Let me save you some money and time and tell you the secret of The Secret.
Now, I’d vaugely heard about this book/movie/philosophy sweeping the nation, because apparently the publishing company is based here in Oregon, but nothing had really moved me to seek it out. But a coworker was gushing about it to another coworker, and I wandered over to see what was going on.
She lent me her copy of the book, and I handed it back to her five minutes later.
“You don’t want to keep reading it?” She asked, confused.
“Seen it all before,” I said.
That confused the hell out of her. “What do you mean?”
“Where I come from, we call that ‘Name It and Claim It’ Theology.”
Her eyes lit up. I learned after the conversation and a judicious Google search that apparently the pushers of The Secret claim it’s been around for 3,500 years and is the basis of most world religions. Pardon me, my eyes just rolled right out of my head, I’ve got to go catch them. “So your church teaches it, then?”
“Um, not so much,” I said. “My church teaches you can ask God for whatever you want, but that God can totally say ‘No’ to your requests.”
The other coworker bounced back into the awkward silence and started asking about the Secret Society or Secret Group or something, and the confused coworker was more than willing to talk about her experiences with other Secret seekers as I slipped back to my cubicle, feeling a little lost and isolated.
2 Comments
March 14, 2007 at 12:49 pm
You might want to check out Brother Jeremy Puma’s comments on The Secret, over at Fantastic Planet:
http://www.snant.com/fp/archives/the-secret-about-the-secret-its-crap/
The link wasn’t working this morning, but Google’s got a cache copy available here. —Mary Sue
March 14, 2007 at 5:36 pm
They say educational fads have a 20-year cycle. I think religious fads just churn around constantly in the cultural blender and pop up at random. This one has all the prayerful depth of a chain letter. Good for you for what you said!