They called The Secret ?The Wish Fairy? but they failed to mention that its principles have worked well for them. On March 21st three self proclaimed marketing gurus held what they said was a record breaking teleseminar to debunk the concepts put forward in the film and book, The Secret. Kevin Hogan, Blair Warren and David Lakhani hosted what they called ?The Secret Teleseminar-The law of Attraction-The Secret Movement Completely Exposed.?

The first thing that needs to be said is that if you are looking for people to market your book, product or company, these guys are good. They are well spoken, the words flow and their rhythm is mesmerizing. The teleseminar attracted people from around the world and the U.S. Callers were coast to coast and I am sure most were impressed by the flow of the conversation.

The seminar opened with a description of the major tenets of The Secret. The hosts said that The Secret is based upon several major premises including: thought plus emotion=attraction: you are responsible for everything in your life; and, it easier to attract good things than bad things. All of the hosts said that The Secret was a marketing masterpiece and should be a guide for all who seek to sell ideas. From that point on most of the comments by the hosts took a turn for the worse.

A major concern regarding the principles of The Secret on the part of the hosts is that they felt that the claim that The Law of Attraction was indeed a scientific law was basically hogwash. Comparing it to the law of gravity, which they said works every time, the law of attraction did not hold up to these criteria. Saying that if you put a person in a room with no food or water they knew of know instance when a person could manifest the needed nutrients to survive. It was suggested that since cancer researchers are thinking about cancer on a regular basis why do their thoughts not attract a propensity for higher cancer rates? Since actors have to put their mind and emotions into the parts they play, why do not actors attract the attributes of the characters they are imitating?

Several other criticisms where mentioned throughout the seminar. It was repeated over and over that people in such places in Rwanda could not possibly have asked to be murdered in the genocide that claimed close to a million lives. Another frequent example was the rape of a young girl. How could a two year old possibly manifest such a heinous act? Considerable mention was made that The Secret was like a cult that seeks to control your made and to keep you in a group at the exclusion of others. They went on to add innumerable times that The Secret does not encourage people to think or to question ideas and that it lacked compassion, promoted behavior control, and that it is very selfish in orientation. By calling it a science, the hosts were unanimous that people would abandon faith and belief since many in the modern age have put their hopes on science as a kind of modern savior.

From a psychological perspective, it was said that The Secret causes depression and stress since they would feel guilty if they failed to manifest their desires. One host commented that the worse thing you can do to a person who is depressed is to say that they created all of their own problems. ?People in despair do not want to hear they are responsible,? for their problems was a common thread.

A pastor , who is a friend of one of the hosts, came on the line and after some more comments about child rape, genocide and that The Secret was just another quick fix scheme, was asked, ?What would Jesus say about The Secret?? The pastor said that Jesus would weep in jealousy that he didn?t have Oprah and that he would call Secret promoters seducers. He said that fixing people?s problems are not simple or easy and that despite phrases such as, ?seek and you will find,? Jesus went on to say that few will actually find the way. He indicated that Jesus would be shocked at the lack of humility, and awe and that it was very egocentric. The pastor finally said that Jesus would say that the promoters of The Secret did not do their homework since he knows of no mention of Plato talking about The Law of Attraction and that he also could not find the quote attributed to Emerson.

After more mention of the cult mentality, child rape, cancer patients, misquotes and The Secret not promoting a questioning attitude, it was said that the entire concept is just wishful thinking based on the ?Wish Fairy.? While there was some acknowledgement that what you believe does have an impact on your life, you are certainly not responsible for all of the events that happen in your life. They claimed that practitioners are supposed to avoid negative people and turn a blind eye to poverty and the misfortunes of others so as to avoid negative thoughts. The final major criticism was that they claimed that The Secret does not encourage people to take any actions and that just thinking about positive things will not change your life that much. They said that The Secret is too black and white and they likened it to a drug that kept you going back to attend more seminars or buy more books or CD?s.

