Banner
Home
Reviews
Media
Downloads
Buy Book
Contact

Excerpts

Note: More than 80 references failed to migrate to this HTML doc. Also, much of the formatting was lost as well.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 Confessions of a New Age Junkie

Chapter 2 Snake Oil, P.T. Barnum and The Secret

Chapter 3 The Laws Governing External Sources of Suffering

Chapter 4 The Laws Governing Internal Sources of Suffering

Chapter 5 The Laws of Transition---Prebirth Agenda

Chapter 6 The Laws of Transition---Our Sacred Purpose

Chapter 7 The Law of Cause and Effect---Karma

Chapter 8 The Law We Consciously Control---Free Will

Chapter 9 Religion, Spirituality, and Prayers

Chapter10 Enlightenment and Consciousness

Introduction

Burying the Secret reflects my slavish devotion to the “law of attraction” in the late 1980s when I believed that dream fulfillment was always just around the corner. Drunk with denial, I staggered into Hell instead.

Back then, I believed all the writers who promised that the law of attraction converts our desires into concrete outcomes through positive-thinking strategies, such as visualizations and affirmations.Over time, rattling off affirmations every day meant that my life simply stood still, shortly before it shattered into a pitiful assortment of tiny fragments. I spent a lot of time rummaging around for usable shards like a homeowner searching for salvageable items after a tornado leveled her house.

Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret

Editor Rhonda Byrne and The Secret’s 24 contributors would have us believe that the law of attraction supersedes all other Universal laws, because no other forces governing our lives are mentioned in this book, let alone their interrelationships and potential pecking order. Furthermore, The Secret fails to acknowledge that unanswered prayers and long-postponed outcomes represent the norm for life-altering changes.

Rather than disputing the existence of the law of attraction, Burying The Secret discusses The Secret’s numerous restrictions and oversights. However, the bulk of Burying The Secret examines other Universal laws and spiritual issues inextricably linked to the law of attraction.

Burying The Secret favors a nondenominational approach, yet seasoned metaphysical readers will likely recognize the book’s Eastern and mystical influences.

(Return to Table of Contents)

 

 

Chapter 1

Confessions of a New Age Junkie

 

Hello, my name is Carol and I am a New Age junkie. My drug of choice is affirmations. 

Hi Carol.

I cannot recall a hand basket when I went to Hell in the early 1990s as a result of following the law of attraction to the letter. I just knew that I had never sunk so low. I also failed to forecast that the worst was yet to come.

Things got so bad that all concrete attempts to reverse my unstoppable slide into deep poverty—and the resulting social alienation—were completely useless. I became an outcast because everyone viewed me as a loser with a capital L, except for longstanding close friends.

I experienced unprecedented levels of frustration as I hit one brick wall after another. At times I felt that only a fine, fragile line kept me from crossing over into full-fledged madness. Nevertheless, short-lived periods of near-insanity and/or depression did take over from time to time. Desperation would render me hopeless and helpless until such time as I would mysteriously revive and begin to struggle once again. Occasionally, the recovery was so feeble that I planned my suicide. Once, I even composed multiple goodbye letters. Their tone reflected more misery and bewilderment than bitterness.  

Confidantes kept telling me that the law of attraction was doing me in, though the buzz words in those days were more typically “transformation,” “healing,” and “prosperity thinking.” Ten years passed before I could adapt to my unprecedented subsistence level, but this whole sorry period spanned 17 years altogether.  

Hindsight Is the Greatest Teacher

I eventually learned that prayers, affirmations, and visualizations, are all well and good in moderation, as long as they refer to trivial matters, such as productive bargain hunting or getting great tickets to a popular concert. I ultimately understood that climbing up the ladder to address more life-altering issues represents another matter entirely: Utilizing real-world resources to solve life’s problems provides the only workable approach. A dash of optimism fuels these efforts, but positive thinking—without concrete strategies—either produces no results or propels us into unwanted situations, no matter how fiercely we resist them.

I now understand that many immovable obstacles far outweighed viable solutions in this dark period. I also can see that my frustrations and failures produced important insights; I could not move on until vital life lessons had been incorporated into my psyche. Chief among these was purging prosperity thinking because it had figuratively and literally bankrupted me. Once I gave up affirmations and took personal responsibility, my life improved. Accepting reality—warts and all—was another key feature of my recovery.

The Transformation Blues

During this period, I found myself rattled and skittish for several months after a trying situation ended. In one case, it took the form of panic when I heard a knock at the door or the phone ringing. The erratic people associated with my most recent horror had no way of knowing where I had moved, but for a few seconds, I believed it was one of them visiting or dialing, until I got a grip. Despite all of this, my walk over the embers in Hell yielded some rewards as these two examples illustrate:

First, I used to be a raging bull with a combustible temperament, breathing fire several times a day over nothing. I now have a very long fuse and find that the repertoire of things eliciting anger has all but disappeared.

Second, my dangerously impulsive nature has given way to extraordinary patience. In retrospect, I realize that my life had to stop dead in its tracks to get my attention, so that I could learn a multitude of lessons. I could not have addressed these challenges in a meaningful fashion without the relentless adversities I faced for a very long time.

I emerged from the chaos—created by my affirmation addiction—to enjoy a far more stable life at this point. This may not sound like much, but I am grateful because I could only dream of stability for a very long time.

Before the Tides Turned

Oddly enough, stability and security had anchored my life until I opened up that New Age can of worms. Leading up to the time my life disintegrated, I was living well in Montreal. I had a good job, a fabulous apartment, and a $7,000 annual budget for clothes and my beloved shoe collection. I worked out at least six hours every week and was in perfect health, as long as I did not count my lifelong battle with weight control. Despite the obesity, I looked presentable in designer fashions and enjoyed a rich social life.

During this period, I was at the tail end of work on a film degree and had already accumulated impressive writing credits. I had traveled to New York and Los Angeles several times to cover film festivals and interview Hollywood notables; and prestigious magazines had published these articles. In addition, an academic conference had accepted an independent study I did on advances in film technology and it was later published by a film journal. Some of my professors were quite stunned by this because most of these events took place while I was still a freshman.

