February 17, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
By MAUREEN DOWD
So I was sitting around watching “Oprah” yesterday afternoon when I realized how I could stop W. and Crazy Dick from blowing up any more stuff.
All I needed to do was Unleash my Unfathomable Magnetic Power into the Universe!
Energy flows where intention goes. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
Anyhow, Oprah taught me how to stop abusing myself and learn The Secret. I finally get it: because the Law of Attraction dictates that like attracts like, my negativity toward the president and vice president is attracting their negativity and multiplying the negative vibrations in the cosmos, creating some sort of giant doom magnet.
I need to examine my unforgiving stance toward them and use my power of visualization to let them know that in my consciousness and awareness, they cannot determine my destiny. I am severing those emotional and vibratory tonalities that keep me tied to their toxic energy, causing me to repeat the same old pattern of bemoaning in the newspaper their same old pattern of blundering in the Middle East.
Oprah did her second show in eight days on “The Secret,” the self-help book (and DVD) by Rhonda Byrne, an Australian reality-TV producer. The book hit No. 1 on the USA Today best-seller list this week.
At first glance, “The Secret” might seem like inane piffle, a psychobabble cross between Dr. Phil and “The Da Vinci Code,” a new-age spin on Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 classic, “The Power of Positive Thinking” and the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” But that’s a negative way of thinking.
James Arthur Ray, a teacher of The Secret method, who talked to Oprah, says it’s “very, very scientific.”
“If you think you’re this meat suit running around, you know, you have to think again,” he said. “You’re a field of energy in a larger field of energy.”
Oprah enthused that The Secret “really is touching a nerve around the world” because “so many people are hungry for guidance and meaning.” Ms. Byrne claims it improved her eyesight; others say it works on everything from weight loss to panic attacks to getting rich to snagging the mate of your dreams or a good parking space.
“We create our own circumstances by the choices that we make, and the choices that we make are fueled by our thoughts,” Oprah explained in her first show. “So our thoughts are the most powerful thing that we have here on earth. And based upon what we think — and [what] we think determines who we are — we attract who we are into our lives.”
Or as the book so eloquently puts it, “You must feel good about You.”
If it works on eyesight, can’t it work on foresight? Can’t we use The Secret on the secretive Bush White House to prevent a calamity in Iran?
According to the Sacred Principles set out by the Law of Attraction Specialists, the universe responds to your thoughts. So if I want certified chuckleheads to stop mucking up American foreign policy, all I have to do is let the universe know. I forgive the president for being a goose and the vice president for being a snake, and I start thinking about the sort of amazing, or even mildly competent, leaders I deserve to have in my life.
Maybe W. should read the book. He likes things biblical, and “The Secret” says it takes its Creative Process from the New Testament.
He would learn, as Mr. Ray said, that “trying is failing with honor,” adding: “Take the word ‘try’ out of your vocabulary. You either do it or you don’t.”
W. could have applied that to Iraq, where he has always done only enough to fail, including with the Surge.
A main tenet of The Secret is learning to avoid the chain reaction of churlishness, which begins with a single thought: “The one bad thought attracted more bad thoughts, the frequency locked in, and eventually something went wrong. Then as you reacted to that one thing going wrong, you attracted more things going wrong.”
It’s an apt description of Iraq policy. A bad thought that led to more bad thoughts, and the negative frequency is now locked in on Iran, which is responding with its own negative frequency.
With The Secret, W. will realize that all he needs to do to change his current reality is admit that it’s fake. (Similar to the wisdom of Dorothy clicking her shoes three times.)
Once he stops his chain reaction of negative thought, I can stop my chain reaction of negative thought. And then there will be peace on earth and parking spaces for everyone.
Has no one ever read Candide? Oprah’s audience may be literate, but just barely. The sales records of this book are a national embarrassment.
i know. Did you read this: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-klein13feb13,0,1519054,print.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
it’s good, too.
