Oy vey! So my friend made me watch the "movie" The Secret last night. It's basically a movie about the concept of visualizing and how we can achieve anything we want if we just picture it and not think about the negative. Well, in those terms it is a good point; however, I felt the movie was definitely a ploy at people's sense of greed and power.
Anyone who feels self important will enjoy this movie. The movie tells you to visualize and believe. What about all of those people that audition for American Idol and truly believe they are the winner when there's not a snowball's chance in hell they'll get past the first round. Were they not believing enough?
A few interesting points about the movie:
1) There's a scene where someone is running late for work and they state that if you keep saying "I'm going to be late" you will be late. Well if you leave 15 mins late for work the universe isn't going to fix itself so that you can be on time. It's your own fault.
2) The movie states that no one has a purpose in life set out for them. Ten minutes later, they state that your purpose in life is to achieve everything you want.
3) They say negative people attract disease. Are they saying the all the people in Africa with AIDS attracted the disease because they are such negative people?
My experience that could have went on the video: A year ago I really wanted to drive a MINI. I determined I would get one in a couple years when my car loan's term is up. A couple months later, a person does a uturn infront of me and totals my car. A week later, I'm driving a MINI. So because I wanted the MINI so bad, the universe let the other drive make a stupid mistake and slam into my car. It's all to fatalist.
What are your thoughts?
"The Secret" - Movie
by Bstndance 28 Replies latest jw friends
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Bstndance
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Qcmbr
As in all good scams it has an element of truth and some whopping lies - presumably if all it took to collapse the universes' probabilities in your favour was visualisation and positive thinking then the laws of cause and effect would be useless. What I do think is right however, is the general principle of having the belief to try and cause things. Nothing is more certain of failure than not trying.
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Bonnie_Clyde
Can't believe it. A friend handed me a dvd of this movie earlier this week, and Clyde and I plan to watch it tonight.
It has been highly recommended. Will post my comments afterwards.
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poppers
Changing negative beliefs and thoughts into positive beliefs and thoughts does nothing more than keep you trapped in a mind-generated universe. That universe may have more comforts but will that give you true freedom? You will remain in a prison, albeit one which has prettier decorations and better scenery,perhaps, but you will discover eventually that there remains a sense of lack, a sense of incompletion, and the search for wholeness will continue. At some point, if real freedom is desired, there must come a point when mental activities and investment of energy there be dropped altogether. Then the opportunity of real freedom and fulfillment presents itself. There is something prior to, underneath, and subsequent to all ideas - there is where freedom awaits. To follow one's thoughts in the belief that they will provide freedom is to cement in place even more bars in a mind-created prison.
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aSphereisnotaCircle
No I have not seen the movie, but saw the author of the book interviewed on Oprah.
She is one slick salesman.
I'm not saying "the secret" is a pack of lies, there is a lot of truth to what she says.
But it's just basic goal-setting stuff, nothing mystical or fantastic, but that is how she packages it.
She is making a ton of money on it, but it's 95% mystical cloud enshrouded hype.
Listening to the author, made me feel a little used.
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jaguarbass
What are your thoughts? Hello Bstdance, I havent seen the movie yet, its on my to do list. But I am familiar with visualization and positve thinking. In my life these things have worked. To comment on some of your points. There can only be one american idol a year so to think that will be you is unrealistic. But if you can make a noise with your mouth and know something about music, there is a high probability that you can derive your lively hood from the music entertainment business vs working in 7 -11. There are many artist who have had tremendous careers who would not make it on American idol, Springsteen, Seger, Lou Reed, Dylan, Petty, Stones, Beatles, On and on. If your a square peg, your not going to fit into a round whole no matter how positively you think about it, Unless you are a 1/4 inch square peg going into a 1" round whole. See what I just did? I did like they did. They said in the begining life has no purpose, then they said what lifes purpose was.
When I was in my teens and twentys, I picked up on contradictions like that all the time, it drove me crazy, I thought every one else was crazy and life made no sense. Then one day, I realized everyone was crazy and life made no sense, and a great peace came over me. Now I can relax do my thing and enjoy the ride, with all my loony siblings. When I was a young man I was born in 52, my mother was a witless and my father was a hedonist. My father inherited enough money that he could play most of his life but never knew anything about making money to share with me. My mother was a typical negaive witless. Dont get an education, sell watertower magazines. My father couldnt tell me how to get a good job, he said you just have to fall into it. Be at the right place at the right time or just happen upon it.Or follow you fathers line of work.My fathers way of life wasnt very fullfiling to me. It was based on iggnorance. I have listened to alot of positve thinking tapes and self visualization tapes trying to raise my self to be a a happier person than my parents and witlesses produced. I have to say, positive thinking and visualization has given me just about everything I can immagine wanting and have been willing to do the work to achieve. Its almost scarry when I was 38 years old, I was into the visualization and positive thinking. I got it in my head that I didnt want any debt. Within 2 years by the time I was 40, I paid my house off and had no debt. I thought I always wanted to ski in Colorado before I died, I've since skied many times in Colorado. I have played music and sung in all the big clubs that I have ever immagined in Tampa Bay. People have even told me I should be on American Idol and asked for my autograph. I know I cant win American Idol, so I dont have to waste my time. I have been my own American Idol. I've been a big fish in my own small pond. I have had boats. Flown airplanes. I cant even immagine what I want any more or what I want and what I'm willing to do the work to get. You have to visualize, when you visualize and hold the thought, you understand how to produce the results. If you are over weight, you can visualize the body you want, paste a picture of it on your refrigerator, put your head on it. Look at it everyday and it should appear. That's the visualization part. Thats planting the immage in your head. The work part is staying out of the fridge and going to the gym & maybe researching what and how you have to eat.. Keep that immage,(visualization) in your head and the body will appear. 3) They say negative people attract disease. Are they saying the all the people in Africa with AIDS attracted the disease because they are such negative people?
