I’m amazed that ‘The Secret’ is at the top of the best seller list!
Don’t get me wrong. The message is a good one - go for your dreams. But this book takes a very superficial approach. The whole emphasis is on getting a bigger house, a ‘wife to die for’, millions in your bank account. What absolute nonsense.
To give an example: I wrote an article in January about Chuck Feeney. He sold ‘Duty Free Stores’ for billions. Now he owns very little, he travels by bus and he carries his papers in a plastic bag. Chuck is very busy giving away his billions to charities. He’s not typical but he sure didn’t follow the pack of the rich and famous.
Just take a look at the rich and famous. Are they any happier than rest of us?
There has been a lot of research about what makes us REALLY happy. Does more money mean more happiness?
Now, we all want to be happy. The trouble with books like ‘The Secret’ is that they peddle a totally materialistic approach to being happy. We are on this earth for the shortest time. The best favour you can do for yourself is to first understand what will make you happy and then set your dreams in place. Don’t make assumptions, this decision is far too important.
Read books by credible authors - as a start read ‘Affluenza’ or ‘Growth Fetish’ by Clive Hamilton. Go searching for information to help you in your quest. Be patient, it will take time.
Cheers
Gail Geronimos
I’m more than happy to bag “The Secret” which I regard as one of the meanest, nastiest, stupidest books in existence.
It promotes totally-discredited strategies for success, setting people up for failure and disillusionment.
There are 2 predictors for success:
1: Pick something you actually care about (and that will usually not be the potential financial reward)
2: Be a voracious learner so that you gather knowledge and experience, adding up to the highest possible level of expertise you are capable of.
It’s not about hopes or dreams, it’s about solid ability. People need to stop dreaming and actually WORK to make things happen.
Cheers
Christine
There are many ways to look at “The Secret” and I can agree with you Gail and Christine on what you see, although I felt a great amount of information about the “Law of Attraction” was covered in “The Secret”, a belief that Quantum Physics supports let alone many ancient and more recent philosophies. “What the Bleep Do We Know” is a great movie which is a more in-depth scientific look at this same science but not from a Money making point of view or examples.
While “The Secret” showed many examples of money, there were very good examples of health and more importantly mindset of your day-to-day thinking and its affect on your life for people in many different situations.
I personally have watched this movie several (10 ) times and have owned it for just under 12 months. I also have introduced this movie to many people and one of them a dear friend who had a health challenge that made him bed ridden and unable to do anything about his bankruptcy that came and went without him able to do anything.
After watching “The Secret” Once a Day for over 30 days, my friend was out of bed, healthy, happy and had not a frown or discomfort to show about his health or his financial state and finally from my point of view, took charge and control of his current position and steered it to one of a happier more pleasant and one of abundance more importantly - all from the mindset he created after choosing what he would like to attract. This man now is more mobile than ever and is an inspiration to others in many ways. http://www.liftinguhigher.com is his website and he will soon be putting his latest legacy up in an audio format for people to hear about.
“The Secret” I would say is something we all could watch and benefit from the many examples and look forward to more and improved types of movies that are based more on changing our consciousness or mindset to one of health and abundance for ourselves, our families and the planet. I have not met someone that is scarred or worse off for watching “The Secret”, yet watching some of the Hollywood movies can have an effect on people that I would say leads them to become worse off than before they watched the movie. Think about that one!
I have found that people who watch “The Inconvenient Truth” can have a more happier outlook to the world, take action faster and make a difference, if they watched “The Secret” before or after this movie, giving them permission and self-empowerment to take action and know why they are doing it as well as knowing there are many others in the support of changing the way we look after the Planet and having more responsibility for the effect of our current lifestyles.
All in all I guess it comes from what we choose to take from what we expose ourselves to. “The Secret” gives some “permission/empowerment” from their current mindsets to break through this.
The FIG Program I attended was one of the most life changing and beneficial experiences of my life, I felt I “attracted” this as I really wanted to have the knowledge I learnt and be in an environment that was more than supportive. I could not believe, the mentorship and information that was provided by yourself Gail and your crew. My business doubled it’s revenue after 12 months of applying the many learnt “Secrets” that Achaeus offers.
Why not make a movie that leans itself to the context of “The Secret” yet based on the entrepreneur testimonials of Achaeus clients of the hard work involved in making a Business that is successful, bu tmost importantly, the end result how happy are they and what they do now. This would certainly be an eye opener to Australian Businesses and something there is a market for considering the basis of “The Secret” no 1 position.
Cheers,
Vanya
http://www.aquawebsites.com
Vanya
Many thanks for your compliments and some great idaes about the FIG program.