I may have missed a few of the complaints since there was a lot of repetition and variations on a theme. The hosts said that a download of the show would be made available for free so any is welcome to try to contact one of the names and listen for themselves. Scientific laws can be fleeting things. Much that was held to be scientific fact only a few short years ago has now been added to the trash bin. To be a law it must work every time under the same conditions. The assumption is that who you have tried the law an infinite number of times, which cannot be done so no law can really be said to be a law. If just fifty years ago you were to tell scientists that time and space could be bent they would have laughed you out of the lab. And yet, today it is an accepted fact. There a time when it was said that the atom was the smallest particle but now we know that not to be true and in fact, matter itself is really energy and not some hard little object. And then, we have the laws of economics such as supply and demand. This ?law? basically says shrinking supplies means higher prices and excess supply means lower prices. However, if you own a company and decide not to raise your prices when supply shrinks then you have proven that the law is not a law at all.

Now the book does say that the Law of Attraction is a scientific law. Is this a stretch? Perhaps, not all of the evidence is in. Should it more appropriately be called a ?spiritual law?? Perhaps. We all know that it is the opposites that attract when talking about magnets. However, we also know that people are attracted to people; deer to deer, bees to bees and so forth. Maybe to be scientific it should have some corollaries. On the one hand the Universe, the stars and planets were all created by some force of attraction but we also know that high pressure seeks low pressure. If religious belief enters the equation, a new set of issues arise. If Jesus did turn water into wine, raise the dead, and heal the sick then all kinds of laws were violated meaning that the laws may not be laws at all, but mere tendencies that repeat themselves almost all of the time. The concern as to whether the Law of Attraction ever works must be subject to what you believe. There are millions of instances reported of the mind having an impact upon the physical world and if that is true just once, then the possibility must be considered. We do know that the mind can make you ill and that it can make you better. Since we never know all of the variables at work, the question comes down to belief. If you believe that it works and you derive benefit from its use, I see no harm in its use, regardless of what you call it.

There is ample evidence that people are responsible for the events in their lives. Even the hosts of the seminar said that there is no question that choices that we make determine the course of our life. Where the hosts diverged from The Secret is where it is claimed that ?everything? is our responsibility. This raises the issue, is it a law or not? If we are responsible for most of our lives are not responsible for it entirely? They would have us believe that it is okay to credit for the good things but that the ?bad? thing are out of our control. To prove this they bring up Rwanda, child rape and cancer repeatedly in order to jerk on the emotional chain. People do not ask for genocide nor do girls ask to be raped. But, if an area or a country is filled with hatred; if they do nothing to protect or stand up for themselves; if they live in a constant state of fear then the Universe takes all of this negative emotion and manifests what the people are asking for-a place of fear, hate and death and rape and whatever else people may perceive to be things that they fear. The Universe does not judge the emotions-it merely reacts to them. This is hard for people to understand-the Universe is objective-actually even unconditional love is objective. The Universe is so filled with love and freedom that it will not deny you what you ask for-and-if you are not specific-you will get what people seem to hate and despise because that is what some seem to want and fear. A fellow blogger by the name of Vicki wrote me and said, ? I've always stuck to the idea that although a person may not logically think to themselves..."gee, I want to be ____." raped, killed, beat, imprisoned, enslaved, tortured, or whatever word you want to put in there, what people do instead is feel...inadequate, powerless, fear, hate, tortured, hurt, and so on - and since that is what they emit through their vibration, it is what they bring upon themselves, in an indirect way.

Although we all know that it is irrational to want to harm ourselves, that inner critic the ego is quick to make us feel bad, fill us with guilt, hate, and negativity of all kind, which then creates the negative situations we experience.