Rumblings before the Storm

Shortly before graduating in 1988, I began to experience an uncomfortable restlessness. I desperately wanted a career change and had spent 10 long years working towards my degree on a part-time basis while employed full time as a well-compensated accountant, though I did not have a CPA degree. However, I had no idea how I would find rewarding film work in Canada. Local pickings were slim to none and staying in Montreal meant joining the long and growing ranks of unemployed film school graduates. I always felt discouraged by seeing these unhappy souls wait tables and man cash registers around town.

I felt trapped and anxious because I could see no way to break free of my current job so I could move onto something better suited to my education and my tiny, but compelling film resume. All I knew was that I did not have to commit a felony to feel imprisoned for an unspecified duration.

During this period of malaise, many people told me I should read Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. It took me a long time to give in because I could not see the value of a self-help book in overcoming the concrete obstacles besieging me.

The Secret to My Magical Thinking

When I finally relented, You Can Heal Your Life unleashed a dormant part of my personality, namely my overly developed sense of magical thinking, or the belief that dramatic life improvements are just days away. Many years passed before I could identify both the magical thinking and my pronounced sense of entitlement as the central instigators of my downfall.

Affirmations: My New Lifestyle

You Can Heal Your Life may be a decent book for those hoping for a spiritual awakening, as long as they do not take everything literally or magnify Hay’s advice, as I did.

More specifically, where Hay advises writing out a few affirmations and reciting them twice a day, I operated on the premise that more must certainly be better, especially for novices such as myself. So I typed out four single-spaced pages of affirmations, covering several themes. I wanted to be embarrassingly rich, pencil thin, wildly successful, and deeply in love. I reworded everything so that these demands would be stated in varying ways many times in those four pages. Reciting this mantra six times, twice a day did not cut it after a week. So I tripled the list, and voilà, I had 12 pages to read aloud six times, twice a day, and even more often on weekends.

My Secret Headaches and Subconscious Custodian

As a result of all the recitations, excruciating headaches were the norm, as if I were slapping myself upside the head a dozen times each morning, repeating the exercise 10 hours later, then again the next morning, and on and on. Over-the-counter headache medicine may as well have been candy for all the relief it provided.

I eventually understood that these affirmations essentially spoke to my unconscious, which housed all my buried dirt, including unresolved childhood issues. I later discovered that we submerge certain events and sorrows into the protective supervision of our unconscious until we are adequately equipped to handle them. The headaches came about because my all-too-powerful subconscious custodian had no intention of breaching the barricade surrounding this pain, as if to say:

“What the hell does she think she’s doing?” Bam. Bam.

“Hey, I’m sleeping over here.” Bam. Bam.

“Yo, knucklehead, get a frickin’ life.” Bam. Bam.

Evidently, this obnoxious gatekeeper had identified a significant gap between the protected material and my readiness to have it revealed in its raw form.

Before I was able to address this unconscious material, some offensive habits erupted, such as casually judging others and trying to control the lives of everyone around me, to name two. These characteristics occupied my consciousness enough to distract me from self-examination. Eventually, I understood that spending all that negative energy on others was not only spiritually counterproductive, but it also alienated the people I cared about.

The Miracle and the Fallout

The highly concentrated protocol of affirmations damaged my life, but the repercussions were not apparent for some time. In the beginning, nothing much happened beyond the throbbing head, but six months later a miracle occurred. I was still living in Canada and had applied three years earlier for permanent American residency through the Green Card lottery. Out of the blue, Immigration and Naturalization (called INS at that time) inquired by mail to see if I would still be interested in permanent residency. This was a miracle because I had no idea they would pull names from previous years to fill current quotas. Moreover, this was the Rolls Royce of all Green Cards. No lawyers were involved and I paid a mere $150 for the required medical exam, fingerprints, and clearance from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Canada’s version of the FBI). Best of all, I got the green light in four months, instead of the usual five or more years. The unexpected opportunity to move to Los Angeles with my new film degree meant I would be able to take advantage of precious opportunities that were not available in Canada. It was a godsend. Or so it seemed at the time.

Offensive Enthusiasm

As a result of this “miracle,” my belief in affirmations and the law of attraction became so hideously pronounced that I proselytized with a frightening intensity. At first, people would listen politely, but they avoided me like the plague soon after.

I was completely mystified. “What’s the matter with them?” I wondered. “This is a no-brainer.” No brains indeed, as I soon discovered for myself.

Falling from Heaven and Burning in Hell

Moving to Los Angeles reminded me of the Charles Dickens passage: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times”. Los Angeles turned out to be the most nourishing and compatible environment for me and I even found a job in Hollywood through a connection in the film industry. Things had apparently fallen into place according to the law of attraction.

I worked for a production company located in a prestigious post-production facility. Surrounded by professionals at the top of their game, I met dozens of people whose names I recognized from multiple movie credits. Better yet, I felt completely in sync with their collective sensibility. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

However, a two-headed monster soon emerged and threatened my sense of well being. The two producers I worked for were more toxic than anyone I had ever encountered. Their abuses of power made me feel like an undocumented farmhand who was constantly on the verge of exposure by the authorities.

I was in the country legally of course, but I was working in an industry that did not embrace entry-level workers over the age of 30. I would later discover that successful people in Hollywood almost always started off at the bottom in their early 20s and worked their way up from there.

My inherent vulnerability in this area gave these cavalier men the leverage to treat me like trash and to impose demands that were nearly impossible to fulfill within a given timeframe. By consistently setting me up to fail, these trust-fund-baby producers accomplished two things:

First, I was a convenient scapegoat. Second, they were leading me down a path to certain employment termination.

In the end, I concluded that they had developed serious hiring remorse within a week of my arrival and this was how they dealt with it. As a result of this war of attrition, I spent more time closing my office door and bawling than I did feeling in control of the situation. The quality of my work began to reflect this ongoing instability and it came as no surprise when I was summarily fired six months later.

