Shhh . . .It’s Not a Secret

By Rom Watson
c. June 29, 2011

It’s easier to appreciate a good song if it’s sung well.  If it’s sung poorly, the singer becomes an obstacle between the listener and the song.

“Bad singer, good song” is my assessment of the documentary DVD The Secret.   The information on the DVD is worth hearing, but to get to it you have to wade through a number of obstacles, such as the title, the marketing campaign, the dramatic reenactments and the first 2 minutes and 35 seconds of the DVD.

Another obstacle: the reviews.  Shortly after its release, I read print reviews that dismissed The Secret as airy-fairy mumbo-jumbo.  It was obvious to me from what they wrote that the reviewers “didn’t get it.”  Which is not surprising, since the material is not easy to grasp.  One could argue that The Secret does more harm than good because it presents to a mass audience difficult information that most of that mass audience would take years to digest and comprehend in a classroom setting.  A 90-minute DVD is at best an introduction, and when the ninety minutes are over and the viewer’s life has not improved, the viewer is apt to dismiss it as airy-fairy mumbo-jumbo as readily as some of the reviewers.  Which is a shame, since the material is an explanation of how the universe works.

How was it obvious that the reviewers “didn’t get it?”  Because they took the truism “Change your thinking, change your life” at face value.  They changed a few of their thoughts, made some positive affirmations, and then were dismissive when their lives didn’t suddenly and drastically change for the better.  In order to change your life for the better, you have to change your consciousness.  Changing your consciousness does begin by changing your thoughts, but it’s much more than that.  And it can take years.

It is estimated that the average person has 12,000 thoughts a day.  (Some estimates are as high as 60,000 thoughts per day, but I will use the lower figure.)  In order to change your consciousness, you’d have to change the majority of your thoughts.  That means at least 51% of your thoughts.  That’s 6,001 thoughts a day.  Every day.  A few positive thoughts sprinkled in among the 12,000 are not going to change your life. So you can see why changing one’s consciousness can take some people quite a long time to achieve.  (Some people have trouble just being aware of their thoughts.  Even though they’re the ones thinking them.)  Applying the concepts presented in The Secret takes awareness and persistence.

For a more in-depth coverage than The Secret provides, read some of the works of Ernest Holmes (1887 – 1960.)  (His book This Thing Called You is a good one with which to start.)  Ernest Holmes spent decades studying and synthesizing the philosophies of what is now referred to as New Thought.  His teachings are the basis of the knowledge presented in The Secret.

If you prefer a more contemporary introduction to Holmes, read a book by Wayne Dyer.  I recommend his 1992 book Real Magic, but everything Dyer writes seems to be based on the teachings of Ernest Holmes.  (That’s not a criticism, merely an observation.  The more people who can explain the teachings of Ernest Holmes, the better.)

The secret of The Secret is that the information it contains has never been a secret.  By calling it The Secret, and pretending that the information has been actively kept from the public, the makers of the DVD hope to sell more copies than if they gave it a more truthful title such as “Stuff a Lot of People Know,” or “Information that’s been Around for a Long Time.”  At its core, what The Secret explains is that the universe works through cause and effect.  And if you want a different effect, you need to change the cause.

“Whatever needs to be done is done in consciousness, for here alone is cause.” – Raymond Charles Barker, The Power of Decision