In hindsight, I feel I was too kind with this book, it makes far more sense simply to describe it as evil. It encourages victim blaming - since they only have themselves to blame for bringing their fates upon themselves for a lack of positiver thinking, and ultimately encourages the reader to blame themselves since when their wishes fail to become fishes there can only be one reason - the positive thinking wasn't quite positive enough, or didn't have quite the perfect tone of positivity to it. معني flood control An
"Everything that surrounds you right now in your life, including the things you're complaining about, you've attracted"...
Often when people first hear this part of the Secret they recall events in history where masses of lives were lost, and they find it incomprehensible that so many people could have attracted themselves to the event
(view spoiler)[ if there is a Hebrew edition published in Israel is this sentence removed? The idea doesn't strike me as incomprehensible so much as repulsive (view spoiler)[but I do appreciate that she wasn't coy about her opinion and just came straight out with it (hide spoiler)]. معني flood control (hide spoiler)]. By the law of attraction, they had to be on the same frequency as the event. It doesn't necessarily mean they thought of that exact event, but the frequency of their thoughts matched the frequency of the event. If people believe they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they have no control over outside circumstances, those thoughts of fear, separation, and powerlessness, if persistent, can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time...You have a choice, and whatever you choose to think will become your life experience.
Nothing can come into your experience unless you summon it though persistent thoughts.
If you are complaining, the law of attraction will powerfully bring into your life more situations for you to complain about. If you are listening to some one else complain and focusing on that, sympathizing with them, agreeing with them, in that moment, you are attracting more situations to yourself to complain about p17
I find the mention of events in history where masses of lives were lost a fascinating example of victim blaming - particularly in the context of Australian and American history. In the nineteenth century commentators took the view that aboriginal peoples would die out because of their inherent inferiority and ability to cope with the modern world (view spoiler)[ as opposed to the violence, warfare, and ecological disruption going on at the time (hide spoiler)]. Now when their populations have been much reduced we can blame that on their inability to think happy positive thoughts. This is a book that works to re-enforce the existing status quo. Those who are successful can only be so for their ability to think positive thought and attract good things to themselves, while those who are not successful are the victims of their own inability to properly visualise what they want as opposed to having face some structural disadvantage in the way that society is ordered.
One can see here how this approach makes life easy in a way. One doesn't have to understand or appreciate the world and the circumstances of other's lives. One can straight away be judgemental: معني flood control they brought it on themselves, whether it is cancer, war, contagious disease, or bad architecture. (view spoiler)[ But of course the something like the boom in London property prices or the Wall street crash and subsequent Great Depression do indeed demonstrate the power of positive thinking. The first could be nothing other than millions of people thinking positive thoughts in concentric rings and the other was the result of millions of people thinking negative thoughts - and what a hero Herbert Hoover was in his one man attempt to try and turn round the thought patterns of a nation by telling everybody that the economy was on the turn. (hide spoiler)]
Victim blaming fits well with The Secret's role as a cultural document. Although it does seem to refine the concept. The good news is that if I punch you it is your fault. I am innocent, you attracted that punch to yourself through your lack of positive thoughts. Indeed it I seize you, carry you off to a offshore enclave, hold you in captivity for over ten years, torture you from time to time, without any legal process this is also something you attracted to yourself through negative thoughts and quite rightly I will be well paid for doing so because I think only positive, nice, thoughts and therefore attract as a modern Midas glittering palaces, big cars and multiple soul mates to myself (view spoiler)[ I find the business of soul mates interesting, does the soul mate you draw to yourself have no agency or independent will? In the world of the secret a soul mate is the equivalent of a big house or a pile of banknotes. Its simply another acquisition rather as one might buy a Ken doll to sit alongside Barbie in her dream car (hide spoiler)].
It strikes me that The Secret will appeal to people who are intimidated by evidence of the world's complexity and feel out of control. The Secret says very firmly that you can, indeed should be, in control. However since sickness, old age and death exist wouldn't belief in this book give rise to anxiety (view spoiler)[ reading this book sparked off memories of those Calvinists anxious over whether they were part of the elect or not - are you wishing correctly or are you allowing negative thoughts to leak into your consciousness causing disaster throughout your life! (hide spoiler)]? Every time you have a cold or find a grey hair you are confronted with evidence of your own inability to think insufficiently positively!