I love it! Normally I disagree with you simply on principle, however, the recent fawning over the world’s biggest scam [I mean self-help phenomenon] has caused me to embrace your rhetoric with open arms! No doubt the searing power of your intellectual intentions have snagged me from my devolved conservative state!
Only one comment – I think it was Yoda who originally said “there is only do or do not, there is no try”.
you may have heard it from yoda first but he didn’t coin the phrase or sentiment as he doesn’t really exist you see i hate to tell you this but yoda is a puppet and thusly should not really be considered the source of anything.
I’m sure the negative energy that you have put into the comments above continue to show up in your daily lives. I wish for all that see the secret as absurd, one positive miracle that they’ve attracted. Unfortunately, it sounds as though they’re synical attitudes only attracts more reasons to see and concentrate on negative people and experiences in their lives. However, fear, anger, and doubt always come easy. Living in love, compassion, and thanks is the basic concept. What’s to lose?
Ah, believer…
Odd, for an enlightened, “living in love, compassion and thanks” kind of person, you’ve seemingly CHOSEN to spend YOUR free time here among “synics” [sic] that are purportedly mired in negativity.
You make sure to affect an air of above-the-fray indulgence; YOU’RE [n.b.] coming here to make such woeful unwashed masses hip to your superior enlightenment.
Yet your contempt comes through loud and clear. Apparently, you’ve already deemed such people as living miracle-free, negativity-filled lives. That’s pretty negative on your part.
I guess that’s what you’re choosing to attract for yourself, then? I note with interest that you chose to reply some two years after the last comment on this near-moribund op-ed.
Hmm. You’d rather be here with us “synics” for free than crammed in with perhaps …oh, say, about 64 other enlightened people in a 15′ wide, 4 1/2′ high human par-boiling apparatus at nearly $10,000 a pop? Not enough love, thanks and compassion in that environment for ya, pray tell? Too much of a good thing?
Do you instead prefer and desire to attract the likes of me, a low-brow, curmudgeonly, anonymous ‘net drive-by pundit as your company and psychological/emotional environs? I’m flattered! C’mon over here, give us a big Kumbaya hug. ;-D
Do you hold no value in your mind for open dialogue and differing opinions? Only want the pretty, shiny rainbow thoughts, eh?
Would that we could actually subsist on skittles and unicorn tears, but alas, the world keeps on producing the likes of me. Where do I come from, when so many like yourself are beaming such happy, superior thoughts into the universe? Mayhaps one of your movement’s turned cheeks is sporting a negative, unsightly mole. Shudder to think!
Unlike yourself, who seeks to cloak obvious contempt, derision, condescension and superciliousness in a mantle of tsk-tsking at those you imagine to be taking the “easy” way out (we’re just not big enough to have love, compassion and thanks anywhere in our lives like you, you see), I’ll be right up front about it:
I think you’re a poor critical thinker — one that is quite full of and high on them self. One who doesn’t recognize the delicious irony of such a purportedly enlightened being going out of their way to dump blatant negative commentary years after the fact on long-gone strangers.
Me, I’m fine with being such a “lowly” Morlock. I’m glad to find your inane, illiterate gem mere days after a hope-mongering scam artist used exactly your brand of belittlement and simplistic pop psycho babble/pseudo-science to fleece and then negligently slaughter his credulous customer base/marks.
Your comment didn’t add any light or knowledge to my life. Sadly, it added one more point of data to support my ongoing hypothesis that those who are enamored of “The Secret” are, for the most part, not the hottest stone in the tent.
Oddly, though, one kernel rings true: you have exactly the kind of life your intellectual curiosity and thought pattern begets, and I mine.
And we’re BOTH happy with ourselves and our lives, I’d wager … which is more than you’re willing to concede back us “synics’” way. I, the blighted, negative Morlock acknowledge BOTH our happy, smug, self-satisfied states, and you, the one who has transcended merely wearing a meat-suit only allows the possibility of your own happiness.
Go figger!
xxxooo,
Scav.