The Power of Belief (part 1)

Ever since I watched "The Secret" DVD and read the book, I've been incubating a post on it.

But then the ever inspirational "Square Peg Karen" wrote a post that tangentially related to my murky gestations, so I figured it was about time I get to work. Her post "god doesn't like me?" can be found here.

The idea behind "The Secret" is that we can use the Power of Attraction to get what we want. The author suggests that you try it out on something simple first. Attract some small object, not too common place but not altogether impossible to encounter. I instantly visualized a crystal doorknob, something I once saw when I was very small, perhaps in my grandmother's apartment. My wife, meanwhile, declared that her test object was a glove with about a half-dozen pompoms dangling from the wrist. She told me to be on the lookout for it.

If you're a believer in The Secret, you might want to know that we found the objects. And now you should stop reading. Please, just stop.


Well, I finally came across my doorknob in an antiques shop about four months later. But I might have missed it had I not been looking for it. (I was actually walking through the shop thinking, "If I'm ever going to find that crystal doorknob, it would be here.")

My wife's pompom glove was a bit less promising. She described it to me, but the only object that I could hold in my mind was a cat toy. When I told her this, she said, "No, I'm not thinking of a cat toy." Perhaps not, but I was. And we found the cat toy glove easily enough. So I was satisfied.

Except I'm not really Satisfied.

The thing that leaves me unsatisfied is this: Did I think of my crystal doorknob because I expected to find it? Or did my Power to Attract bring about my expectation to find it? There's a subtle difference here. In the first manner of thinking, I might have had a pre-cognitive notion that I would find that doorknob, and so I selected it to make the experiment a success. (I might've already seen one at an antiques store, although the store I did find it at was one I've never been to before.) In the second, by holding the doorknob in my thoughts, I actually drew it toward me or propelled myself toward it.

Guess which line of thinking I subscribe to?

It's not that I'm unwilling to believe in The Secret. I do believe in Shakti Gawain's "Creative Visualization," which pre-dates The Secret by about 30 years. So I believe the process can work. I just have a problem with the way in which The Secret tries to win over skeptics.

In fact, I'm having success with The Secret. For example, we needed a new container for our Q-Tips. The one we've been using for ten years is made of cardboard and has a flimsy plastic cover that has been ripped and dented for nine years. I imagined that we'd find something to replace it at an import store. So when I entered the store, I looked through it with a Purpose. And I found a container. (But not The Container, because the container we bought was carved out of a huge stalk of cinnamon, and it imparted a dusty residue to the Q-Tips we put inside it. It smells nice, though!)

Still on the lookout for a container today, I headed toward the Baby Products aisle in the drug store. "That's the baby aisle, dear. We don't need anything there," my wife said to me with the patience of one who looks after a senile grandfather. But I found The Container rather easily -- much more easily than I could ever hope to find the ketchup in our refrigerator. It helped immensely that The Container actually had Q-Tips in it. :)

I have another success story. But strictly speaking, it's a success story about Creative Visualization, because it happened before I heard about The Secret. I won't write about it here. Not now, not yet. I've rambled on long enough, and I must get to bed. And I still need to explain what this has to do with "Square Peg Karen's" post, "god doesn't like me?"

But perhaps you've already figured that out for yourself. If not, I'll let you meditate on it for a while.

(continued....)