I never again worked in Hollywood, as though I had been blacklisted. However, I doubt this was the case because my job was relatively insignificant and these two producers were inconsequential within the industry as a whole. Hence, the job-hunting obstacles that followed could not be tied to these men.

Casting Pearls before Swine

Within eight months of my promising arrival in Hollywood, I was pounding the pavement in search of another job commensurate with my education and credentials. My solid resume had no impact whatsoever on potential employers. Their indifference puzzled me because my qualifications should have at least made me a serious contender for numerous positions. Nevertheless, my job searches came up empty and my money kept dwindling.

To make matters worse, Los Angeles in 1991 experienced its worst recession since 1929, according to the local news. As a result, unhappy employees were clinging to their jobs because compelling job opportunities were rare.

I faxed or mailed 100+ resumes in three or four months, yielding a handful of calls and about 20 rejection letters. I also tried employment agencies for temporary and permanent assignments, but my “foreign” experience led some agency representatives to say, “I see here you have no experience in this country,” before they quickly escorted me out.

From the beginning, I had organized a system for job searches, with files named:

After two months of “regular” job-hunting, I exhausted the “Desperate Only” file within a week. Jobs requiring lengthy, exhausting commutes and graveyard shifts made up the bulk of this file. I then stared at the papers in the “When Hell Freezes Over” file, featuring menial opportunities. These jobs paid poorly, but the worst part was that they made demands beyond my physical abilities. For example, working as a cashier did not seem that bad, but I would have to stand for longer periods than I was capable of.

No matter how far down I spiraled or how desperate I felt, I still had complete faith in the power of affirmations. I believed “it was just a matter of time,” and “a miracle is just a day away.” I had not connected my relentless decline with my treasured belief in the law of attraction and her twin sister, magical thinking. Years later, when I finally disengaged myself from this vile pairing, I came to two astonishing realizations:

First, faithful compliance with the law of attraction virtually guaranteed manifesting anything but my wishes. In my case, this often meant experiencing the direct opposite of my stated goals.

Second, stuffing my head with affirmations meant that little room was left to actually receive good things. I understood that being open and receptive depended on my reserving a spot for new things. More importantly, with most of the real estate in my mind occupied, I failed to make critical connections. For example, I relied on standard job-hunting procedures and may have overlooked less traditional approaches, such as tying in a news story of a new branch opening locally with the company’s potentialneed for my services.

After countless dead ends on the job-hunting front, the phone’s deafening silence drove me to find some way to occupy myself, other than waiting for calls that did not come. I needed to fill my free time with something meaningful that would take my mind off my troubles and away from the stress that was growing exponentially.

Consciousness Overhaul at the Los Angeles Public Library

Between job interviews, I discovered a treasure trove of metaphysical material in the central L.A. library. At this point, my unwavering belief in the law of attraction—coupled with the panic I felt about my situation—drew me to books supplementing Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. I rationalized that I had either misunderstood Hay or that You Can Heal Your Life had not adequately covered reversals of fortune.

In the end, all the subsequent get-rich-quick and law-of-attraction books left me as hungry for guidance as I was before. So while I was doing temp work to sustain me, I branched out and found magnificent material unrelated to the law of attraction, including books about:

These new perspectives made me understand spirituality in a brand new way. I took copious notes and used bibliographies to guide me to deeper material until a fresh context emerged: I had consumed so many powerful perspectives on the above-mentioned topics that discarding the law of attraction actually seemed feasible. This exercise radically altered my thinking and realigned my priorities in several ways:

First, I saw that the accumulation of wealth may be an accomplishment of sorts, but it had nothing to do with spiritual development.

Second, I perceived my place in the big picture more clearly. Instead of comparing myself only to those in my own milieu, I saw myself as a citizen of the planet. Over time, this meant that I felt connected to everyone, including people who embraced alienating cultures and strange traditions. I was forced to conclude that I was much better off than many others around the world, despite the financial challenges facing me at that time.

Third, I understood that I had spent a lifetime being ruled by a sense ofentitlement, which I later discovered had lured me to the law of attraction in the first place.

Fourth, a sober assessment of my current circumstances eventually produced gratitude for my life as it was. This allowed me to accept my substandard situation when things did not fall into place easily.

Fifth, as my perspective shifted, an unprecedented outlook surfaced: For the first time, I identified with people whose aspirations had to be postponed or canceled so they could deal with basic survival needs or pressing responsibilities, such as parenting.

Sixth, as time went on, I discovered that these individuals probably represented the majority of the population as I had met precious few people who were actually living their dreams. As long as I had clung to my sense of entitlement, I was completely oblivious to these particular individuals who surrounded me on a daily basis. By shedding the entitlement, I could finally relate to others in a way not possible before.

Seventh, my comprehension of humanity became even deeper when I realized that everyone’s journey is unique and includes mysterious elements that are beyond my ability to understand. Hence, my strong inclination to offhandedly judge others also disintegrated.

This whole process mimicked a domino effect and spanned several years.

.(Pages omitted)

(Return to Table of Contents)

Chapter 2

Snake Oil, P.T. Barnum, and The Secret

According to The Secret’s acknowledgements page, The Secret is a corporation, called T.S. Production LLC, with CEO Bob Rainone at the helm. A former IBM salesman and telecom executive, Rainone neither wrote nor edited any part of The Secret, but he is clearly a marketing brainiac.

While developing The Secret, his company employed:

In an odd way, The Secret has probably made publishing history: Instead of a lonely author tapping away at a keyboard, surrounded by piles of papers and books, we get content by committee for maximum marketing effect. In addition, The Secret’s remarkable dust jacket looks similar to The Da Vinci Code’s, while the interior graphic design and parchment-like appearance harkens back to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Every word has been carefully examined and tweaked with two things in mind: Marketing and money, with an emphasis on get-rich-quick. “Get-rich-quick” has a double meaning here: It refers to the reader’s interest in instant wealth as well as to The Secret’s accumulation of massive revenues at lightning speed.

