“The secret” by Rhonda Byrne is a text describing how much easier life can be if we understood and took advantage of something that she referred to as “The secret”. It begins explaining what the secret can do for people and from the sound of it, I believed it was revolutionary because it appeared to make everything in your life go your way, even things you would think we have no control over. Eventually it is revealed that the secret is what is known as “The law of attraction”, the idea that everything that happens to us happened to us because we attracted it. At first I thought it made sense, If I envision myself passing a test, chances are that would raise my motivation to study for the test which leads to me passing. However, that wasn’t exactly what was being explained. I misunderstood and believed that the positive/negative thoughts that were being discussed worked as a chain reaction that changed our actions and the way we do things which would obviously effect us. I was wrong, the idea was that our thoughts are so powerful that they alone are creating these things that happen to us. That sounds crazy and impossible. I’m not going to pretend I know alot about this topic when I don’t, I’m just going to express how much I don’t believe it.
According to the text, thoughts give out frequencies the same way television towers do. These frequencies are transmitted to the universe which gives the universe the power to make that thought a reality. The text makes it seem as though the universe is some sort of magic machine that takes thought and turns it into real life scenarios. If you tell yourself “I really hope a stranger doesn’t try to rob me while i’m walking home alone at midnight” according to this text you are sending out an invititation to the universe to work it’s magic and make a random stranger decide to cross paths with you and rob you. My idea of the universe isn’t some almighty thing that can make literally anything happen, I thought the universe was simply something where the planets, stars and galaxies around us were inside. Secondly, my idea of thoughts isn’t the same idea as its represented in this text. You can not think of something and just like that, it gets sent somewhere with all that information as if its some sort of email. Thoughts stay where they take place, in our minds.
I want to mention something this text reminded me of, and thats the time I experienced something similar to this. I remember when I was in 6th grade, on the first day of class, my teacher told us we are expected to come in next monday with a green folder. Over the course of the weekend I forgot about it and sunday night was when I remembered. I was worrying because it was too late to go and buy one and it would be too early to go and get one the next day before school. So I kept searching through old supplies I left lying around and didnt find anything. Lastly, I searched in a closet where leftover school supplies was and inside a white bag was nothing inside, nothing but one folder that happened to be green. It was satisfying but scary with how lucky I got, it genuinely felt like the work of a higher power. The point of saying this is to let it be known that coincidences happen and that’s most likely how this idea was formed. Crazy coincidences occured and eventually it was brought up that they weren’t coincidences but a “Law of attraction”.
“The secret” was very interesting but I wish I didn’t let myself be so intrigued by the fact that I disagreed so much. With every chapter I read I found myself seeing more and more things I just felt were impossible. One positive thing I can say however is that this gives people who believe in it hope, and I believe this about alot of other worldy things people tend to believe in. I feel that even if people are believing in things that are not true, atleast it gives them hope for a better future.