I agree with the basic principal of the Secret. But it does take more than mindset. Mindset is definitely the start because without that then nothing will happen. To achieve our dreams we also need to work towards them.
It’s as much about the journey as it is about the destination. It’s a constant process of thinking, discussion, observation and testing.
What really annoyed me about the secret is that it took very dubious references to scientific research and tried to apply these principals to the psychology of success.
One of the first physicists to identify links between quantum physics and philosophy was Fritjof Capra with the Tao of Physics in 1975. Now this man has some real credentials.
I don’t believe in shortcuts. It takes a lot of thinking and a lot of time to sort out what we want from this life. Too many people have too quickly decided on THE Dream only to find that they are living a nightmare.
I saw A Crude Awaking last night. That’s an example where millions of us have followed the dream of consumerism - high economic growth, bigger houses, bigger cars, more of everything.
Where will that dream end? How much did we all think about that particular dream?
Cheers
Gail Geronimos
Modern Science offers no support for “The Secret”. There was an interview with the author of the Secret, he is in rather deep financial trouble … . Please, if it were that easy, if all those ancients were right, please explain why I must work so hard, get up so early, spend years filling my brain with information knowing full well that in 10 years time too much of that will be found to be bunkum. Sure, success is easy, you just have to think it. Tell me one experiment in QM where the result can be rigged by the experimenter choosing to invoke a different result. Don’t give me the dual slit or Wheeler’s wonderfully tantalizing variation of the same. Damn these types of logical fallacies are so common, even the Nobel physicist Penrose was naive or desperate enough to believe that indeterminacy in QM was the basis of free will(The Emperors New Mind). Well Doh! That indeterminacy is actually an argument against free will.
Consider Einstein, he first became interested in light after a dream as a teenager and then spent 9 years working it out, then another decade plus further developing his theories. If only he had read “The Secret” and saved himself so much time and trouble.
Forget about using science to validate a philosophy of life, that constitutes a category error. Of such things science cannot help us, or if it does it is only at the margins. As Wittgenstein once quipped, “Off that which we cannot speak we must remain silent”.
The best mindset is doggedness. Take Newton for example:
If I have succeeded in my inquiries, more than others, I owe it less to any superior strength of mind, than to a habit of patient thinking.
Newton
I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait till the first dawnings open slowly by little and little into the full and clear light.
Churchhill’s Black Dog, Anthony Storr, page 103. Quote by Newton on how he made his discoveries. He would literally maintain this concentration for weeks, forgoing sleep, people, and food. This is a common characteristic of major thinkers. Constantly at it. Think about it.
In Men of Mathematics, ET Bell mentions that Euler went blind, possibly from working too hard. Of Beethoven Brahms remarked:
nterview with Brahms:
“Who, in your opinion, was a perfect type of the creative genuis?”
“Beethoven. He had lofty inspirations, and at the same time he was an indefatigable worker. We all have to work hard.”
Multiple Minds, p 114
“The essential thing in heaven and on earth is that there should be a long obedience in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”
Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil
(I threw in the Nietzsche quote because it is sooo appropriate.)
The mindset creates the drive, the drive creates the effort, the effort produces the results (with some luck and intelligence). That’s the real secret. Even the apostle Paul was onto this when he wrote in Romans:
“Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope … “.
Some secret … .
Hi John
Thanks for your comment on The Secret. Enjoyed reading your may and varied quotes.
I agree with most of what you are saying.
Regarding your comment about science to validate a philosophy of life…
Have you read any of Fritjof Capra’s work? I read Tao of Physics and The Turning Point many years ago. He does not attempt to prove a philosophical point using science but he does highlight some very interesting linkages between eastern thought and quantum physics.
Some of his thoughts.
Fritjof Capra Quotes, The Tao of Physics, The Turning Point
Deep Ecology is rooted in a perception of reality that goes beyond the scientific framework to an intuitive awareness of the oneness of all life, the interdependence of its multiple manifestations and its cycles of change and transformation. When the concept of the human spirit is understood in this sense, its mode of consciousness in which the individual feels connected to the cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is truly spiritual. Indeed the idea of the individual being linked to the cosmos is expressed in the Latin root of the word religion, religare (to bind strongly), as well as the Sanskrit yoga, which means union. (Fritjof Capra, Turning Point, 1982)
The purpose of this book (the Tao of Physics) is to explore the relationship between the concepts of modern physics and the basic ideas in the philosophical and religious traditions of the Far East. We shall see how the two foundations of twentieth-century physics - quantum theory and relativity - both force us to see the world very much in the way a Hindu, Buddhist or Taoist sees it .. (Fritjof Capra, Tao of Physics, 1975)
Cheers
Gail
Hello Gail,
Lately I’ve been reading some older physicists thoughts on the matter. I’m too lazy to extract the notes so I’ll provide the lot below. Of particular significance and a damning problem is the idea that the world can be understood as a material representation. This raises all sorts of abusurdities the only escape being to deny the universe is a material representation.
