7.1.07 Christian Reflections on the Secret: The Secret Made Simple
WESTMINSTER PULPIT
The Rev. Dr. David Thompson
July 1, 2007 “Christians Reflections on The Secret” #2 The Secret Made Simple
“Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honor, and everything that can be thought virtuous and worthy of praise. Keep doing all the things that you have learnt from me and have heard or seen that I do. Then the God of peace will be with you." Philippians 4: 8, 9.
Last Sunday I launched the series on the controversial bestseller called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. I was interested in the congregation’s reaction to both what The Secret said and what I said about The Secret. I received a lot of positive feedback. One or two folks were indifferent to what I said. Another good friend had problems with the theology, wondering whether the law of attraction was all about human will and intention and wondering where God’s will and intention came into it.
So today I want to step back a little bit and try to prepare the ground a little better for these ideas which I believe are not really new at all. They are in a new set of clothes however and we need to cope with that as Christians.
Let me begin with a metaphor from the computer world. When we install a new computer program into the computer the computer drive installs it by running the program, usually from a compact disk. But after the program is installed the computer needs to be turned off so that the computer can integrate the new information into the whole computer mechanism. Every computer has to be built so that it can integrate new programs. This process is involved in what is called “booting up” the computer. Only when this “booting up” is complete will the computer let us proceed with the new program.
I believe that when we confront new ideas we as Christians need to go through a “booting up” program to integrate them into our personal faith. I talked with a wise and seasoned elder about The Secret and asked him his reaction. He said, “I like a lot of it. Other parts I have difficulty with.” That is close to my take on The Secret as well. So what I am trying to do for us all by working on The Secret series is to work to find out where it is true and discard it where it is not. We ought not to start up the program without ‘booting it up’ into our faith computer or it won’t run and we will be confused.
As President of the Interfaith Service Bureau I have a lot of “booting up” to do to permit ideas from different faiths into my Christian world view. It is the same thing we all have to do with new ideas. .
So here is my Boot up! My favorite verse in all of Scripture is this one: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof and all they that dwell therein.” This means that everything belongs to God that is in creation, which is all ideas, truth and the laws of gravity and physics. Nothing lies outside of the purview of God. St Paul says that, “God is revealed in everything that God has made. Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and Deity, however invisible have been there for the mind to see in the things He has made.” On Mars Hill St Paul said that, “All nations are to seek the Deity and by feeling their way towards him, succeed in finding Him.” St Peter said early on after receiving a vision from Heaven: “The Truth I have come now to realize is that God does not have favorites but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to Him.” This teaching in our Scriptures has enormous implications for interfaith work and any faith ideas coming from outside our Judeo Christian tradition. God has been active in other faiths and cultures from the beginning of time. When anyone in any culture feels after God, they will succeed in finding God. They may not believe exactly what we believe. They may be flat wrong, as we may be flat wrong, but if their intention is to feel after God, our Scripture says they will find God and that God has no favorites.
St John says that “Jesus is the way the truth and the life.” The historical Jesus said, “The truth will set you free.” The New Testament teaches that the role and function of the Holy Spirit of God is to lead the believer into all truth.
The Bible also teaches that we are made in the image of God. The Bible teaches that we are Co-Creators with God. The Christian through prayer and other spiritual practices partners with God in Creation. Jesus said that he would be with us even to the end of the world. The Divine will partners with our good intentions to bring about the Kingdom of God. It is not then just about us. It is really about the love of God self and neighbor. The law of attraction, the law of reciprocity and the laws of physics are the stage on which we Co-Create with God.
The Christian welcomes truth wherever it comes from for Truth is one and in the Christian tradition is personal in Jesus and The Holy Spirit. Truth therefore is of God and we will know it is the Truth because we will be set free by it. Freedom is always the litmus test for what is true.
Hear St Paul: “Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honor and everything that can be thought virtuous and worthy of praise. Keep doing all the things that you have learnt from me and have been taught by me and have heard or seen that I do. Then the God of peace will be with you.”