In September 2007, the company launched Phase II of its marketing plan, including a book sequel and another DVD, and a third book is in the works. And let’s not forget the speaking engagements. James Ray, one of the book’s contributors, commands $3,495/person for his weekend seminars. The Secret has also been a godsend to Rhonda Byrne who personally accumulated $12 million from July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007, according to Forbes.

CEO Bob Rainone blatantly told a reporter that The Secret’s “wealth enhancement” was deliberately emphasized. Anyone with the slightest inkling about spiritual development knows that amassing riches has nothing to do with our spiritual well being.

On top of everything, the book does not hold just a measly copyright, but has a registered trademark as well, so merchandising was planned all along. And if that were not enough, CBS Corporation owns both Simon & Schuster and King World, the company that produces The Oprah Winfrey Show, which featured two one-hour episodes about The Secret.

The Genie-in-a-Bottle Effect

One of the many offensive aspects of The Secret is its promise that absolutely anything envisioned can be manifested, as if God grants each and every wish just like a Genie in a bottle. However, practicing the law of attraction promises limitless wishes instead of just the three offered by a Genie. Indeed, The Secret DVD even features Aladdin and his lamp with the tag line: “Your wish is my command.”

Visualizations, affirmations, and prayers fall under the umbrella of “petitions to God.” The Secret fails to acknowledge that unanswered petitions are the norm because fulfillment of the most dramatic or life-changing prayers usually conflicts with our karmic standing and/or our purpose in life, among other things. This means that we can babble affirmations, and visualize day in and day out for years on end and get nothing. Or, worse, our lives can deteriorate in the very area in which we seek healing. This reversal not only happened to me, but I have seen it with others as well.

Clotaire Rapaille and the Reptilian Brain

The Secret’s mega success causes many of us to scratch our heads, wondering why an otherwise intelligent person would swallow the law of attraction, hook, line, and sinker. As cultural anthropologist and psychiatrist Clotaire Rapaille (1941-) points out, this contradiction between mass appeal and mindless content can be explained.

Though Rapaille has not publicly analyzed The Secret’s success, he does scrutinize similar conflicts in other areas of our lives. For example, a man may be vocally supportive of energy conservation and other environmental issues, but he may still purchase a gas-guzzler, such as the Hummer. More commonly, some of us study nutrition labels at the supermarket, but we then eat six times the recommended amount of the low-sugar or reduced-fat selections. This opposition between word and action refers to our “reptilian brain,” which, according to Rapaille, dominates our psyches until we are about seven years old.

Rapaille explains the discrepancy by pointing out that we occasionally set aside our rational mind when making purchases. Instead, our reptilian brain controls some of our buying decisions, particularly the ones involving luxury items. This means that the imprints we receive as preschoolers sometimes carry more weight in influencing our adult behavior than does our rational mind.

Reptilian Imprints

Childhood imprints may include icons such as the military For example, a man’s father may have been a marine for life and the marine’s son may have played with toy soldiers for many years. As an adult, the son still has positive associations with military symbols. An imprint might also refer to a smell, such as the aroma of brewing coffee, which has been experienced on a daily basis since birth.

The imprints triggered by The Secret relate to our preschool sense of entitlement and the innate magical thinking to which we revert when our reptilian brain dominates. Furthermore, The Secret appears to have struck a chord within our cultural reptilian brain, which desires the wealth necessary to purchase luxury items. This is the only explanation that can account for The Secret’s success and it certainly illuminates how I succumbed to the law of attraction in the 1980s in such a pig-headed fashion.

People who face criticism for an ill-advised reptilian decision often make little sense when they defend their actions, especially in light of the sober, intelligent way in which they might approach non-reptilian issues. This means that loved ones do not stand a chance of reasoning with a person whose reptilian side is the only one listening.

Reptiles in Denial

Whether choices are challenged or not, denial plays an important role in justifying such irrational decisions. Likewise, denial prevents fervent believers in the law of attraction from objectively examining the countless promises of wish fulfillment that dominate The Secret.

If these readers took a good hard look at all the people they have known throughout the years, they would see that rough patches and long postponed dreams are the rule, not the exception. Furthermore, if law-of-attraction practitioners made a list, they would soon discover that successful people run the gamut from grouchy cynics to those with the sunniest dispositions, yet they all achieved success in much the same way: By working very hard and taking scary risks. Realizing big dreams is a lengthy and difficult process, typically involving tons of energy and plenty of setbacks along the way.

Of course, some of us accept life as it has been laid out in front of us. The Secret authors probably believe that these people still need to be enlightened by the law of attraction. Nevertheless, acceptance of life’s circumstances—which have absolutely nothing to do with what we wanted in our 20s and 30s—is actually a signpost of significant spiritual maturity.

The Power of Acceptance

Most of us experience meager, mediocre, or trying circumstances in at least one aspect of our daily lives. Through acceptance—and by doing our best with the situation at hand—we not only make our lives better within these parameters, but we slowly and steadily grow spiritually as well.

I imagine the Scales of Justice, with wealth on one side and spiritual development on the other. The Secret blatantly disregards half of this balancing act. Of course wealth and spirituality are not mutually exclusive and we can theoretically achieve both. However, greed—and pursuits driven by a sense of entitlement—pretty much wipe out the possibility of any spiritual growth during a period dominated by such quests. A person preoccupied with manifesting wealth is doing anything but taking care of matters deemed important from a spiritual standpoint.

Unsung Heroes

In the movie A Bronx Tale (1993), Lorenzo (Robert DeNiro) is a straightlaced bus driver who has developed a profound level of acceptance. His son is slowly being seduced by the grandiose lifestyle generated by neighborhood mobsters.

Lorenzo can only offer the child a Spartan home, which clashes with the fancy cars and houses owned by the criminals. At one point, Lorenzo says that it takes courage to face his job and his life every day. Lorenzo also believes that real men always honor responsibilities.

Lorenzo shows us that a seemingly unremarkable life can be infused with integrity and dignity. Indeed, people like Lorenzo are the real role models, but few of us recognize that. As a result, our current cultural climate and collective mentality are ultra receptive to The Secret’s core message.

