The Truth About “The Secret”
Why The “Law of Attraction” Does Not Work

by Ross Bishop

I received an email recently from a woman who had suffered through bi-lateral breast removal. She wrote:

Do you have any insight on why I developed this disease? It's been very difficult for me to handle what they teach in” The Secret” and all the Unity Church beliefs and that we create illness through negative thinking because I worked so hard to heal my life and have lived a life of joy for the past two years.

For several months I have been receiving calls and emails from people who are distraught over the guilt-producing messages contained in the video “The Secret.” These people have been told that:

. . . you create in reality, in one way or another whatever you focus your attention on. Your life is going to be an outcome of where you predominantly place your attention.

This is a resurrection of the discredited “Law of Attraction” foisted by new age teachers, MLM organizers and get-rich-quick real estate infomercials. The idea is a simple one: what you place your attention on will manifest in reality.

According to “The Secret” and some success trainers, if you want to cavort with Daniel Craig or Selma Hayek or be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, all you need do is to send $34.95 to the producers of “The Secret” for their CD and then align your intention by thinking earnestly about what you want.

The flip side is that if it doesn’t work it’s your fault. If you do not become rich and successful, you have not done it correctly or prayed hard enough, (or read the right book or bought the right CD). If that doesn’t help, you can send an additional $49.95 to the producers of “The Secret” for their Secret Genie Lamp.

And if you are unfortunate enough to develop cancer or heart disease, that is your responsibility because you have obviously screwed up and created that reality for yourself.

 The Law of Attraction comes from part of the new age community that lives in the Land of Oz and frankly just doesn’t understand how The Universe works. These people apparently have little regard for the harm they cause or the people they hurt so long as they can make a buck off of other people’s pain and the ever-present human desire to find a magical way out of life’s problems.

The teaching that, ”What you place your attention on is manifested in reality” is untrue as it is presented and is a significant misunderstanding of the way The Universe works.
 
 God is an incredibly compassionate being who has created a perfect and powerful way for us to achieve enlightenment. We know that transformational process as life. Enlightenment is the natural state that occurs when you resolve the inner disharmonies that keep you in your ego and out of the God Space. Life is about resolving your inner disharmonies.
 
You are on earth to learn to live from the God Space, and the painful events of your life are generated by your inner dissonance. What happens in your life is determined by forces far greater than the simple ego-based desire for notoriety, wealth or even contentment. The events and circumstances of life come neither to reward or to punish. They come to teach.
 
Regardless of what some new agers believe, our minds do not control what happens to us, especially our conscious minds. Our lives are shaped in reaction to what we believe, not by what we think, and that is an enormous difference. At first blush, this might seem like a small distinction, but it is extremely significant. We do control how we feel about the events of our lives, but that is a different issue.

Some people can function outside the boundaries of conscious reality. The achievements of psychic healers, shaman, trans mediums and other gifted people have been studied and written about for years, but there is little understanding of the source of their gifts. What we do know is that when they work, they are outside of the boundaries of their conscious awareness. None of them have learned their art from listening to CDs.
 
To be blunt, The Universe isn’t concerned about earthly matters. What The Universe cares about are the beliefs you need to release in order for you to move to the God Space. And, if being poor or sick or anything else, is what needs to happen in order to sufficiently stress your beliefs (especially the ones you hold about yourself) so that you will release them, then that is what is going to happen, no matter how many affirmations you put on your refrigerator.

It is difficult to explain all this in a few words, so please forgive the length of this article, but if you would like to know more, put on your faux Prada Ruby Slipper’s, (available from www.rossbishop.com for $69.95), click your heels together three times, say “There’s no place like home,” and read on:

The qualities of the God Space are eternal, such as love, compassion, openness, gentleness and kindness. In that space energy flows easily, and there are no barriers or blockages. At our present level of conscious development, we hold beliefs that keep us from moving in harmony with the God Space. These beliefs are primarily about compassion for ourselves and for others. The emotional qualities we find on earth such as fear and anxiety are energy contractions that inhibit the free movement of energy, and are incompatible with the free movement and flow found in the God Space.
 
We believe that if we are exposed to the light of truth, we will be found wanting. Conscious of it or not, some part of us believes that our separation from The God Space is the result of personal shortcomings. Although this cannot be true, and there is nothing specific we can point to as the cause, the feelings are there, nonetheless.

When you believe that you are inadequate or unworthy then you must create barriers both within yourself and to others for “protection” from the risks of life. We compensate for our “inadequacies” by thinking and using our egos for protection. These are poor substitutes for the guidance of the God Space. The result of our efforts to compensate for our  “failings” is that we create problems for ourselves.
 
