Babble

When Schroeder and I were at Disney World in May, we met up with my cousin Justin who mentioned he was reading The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, and as a result he was visualizing — and getting — good parking spaces. I had heard of the book on Oprah, so between Oprah and Justin’s endorsement, I decided to try out the theory and visualized receiving the book when I got home. As it turned out, on a layover on the way home, Matt saw the book and bought it. He thought it was stupid and gave it to me.

So, the premise of the book is that the great secret of life is the law of attraction. In a nutshell, this law states that positive energy begets positive energy. Here’s a couple paragraphs from the book:

Let me explain how you are the most powerful transmission tower in the Universe. In simple terms, all energy vibrates at a frequency. Being energy, you also vibrate at a frequency, and what determines your frequency at any time is whatever you are thinking and feeling. All the things you want are made of energy, and they are vibrating too….

When you think about what you want, and you emit that frequency, you cause the energy of what you want to vibrate at that frequency and you bring it to You! As you focus on what you want, you are changing the vibration of the atoms of that thing, and you are causing it to vibrate to You.

It goes on to say you can cure your poor eyesight if you think you have perfect vision, attract money if you spend money like you’re wealthy and claims “nothing can come into your experience unless you summon it with persistent thoughts.”

Clearly, this theory is not sound. No sane human summons blindness, poverty or things like natural disasters, cancer or murder unto themselves. The book refutes these points by saying those people lacked awareness of The Secret, and didn’t use its power to change their circumstances. I can buy into the idea that positive thinking begets positive results, and have come to believe whole-heartedly that gratitude enhances your life. But that unborn children in Africa somehow summon themselves to be born with AIDS, or die due to lack of awareness of their own power? Ah… no.

That said, I figured a little experiment couldn’t hurt. I decided to aim low and wish for a wedding invitation in the mail, full well knowing I’d be getting at least one in the next month or two. I thought about this all the way home on the bus, got to the mailbox and got 1) an invitation to a furniture sale and 2) a save-the-date card for a wedding. I consulted the book which informed me I lacked focus and my request lacked clarity. Fair enough. The following week I ran into some unexpected expenses so, in keeping with the summary points from the chapter entitled “The Secret to Money”, I visualized myself receiving checks. Why not, right? Shockingly, nothing happened.

At first. A couple of months later I was relating the merits, along with the absolute inanity, of various parts of the book to a friend, and was reminded of my check visualizing plan. So I thought about it every day for a week.

Since then I’ve received four checks. Two probably don’t count, because they were reimbursements (although unexpected), with another (also unexpected) potentially on the way. The third was from a freelance client who called me out of the blue to ask for a bill for an incomplete job from a year ago. The check arrived in today’s mail, in addition to an envelope from Porta Bella with a gift certificate, which I apparently won for filling out a brief survey card last week when the fam went to dinner. Which brings the total to $562.00 in unexpected income in the last two weeks.

I think I’ve become an admirer of The Secret.