The REAL Secret

Here's a (non) news flash: I like "The Secret." In fact, I like it so much, that I encourage as many people as I can to see it. And -- as many of you know -- I even sell it from one of my other websites (http://www.the-secret-dvd.net/).

So, again: I like The Secret.

And more than mere liking, I'm very grateful to The Secret for helping bring ideas and concepts into the "mainstream" that otherwise were being ignored. Yes, it goes without saying that nothing in The Secret is actually new information. But what is new is that people who otherwise wouldn't come close to anything remotely "new age" or "metaphysical" are, indeed, talking and thinking and even experimenting about the ideas, lessons, concepts in The Secret. I consider all of this to be VERY GOOD NEWS and am glad that it's happening. Indeed, when polished, professional, successful and credible business people talk about "new age" -- more people listen. That's just how it is.

But while I like and am grateful to The Secret, I'm also of the opinion that there is actually a deeper secret behind The Secret that, quite possibly, many of the people very closely connected to The Secret don't know -- or, maybe, don't talk about as much as they should.

It's about acceptance.

The real energy behind The Secret is not, in my view, about visualizing a better reality -- one where you have a better job, or a nicer car, or whatever else you may have on a "dream board." The real mechanism of The Secret is to get you to somehow stop fighting with your present reality. And yes, one way for you to do that is to simply have you envision something better.

It's not, however, the most efficient way.

It's a bit like this:

You may have a child at home who -- like many other children -- hates to eat fruits and vegetables. And yet, you know that fruits and vegetables are essential to the child's health and well being. Furthermore, you'd really like to somehow help your child create a healthy habit of (sometimes) eating fruits and vegetables.

"Ideally" you'd simply like to talk to your child and help them understand. But that's not realistic, right? So you create a story of some kind -- something that helps the child eat their fruits and vegetables. They receive the benefit in terms of health, and eventually, you hope that they "figure it out" on their own so that when they make their own eating choices as they get older, they choose fruits and vegetables, sometimes, over other non-healthy snacks.

That "story" you told your child was helpful -- it was needed; there was no other way. It was simply unrealistic to expect your child to see things the way that they might 10, 20 or 30 years "from now" -- one where a doctor is saying: eat more fruits and vegetables to stay healthy!

Yet while the story was helpful -- it "did the job" -- it's simply not the most efficient way. The most efficient way is always a straight line (a lesson from math that applies here as well), and by taking things through a "story" there is some momentum that is lost; some effectiveness falls through. Instead of eating, say, 4-5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, a child "following a story" may each 4-5 servings a week. That's still better than NO servings a week, but it's not as great as 4-5 servings a day/28-35 servings a week.

So that difference between 28/35 servings and 4/5 servings is the "difference" that a story makes. It diminishes things. It slows things down. Yes, things are still headed in the right direction -- and that's great. But not as rapid as it could be.

When you "envision" something you remove yourself from the present moment; and that is simply an inefficient thing to do, because the present moment is all you have to work with. And so the very idea of envisioning is, in essence, an inefficient thing to do with your time. You are much, much, MUCH better off accepting reality as it is -- not as you want it to be, not as it "should be" and not as it "could be" if someone else would only do this, or if a certain situation would change.

But getting people to accept reality as it is, is not easy -- and in many cases, not practical. We are accustomed, culturally, to not accept reality -- that very "habit" is ingrained in us as children. We are always either dwelling on the past or projecting into the future. And so if The Secret or some other teaching tried to "get you to just accept the present," it likely wouldn't work for most people -- not because the teaching is wrong, but because the lesson is too difficult.

Look, for example, at the difference between pre-Oprah Eckhart Tolle and the Secret DVD. Before Oprah endorsed Eckhart's first book, The Power of Now, he wasn't selling anything. In fact, he was hand-placing copies of his book in little stores in Vancouver Canada. I believe, in fact, that he had 3000 copies created on a small press, and was unable to sell them (I could be wrong about the exact figure, but even if it's 5000 or 10000, the point is the same).

Compare this to The Secret, which sold millions and continues to do extremely well in all forms, including the amazing wealth of "secondary markets" that it has generated: speakers, workshops, books, you name it.

What Tolle was saying in "The Power of Now" was, actually, the most efficient method of achieving real change: accept the now. But, again, the message was too direct; too harsh for most people to accept.

So The Secret came by and helped people "accept the now" -- in a less efficient form -- by envisioning something better. By envisioning -- by the mere act of not resisting the now -- people started to RELAX. And by relaxing -- and NOT by anything else -- things started to open up. Fresh new possibilities emerged through that relaxation.

Of course...this has created a problem, too. It's that many people who experienced some real benefits thanks to The Secret -- because it indirectly enabled them to RELAX into the now -- don't know why they experienced those benefits. They think it's because of the envisioning; and hence, they start to become tense because what they envision "isn't happening" anymore. The irony of this shouldn't be lost on anyone: it was the "relaxing" that made the progress and positive change happen in the first place, but without awareness of this fact, tension sets in an serves to suffocate and stall that same progress and positive change from happening.

And so many people, I believe, are confused right now: they experienced pleasant growth and change "before" but now they don't see much happening at all. And so they think that they aren't "envisioning" well enough.

That's not it. It was never, actually about the envisioning in the first place.

It was about RELAXING so that you can ACCEPT THE PRESENT MOMENT.

That is the real secret behind The Secret -- to accept the now.

If you can do that, you don't "need" The Secret anymore; you become The Secret.