BOOKS: The Secret

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Is anyone familiar with the new book, “The Secret”? I wasn’t until lastnight. This is just another good example of where society is headed.
Any thoughts on this?
 
I’m sure many of you would’ve heard of that self-help book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.I first read it in October and have enjoyed using its principles. However, I keep having a nagging questioning. I keep wondering if this use of The Secret is acceptable to God. I would imagine it would be as it’s not a religion, but based on the Law of Attraction, uses biblical quotes and doesn’t worship idols or another god or anything however, I won’t want to be believing in something that would offend the Lord.
Does anyone know anything about this?
 
angelofmusic said:
I’m sure many of you would’ve heard of that self-help book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.I first read it in October and have enjoyed using its principles. However, I keep having a nagging questioning. I keep wondering if this use of The Secret is acceptable to God. I would imagine it would be as it’s not a religion, but based on the Law of Attraction, uses biblical quotes and doesn’t worship idols or another god or anything however, I won’t want to be believing in something that would offend the Lord.
Does anyone know anything about this?
Click to expand...
It’s New Age. There is nothing “secret” in obtaining true peace and joy in this life, it is called Jesus Christ.
 
The Secret is the latest and by far the worst example of a HIGHLY profitable trend where self-help gurus with fabricated new age titles and little relevant education, credentials or legitimate expertise brainwash us into believing that they know what is best for us, our marriages and our families. The Secret places YOU at the center of the universe not GOD!

Often their only contribution to society is introducing some exotic sounding, new age philosophy. However, they often cleverly form an incestuous group of like-minded “experts” who cross-promote each other by swearing their success is due to following the beliefs of another member of their “cult!” All the while, they ply the airwaves jockeying for an ever-larger audience by appearing in the national media to garner third-party endorsements.

The Self-Help Movement has become the Self-Destruct Movement by diminishing or destroying our critical thinking skills to choose and evolve on our own. We have given up the freedom to build healthy lives, marriages and families based on our unique history and life experience. Instead many victims, blinded to the value of their own life experiences, are attracted to the latest secret in self-help, in an attempt to find out what they should think, feel and how they should act… this is the definition of a cult.

The solution is a return to our (common) senses! The best way out of this learned “self-helplessness” is to go cold turkey. Stop following ALL self-help gurus now. Begin, instead, to reclaim your natural, God-given ability to think for yourself. The common sense that was once readily available to all of us is still there free of charge and waiting to be applied to just about any challenge we might face in life… all you have to do is use it.

Please, let’s all work together to stop the flock of “sheepeople” who blindly move from one UNPROVEN concept to the next, looking for the answers to life’s challenges that you already possess and that is the OBVIOUS!

Please consider visiting www.selfhelpfraud.com to learn more about the downsides to The Secret.
 
So what is secret when you can buy the book? I used to read self-help books. Its like reading the Merck Manual, next thing you know you have the illness/problem you are reading about. It is like a dog chasing its tail, you never quite make it onto the bus of life. 😉
 
angelofmusic said:
I’m sure many of you would’ve heard of that self-help book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.I first read it in October and have enjoyed using its principles. However, I keep having a nagging questioning. I keep wondering if this use of The Secret is acceptable to God. I would imagine it would be as it’s not a religion, but based on the Law of Attraction, uses biblical quotes and doesn’t worship idols or another god or anything however, I won’t want to be believing in something that would offend the Lord.
Does anyone know anything about this?
Click to expand...
IMHO that “nagging questioning” is the Holy Spirit warning you to stay away from these “New Age” teachers and their programs. These types of things focus on man, not God. They are very subtle.

The best “self help” book is the Bible. God knows human nature very well, and has addressed it in His Word. Start with the Beatitudes. Listen to Jesus’ words in Scripture and apply them in your own life. You will be surprised at your spiritual growth, if you follow His principles. There are many good Catholic books out there to help you in this also.

God bless you on your journey.
 
Start by burning the book!!! It is just Unity School of Christianity repackaged.
So what is it that The Secret teaches that would be harmful to the Christian? In her section on acknowledgements Byrne names names and she lists several that stand out as being instructive. One name, in particular, is Charles Fillmore. His name may have slipped from your memory, but he is the founder of **Unity School of Christianity14 **along with his wife Myrtle. Unity is a classic new age belief system that teaches the divinity of man. Eric Butterworth, a past Unity minister, in his book Discover the Power Within You underscores the new age premise that Jesus taught the divinity of mankind. Butterworth is of interest because he is proclaimed by Oprah Winfrey to be her spiritual mentor.15
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aboutthesecret.info/creatingreality.html

aboutthesecret.info/articles.html

apologeticsindex.org/482-secret-rhonda-byrne
 
angelofmusic said:
I’m sure many of you would’ve heard of that self-help book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.I first read it in October and have enjoyed using its principles. However, I keep having a nagging questioning. I keep wondering if this use of The Secret is acceptable to God. I would imagine it would be as it’s not a religion, but based on the Law of Attraction, uses biblical quotes and doesn’t worship idols or another god or anything however, I won’t want to be believing in something that would offend the Lord.
Does anyone know anything about this?
Click to expand...
The last self help book I read was the purpose driven life and that was years ago, then Father Joseph Champlin wrote A Catholic Perspective on the purpose driven life. It was much better and more fullfilling. Look for a Catholic author. In fact read it is good.
 
The bottomline question perhaps is:
Are the concepts in the Law of Attraction against the Catholic CCC?
Also, I’m just wondering if the average Catholic who has not read the Rhonda Byrnes book can perform (professionally or in business) better than those who did not.
To avoid being mislead, we need a good counter suggestion to the said book and which need not be based on ‘new age’. Can somebody recommend such book?
 
The Secret to me is very much against Catholic teaching, both specifically and in general.