I would take the statement negativity attracts disease to be a generalization. Since you dont live in Africa you need to see how it applies to yourself, taking a positve view to your health . If you think negative like the witlesses about blood transfusions and refuse them you will likely die prematurely. I have a friend who has been bleeding internally the past year. He has had 4 transfusions. The doctors havent been able to find the cause. But he is still alive so they can keep looking. If he dies tomorrow he lived a year longer than he would have without blood. Specifically to your point if the governments and people in Africa took a positive approach to dealing with aids there would be less of it. If a person was a positive thinker perhaps his intellectual out look would raised to the point of saying I got to get out of Africa, I have to live in a more positive enviroment. I know at times it seemsl like it is all a spin. What you have to do is spin lifes data to keep your life on the good foot. That is what I suspect the movie the secret is trying to enable you to do. I havent seen it yet but I plan on checking it out. And these are my opinions and comments on your post. -
poppers
People continue to think that lasting happiness is in achieving goals and getting what theywant. It just ain't so. Even Bill Gates has moved on to other endeavors because he hasn't found real happiness. Even in his philonthropic work he will never find lasting satisfaction - he just hasn't reached that point yet. Happiness isn't in what one does, what one has, where one lives - happiness is the very nature of what one is in their essence. Looking outside oneself will always leave you lacking.
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Seeker4
Yeah, my girlfriend was given the book and DVD a couple of days ago. You can get the drift of the whole book by reading the last section in about 5 minutes. It's the same positive thinking/goal setting/proceeding with confidence idea that has been packaged 1000 different ways.
Slick packaging on this one, I must admit. Kind of a cashing in on The Da Vinci Code a bit there, and I love that they actually had the balls to trademark the name - The Secret.
There are basic good ideas in all of this, if you can cut through the sales aspect of it. I do believe there is tremendous power in a focused human mind.
Jaguarbass - great experience and congrats.
S4
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outnfree
I've seen the movie and I LOVE it!!!
I think Bstndance's review is incomplete, because as jaguarbass said, the point is visualization and positive thinking, but always, always, in the following manner: you visualize the things you want that make you feel happy, joyous, and, yes, abundant. If what you are visualizing makes you feel sad, lonely, guilty, stressed, then you need to change what you're seeing for yourself. If you keep believing bad things will happen to you, then they will.
I had a huge break with my only brother several years ago (we have since reconciled) because he called me a "princess" who had no concept of how hard life was. Well, while I took exception to the fact that I had no "concept" of how hard life could be, I did, in fact, lead a rather charmed life in many ways. And I truly believe it was (is) because I EXPECT good things in my life. For the most part, I lead a happy life -- even though I am sometimes beset by some difficult challenges.
They say that the cancer patients who don't ask questions, and bug their medical team, and who just passively accept treatment are the ones most likely to die. I believe this, having seen first hand how some of my fellow cancer sufferers have fared. For myself, from the very start, I told myself and others "This is NOT my exit point." I have plans, you see, for seeing my grandchildren born and for taking them on trips all over the world with me. I NEVER let go of that determination that breast cancer would NOT mean my death. I recently got back my tumor-marker results, and my doctor told me that the score was so low that insurance would not allow her to give me another one any time soon!!!
I also believe I visualized my present home into being. While I was still living in the marital home for financial reasons, I received a postcard in the mail which had a lovely picture of a door with the number 4 above it with viney flowers all around it. I LOVED it! So I put it where I could see it whenever I did the dishes and kept saying to myself that that door Number 4 was going to open into my new condo, for which I WOULD be able to get a mortgage (despite having had no full-time, outside job for the past 20 years or so). Well, by the time I could actually arrange a down payment on a 3-bedroom condo (they're rather rare), the condo in the building I'd planned to live in was gone. What was the only 3-BR unit left? Unit 4 -- which also happens to back on to conservation lands, so I have nobody behind my unit. And I have a truly sweet neighbor, too, who volunteered to stain my deck for a case of beer -- and then did it for a 6-pack!
So, "The Secret" wasn't anything new to me, but the movie did sort of formalize the things I'd been learning to do all along.
Popper -- it's ALL about feeling good versus feeling bad, and while I agree that the external are only "things", my recent inner peace would not have been possible if I had continued living with a person who had betrayed me because I hadn't the financial means to get out. The means appeared, I believe, because Source knew that for me to be my best and highest self, I had to move to a place where I could be myself, unencumbered.
Anyway, to each his own...
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TopHat
I haven't seen the movie....however I have a nephew who believes in positive thinking and praying. He wanted to buy his first house at a lower price and the owners wanted the price they were asking....Finally my nephew got the house for the price he wanted and was so happy....He told everyone "God was on his side" I told him I didn't know God took sides.
Maybe positive thinking does help though.