You don't have to mad to live this life, but if you are...
In a newspaper article I read a journalist interviewed the psychologist who wrote the second report on Anders Brevik - the one which found him sane. In response to the journalist's question about how appropriate his finding was the psychologist responded that hundreds of people have written to Brevik in prison all praising him for his actions - are they all insane too, he asked rhetorically.
My response would be yes. But then perhaps to be sane in the world would be the most insane reaction one could have (view spoiler)[there was a nice short story I once read about a psychiatrist returning to his home town after a distinguished career in Europe to open an insane asylum. As the story progresses he finds grounds to incarcerate more and more of the town's population in his asylum until everybody has been finally committed. Then he realises that what he has done is also completely insane so he has himself locked up to. And then everybody lives happily ever after (view spoiler)[ the story is O Alienista by Machado de Assis (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]. We don't for the most part notice the amount of insanity around us because on the whole it doesn't cause that much friction. It's only in books like The Secret that the inner craziness of people's private lives gets laid out in public:
The law of attraction states that what you focus on you will get, so I got a bank statement, I whited out the total, and I put a new total in there. I put exactly how much I wanted to see in the bank (p104)
A game I created that help shift my feelings about my pile of bills was to pretend that the bills were actually checks. I would jump for joy as I opened them and say, "more money for me! Thank you. Thank you." I took each bill, imagined it was a check, and then I added a zero to it in my mind to make it even more. I got a notepad and wrote at the top of each page "I have received," and then I would list all the amounts of the bills with an added zero. Next to each amount I would write "Thank you," and feel the feelings of gratitude for receiving it - to the point where I had tears in my eyes. Then I would take each bill, which looked very small compared to what I had received, and I would pay it with gratitude! (p105)
Still my favourite part of this book is a fine example of how irrational the rational world of business can be.
The true story of a Belize oil team is an inspiring example of the power of the human mind to bring forth resources
(view spoiler)[What quantum physicists and Einstein tell us is that everything is happening simultaneously...whatever you want in the future already exists (p62) it seems that Byrne believes this applies to the past too - that through positive thinking the team altered the geological processes that occurred in the region. This probably also explains why Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun's burial to be so rich (hide spoiler)] The directors of Belize Natural Energy Limited were trained by the eminent Dr. Tony Quinn, who specialises in Humanistic Physiology training. With Dr. Quinn's mind power training, the directors were confident that their mental picture of Belize being a successful oil producing country would be achieved...and in one short year their dream and vision became a reality. Belize Natural Energy Limited discovered oil of the highest quality, in abundant flows...Belize has become an oil-producing country because an extraordinary team of people believed in the unlimited power of their mind.Nothing is unlimited-not resources or anything else. It is only limited in the human mind...
(pp148-9)Oil production in Belize took off in late 2006, peaked in 2010 and remains in steady decline.
Probably not my final thoughts
If the idea of the universe as a complex place that requires understanding makes you uncomfortable, if the idea of bad things happening to good people is a problem for you, then books like The Secret hold the solution. It's offer is that life is simple. Everybody gets exactly what they are due to get, everything works fine just as it is, and you can be in control.
This could be a reassuring message for some, particularly since it relives you of the exhausting work of having to appreciate the world, all its interactions and how we are all implicated and bound up with one another - allowing you to get on with the business of being judgemental instead.
It doesn't work for me because it requires a pretty contorted view on existence as far as I can tell and its focus on material goods leaves me cold. It also doesn't just recommend ignoring a good chunk of the normal experience of human life but recommends vigorous self censorship to achieve a kind of cargo cult effect - only through the thorough imitation of the assumed thought habits of the rich and famous can one achieve the unlimited power to alter the geology of Belize.
I'm left with the odd feeling that the author read Foucault's Pendulum and thought that those guys were really on to something with "The Plan".
Is it is surprise that our society throws up a book like The Secret from time to time, and it is apt that it appeared on the eve of a financial crash, a clear and vigorous trumpet blast at odds with complex and shifting reality. ...more
، معني flood control[The Secret (The Secret, #1) by Rhonda Byrne معني flood control]
نویسنده و منبع | تاریخ انتشار: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:55:00 +0000