The Law of Attraction and Large Groups

One way to assess The Secret’s gaping omissions entails large groups, such as:

The Secret’s contributors would dismiss all this suffering as negative thinking or as a lack of knowledge about the law of attraction. The Secret’s authors apparently refuse to acknowledge that life happens, that people get sick and die, and that the cards we have been dealt vary tremendously. These cards differ among us and they also change at different points in our own lives. In contrast, The Secret prefers to blame the victim.

Furthermore, a stubborn refusal to acknowledge the dual nature of reality runs through The Secret like an incurable virus. At different times in our lives, we face sickness and health, joy and sorrow, lack and abundance, and so on. I cannot recall a single optimist who has not experienced these cycles in one form or another. Nevertheless, The Secret would have us believe that we can avoid all the low points with sustained positive thinking.

In truth, we constantly move in and out of different phases. Both desirable and painful times come to an end eventually. We are relieved to let go of the hardship and are saddened by the end of a really great situation or relationship. In both cases, new people and circumstances emerge to fill the voids. These cycles structure our lives and guide us through events and relationships. Even so, The Secret prefers to dwell on stunning improvements that it promises will materialize, usually in 30 days or less.

The Secret’s claims consistently clash with observation and experience. After living in Hell for nearly two decades, I personally see positive thinking as useful, but overrated. One possible benefit seems to be compelling: Positive thinkers enjoy life more than cynics. Or do they?

Optimists and Pessimists

Interestingly, pessimists tell us that they never get their hopes up, so they rarely feel disappointed. This tells me that optimists and pessimists employ different survival skills. And that is it. We all erect protective barriers, so the pessimist’s coping strategies are every bit as viable as the optimist’s. If the law of attraction worked the way The Secret’s authors suggest, then negative thinkers would never draw good things into their lives. Ever.

I have seen the opposite time and again. One side of the discussion is populated by individuals we may recognize:

On the other side, we have:

Positive Thinking and Surviving Cancer

While we are on the topic of surviving cancer, let’s discuss Dr. Jimmie Holland’s article called The Tyranny of Positive Thinking, which considers the harsh realities facing cancer patients. Holland bases his theories on his 24 years of experience counseling patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.

Holland believes that low self-esteem and a poor attitude have nothing to do with either attracting cancer or surviving it. He asserts that lifestyle issues—such as smoking, poor diet, and lack of exercise—are much stronger contributors. Holland also believes that even positive thinkers—who lead relatively healthy and smoke-free lives—can develop cancer.

Holland chastises the “positive thinking police” for not allowing cancer patients to feel blue about the horrors of chemotherapy. Their censorious attitude implies that a negative reaction to the treatments will only help tumors to grow. Holland concedes that anxiety may adversely affect a patient’s recovery, but he believes that while “stress does affect the immune system, there is no evidence that the blips produced are in the range of those that would affect tumor growth”.

Holland has observed negative thinkers thriving for decades after a terminal diagnosis and he feels that cancer patients should make no alteration to their thinking. Whether we are optimists or pessimists, staying true to ourselves seems to be what is most important to Holland. “Identify your own beliefs about the mind-body connection and use them as they are comfortable for you, based on your temperament and your natural ways of coping”, Holland advises.

.(Pages omitted)

(Return to Table of Contents)

Chapter 3

The Laws Governing External Sources of Suffering

As you may have already noticed, The Secret and other books about the law of attraction trivialize the complexity of the human experience and consistently fail to acknowledge other crucial factors, such as periods of severe anguish.

Suffering overtakes our spirits and manifests in so many ways that by the time we are 40 its imprint on our psyche is as unique as our DNA profile.

In one form or another, hardship is endemic to the human experience. Interestingly, Buddhists look through the prism of suffering and compassion to bolster their spiritual understanding and to fortify their acceptance of the way life works.

After considerable contemplation, I can only explain the purpose of suffering by describing what happens in its absence. When we go through intervals of contentment in most areas of our lives, we often conclude—unconsciously at least—that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Then we stop working on our spiritual development.

These periods of grace become a respite from our main spiritual goal of learning. The intermissions are like holidays because we are blessed with low-maintenance situations for a while and are not expected to work on spiritual advancement at all. The natural tendency is to take these breaks for granted and grow complacent, because we are not motivated to challenge ourselves during the good times, just as we lack incentive while on vacation.

The easier interludes occur between much longer periods when we are more attuned to faltering areas in our own lives. At such times, we rarely connect our distress with opportunities to learn lessons. Even so, most of us understand this correlation in hindsight. Looking back imparts a degree of clarity compared to the murky nature of the actual hardship as we go through it.

The variety of potential issues we face can be enormous, particularly when we factor in our observations of what other people have to endure. Let’s discuss some of these now.

Difficulties without Resolution

Some kinds of suffering offer no feasible way out. Let’s consider a long-term situation with no obvious resolution. For example, a four-year-old girl—who lost both parents in a car accident—spent the next 14 years in the harsh world of the foster-care system. She missed the educational opportunities that would have been available had her parents lived. She was also deprived of quality parental care and concern.

By the time she turned 21, she was lost, confused, and felt like damaged goods. The burden of such wounds may have been greater for her than most of us bear at that age. Nevertheless, she really has no choice but to make the most of her situation and go on. As an adult, she must mull over opportunities as they arise and make decisions for better or for worse. Her unusual circumstances and added burdens do not exempt her from fulfilling her spiritual mandate.

Adversities with Possible Solutions

Another type of suffering points to situations that theoretically can be resolved, such as financial distress. When we encounter monetary difficulties, we immediately look for solutions. We tackle the obvious things first: We might get a second mortgage, find another job, and try to collect old debts. However, if circumstances show that our efforts are in vain, or we once again run out of money, we must look for different approaches. If these also fail and bill collectors badger us all day long, we may sink into despair.

