Criticism of The Secret

Note:

June 1 st , 2007 I sent Robin Johnson, the founder of the Prophet's Conference, a copy of my review of The Secret . Below is our correspondence.

Robin Johnson:

Thank you for your thoughts on The Secret, and on greed and the many areas where healing is needed. We agree with you.

A book that has touched so beautifully on this topic is “The Soul of Money” by Lynne Twist. Lynne was a fund raiser for The Hunger Project for over 30 years and her stories and experiences are quite moving, and hopeful – true stories about actually ending hunger and poverty.

One of her stories that had a deep impact on me personally was the one when she when to Ethiopia with The Hunger Project. Wanting to create a program that would actually bring about real change, rather than just handing out food (also important) she created a workshop (free of course) with a group of local people. And the change it fostered is absolutely amazing. Mind blowing, actually. Two of the techniques they used to spark this change were visualization and imagination. Not the kind of “Oh Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz” but rather “how would it feel if this were possible” ( this meaning enough food and clean water, health, a rich life). I encourage you to read her book and I feel it will also give you hope. With all of the pain and suffering that seems to engulf us at this time, as you so well stated, we need more good news stories.

To experience wholeness we need to move through the belief systems around scarcity (fear of not enough, push to always get more, resignation that it's just the way it is) to belief systems around sufficiency (there is always enough; turn our attention and appreciation to what we already have). Sufficiency becomes a more useful word than abundance. Creating a world of sufficiency (includes sustainability) is where we are headed together.

We feel that the essence of The Secret is also about changing our belief systems around scarcity to sufficiency and wholeness. And when we begin to turn to a higher power to bring about this change, it never comes at the expense of others.

Some people, due to the media brainwashing, equate “stuff” with wholeness, which has triggered the rampant consumerism. But I believe at the heart of most people is really a desire for wholeness. In line with the idea that addiction is often a misguided search for God.

We truly feel that the collective soul of which we all partake holds the promise of a sufficient, just, and more peaceful planet. And The Secret may be a powerful reminder.

Blessings,

Robin

Axiom Conferences

1.888.777.5981

axiom@greatmystery.org

Doctress Neutopia

Thanks, Robin, for the response to my review. I will see if I can get a copy of The Soul of Money at the library.

I certainly believe in the power of visualization and the imagination in moving us beyond our current global crisis. Positive visions of the future are the way we find direction to make the quantum leaps we must make if our species is to survive. My Sacred Arcology visualization is an image of how we might move into a sustainable world. It is a collective vision of the law of attraction rather than the individual vision that is used in The Secret.

You write:

Neutopia:

I like what you are saying above. Sufficiency is a better word than abundance. Architect Paolo Soleri calls for the creation of a lean society based on sufficiency within his architectural model, arcology. A hyper consumer culture within his model simply defeats the purpose of an arcology! Perhaps the reason why his model hasn't been built is because we haven't developed an alternative culture that has fully accepted living in a sufficient way. In a world created from world views that divided our world into categories such as rich and poor, master and slave, oppressed and oppressor, finding a sufficient model is necessary to more beyond our current conflicts within and outside the USA.

Robin:

Neutopia:

Watching the video The Secret, I felt that it was almost there! The philosophy that the teachers were advocating touched the cord of how important the individual is to the human race and that dreams do come true. My criticism of the video is that it fails to develop a collective vision—what I call Gaia Messiah -- a vision necessary for humanity to discover a blueprint of how we may redesign the world in a way that builds a global structure that fosters a peaceful and equitable way of life.

Thinking about the problem I have with The Secret in terms of the lack of a collective vision, I realized that many prophets of the New Age spirituality movement who the Prophet's conference promotes, could be called social entrepreneurs. What I mean by this is that many of them are best selling authors. Canfield, for example, has made a fortunate off of his spirituality-based self-help books. Now he is living the life of the rich and famous.

Unlike writers who are within a religious tradition, New Age prophets have no religious obligation to give back to their spiritual community. They have no institutions, such as a Church within the Christian tradition, to support with the money they earn off their spiritual insights. This is a problem that encourages greed, and could be a reason why the New Age spirituality movement hasn't evolved our world to the higher consciousness levels which they write about.

I feel certain that many of these authors are good-hearted charity-giving people, and many of them use their money to support their own institutions. But without a collective vision, there isn't a channel in which to funnel money into the great work of building a model city based on the principles of sacred architecture. As Lewis Sullivan, the American architect who invented the skyscrapper said, architecture is not an art, but a religion. I think that he is correct. Without a cosmic liberating religion, the New Age spirituality movement doesn't have a way to ground the spirit. So we continue to be stuck in crime-ridden, ecologically disastrous cities without a vision to lead us out of the trap of modern civilization.

Seeing the need for profound positive change, I wrote a theory of architecture— Gaia Religion --a copy of which is posted on my web site, as a way to ground New Age spirituality. Holistic thought deserves to be manifested in reality through mirroring Gaia's design within ecological cities.

Robin:

We truly feel that the collective soul of which we all partake holds the promise of a sufficient, just, and more peaceful planet. And The Secret may be a powerful reminder.

Neutopia:

What about the idea of holding a Prophet's conference on the need to find our collective soul? A friend I was just talking to on the phone suggested calling it, "The Greening of The Secret." Perhaps the framework of the conference could be Barbara Marx Hubbard's Wheel of Cocreation and at the center of the wheel is an arcology. The conference could be asking New Age prophets to give us their visions of “The Other Side.” What does world peace look like? How is the society arranged? What is our relationship to technology and nature?

Why such social idealism is important is because in conscious evolution Barbara Hubbard explains that there is the “strange attractor.” This is the attracting vision of the future necessary to manifest it in the present. I could share with you names of people who I feel are doing this work and would be good for such a conference.