The Secret by Rhonda Byrne — A Psychonaut’s Review
The Year 2020 has been nothing but great opportunities despite obvious setbacks from the outset. Everything that happens is a matter of perspective. This current pandemic explores the true nature of Being. In a nutshell, The Secret is a reflection of our own thoughts and desires.
This isn’t a review of my praise for the book nor is it the opposite. I write this to park my own thoughts about what I think of The Secret. If you were born in the 90s, I am sure you grew up having seen this book laying down on someone’s table. Without any clue on what it is, you just shrug it off. Growing up ten or so years later you realise that you get curious on why this book received such massive praise in the early 2000s, and later on, led to its absolute downfall. Why is that? I’d be glad to open my thoughts.
The Secret was written by Rhonda Byrne and was published in 2006. Just to refresh your historical knowledge, the Year 2006 was not a fun time to be an adult in the U.S. To take you back down memory lane, the bursting of the housing bubble began at this time which led to the 2008 global financial crisis. Housing prices fell and homeowners began to walk away from their mortgages. In three words, Americans were fucked. This is where Rhonda Byrne comes into cinematic play.
Well, what is The Secret anyway?
Without spoiling the contents of the book for anyone who has plans on still reading it, The Secret (in getting what you want) is basically to apply the Law of Attraction. Whatever you think is a reflection of the Universe’s actions toward you, or so Rhonda Byrne would have said. There is much to learn about the Self based on the power of the mind and its perceptions.
If you think you are going to fail, you are definitely going to fail. If you think you cannot pay your debt, you will surely owe more money. The law also applies inversely. If you welcome wealth in any form, you will attract wealth. If you see yourself as a healthy individual, healthy habits will come along. You get the picture. It seems mumbo jumbo from its appearance, but it goes deeper than mere delusion.
… And because it was written at a time where people were at their lowest frequencies, it received massive popularity and fame. Heck, it even reached the big screen for a greater reach in audience impact. It only reached the big screen because everyone needed it at that time. Perfect marketing. That was how effective their marketing was and how it related to the masses. However, with fame comes skepticism. There comes a point when a person would bring backlash to a school of thought to challenge and invalidate it. Nothing wrong with that, to challenge a popular thought is to test its limits.
It became infamous because the book’s message implied impractical methods of thinking which led to mass delusion. Everyone was so over their heads that they believed anything they thought without even putting the necessary actions to achieve it. The design was perfect but delivered poorly, which I’ll explain in a bit.
The Law of Attraction (or The Secret) is a genuine concept of reality.
In spirituality, mysticism, or psychedelia, whichever word you think is more appropriate, the teachings always lead back to how the ego is the enemy. In other words, your enemy is yourself. If you continuously doubt yourself and prove yourself unworthy of greater heights, in essence, the Universe will reflect these thoughts back at you to how you see yourself. It is all a matter of perspective. To be able to accept things as they are is one facet of accepting the higher realm. This is the true secret.
This might come as a surprise, but to access the higher realm is to acknowledge Death, for death is the catalyst for new beginnings. Even Buddhists reference this through karmic debt and reincarnation. Death defeats the Ego through acceptance of the here and now. In psychedelia, when the mind-bending ways of nature begin to consume one’s thoughts and sanity, which relatively is synonymous to death in itself, man is faced with two options: to fight it or to accept it. It is a lesson for accepting what the Universe is giving you. It’s all different wording but with the same philosophy of being in the here and now.
The Secret is true to this nature. It even references the spiritual metaphysical fact that the highest frequency there is in existence known to man is Love.
Psychedelia has always been one of nature’s greatest teachers for Love. The Secret wishes to exploit these concepts to make it more common for mankind.
However, having been read this book today made me realise something. The Secret did not age well because it was merely a product of terrible writing wishing to be the quick fix that every man needed at that time. From the perspective of a psychonaut, I can see the book’s message in all its good intentions and what it is trying to say to its readers.
If you have been awake or has experienced an awakening, you’ll know from the get-go what The Secret is all about. If anything, reading The Secret from the perspective of already being awakened, the book serves as a reminder of what it’s like to be on a higher frequency of thought.
After all, life is all about ups and downs and we can’t stay at a higher frequency all the time. That’s just how nature is. Thus, we can’t control the Universe. What we can control is the way we think and how we project ourselves to the world. If we master our own mind, the mind projects itself as a ray of light that serves direction and purpose. Without steering the wheel, we end up in a mindless array of nonsense.
The Secret fails to expound this message in a way that touches the human soul. Why? Because anything that concerns the frequencies of thought is analysed at a metaphysical level. Explaining the metaphysical abstraction requires an understanding of the unknown and having been inside the void. The Secret is close to what it wants to say but it is still at the surface level of complexity. The message of the book instead diverted its readers through ambiguity and delusion.
If it was written in a different way ala Dalai Lama style, it might have produced a more wholesome effect on mankind.
In the end, this discourse boils back to being able to observe the mind and how it responds to your own observation of the world. It has been said time and time again by many other stoic philosophers, You are not the mind. The mind is simply an organ that serves to produce thought. You are not your thoughts. Thoughts serve to create action, while action creates results.
Nothing is ever accomplished without the ability to be mindful. Observe the thoughts and the thoughts observe you. Figuratively speaking, our mind just needs some great fucking.