Despite contrary indicators, these dilemmas encompass a positive element: All this activity galvanizes our spiritual side, though we rarely perceive that enough misery means that we may eventually reach the point of facing the lessons we need to learn. Our success depends on our willingness to confront longstanding issues. Accordingly, this process—including the attendant adversities—may be repeated many times throughout our lives.

Mellowing over the Years

Both William Styron’s Darkness Visible and Carl Jung’s The Portable Jung refer to a “knock at the door” starting as early as 35 years of age. These faintly audible “knocks” remind us of hearing a neighbor’s alarm clock:

They are just loud enough to be heard, but not resounding enough to be characterized as a “wakeup call.” If we ignore the gentle rapping we become predisposed to depression and midlife crisis. At this point, repressing issues—whose time is ripe for revelation—includes the potential for woefulness or a frenzied attempt to reclaim our lost youth.

These subtle, slippery middle-age cues are barely perceptible and we easily set them aside even after numerous prompts. We are spiritually obligated to take a long, hard look at our life as it is right now with both the beautiful and the hideous in sharp focus.

On the ugly front, specific situations, ideas, and behaviors must go, particularly if they have never worked or if they have outlived their usefulness. If we take refuge in escapism or denial, we not only postpone the inevitable, but we also negatively influence our daily functioning and inadvertently sabotage real-life goals. If we fail to respond by the time we are 50, we can turn into unsightly distortions of our younger selves.

Carl Jung warns that if we do not learn as opportunities arise we become unbearably pigheaded:

One’s cherished principles and convictions, especially the moral ones, begin to harden and to grow incessantly rigid until somewhere around the age of 50 a period of intolerance and fanaticism is reached.

Carl Jung ,The Portable Jung

Jung goes on to explain that we react as though these principles seem “endangered” to us, so we overcompensate by embracing them even more tightly. We cling to old ideas and habits because eliminating familiar (albeit dysfunctional) elements often means treading in the dangerous waters of fear and insecurity. We are really grasping at straws because we want life to be a certain way, but our desperation indicates that we cannot accept that change is the only sure thing in life. Furthermore, we fail to recognize how counterproductive our stubbornness has become. We simply cannot see that life is fluid because we sometimes want everything to stay frozen in place.

We turn into caricatures of our younger selves and routinely dismiss some rational concepts and suggestions from those around us. Consequently, our obstinate nature pushes loved ones away, even when we do not want to alienate them. However, even a complete break from a valued relationship is sometimes better than dealing with the fears that arise when the need for alterations comes knocking at our door. Fortunately, most of us do rise to the challenges and mellow, but whether we comply or resist when the times demand it, our journey through life is rarely smooth and uneventful, except for those wonderful lulls that we discussed earlier.

Under the best of circumstances, the bumpy road through spiritual evolution is twisted, muddy, and full of opportunities to exit. Some off-ramps take us to resting areas with a multitude of distractions, while others lead straight to self-destruction and potentially ruinous options, such as addiction.

Addiction

Our drive for diversions and panaceas—and to Hell with the consequences—reflects the unconscious. We are spiritually obligated to face the music and if we run for cover in the form of escapist activities, such as addiction, we compound the situation by adding yet another set of unpleasant variables.

In light of this, the dry-drunk syndrome is fascinating to observe and applies to all addictions. The “dry drunk” is someone who gave up alcohol, but has resolved very few of her underlying issues. The dry drunk typically switches venues, replacing alcohol with another addiction, usually something less toxic. However, sometimes the new addiction is just as detrimental as the old. For example, I know one dry drunk who soberly became a compulsive gambler.

As I managed 1,300 calories a day most of the time, I was hopelessly addicted to a computer game and to buying jazz CDs. I had transferred a food addiction to less virulent obsessions. I frittered away a lot of time on these activities instead of getting on with my life, but I stayed away from excess food on most days.

However, I was still addicted. Like the dry drunk, I was not dealing with the underlying issues that catalyzed the eating disorder. Because losing weight was such a medical priority, I forgave myself for the silly distractions and prayed that whatever needed to be faced would reveal itself when I was ready.

As these examples indicate, being a dry drunk can be a good thing if an addiction is replaced by something significantly less damaging. At least the dry drunk has eliminated the complications arising from the more dangerous addiction. For example, an alcoholic who stops drinking abruptly terminates the predictable erosion of her liver and pancreas. Sober alcoholics are also rational 24/7 and stand a much better chance of retaining jobs and relationships.

However, the case of one dry drunk who became an obsessive gambler illustrates that exchanging one addiction for another is not always desirable. It depends on the trade, which has to do with the subject’s level of development and conscious awareness. Therefore, our compulsion to substitute one unhealthy behavior with another—of equal or greater toxicity—underscores our fear of broadening our self-knowledge.

Addiction and Windows of Opportunity

Compared with substances such as alcohol and painkillers—or diet pills and prescription sleep aids—drugs such as meth-amphetamines, cocaine, and crack offer a much narrower window of opportunity for reversing the physical damage caused by their use.

Our bodies are more vulnerable and less forgiving over time than some of us realize. Doctors are sometimes astounded by a patient’s complete reversal of an addiction-induced condition, but most of us do not enjoy such a miracle after we have pushed the envelope too far. Therefore, those of us who wait too long to successfully purge a substance from our system cannot usually overcome the natural laws leading to irreversible conditions.

We are not being punished, nor does this refer to negative karma, as some would tell us. Rather, we are being subjected directly to the consequences of our own actions in the real world. In my case, I got a handle on my eating problem only after I was in a wheelchair. I can prevent more weight from accumulating by taking in just 1,300 calories and following a regime of 30 minutes of sit-down exercises a day, but I will have to reduce my caloric intake much further to accomplish any real weight loss. So far, this has proven to be quite a difficult challenge.

Even so, my medical conditions are now past the point of no return, so the best I can hope for is some reduction in the pain associated with my situation, along with a reduced risk for strokes and heart attacks. This is of great value of course, but it is a far cry from a reversal substantial enough to allow me to walk again. That ship has sailed.

Unlike most people in wheelchairs, I could have prevented my situation had I acted in a timely fashion. I do not blame bad karma. I know I did this to myself and I do not expect God or the law of attraction to rescue me from the hole I have dug.

