To me spirituality is more of an individual awakening of one’s consciousness. I feel like once you label it or place it into a community of sorts it begins to cross the line into a type of religion or following. When a so called leader labels himself or herself as an expert, that’s crossing the line. Real spiritual leaders do not label themselves. Buddha did not label himself, we did.

Hey Joe – thank you for your honesty. I’ve also read and watched The Secret countless times but not within the past couple of years. I guess in my eyes I’ve moved on to better sources of the information I seek. The Secret was however a great stepping stone for me to begin learning about the Law of Attraction. My quick story is I’ve come from a very dark past. Alcoholic/drug addict for 15 years while being married and trying to raise 3 kids. When my oldest was 6 I decided I needed to change. I went to AA and I got clean and sober. I was still bitter at life but I remained sober. Then about 3 years ago my wife of 20 years had an affair and my world came crashing down. We tried to work through it but ended up separating. This was the most painful time of my life. Most that knew me thought I might drink again but I didn’t. Besides crying a lot I also meditated a lot and this is when I found The Secret. I watched it every morning for a year. From it I found other sources of information to help my life. A year after being separated, my wife and I got back together and now we are happier than ever. I grew so much during that time. I am a completely different person. So I will always be grateful for The Secret and what it did for me.

With all that said, I too, like you can see a lot of flaws with the book and movie. I’ve learned since then that the Law of Attraction does exist but it doesn’t work by simply wishing upon something. I did the whole cork board thing, cutting out pictures of money, houses, and cars and looking at them every day but for the most part none of them came true. What I have come to realize is that you have to really want something for it to come into your life. The law only works when we give 100% of our focus to something and on top of that, we don’t have any underlying false beliefs that are sabotaging the whole thing.

We attract the things we truly desire by having true feelings for them. When you can think about what it is you really, really want and you get that tingly sensation of excitement inside, then and only then will you begin to attract the people, things, and circumstances necessary to make it happen. You see our thoughts and beliefs create feelings and our feelings emit a unique frequency that attracts like frequencies. It sounds crazy but it’s true. The Secret fails in this aspect. It makes it seems like all you have to do is haphazardly wish upon things and they come true. But for the law to actually work you have to radiate feelings of love, excitement, and passion about what you want.

The hard part is you may really want something but you might have deep false beliefs that are fighting against you. For example, say you desire to become rich, so you visualize being rich and focus on it, and have happy feelings about it. But deep down you have the belief that being rich is bad or that money is evil. Maybe this was something you picked up from your parents. I actually used to struggle with this myself. As a child I remember my parents always fighting about money and finances. They ended up getting a divorce because of it. This belief will hinder your efforts to attract money. You have to literally change those beliefs about money. This takes some serious inner strength. Trying to convince yourself and change your brain’s programming is very difficult. But it can be done. You have to convince your subconscious mind that money is not evil and that being rich is not bad but actually a good thing. It’s like rewiring your brain. I’ve had success meditating, reading affirmations, and visualizing every single morning for more than a year now. That is the type of dedication it takes.

So yeah, The Secret misses the mark. But it is a great entry level stepping stone for someone just learning about the law of attraction. It was for me anyway. Since then I’ve studied cosmology, ALL the universal laws, energy chakras, and so on. Now I’m surfing forums like this and have actually written several books on universal laws, affirmations, and started my own blog writing about it. For me though, it all started with being cut to the core in pain and finding The Secret.

In response to a couple of your comments if you don’t mind – This is why it’s important to practice positive thinking as opposed to negative. Because whether you are aware of it or not, you’ll attract like frequencies into your life. Our outer world is only a reflection of our inner world. For example, when you say life is “full of crap,” well you are right! If that is your belief then you’ll always find it to be true. That may be hard for you to hear but until you can change that belief then you’ll always experience it. The universe has no choice but to align your outer world with your belief that life is full of crap. I know what you mean Joe because I used to think the same thing. But I’ve learned that nothing happens in life by chance. If there is crap in my life it’s because I’ve attracted it. Now I choose to belief life is full of challenges (not crap). I actual celebrate challenges because they give me the opportunity to overcome and master new skills which makes me a more complete being. There is no crap in my life anymore. Once I started to realize that I create my own circumstances and that the world only reflects my thoughts and feelings back to me and that like frequencies attract like frequencies my life has turned around completely for the better.

Thanks for letting me share!