I feel that with this Christian Theology as our ‘boot up’ mechanism, we will be able to find our way as Christians through the strengths and weaknesses of The Secret and be able to integrate its best insights into our Christian life.
One last introductory word: At the very heart of The Secret is a word from Christ and it is absolutely pivotal to the understanding and practice of the Law of attraction. It is about prayer and how God gets involved with us as Co-Creators. I believe that it is a unique contribution to The Secret methodology from the Jesus of History. What is amazing is that the latest experiments from the Quantum field research bear Jesus out. That will come in Sermon #3. If you are following along with me you will find this heart of The Secret in Matthew 21: 22 and Mark 11: 24. Now let’s start on the second chapter, The Secret Made Simple. Here is a brief summary:
Chapter two of The Secret says that the law of attraction is a law of nature. It is as impartial as the law of gravity. Nothing can come into our experience unless we summon it with persistent thoughts. To know what we are thinking, we need to ask ourselves how we are feeling. Our emotions tell us what we are thinking about. It is impossible to feel bad and at the same time have good thoughts. Our thoughts determine our frequency and our feelings tell us immediately what frequency we are on. When we feel bad we are on the frequency of drawing more bad things to us. When we feel good we are powerfully attracting more good things to us. Secret shifters such as pleasant memories, nature, or our favorite music can change our feelings and shift our frequency in an instant. The feeling of love is the highest frequency we can emit. The greater the love we feel, the greater the power we are harnessing.
This chapter for me has a lot of gold in it. I particularly love the section on The Secret Shifters and I personally use them all the time. The section that links thoughts to feelings is fabulous. However, I take issue with the idea that everything bad or good that happens to us we have attracted. Rhonda Byrne says “Often when people first hear about this part of The Secret they recall events in history where masses of lives were lost and they find it incomprehensible, that so many people could have attracted themselves to the event. By the law of attraction they had to be on the same frequency as the event. It doesn’t necessarily mean they thought of that exact event, but the frequency of their thoughts matched the frequency of the event. If people believe that they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time and that they have no control over outside circumstances, those thoughts of fear, separation and powerlessness, if persistent can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
I have difficulty with that. Here is why. The Bible talks of the Law of Reciprocity, that is, whatever we sow, we also reap. But the Bible also talks of law in the Ten Commandments. It teaches taking responsibility for our actions good and bad. It teaches about the evil intent of others playing out in society. It also talks of malicious intent in the heart and purity of heart. According to the Scriptures there are innocent victims of other’s misdeeds.
Genesis teaches that God hears the cries of his oppressed people in Egypt and responds with liberation. It is not that the children of Israel have attracted slavery. Slavery is the idea and intent of a totalitarian Egyptian State and slavery has its innocent victims who have not attracted their predicament.
Did the Jews attract the holocaust because they were on a thought frequency that permitted that attraction? In my view they did not. If the law of attraction is always working it will also respond to the evil intent of others. The laws of physics can be used for good or ill by anyone at any time. I once had a theology professor who said that in every Atom Bomb there is a “Heart of darkness”. Whenever a weapon of Mass destruction is released there will be innocent victims. The Atom Bomb idea was one of the great regrets of Einstein’s thought life.
No for me it is a lot more complex than the thesis that we attract everything into our lives, bad and good. There are many laws, many attractors. The law of gravity can be used to make our lives possible or to end someone’s life by pushing them off a building. Our intent according to the Scripture can be good or evil. It is the challenge of the Christian to be moral and loving with our intents all the time. There is something very real called sin. That takes place when free beings do things that are not good. Part of the price of our freedom on earth is our freedom to hurt others, to be malicious, spread gossip or whatever. The victims of this behavior can be totally innocent. They no more attracted this into their lives than they could attract a sunrise.