These people make it appear that those of us who believe in LOA are heartless fiends who believe people get what they deserve. This is so far from the truth - it is just a lie to deceive would be believers.? Did Jesus once say, "Oh, you poor victim!" Or "I feel so bad for you!" Never! He didn't ever concern himself with what they perceived to be their illness, or pain - he addressed only what they should focus on doing, "Pick up your bed and walk", "Be healed", and so on We all know that peace on earth is literally just a thought away. We all know that the end to poverty is a thought away. We all know that solving almost all of the world?s problems are just a thought away. We choose not to do these thing and our choices have consequence. It is a cop out to take credit for only the positive but leave the blame for the negative to forces that we are told are beyond our control. Does the two year old child ask to be raped? I will have to challenge and stretch your faith to get a handle on that question. If you believe in reincarnation, I see the eyebrow going up, then much makes sense. Keep in mind, outside of Christianity most in the world have some belief in reincarnation and in fact, early Christians believed likewise but the Church saw this as a threat and deleted most, but not all, references to this concept. No, people do not reincarnate as butterflies or snakes. People are people and over the course of many lives we evolve and grow. That being said, it becomes unknown as to all the forces that interact in determining our life circumstances. For some, this will be a cop out also. Sorry, but all things are not black and white and some of what we believe come from inner gnosis which can never truly be properly explained.

Is The Secret a cult? By definition all religions are cults as are any set of ideas that have a follower. The attempt on the part of the hosts to place The Secret into some kind of Satan worship cult is not worthy of their, or our, intelligence. There is no leader to follow, no real dogma, no church to attend, no penalties imposed and nothing to join unless people voluntarily get together to talk about their experiences. One could just as easily call the Union of Concerned Scientists, college fraternities, the Elks, the Chambers of Commerce, the book club of the month or any idea that brings people together to share common goals and purposes a cult. By definition, the biggest cult on the planet is probably the Catholic Church.

One host in particular constantly said that The Secret does not promote ?critical thinking.? Let me get this right. A set of ideas that ask you to question the fundamental basis of reality, all accepted conventional wisdoms, the very nature of all religious belief, the very fabric of our health system and our entire perception of the known Universe does not promote critical thinking? When Brian Doe and I authored the novel, ?Waking God,? we set as our goal to get people to think about religious dogma and the real relationship between humanity and the Universe. We were very pleased when almost every book review and reader comment said that the novel made them ?think.? I would have to say that I am in awe as to the degree to which The Secret has made people become walking question marks. I believe, as a lifelong mystic, that Jesus would applaud The Secret. I believe he would say that it gives his message but not in parable form. I believe that Jesus would say that it brings people together since that no longer have to fight over the myth that there is not enough to go around and that we all have a special and deeply person relationship with the Divine Intelligence that guides the Universe. I believe that he would say that society has built its foundations on a bed of sand and that if people would just wake up to the true nature of the Universe, it can now be built on a solid foundation of rock.

I do not know the motives behind the teleseminar. It seems that they did what they have accused The Secret of doing, using bits of truth and emotionalism to prove their points. Is The Secret perfect? There probably are some errors and incomplete quotes. It is even likely that some who contributed to its content do not truly understand what they have written. In the book it says, page 38, ?There is no greater power in the Universe than the power of love;? so much for no compassion. The book is riddled with action to take to manifest your desires. It says that the Universe will provide the circumstance for the manifestation to occur and it is obvious you have to take action. It does not advocate that you just sit alone in a room and wait for your desires to be fulfilled. I do not believe the book, as one host said advocates not looking at ?fat people or even poor people.? What it does advocate is that you see with the Eyes of the Universe and the Christ. See people as whole, vision people as healthy and abundant, do not accept appearances as they are truly deceptive.

Everything you see that is man made is a thought made manifest. I would go so far as to say that all things are thoughts made manifest. We would have no chairs, cars, TVs, homes, or anything if no one thought of them. There is also ample science that all things are made of energy and that the mind can have an impact on that energy. Can all the principles of The Secret be empirically proven at the present time? Can all science be proven at the present time? After two thousand years people are still debating the history of the Bible and I am certain the debate over The Secret will also continue. At least we now know that the earth is an oblate spheroid.

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