It is also worth remembering that what we can understand about the world is invariably limited. The mathematical physicist John Barrow raises this interesting question:
“If we define a religion to be a system of thought which contains unprovable statements, so it contains an element of faith, then Godel has taught us that not only is mathematics a religion but it is the only religion able to prove itself to be one.”
John Barrow - mathematical physicist
The World Within The World: A Journey to the Edge of Space and Time John D. Barrow
“Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.”
These statements is echoed in the text, The Limits of analysis, Stanley Rosen:
“After all, mathematics is itself an extraordinary way of treating ordinary experience. Perhaps there are other extraordinary manifestations of rationality and the devotion to measure.”
Stanley Rosen, somewhere in “The Limits of Analysis”.
Stanley Rosen, The Limits of Analysis
The positive task of the philosopher is to fecundate his analytical skills with dreams, and to discipline his dreams with analysis. … There are no rules and regulations for being reasonable, and certainly no rules and regulations for dreaming reasonable dreams. In philosophy, as perhaps in everything else, one communicates best his deepest dreams by enacting them.
Yes! Stephen Wolfram, New Kind of Science. AND Living Business right here in Brisbane!
So we should always remember:
25
The soft lines of these hills and the hand of evening on this troubled heart teach me much more. I have returned to my beginning. I realize that if through science I can seize phenomena and enumerate them, I cannot for all that apprehend the world.
Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.
Article: Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of The World’s Great Physicists
Authors: Ken Wilber ed. with the research assistance of Ann Niehaus
Journal: Shambala, Boston, 2001
Location: GCCC library: ANF530QUA
Date obtained: 1/06/2007
Date Read: 22/06/2007
Date to Review:
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Keywords:
Printed:
Notes:
“Let me briefly mention the notorious atheism of science which comes, of course, under the same heading. Science has to suffer this reproach again and again, but unjustly so. No person god can form part of a world-model that has only become accessible at the coast of removing everything personal from it. We know, when God is experienced, this is an event as real as an immediate sense perception or as one’s own personality. Like them, he must be missing in the sapce-time picture. I do not find God anywhere in space and time - that is what the honest naturalist will tell you. For this, he incurs blame from him in whose catechism is written: God is Spirit.
Erwin Schroedinger, The Oneness of Mind.
Thde twentieth century critics who make these comments are still in the state of mind of the nineteenth-century scientists; they take it for granted that the universe must admit of material representation. If we grant their premises, we must, I think, also grant their conclusion - that we are talking nonsense - for their logic is irrefutable. But modren science cannot possibly grant their conclusion, it insists on the finiteness of space at all costs. This, of course, means that we must deny the premises which our critics unknowingly assume. The universe cannot admit of a material representation, and the reason, I think, it that is has become a mere mental concept.”
Sir James Jean, In the Mind of Some Eternal Spirit,
“All I would claim is that those who in the search for truth start from consciousness as a seat of self-knowledge with and interests and responsiblities not confineed to the material plane are just as much facing the hard facts of experience as those who start from consicousness as a device for reading indications of spectroscopes and micrometers.”
“In comparing the certainty of things spiritual and things temporal, let us not forget this: mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience; all else is remote from it.”
Eddington, Beyond the Veil of Physics.
“WE have seen that the cyclic scheme of physics presupposes a background outside the scope of its investigations. In this background we must find, first, our own personality, and then perhaps a greater personality. The idea of a unviersal Mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory; at least it is in harmony with it. But if so, all that our inquiry justifies us in asserting is a purely colourless pantheism. Science cannot tell whether the world-spirit is good or evil, and its halting argument for the existence of a God might equally well be turned into an argument for the existence of the Devil.
………..
“The materialist who is convinced that all phenomena arise from electrons and quanta and the like controlled by mathematical formula, must presumably hold the belief that his wife is a rather elaborate differential equation, but he is probably tactful enough not to intrude this opinion in domestic life. If this kind of scientific dissection is felt to be inadequate and irrelevant in ordinary personal relationships, it is surely out of place in the most personal relationship of all - that of the human soul to the divine spirit.”
…
Verily, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a scientific man to pass through a door. And whether the door be a barn door or church door it might be wiser that he should consent to be an ordinary man and walk in rather than wait till all the difficulties involved in a really scientific ingress are resolved
Eddington, Defense of Mysticism.
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