Making Sense Of The Secret

The purpose of this article is to explain some of the ideas used by people who have read The Secret. You may find it hard to understand some of what everyone is talking about. I've heard people say the language of the time sounds forced and unnatural.

This was really an exciting time. New knowledge was changing everything. Charles and Myrtle Filmore were creating study groups that eventually became Unity Church; Ernest Holmes founded Religious Science and Edgar Cayce was giving psychic readings that were uncannily accurate.

The old ways were being swept away. Key to this process were the discoveries of science. We learned that we had an effect on the universe in which we found ouselves.

We started looking at the world around us as something we could influence. We discovered we could influence the outer world with the power of our minds.

Our whole universe expanded! This didn't just influence the New Age religions. Many of the things we take for granted today like Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, Positive Mental Attitude and the areas of literature, art and music show the influence of this new way of thinking.

Many people may think the view of the New Age culture sounds like The Force of Star Wars fame, which "surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together." This view of a universal substance that is everywhere present is described in many of the Earth's great religions and is described by Wallace Wattles as "a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe."

The "new concept" that occurred 100 years ago was that we could directly impress our thoughts upon this "formless substance" and create our experience of life. No more pleading for the intercession of a Supreme Being! Such an idea was very transformational to the mindset of the time.

I like the way one person put it when saying "It gives us more power over our lives." How can we know the unknowable? It makes sense to this writer that we are free to live our own lives and to make our own choices.

Do you believe in past lives? You can embrace any belief you want, but I hope your fate doesn't depend on it! I would not like to find out in the end that my ultimate fate depended on whether I mumbled certain chants or rubbed magic beads in a certain order.

The big secret behind The Secret is the Law of Attraction; another way of saying this is "like attracts like.". It's exactly what the New Agers, the Positive Mental Attitude people and the optimistic folk have been trying to tell us all this time. Like Edgar Allen Poe's Purloined Letter, it's been there the whole time!

Would you like to learn more about this? The name of the book is titled The Science of Getting Rich. This book is in the public domain now since it was published over 100 years ago Look for more information in the next paragraph.

Adam Dillinger owns the Self Help Hotline and has been involved in self improvement and New Age thinking since childhood. He is pleased to offer a free copy of the book that inspired The Secret. You can learn more about it here.