That said there is a truth here and it is this: Whatever we sow we reap. If we think continually evil thoughts they will manifest in our lives. St Paul makes that very clear. If we sow to the Spirit we can reap love , joy and kindness in our lives and in the lives of others. If we sow to the dark side of our nature we will reap a harvest of corruption in our lives and in the lives of others he says. And that corruption can harm others, create innocent victims and perpetuate injustice. I believe that here in this part of The Secret the Bible needs to step in and correct, with the law of reciprocity. I also believe that the law of intention is also at work here. Our intentions affect the whole world. Our minds are awesome in their potential for good or evil. That is the Biblical correction.
Nevertheless I believe the thesis that the law of attraction is always at work has some merit and that even in the darkest of circumstance as an innocent victim of someone else’s evil intents we can apply it with success. Victor Frankl was imprisoned in a death camp. There he learned that his attitude could preserve his life. His thoughts were vital and eventually they attracted his freedom when others died who did not practice preserving their lives through attitude monitoring. Out of this experience Victor Frankl wrote his system of Logo-Therapy.
I believe that in a free society that the Law of attraction is less obstructed in its operation. In a totalitarian society other laws are also at work that can severely restrict our freedom for self determination. The laws of physics can be used positively or negatively. The law of propulsion is behind every bullet used to kill others. The law of propulsion is not to blame. It is just there as part of reality. It is the human intent that determines human actions for good or ill. So the Bible declares.
In the Biblical story of Nabal, and Abigail, we once again get a back to back Biblical example of the law of attraction at work. Nabal is a beneficiary of David’s military protection. David makes a friendly overture asking that his men receive what Nabal has to hand in the feast that he is preparing. Note what Nabal does. He attracts his fate by his thinking and what he actually does.
The first mistake he makes is to fail to express gratitude to David for his protection. Gratitude is a very powerful attractor of goodness and kindness. If someone is not kind to us, have we expressed gratitude for what they have done for us?
Second he insults David who is able to kill him in the lawless situation that Nabal finds himself in. Insults also attract negativity. But Nabal is married to a wise and beautiful woman. When she hears about Nabal’s unfortunate response she is fully aware that he is attracting disaster to her family.
She immediately takes inspired action, another principle of The Secret at work and loads donkeys with provisions for David and his men. She apologizes, she says it is her fault because she had not seen David’s men and tries to take the blame. She is wise enough to say that her husband is a churl and brutish with which David and his men would undoubtedly agree, because of their treatment at Nabal’s hands. She then identifies with David and his future ambitions and presents a vision, also a principle of The Secret methodology. She says God will grant you a lasting dynasty because there is no wickedness to be found in you. The vision goes further. She sees that David will be kept close in the satchel of life with Yahweh your God. She sees him as Prince over all Israel and in that event she thinks that he does not want on his conscience the shedding of innocent blood, to regret when he becomes King. Whatever we sow we reap. She senses somehow that David is divinely guided and protected by God. And the proof of the pudding comes when David asks her to marry him which she agrees to do following the death of Nabal.
Let’s note that here the use of positive imaging, visioning, empathy and an inspired action protects against the death of innocents. Isn’t that fascinating? I wish that was in The Secret book! But it is in the Bible! These are the laws of intent, reciprocity and the law of attraction all at work together for good.
Nabal, like Saul living the unexamined life holds his princely feast. When Nabal is very drunk Abigail does not tell him of her action, which has actually saved his life, until he is sober. When the wine leaves him she tells him what she has done. Note that Nabal was celebrating because he believed that he had put David down and that David had slunk away. He was saying at the very first, “Who is David? Who is the son of Jessie? There are many servants who run away from their masters,” meaning that David had run away from Saul the King. Nabal probably felt that Saul would protect him. So for Nabal it was time to get drunk and celebrate how very clever he was. When he sobered up Abigail told him what she had done and his heart went to stone. Ten days later he died. David’s comment was, God has brought Nabal’s wickedness down on his own head. Could it not be said that Nabal attracted his fate? His churlishness and his lack of gratitude, his evil intentions to David attracted his fate. This too could be the law of attraction at work. It also has everything to do with the Scriptural Law of Reciprocity and the Scriptural injunctions about the intents of the human heart. Abigail led with her heart, Nabal’s black heart turned to stone.
