Well-Known Secret

Posted by Ron Ball

Mar 12, 07

There’s not a week that goes by now that I don’t get a phone call or e-mail from a friend asking me if I’ve seen The Secret. If you haven’t seen or heard about it yet, The Secret started as a DVD video and also became a book — the #1 selling book in one of the categories of the New York Times bestseller lists. The Secret is primarily based on The Law of Attraction which means that what you’re thinking and feeling consciously and unconsciously on the inside is what you attract or manifest in the outside world. The Secret is controversial. It’s challenging people’s assumptions and beliefs. That’s great.

The Secret does a very nice job of packaging what some of the current teachers of The Secret are saying. Actually, the information found in The Secret is no secret at all. It may have been centuries ago. But it’s been available to anyone who wanted to know for a long time. Of course, the Internet has made it much easier for people to find the information. Perhaps there’s such a hoopla about The Secret because many more people are now ready to seek it. Are the masses now attracting the messages of The Secret because they’ve had enough of what they don’t want and are ready for what they do want?

I was amused when I heard a critic of The Secret say it was all just about positive thinking. No way. It’s much more than that. While positive thinking is a nice step — a head start — it’s not The Secret. Neville Goddard (1905-1972), a new thought teacher encapsulated an important key to “The Secret” when he said:

“Imagining creates reality. There can be no outer change until there is first an imaginal change. The secret of creation is the secret of imagining — first desiring and then assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled. The individual’s imagination is not functioning in it and thinking from it, but is functioning out of it and thinking of it. Enter the image of the wish fulfilled, then give it sensory vividness and tones of reality by mentally acting as you would as if it were a physical fact. If you do this, all things will conspire to aid your harvesting and upon reflection you will see how subtle were the threads that led you to your goal.”

I thought I’d pull some books from my office library that convey some of the ideas of The Secret. By no means is it a comprehensive list. I just want to show you that there are many books out there with threads tied to The Secret.

Older Works

• The Wisdom of James Allen : Including As a Man Thinketh, The Path to Prosperity, The Mastery of Destiny, The Way of Peace, and Entering the Kingdom by James Allen
• Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World by William Walker Atkinson
• The Neville Reader by Neville Goddard
• The Master Key System by Charles Hannel
• The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes
• The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn
• The Wisdom of Wallace D. Wattles – Including: The Science of Getting Rich, The Science of Being Great & The Science of Being Well by Wallace Wattles

General

• Beyond Positive Thinking: A No-Nonsense Formula for Getting the Results You Want by Dr. Robert Anthony
• Professional Dreamer: 6 Simple Steps That Turn Dreams Into Reality by Ghalil
• Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting: The Astonishing Power of Feelings by Lynn Grabhorn
• Ask and It is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks
• The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham by Esther and Jerry Hicks
• Law of Attraction: The Science of Attracting of More of What You Want and Less of What You Don’t Want by Michael J. Losier
• You Can Have It All by Arnold Patent
• The New Perspective: Ten Tools for Self-Transformation by Ron & Denny Reynolds
• Unlimited Futures: How to Understand the Life You Have and Create the Life You Want by Bobbie R. Stevens, Ph.D.
• The Attractor Factor: 5 Easy Steps for Creating Wealth (or Anything Else) from the Inside Out by Joe Vitale
• PSYCH-K…The Missing Peace In Your Life! by Robert M. Williams

Money Related

• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches by Joe Karbo
• Creating Money: Keys to Abundance by Sanya Roman & Duane Packer
• The Trick to Money is Having Some by Stuart Wilde

What’s interesting is that The Secret initially spread by the Internet and e-mail lists, generating powerful word-of-mouth marketing. Then what seemed like almost overnight, Larry King had some of the teachers in the video on his show. He’s had three shows about it. Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres have covered it too.

The DVD and book are very popular. Clearly, a lot of people are craving for the messages in The Secret. As people become more receptive to these “new ideas,” perhaps they’ll also be open to discovering other wondrous “secrets” like EFT, and we’ll quickly see a jump from the early adopters to the early majority. (See Why EFT is Like Sushi.)