Chapter 1
Confessions of a New Age Junkie
The author introduces herself as a member of a support group for New Age junkies, recounting in vivid detail her experiences with the law-of-attraction fad in the 1980s. At that time, the buzz words were typically “healing,” “transformation,” and “prosperity thinking.” The term “law of attraction” was used from time to time, but the overall strategies were rooted in: “Simply visualize or state what you want and it will quickly manifest in your life.”
While she was enjoying a life of affluence and the promise of a significant career change, the author read Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. Hay recommends using moderate amounts of affirmations and visualizations to manifest good things in our lives.
The author decided that more must certainly be better, so she implemented a rigorous regime of affirmations. As a result, her life came to a complete standstill. Eventually, life as she knew it crumbled and this proved to be a useful platform for learning long-overdue lessons, though she only understood this in hindsight.
The author’s bewilderment at her reversal of fortune led her to the library, where she discovered a treasure trove of spiritual books, most of which implicitly contradicted the law of attraction After absorbing concepts derived from 300+ books, a lengthy manuscript emerged.
Chapter 2
Snake Oil, P.T. Barnum, and The Secret
The initial part of this chapter details The Secret’s historic rise within the publishing world, including the crazed media attention, spanning three months or so, that was followed by nearly deafening silence.
The Secret is also discussed as a calculated corporate project, which deploys several powerful marketing strategies. For example, “wealth enhancement” was intentionally emphasized.
The fine points of positive and negative thinking are examined, including Dr. Jimmie Holland’s well-reasoned theories about the “positive thinking police” in relation to the punishing nature of chemotherapy treatments. (Dr. Holland has counseled oncology patients for 24 years at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.)
In addition, guided visualizations and stress-reduction techniques are introduced as the only viable applications of positive thinking for supplementary medical treatments, as outlined in The New Medicine, a powerful analysis of alternative medicine.
The last half of this chapter lays the foundation for The Secret’s innumerable shortcomings on the spiritual front including its unfathomable premise: The law of attraction thrives as an independent force in the Universe.
Please note that all upcoming chapters refer to the law of attraction and/or "The Secret" to a lesser extent than the first two chapters do.
Chapter 3
The Laws Governing External Sources of Suffering
This chapter begins with the hardships we encounter from adverse situations in our lives including:
- Difficulties without resolution, such as facing adulthood after 14 years in foster care
- Challenges with possible solutions, such as financial struggles
Later on, the author also delves into:
- Carl Jung’s theories about mellowing over the years
- Addiction, including the so-called “dry-drunk” experience
- Lessons mirrored by adverse situations
- The role of sacrifice
• Voluntary sacrifice
• Involuntary sacrifice
• Sacrifice and wealth - The “golden bridge to Hell,” which refers to high-contrast choices, such as deciding between our current dreary job and signing up for our dream career. However, unbeknownst to us, our ideal choice is riddled with corporate instability leading to a massive layoff a year later
- “The lesser of two evils,” which refers to low-contrast choices. In the author’s case, her financial crisis forced her to choose between homelessness and moving into a house of horrors, featuring a close friend and her erratic, psychotic mother
The chapter concludes with a discussion that supports the theory that adversity brings us closer to God.
Chapter 4
The Laws Governing Internal Sources of Suffering
This chapter starts with an introduction to Alice Miller and Carl Jung, who greatly influenced the author’s spiritual journey and informed this chapter to a large degree. We then discuss the theories of poet Robert Bly, who also championed Jung’s work.
According to Robert Bly, we store lots of emotional garbage, accumulated in childhood, in an invisible bag we drag behind us. Our duty as adults is to empty the bag, one piece at a time.c In part, these spiritually counterproductive elements consist of:
- Psychological injuries and indignities
- Moments of profound shameInstances of abuse or neglect
- Huge losses, such as the death of a parent
The bulk of this chapter deals with “introjects,” a term coined by Alice Miller. Introjection loosely refers to adopting the characteristics imposed upon us by others. This results in submerging important aspects of our true selves.
When parents detect unwanted characteristics in a child, they typically inoculate their children with introjects as an antidote. Some of these behaviors may be universally disdained, such as regular temper tantrums in a child old enough to know better. However, parents who favor introjects as their modus operandi often just want to wipe out traits that are inconsistent with their agenda for the child with no regard for who the child really is—and replace them with characteristics the parents find more palatable. In these cases, silent “parental directives,”—often in the form of a shame-inducing stare—replace verbal communication.