Let me make one last point on the best parts of this chapter of The Secret. This chapter very helpfully also stresses the importance of feelings to tell us what we are thinking. That to me is pure gold. How are we feeling? Feelings tell us what frequency we are on. Are we on the love frequency? If we are feeling bad the answer is no. We need to pay attention to our feelings as a direct way to understand that what we are thinking about is either positive or negative. Lisa Nichols, author and advocate of personal empowerment, is very good in this chapter. She says that we have two sets of feelings, good and bad. We know the difference between the two because one makes us feel good and the other makes us feel bad. The bad feelings are the depression, the anger, the resentment the guilt. These feelings do not make us feel empowered. The flipside is that good feelings feel good. Excitement, joy, gratitude and love draw to us more good feelings and things that make us feel good.
Nabal is on the feel bad frequency which he covers with alcohol. Abigail is on the feeling frequency of love which results in empathy, wisdom and kindness. David recognizes her wisdom and gifts and proposes marriage. One good thing leads to another for Abigail. That is not accidental. One good thing does not lead to another for Nabal. That too is not accidental.
Charles Haanel is quoted in The Secret as saying: “The principle which gives the thought the power to correlate with its object and therefore to master every adverse human experience is the law of attraction which is another name for love. This is an eternal and fundamental principle inherent in all things, in every system of philosophy, in every religion and in every science. There is no getting away from the law of love. It is feeling that imparts vitality to thought. Feeling is desire and desire is love. Thought impregnated with love becomes invincible.”
St Paul sees in I Corinthians 13 that love never comes to an end, that without love nothing matters. Great faith without love means nothing. There is nothing that love cannot face. The greatest thing of all in the universe is love. Scripture puts it this way; God is love.
Tijn Tuber wanted to learn to write without stress panic and ego. In order to learn this he attracted his worst fear as a writer. Have you ever been working on something on a computer then lost it all? Tijn lost an article he had been working on, on a laptop he was using on an airplane. The deadline was that very day. He even went as far as to call up Apple Computers and they said, “Your worst fears are realized.” You have lost it all! Tijn was devastated. He believed that he couldn’t write it as well again.
Then he changed his intention and sent out another frequency. He thought this is my chance to put an end to all that work related stresses once and for all—the panic of deadlines, the fear of failure, and the tension of always trying to do his best. Who was he doing it for? For what reason?
The next morning he got up did a little yoga, meditated, and looked at the ocean, laughed at the seagulls and asked God and the angels for help. Six hours later he had finished the piece. It was better, more honest, and more vital. It was more real and in fact had more energy than the first version.
Interestingly he said that the story was about the importance of intention: the idea that it’s not what you do so much as how you do it. If we write a good article but do so from a place of stress, panic or a need to prove ourselves, then how does it come across to the reader? Exactly: filled with stress, panic and ego. He said, “this was all spelled out for me, but at first I didn’t get it.”
Then he says: “When you do get it life becomes a lot easier. Looking back I am glad that I “accidentally” deleted my article. Now I don’t feel pressure to write…amazing stories, compose fabulous songs. I simply need to bring an awareness to what I do—a goal of authenticity and truth, not some impossible standard of greatness. The rest will follow.”
Note in this writer’s experience both the law of intention and attraction work together. The law of attraction made sure that the deletion was not accidental. It actually fulfilled his real intention to write truthfully and stress free. In order to get there to that place he prayed and meditated. Coincidence? Jesus said: “Whatsoever things you ask for in prayer, believe that you receive them and you shall have them.” Thanks be to God!
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