Taking issue with ‘The Secret’: It’s naked hubris, pure and simple

Readers keep asking me about "The Secret." It's available in book and movie form. Here's a good general rule about hanging with me: Never ask me anything you don't want to know.

Check out "The Secret's" official Web site. "The Great Secret of the universe ... has been passed throughout the ages, traveling through centuries, to reach you and humankind. This is The Secret to everything -- the secret to unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth ..."

What exactly is unlimited youth? Will I have to be nervous around girls forever? Will I always have the brains of a sheep, the historical perspective of a housefly and the impulse control of a hamster? Tell me again why I want this?

"The Secret" is just the newest packaging for the most ancient and pervasive burden of being human: egocentricity and its inevitable companion, narcissism. We used to call it magic. In orthodox religious circles, its name is Gnosticism. Its official modern name is logocentrism.

"Logo," from the Greek logos, meaning of the mind, a thought or idea. Put simply, logocentrism is the idea that all reality is first an idea or thought. Indeed, the thought actually creates or attracts the reality.

Rene Descarte said, "I think, therefore I am." Logocentrists say, "I think, therefore it is." Magicians say, "abracadabra." Christians seduced by logocentrism -- who should know better -- say "in the name of Jesus" for the same reason.

Is there power in positive thinking? Yes. Relative power, but powerful. Its primary power is that it makes us more aware of and willing to risk potentials and possibilities.

Yet, negative thinking does not prevent me (sometimes) from receiving unexpected and perfect gifts "from the universe." In fact, while "The Secret" prompts me to will, want and visualize as a strategy for making cool things happen, I would say that I have just as often made cool things happen by the simple act of giving up.

Or maybe cool things happen independently from whether I think positively or negatively. Maybe cool things don't care what I think. Maybe I'm just not that big a deal.

"The Secret" is naked hubris, pure and simple.

"Perception is reality," my friend says, eyeing me with a benevolent condescension that waits for me to stop resisting and join her in enlightenment.

"Tell that to John F. Kennedy Jr.," I say.

See, according to the evidence, John Jr. thought, with every fiber of his being, that he was flying level to the horizon. But he wasn't. And his thinking otherwise didn't make it so. When he turned into his approach pattern, he pretty much pointed the nose of his plane straight into the Atlantic. Might as well have been in a trash compactor. He died, as did his passengers.

Are the producers of "The Secret" going to tell me that John Jr. was secretly "blocking" the possibility of flying level with the horizon? And what happens when half the passengers are visualizing flying safely and half visualize crashing?

When religion gets hold of "The Secret's" secret, then it's God who wants us to have everything. Salvation is equated with limitlessness. Everybody ought to be rich, free of pain and just plain hip all the time. Which is the same as saying if you're poor, in pain and unhip, then it's your fault. You're a screw-up. What is it about you that you won't simply decide to stop having cancer?

Do the poor participate in their own poverty? In many cases, yes. Is most of our misery related in some way to our choices? Uh-huh. But that's just it. One of the limits inherent in being human is that I can't not make choices that impoverish me and make me miserable.

"The Secret" says everybody ought to be rich. Healthy religion would say everybody ought to have the chance to be wholly and authentically human.

Is there virtually always more potential around you than you think there is? Yes. Are you responsible for or at minimum participating in virtually all your misery? Yes. Are you inherently lazy? Often. Are many of your "limitations" self-imposed? Definitely.

But are you God?

I feel an obligation to tell you a secret. It has been passed through the ages, traveling through the centuries to reach you and humankind. You have my permission to share this secret with anyone, anytime, anywhere.

No. You're not God.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling and Wellness Center in Las Vegas. His columns appear on Tuesdays and Sundays. Questions for Asking Human Matters or comments can be e-mailed to skalas@reviewjournal.com.