Lessons Mirrored by a Situation

Some lessons directly reflect the situation itself. For example, a woman may come to understand that she has been attracting similar men over and over again to play out the same painful aspects of a romantic relationship. She may have to go through a dozen men to see this clearly because not only do the faces change with each new man, but also the peripheral circumstances.

For example, one woman might find that all of these men share an aloofness and refusal to communicate when she needs to talk the most. However, one man’s life, his personality, and the relationship itself, can be so vastly different from the men before him that they mask the essence of the troubling common denominators.

In some cases, these unhealthy features point to an old situation we have failed to excavate from our psyches. In others, they reflect a flaw in our own makeup that needs adjustment. For example, attracting controlling men may refer to either recreating a controlling parent, or to our own need to control others.

.(Pages omitted)

(Return to Table of Contents)

Chapter 4

The Laws Governing Internal Sources of Suffering

A thin, blurry line separates some psychological theories from spiritual matters. The sheer number of overlaps between psychology/psychiatry and metaphysics astounds me at times. In addition, one camp addresses pertinent issues that can be borrowed by the other for deeper understanding. Fortunately, numerous insightful books, written by psychologists and psychiatrists, have helped in my personal journey as well as my ongoing research.

Psychology, Psychiatry, and Metaphysics

Psychological or psychiatric counseling may serve some people well, particularly those who have yet to awaken spiritually. Successfully applied techniques and talk therapy can be every bit as helpful as confronting real-life issues in a pragmatic fashion.

The goals of therapy patients typically include living richer, fuller lives, which is completely in synch with their spiritual agendas. Furthermore, when we consult a psychiatrist or psychologist, we work from the inside out, as we do with a strictly spiritual approach.

Whether or not we seek professional help, this discussion boils down to our responsiveness at any given time to a particular approach. At certain points, some of us might find a perceptive friend to be enough, while others feel satisfied with a life coach. For deeply rooted issues, we may find that a psychiatrist is our best option. The good news refers to having plenty of choices to suit our ever-evolving consciousnesses and changing needs.

Carl Jung’s Prolific Work

References to Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961) are scattered throughout this book. Of all the psychologists to have surfaced in the last century, nobody had a better grasp on the spiritual aspects of psychology than Jung and the Jungian analysts who have subsequently enhanced his material.

Jung’s writings revealed spiritually attuned perceptions and remarkable, forward thinking. Moreover, Jung’s work has been clearly influenced by his longstanding interests in mysticism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, and Taoism, according to Wikipedia.

In books geared towards the public, the Jungian analysts’ contemporary writings usually reflected a clearer and more accessible rendering of Jung’s theories than Jung’s original work. Jungian analysts have apparently mulled over Jung’s writings and have routinely added startling perceptions, which typically remained faithful to Jung’s intentions.

Studies of consciousness and the unconscious dominated Jung’s work. He also focused on dream interpretation in a revolutionary way. Jung coined many familiar terms, such as the shadow, archetypes, synchronicity, extravert/introvert, and the collective unconscious. Jung also proposed the anima/animus hypothesis, but only half of this equation is vaguely conveyed today when we talk about a man’s “feminine side.”

Alice Miller and Childhood Issues

Jung often discussed the nuances of family dysfunction that can lead to an existential handicap in adulthood, but Swiss psychologist Alice Miller (1923-) devoted most of her professional life to this subject. (Strangely enough, after decades working as a psychoanalyst, Miller ultimately rejected psychoanalysis as a viable treatment option in 1988, according to Wikipedia.)

The bulk of this chapter echoes Miller’s theories, particularly those found in The Drama of the Gifted Child and I am indebted to Miller for introducing these concepts. However, comparing the pertinent sections of The Drama of the Gifted Child to what I have written reveals Miller’s theories to be the scaffolding from which I have built an imposing structure.

Supplementary research accounts for some of what follows, but Miller’s theories profoundly resonated with my own experiences in an ultra-repressive environment, so most of the material in that section just tumbled out. Consequently, I adapted Miller’s work in a way that would not necessarily be instantly apparent to readers of The Drama of the Gifted Child.

Beyond Miller and Jung, I am very grateful to all the psychologists and psychiatrists who have written the books that inspired me in a meaningful way. These authors performed a delicate balancing act: They avoided scientific jargon, preserved the subject’s complexity, and refused to dumb down the material.

Submerged Truths

In the last chapter, we completed a lengthy discussion of the concrete troubles that can besiege us from time to time. Even harder to identify and readjust are the hidden aspects of our inner lives, shrouded as they are behind the numerous shielding mechanisms of our unconscious. These protective curtains may as well be thick iron walls, because we cannot see beyond them until such time as our unconscious receives a clear indication from our conscious self that we are now prepared to examine the contents.

Don’t Mess with Me

Most of the time, the unconscious resides quietly in our brain and operates on the premise that: “if you don’t disturb me, I won’t mess with you.”

Though we rarely notice it most of the time, our unconscious contains a staggering power that both helps and hinders us. It immunizes us from painful events we are not ready to confront and blinds us to traits we are unwilling to acknowledge. Nevertheless, these concealed truths really need to be released and harboring them creates an unnecessary burden that pulls us down.

According to author Robert Bly, we store lots of emotional garbage—usually accumulated in childhood—in an invisible bag that we drag behind us. As adults, our spiritual duty is to empty the bag, one piece at a time.

In part, these counterproductive elements consist of:

The actual traumatic event or situation is often far less damaging than is our inability to release it. We may not know how to purge something from our system, but the longer we warehouse it, the more distorted our psyche becomes. Consequently, healthy functioning in certain areas can be reduced to the realm of wishful thinking. For example, a sexually abused child may never enjoy a long-term and mutually gratifying relationship as an adult because either her trust in men was destroyed or she cannot overcome the shame she now associates with sex.