Both parent (introjector) and child (introjectee) are susceptible to a highly unconscious process. The parent cannot detect the potential toxicity of introjects and the child innocently ingests them as effortlessly as inhaling carbon monoxide, which, is also odorless, tasteless, and impossible to detect. Neither side foresees the potential existential incarceration awaiting the child in adulthood.
The chapter concludes with a lengthy discussion of Carolyn Myss’ work as an effective means of healing the damage done by introjects.
Chapter 5
The Laws of Transition—The Prebirth Agenda
The prebirth agenda involves a contract we sign before incarnating. This agreement only covers degrees of adversities. We are not endorsing specific horrors, such as:
- A terminal illness when we are 22 years old
- Losing our toddler in a car accident.
- Spending a long time in prison for a crime we did not commit
In the afterlife, countless opportunities for education help us decide between an incarnation with relatively easy terms and conditions and one with much harsher circumstances.
This chapter also outlines a multitude of issues regarding consciousness, particularly the differences between our conscious lives on Earth compared to the afterlife.
Chapter 6
The Laws of Transition—Our Sacred Purpose
This chapter commences with a discussion of parenting as the most common spiritual purpose, followed by elaborations on:
- Serving a purpose by just being ourselves
- Doing many small acts of kindness, which sometimes impact on others in a much bigger way than the act itself would suggest
- The purpose of unacknowledged talent and creativity
- Purposes with a twist
Chapter 7
The Law of Cause and Effect—Karma
A powerful and complex force, karma influences our lives in ways we usually cannot detect. This chapter discusses how the Western interpretation of karma fits in with its global counterparts and also covers:
- Karma and redemption
- Motives for our actions
- The relationship between karma and sacrifice
- Karma as currency
- Karma is not exactly “what goes around comes around"
- Acts of vengeance
- The boomerang effect of revenge
- Karma in relation to our consciousness at a given time
- Karma, reincarnation, and conflicting beliefs
- Karma and suicide
Chapter 8
The Law We Consciously Control--Free Will
Free will is discussed in terms of:
- Random events
- Evil
- The unconscious
- Theodicy, or the Catholic mystical analysis of free will, suffering, fairness, and justice
- The challenges of tremendous loss
- World religions and mysticism
Chapter 9
Religion and Prayer
This chapter opens with strong evidence supporting the claim that the scriptures of diverse religions overlap to an astonishing degree. In addition, the following topics are considered:
- The pluses and minuses of organized religions
- Krishnamurti and The Order of the Star
- “Our way or the highway” dogmas
This discussion could have been far more condemning of organized religions than it is. The author opted for a softer approach in deference to the sheer number of sincere spiritual seekers who feel they gain a tremendous amount of guidance from their place of worship.
In direct opposition to The Secret, the section on prayer begins with the persuasive contention that unanswered prayers are the norm. The author cites many examples of the twists and turns involved in using petitions to God as a spiritual strategy.
Chapter 10
Enlightenment
This chapter begins by discussing the premise that prayer sometimes leads to enlightenment because our petitions make us alert and ready for direction, both from within ourselves and from outside sources. Of course, enlightenment does not occur all at once. Rather, our consciousness expands a little bit with each epiphany.
For example, those of us who are not consciously plugged in spiritually, but who mellow over the years, experience dozens of epiphanies through lessons learned and absorb them into our psyches in small chunks. Therefore, we don’t have to be spiritually attuned to benefit from consciousness expansion.
The progression of enlightenment is similar to going from complete blindness to 20/20 vision with thousands of increments along the way. If we experience a huge spiritual leap forward, we simply cannot gauge its relative value because we don’t know where on the spectrum we began, nor how many steps we have just taken. So, enlightenment is measured in degrees, yet it cannot be quantified.
Unfortunately, we are only as perceptive as our spiritual maturity allows. Therefore, what seems like a giant step could be just that, or could be much smaller when observed within the larger scheme of things.
Enlightenment is also discussed in terms of:
- Addiction
- Transporting wisdom from one life to another
- Three myths associated with enlightenment:
1. Consuming large quantities of metaphysical material promotes spiritual expansion
2. Philanthropy, volunteering, and doing things for others guarantee a ticket to heaven
3. If only I could inhabit a Himalayan cave for the rest of my life . . . - Individual and collective consciousnesses
- Comparing the relative awareness of pets and humans, which illustrates the differences between our consciousness on Earth compared to our spirit’s potential
- The differences between intellectual understanding and spiritual comprehension
- Near-death experiences
Afterword
Appendix
Notes
Works Cited
Bibliography
Index