The Secret Challenge, Part Two
Friends, I have something to share with you: A few months ago, I was at the lowest place I've ever been in my life. I was living on the streets, panhandling for money, eating scraps from garbage cans just to survive. But then one day someone threw a small book into the Dumpster I was subsisting in. When the book proved too difficult to eat (the pages were a little too glossy for my taste), I started reading it, and I soon discovered that I was responsible for my own crippling poverty. See, I kept thinking "I have to get off the streets, I have to get off the streets," but the universe only heard the "streets" part, so I remained (where else?) on the streets.
From then on, I decided to take the book's advice, and treat the world like my own personal catalog. I started thinking, "I have to get a four-poster bed with Frette linens. I have to get a flat-screen TV. I have to get an unlimited supply of Godiva chocolates." I focused on these things, visualized them, day after day, week after week, until one day they materialized.
And now I can sit on my four-poster bed, comfortably ensconced in my Frette linens, popping truffle after truffle into my mouth as I watch my flat-screen and it's all because of The Secret! (I'm still living in a Dumpster, but the book says that time is my friend, so we'll see…)
Anyway, in case you can't tell, I just finished watching
The Secret DVD and I'm a little delirious. The Secret is an hour and 30 minutes long, and that's a very long time to hear the same five things (like attracts like, thoughts become things, you are your thoughts, universe blah blah blah, and energy, energy, energy) repeated over and over again by a rotating cast of "experts" as they sit in front of a faux parchment background.
Still, The Secret wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I pictured it more as a cheap infomercial with silly Da Vinci Code-like touches. In reality, it was much sleeker than I expected, but also much, much stupider–thanks to an unending parade of stock video clips that seemed to have been stolen from National Geographic specials (whales surfacing, people playing on a beach, a ridiculous amount of workers in rice paddies), as well as endless talking head interviews with people like Bob Proctor (a "philosopher"), Bob Vitale (aka the world's only marketing expert/metaphysician), and the guy who wrote Chicken Soup For The Soul that were punctuated by whispery quotes from famous "Secret" knowers (Martin Luther King Jr., Henry Ford).
But that doesn't mean The Secret didn't teach me anything. Here's what I learned from my hour and a half of indoctrination:
1. Reading a book with a loupe may look ridiculous, but it is the best way to indicate that you're investigating the origins of "The Secret."
2. If you think about that hideous, gold rope necklace in the shop window hard enough, eventually the universe will make someone give it to you.