Introjects

This instance of shame induced in childhood illustrates “introjects,” a term coined by Alice Miller in The Drama of the Gifted Child. Introjection loosely refers to adopting the characteristics imposed upon us by others. These counterfeit traits result in submerging important aspects of our true selves.

For example, my mother saw me as a “sad sack,” and she constantly insisted on smiles, however fake they may have been. I introjected this expectation by stretching my lips in her presence, but I reverted to a neutral expression the rest of the time.

As we see here, elements of my real self were temporarily supplanted by my mother’s demand to smile, but this particular introject did not carry over into adulthood because its effects were quite shallow. Superficial and annoying introjects rarely cause permanent, penetrating damage while others may invoke much more debilitating after-effects.

Invisible Vaccines

When parents detect unwanted characteristics in a child, they typically inoculate the child 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, subjectivity motivates the parent. For example, one parent might see an opinionated child as headstrong and obnoxious, while another might view her as lively and assertive, with a bright future ahead of her.

This particular example also calls attention to personality compatibility issues. When parents feel attuned to a child’s personality, they are less likely to impose introjects. As a result, parents who are prone to introjecting may do so more with one child than another. In some cases, the introjecting parent’s narrow context reflects a set of constrictive and often outdated values, relative to the collective consciousness surrounding such a parent.

Parenting Trends

Parenting trends sometimes underscore these phenomena. For instance, most of us now recognize the negative, long-term consequences of constantly berating a child. However, now that this is acknowledged, some would say that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, with some parents’ gushing admiration for a 10-year-old who remembers to bring home his lunch bucket. Hopefully, we will eventually achieve a balance between these two extremes by reserving praise for more significant accomplishments.

Here we see signposts of three levels of developing consciousness: In the past, demoralization was common. Today we have over-compensated, leaving our children poorly prepared for the real world. In the future, we will undoubtedly pull back and achieve the balance we sought in the first place.

These three states represent snapshots of different periods of a collective consciousness within a specific culture. (We can take a step further and observe the pendulum at work on a large scale by charting the course of many aspects of a particular culture, from standards for political correctness to sexual mores.)

The Toxicity of Introjects

Now that we have discussed various trends, we will return to introjects. Both the parent (introjector) and the child (introjectee) are susceptible to a highly unconscious process. The parent can neither identify nor forecast the potential toxicity of introjects. For her part, the child innocently ingests them as effortlessly as inhaling carbon monoxide, which is also odorless, tasteless, and virtually impossible to detect. Neither side foresees the existential incarceration awaiting the child in adulthood.

By their very nature, introjects are submerged in the realm of the irrational, yet highly functioning adult introjectees often comprehend the full extent of the damage done by introjects. Nevertheless, they can still be utterly immobilized when they contemplate bridging the gap between intellectual understanding and actually releasing themselves from this straightjacket.

Introjectees fully understand that such paralysis saturates the psyche to the point that rational thought is all but swallowed up by the introjects.

The Victor, the Vanquished, and the War Within

Once introjects linger long enough to be systemically encoded, the adult introjectee reaches an uneasy impasse. Instead of new thinking unseating the old, our true nature struggles helplessly to free itself from the weight of long-established introjects. Nevertheless, time and again the prevailing introject successfully annihilates all attempts to liberate the real self.

These exertions exhaust us until we have stopped fighting and until enough time has passed to reinvigorate our psyche. Then another battle ensues and the introject usually reigns supreme while the true self feebly concedes defeat once again.

Even so, the screams for release continue, but they tend to grow progressively fainter because our authentic disposition plummets deeper into the abyss with each setback. The victor (our introject-command coordinator) confidently settles in for the long haul, while the vanquished (our conscious self) mourns the loss of both our hearty voice and most ambitious wishes. This war within corresponds to a lesser-known interpretation of an old adage: “We truly are our own worst enemies.”

Projection

We can understand introjection better when we look at its opposite: Projection, or the assignment of favorable characteristics we wish another person possessed. Projection typically occurs early in a close relationship and can often lead to its demise.

For example, when we are in the initial, giddy stage of a romance, we believe that our partner displays all kinds of idyllic qualities, which amplify our attraction all the more. Within a month or so, we painfully watch as the fictional features disintegrate one by one, exposing the person’s true nature, blemishes and all. At this point, the shortcomings shift to the forefront in excruciating contrast to the first idealized image, which we believed was so real just a short time ago.

Eventually, maturity and experience usually armor us against this, but almost all of us project at one time or another. Therefore, it is truly miraculous when a relationship survives past this reality check. In these cases, projection means casting ideal attributes onto another.

However, we also transfer shadowy elements within our own psyches onto others. For example, a chronic braggart may grumble about someone else’s momentary boasting. In this instance, a third party might make the ironic correlation between the complainant and the accused, but the braggart will remain clueless about the connection.

The essential differences between introjection and projection refer to their relative sources: Projection generates from within the self, while outside parties typically initiate introjects, which we unwittingly nurture.

Harmless Introjects

Since introjects usually take root in childhood, we need to return to an earlier stage of life to examine them more fully.

Let’s look at an innocuous introject in a five-year-old who mimics his father. The child may be pleased that his mother bought him a three-piece suit because he can look more like his dad going off to work every day. In this case, a benign introject is manufactured solely by the child. The boy secretly wants the suit so he can resemble his dad, as opposed to the father insisting that his son wear a suit to maintain family status or to impress the neighbors.

This last scenario—compounded by many other similar parental messages—may lead to a mildly detrimental introject. However, we are more concerned with the kind that lingers into adulthood and messes up our thinking—and sometimes our lives—in a major way.

Malignant Introjects

Injurious introjects can also be created by the introjectee, but they are usually a response to tacit appeals from others. Parents often solicit desired behavior via unvoiced “parental directives.” The introjectee understands that much is at stake if she rebuffs the demand and she clearly sees that compliance leads to approval.

So the introjectee conforms in classic Pavlovian fashion, regardless of how much of her real self must be sacrificed. For example, when a child is “caught” exploring her body, a parent may verbally reprimand her or implicitly invoke shame. Either way, the child believes she has done something hideous. This one incident may be all that i