Fear and anxiety are incompatible with the God Space and The Universe is obliged to apply pressure to anything that is disharmonious with it. Thus every dissonant thought or action you have ripples out into The Universe and is met with a corresponding pressure “encouraging” you to change your disharmonious beliefs. This push comes at the “soft spots” where your disharmonious feelings originate, and of course, this is the one place we do not want to go. We react protectively and in the process create what is known as a “problem.”

In a rather curious twist, our problems generate pain so that we will pay attention to the fears and anxieties (contractions of thought) that drive them, thus eventually bringing us to confront the very feelings that created the problem in the first place. Our pain is a signal that we are out of alignment, not that something is wrong with us, but we often do not see it that way.

The purpose of The Universe’s pressure is not to irritate, although that is what it usually feels like. The pressure is an invitation, an opportunity, to change. We tend to focus on the situation and blame others or ourselves for our failings and miss the greater opportunity that is being offered. We react. We become defensive. We either collapse inwardly and withdraw, or push back with aggression and rage. We have the opportunity to move to compassion, but we do not often make that choice.
 
God cannot simply give us enlightenment because we have free will. This means that if humans are to develop, it must be of our own choosing.  Put yourself in God's place. There are billions of souls who do not yet live in the magnificence of who they really are. You cannot give them Grace because they have free will. So what would be the most powerful way to get them to know and deeply hold the truth about themselves?
 
You create a place where they can live from their egos (shamans call this the shadow), outside the God Space if they wish. When people live in their shadow it puts them out of harmony with The Universe, leading to an inevitable consequence. Then you create a process through which people will become sensitized to the places where they do not move in harmony with the God Space. This is called childhood wounding and it happens to every child on the planet – that should tell you something.
 
Let’s take an example: Say that you want to be free of economic difficulties. You want things to be better. You wish, you hope, maybe you even pray. You put affirmations on your altar, cut pictures out of magazines, watch to The Secret, or call a psychic or a therapist that one of your friends used. You're not asking for wealth, just for things to be easier. So, you pray. You ask for God's help.

On the surface this seems like a reasonable request. But actually it is not. In seeking the result (more money) you are actually trying to skip over the work on yourself that would be necessary for that to happen naturally. The Universe has created the situation you are in so that you might learn from it, and you want off the hook!  It is like asking for a hall pass from life. What you have brought to the table is conditional. You will participate so long as you don’t have to give up your ego or your beliefs. The Universe will not accept those conditions. You cannot come to the table with dirty hands.
 
The thing most people do not realize is that The Universe does respond. What happens, is that a life experience will be created to show you the ways in which you push love or abundance or whatever else it is that you have asked for, away. In other words, you will be presented with a lesson, or what I will call a "learning opportunity."
 
Your problems provide an opening for you to examine the resistance you create to what you have asked for. This means that you will most likely experience a failure, and it can feel like torture. After all, you have asked for help, and instead of being given salve, you got sandpaper. And to be fair, we must remember that you are not starting out in the best frame of mind, anyway.

But this is the route you must take in order to receive what you have asked for because that is where the problem is! The block to abundance or love or peace or whatever it is, isn’t on God’s end, it’s on yours!

It is helpful to remember that the Universe is a place of infinite abundance. God has more love or gold or anything else that you might desire in amounts beyond your wildest imagination. And, He freely offers it all to you just like He does fresh air and sunshine. So, the issue is not the availability of what you want. I will say again that the difficulty isn’t on God’s end. It's on yours, so that’s where you will have to go to fix it!
 
We of course, don’t want that. We do not want to have to give up the comfort of our limiting fears and beliefs. We would rather have someone hand peace and joy to us so that we don’t have to give up our protection. The unspoken promise in “The Secret” is that there is a free lunch and that you can have anything you want by having “happy thoughts.” People respond to this because they are reluctant to give up the beliefs that brought them this far. It doesn’t really matter that the old beliefs don’t work very well. They provide a sense of security. Many people are just not ready to take off their old clothes and see the image that is reflected in the mirror. That is why life gives them a push. But the truly ironic thing is that what is in the mirror is absolutely breathtaking!


 
The Self within the heart is like a boundary
which divides the world from That.  
Wherefore he who has crossed that boundary,
and has realized the Self;
if he is blind, ceases to be blind;
if he is wounded, ceases to be wounded;
if he is afflicted, ceases to be afflicted.

 Chandogya Upanishad

 
This is a complex subject that I will address at length in my new (as yet untitled) book to be released this spring. In order to be notified when the book is available or to have these articles emailed to you directly, please go to: www.rossbishop.com/Updates.htm

©2007 Blue Lotus Press.
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