The Secret embraces a kind of gnostic and magical thinking about the world. It presumes to say our desires and our interests always coincide, that desire need not be tutored by moral and other considerations, that suffering is always just because it is in proportion to negative thoughts, and that positive thoughts will always yield the specific blessing of earthly happiness and wealth.

All of these thoughts are against core Catholic teachings. We believe, for example, in a Providential and Benevolent universe created by God for our benefit, but we acknowledge that God’s designs are sometimes mysterious, that the innocent suffer, and that Jesus Himself suffered not because of negative thoughts (or the negative thoughts of others), but because all of our life in this world has an important role as a preparation for life in Heaven with God. He showed us the way with his redemptive suffering. His suffering was meaningful because He was doing God’s will.

Suffering in this world is seen by Catholics as a kind of spiritual gift; suffering teaches us to be less worldly and focused on the ephemeral. It teaches us that our real treasure is in heaven. Worldly society has always placed a high value on wealth and material possessions (Luke 16:9,11). Jesus, our great example from Scripture, lived in humility and obscurity, never accumulating wealth or possessions. Jesus taught His followers not to be anxious about the future, for their heavenly Father would provide for them (Matt.6:25-34).

Suffering is hard and sometimes mysterious, but the ideal life is not one devoid of suffering necessarily. Why else do Catholics practice fasting and mortification and voluntarily take vows of poverty in religious orders? These practices teach a proper relationship to the world and life, not one spent in a never-to-be-won “rat race.”

Without even getting into all the specifics of the ersatz philosophy behind the Secret, we know it’s not Christian because its focus is not on holiness, sanctification, true spiritiual values, and a God-centered life, but instead on desire, wealth, and power. In other words, it simply dresses up unchallenging and unspiritual materialist values with some worn out pagan language.
 
I was under the impression that “The Secret” really was a repackaged, shiny version of stoicism: what you think about things is the reality of them; you can affect your situation by changing the way you think about them. Isn’t this about it?
 
Unfortunately not. It’s not just: don’t think about things too negatively and they won’t hurt your feelings as much, in which case the philosophy would be juvenile, but not particularly harmful. Instead it has a magical and gnostic quality: think positive and that thing will come as long as you think about it with sufficient sincerity because your brain is emanating brain waves affecting the entire structure of the universe.

This is much like astrology in some sense: small imperceptible movements of the stars at the time you’re born will have lifelong consequences on your personality, prospects, fortune, etc. It’s ridiculous, not least in this case, because (1) there is a nonmaterial aspect to human beings in the official view of the Church and (2), even for atheists, none of this stuff can be tested, there are no measurable impacts of the mind on the acts of other people and things halfway around the world, and this materialist philosophy does not stand up to scrutiny under the materialist-understanding tools of natural science.
 
Mansizedtarget said:
Unfortunately not. It’s not just: don’t think about things too negatively and they won’t hurt your feelings as much, in which case the philosophy would be juvenile, but not particularly harmful. Instead it has a magical and gnostic quality: think positive and that thing will come as long as you think about it with sufficient sincerity because your brain is emanating brain waves affecting the entire structure of the universe.

This is much like astrology in some sense: small imperceptible movements of the stars at the time you’re born will have lifelong consequences on your personality, prospects, fortune, etc. It’s ridiculous, not least in this case, because (1) there is a nonmaterial aspect to human beings in the official view of the Church and (2), even for atheists, none of this stuff can be tested, there are no measurable impacts of the mind on the acts of other people and things halfway around the world, and this materialist philosophy does not stand up to scrutiny under the materialist-understanding tools of natural science.
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St Paul taught us to think of things that are honorable, pleasant, pure, uplifting, etc, things that will condition your mind to behold the good things in life- are these magical too?
 
Paul’s teaching is not magical because it never says: Do X and Ywill definitely happen. Everything that happens is under God’s providence; so even seemingly bad things–like Jesus’ death upon the Cross–fit into a broader divine purpose. Further, Paul never says we’ll be wealthy and comfortable in this life if we simply follow God’s laws and pray a lot. We may very well be miserable; but that misery may lead to spiritual growth. What else do we make of the beatitudes? Jesus doesn’t say, Blessed are the poor because, if they believe in me, they’ll hit the lottery in this life. Our treasure is in heaven and our promises are not for this world, which is (for now) damaged by sin and its consequences: sickness, death, and poverty.

The difference of magical and prayerful thinking to me is the conceit in magical thinking that we can manipulate the universe without the mediation of God simply by esoterically controlling the forces of nature or energy or whatever that nonsensical Secret book promises.
 
I’d just like to add that the “Law of Attraction” is a practice and belief of modern pagans. Now if that doesn’t tell you something right there…

Seriously, this whole thing ticks me off. On a spiritual level, we’re supposed to be working God’s Will, not the other way around. When bad things happen, He will use them for benefit. We need to have Faith and realize that things happen for a reason.

On a practical level, I think it promotes a passive approach to life. If you want a new car, work hard to earn the money to get one. If you want a love life, go put yourself in situations where you meet the opposite sex. If you don’t get along with your boss, well, either learn to deal with him anyways or start looking for a new job. Some hippy dippy new age mumbo jumbo is not going to get anything done!
 
angelofmusic said:
I’m sure many of you would’ve heard of that self-help book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.I first read it in October and have enjoyed using its principles. However, I keep having a nagging questioning. I keep wondering if this use of The Secret is acceptable to God. I would imagine it would be as it’s not a religion, but based on the Law of Attraction, uses biblical quotes and doesn’t worship idols or another god or anything however, I won’t want to be believing in something that would offend the Lord.
Does anyone know anything about this?
Click to expand...
You might enjoy this article I wrote that touched on this area.
 
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