Secret teachings, the power of positive denial

I slowly eased reading books that are not by Jane Austen (my comfort reads for the past few months!) with a transitional period listening to 4-hour(!) audio DVD of The Secret, which a friend lent me.

The hook that gets people “into the tent” for this product, whether in video, book, or audio, is the pitch that this is a life-transforming "Secret." Yet the underlying principles, whether called The Laws of Attraction, the Power of Positive Thinking are familiar to even the most casual student of self-help books.

I like positive thinkers and New Age presentation people. As Douglas Adams said of the planet earth, they are “mostly harmless” and occasionally helpful. But the kindest thing I can say of The Secret is that it is partial—as in a fragmentary or limited. In its truncated fashion, it explains how, with single-minded thought, a person can affect his or her environment. There are some useful ideas in The Secret, presented with the maximum of smoke and sizzle and very little insight or responsibility.

I will consider using any mental or physical tool that doesn’t clash with my Buddhist practice. (I won’t channel, don’t ask me.) So I’ve encountered (and enjoyed studying) some of these New Age Usual Suspects. I didn’t like the metaphor of ordering your reality from a catalog. That one was too aggressively shallow for me. Also as a world view, the idea that you create the entire universe with your thoughts strikes me as childish at best and delusional at its worst.

I do like the metaphor of “change the frequency of your thought vibrations, like changing the radio channel.” I can almost hear an echo of an explanation of Buddhism as it was presented to Americans in the 1960s and ‘70’s (and it may have been a direct steal—such metaphors do get around). One of the unlooked for side-effects of a Buddhist practice is learning how to become aware of and move out of negative life conditions (as an exercise that must be repeated by the way, it’s not a one-time thing!)

The latter half of the DVD set made me a bit queasy with its exhortations to “believe” when doubt attacks. That sort of talk always induces deep mistrust in me--and an urge to head for the nearest Exit sign.

I’m not going to get into the “negative thinking caused the Holocaust” thread (my brother hit the nail on head when he said, “So, the Holocaust victims were all thinking negatively and the Nazis were thinking really positively?”) This is not the first time such views have been brought forth, but that doesn't make them less offensive.

For me it’s a sure-fire indicator of a con game when the salesperson plays the weight loss card. The weight loss issue draws con men like an overripe banana draws fruit flies. it's such a gold mine that few can resist. Such a large percentage of Americans are freaked out about their weight that playing on the hopes of a magical solution causes many to instantly reach for their wallets.

As a fat person, listening to their spiel, I was pleased at the suggestion not to dwell on your body’s flaws, that’s always more constructive. But I was wryly amused to hear the suggestion that followers "achieve their perfect weight" ("losing” is one of those banned, negative words)by looking away when fat people appear and instead envisioning their internal perfect body. I guess if I walk down the street and see people bumping into lampposts rather than look at me, “la, la, la, you don’t exiiiiiist…la, la, la, I’m thinking of my own perfect body…” I’ll know that it’s a Secretarian. Or will I?

Actually, invisibility in social situations is one of the side effects of getting old and/or fat. All of which The Secret assures me do not have to happen.

When I first started listening to the DVDs I wondered if there was any correlation at all between actual secret teachings in mystical tradition, and the positive thinking stuff they are invoking as the secret of the ages. A friend who is into the Western alchemical/metaphysical tradition pointed out that the concept of secret teachings can be to protect a student from getting in too deep too soon. My own experience in Buddhism has been that even when a secret teaching is revealed it is usually so simple that an untrained mind can’t see any profound meaning at all there. It can take decades of practice to realize how deep something so simple can be.

I suggested to a friend who was about to listen to the DVDs is “take what you need and leave the rest.”


April 16 to May 3, 1977 I read:

1876, Gore Vidal

English Humour, J.B. Priestly
Note: v. fine, also beautifully illustrated. (didn’t finish though)

Stop the Presses, I Want to Get Off, [MORE Magazine] R. Pollak [Ed]

The Man with the Candy, the Story of the Houston Mass Murders, J. Olsen
Read most of it

The American Tradition, A Gallery of Rogues, John Greenaway

Patchwork Mouse, Joseph Hixson

Darker Than Amber, John D. MacDonald

Gateway, Frederick Pohl

Scoundrel Time, Lillian Hellman
I first encountered Hellman in her preface to some of Dashiell Hammett’s posthumously published work. She was a glamorous figure, not the least because of her life with the magnetic Hammett. Who wouldn’t want to be with Hammett? Many were called and briefly chosen, but Hellman was the one who lasted. The fact that he told her she was the model for Nora, of Nick and Nora in The Thin Man made her even more interesting. Nick and Nora Charles have always been the ideal fun couple for more than one generation. Early in their marriage my parents named their dog Asta in honor of the Charles’ memorable terrier. I’ve read all of Hammett several times, but never have read any of Hellman’s non-memoir work, although I did see the movie The Little Foxes, and was startled by how over-the-top melodramatic it was.


From April 16 to May 3, 2007

Aside from listening to The Secret DVD, in the past few weeks I re-read:

Scoundrel Time, Lillian Hellman.

I remember noting what a thin book it was when I first read it, sitting on a bench at a bus stop in 1977. The edition I read recently has it collected along with Hellman’s other memoirs, An Unfinished Woman and Pentimento. Scoundrel Time only takes up 123 pages—with wide margins.
Hellman

I think nowadays Hellman would be called “high maintenance.” She savors and shares her emotions the way some people share fine cuisine. This is part of her charm, and yet one can’t help but mistrust it.

One of the anecdotes she tells is of an old friend, unsuccessful Progressive candidate for President, Henry Wallace, who presented her with a large bag of manure on the occasion of her selling her farm due to financial disaster after she and Hammett were blacklisted and unable to find work. Hellman mildly complains that this was not a gift she could use in the New York apartment she was moving to, and puts it down to Wallace’s total cluelessness—and she gives several other persuasive examples of this. But something about the gift made me wonder if there weren’t others who might have wished to give her such a gift, but just didn’t have it handy when the occasion presented itself.