The Secret: Re-examined

Like articles on writing, The Secret is a popular subject for writers to comment on to get themselves an article. Yes, I am joining them, but it is as much about sharing a view and exploring this idea as much as a sneaky but unoriginal subject to create content on.

In reading another article on this site, Debunking the Secret, I have some debunking to do of my own. This is a critique, not a personal attack on another content producer. But I must share my cynicism with the cynics: the author of the above is among many who see the contributors to this bestselling 2007 book and DVD as looking for ways to promote themselves and make money - as are every writer who takes a swipe at it.

In Debunking the Secret, we are offered eleven short points against the book, but I'm afraid these aren't terribly original or well formulated or argued. One supposed flaw is that the Secret isn't secret: the point is that the Secret should not be a secret and its proponents want this knowledge - instinctively known to many throughout the ages - to be consciously known to all.

The Secret does not claim to be new - the book states that it is age old and found in all sorts of sources, and this may include the mouths of characters in fantasy films, whom the article writer facetiously quotes. Whereas The Secret's representation can seem simplistic and there are some major philosophical problems with it, it has given empowerment to many.

The chief problem that is debated is that the Secret apparently says those who suffer attract their suffering to themselves. But perhaps those who put this forward - and I include myself - are missing the point. It is like going to a sage and being frustrated that your query is continually met with a baffling answers - but then you see that your question has been based on a misapprehension of what you are trying to be taught.

The cynics are proof of the laws they are repudiating - they don't believe it so they don't get.

However, and this is harder - what of those believers who also don't get? I've met people inclusion myself who have used the secret for say a job change. Inspired by this teaching which is so prevalent across New Age and Self Help, one writes the application with confidence, telling yourself that the job is yours and visualising yourself already in that role. You are offered the interview - wow - the Secret is working! You put great energies into preparing and believe that you'll obtain this fantastic opportunity very soon.

But then you don't get the job. And you're really stumped by this.

You know it's not meant to be a con by the writers. You ask God what you did wrong. The crushing of rejection and failure is worse than if you had adopted a Susan Jeffers style attitude: 'The Power of Maybe'. I was disappointed in Susan's book (apart from the 4,000 references to her more famous one, Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway) because she alone of the big pile I was reading was not advocating that we have the power to change our lives. She says, accept what comes at you, either way.

Without the Secret, I would have done the same. If I don't get the job, I believe that there is a reason. I could be that I interviewed poorly or didn't really have the right experience for the role. It could be that I am being spared from an awful job. I once went for a dream job and beat 250 people to get to the interview, which felt so promising and flattering. I was gutted not to get the post, but I befriended the person who did, an internal candidate. She and told me that the organisation wasn't! It was lonely, full of politics, paid far less than it ought; she left within months. that might be a case of being saved, and also that I wasn't quite ready for what that role involved.

But can one always comfort yourself theories this assumption, or does The Secret actually sets people up or a worst failure than a Que sera sera approach? There seems a certain guilt or blame attached with the Secret, though again this could be cynics misunderstanding. In charismatic evangelical circles, Christians whose prayers go answered are told: You didn't have enough faith, and/or - your have sin in your life. I could say that The Secret has a similar fallback for its proponents, rather than their they being wrong, it is the doubting individual. Several books and people have stated that if there is one grain of doubt, then that's what the universe acts on. This grain of doubt can be unconscious - lest you should protest that you didn't doubt the job. But why should that negative thought have more power than all the positive ones?

Like meditation, The Secret is about reconditioning one's thinking, and this can seem so difficult as to make it easy to give up. In order to calm one's mind, you're meant to question all your thoughts to see which are habitually negative. I feel like I am catching bees, examining them to see if they are good bees - making them all buzz faster! Unlike learning meditation, they are no yet (to my knowledge) books and courses than can really assist in this process.

I see the Secret as the analogy with what God is like, which I once found so woolly and irritating: a group of blindfolded people have found an elephant, which they have never seen before. They are all really feeling and describing an elephant, but they do not perceive the whole. One feels a trunk, and confidently asserts that it is for a very different purpose than squirting water and wrapping round things(!!) Another finds a tusk - or the wrinkle of its legs, the great flat ears, the paint brush shaped tail, all which don't make total sense and they may not get right what it is they are experiencing. These elephant feelers genuinely seek to know the elephant and to help others understand what an elephant does and how we can best live with him/her. But they are broadcasting about the elephant in their excitement and wish to aid the world of elephant seekers before they have fully grasped the knowledge of the elephant, or thought everything out.

The Secret is part of an ongoing search and I am likely to return with new views with my reading and understating; I am also an elephant feeler who has not yet learned to use all my senses.