lacking most in the spiritual community. "

And a final word of wisdom from my old correspondent Dr. Mark Woodhouse, retired professor of philosophy and author of the intellectual tour-de-force...
Paradigm Wars: Worldviews for a New Age


"It would help the cause of growth, if New Age folks who constantly remind us how we "create our own realities" would distinguish between allowing, manifesting, projecting, and attracting -- all at both conscious and unconscious levels. "
MarkWoodhouse.com