This is a great article, Janielle. It highlights each of the problems with the way this information is currently being presented quite clearly (not to mention the liberties taken in order to get a point across). I agree with Ms. Byrne about the fact that each of us creates our reality, and that living our objective best lives (the lives that would be perceived to be our 'best' one by a general audience) requires that we maintain a positive attitude, focus on our desires, and allow room in our lives for growth and opportunity (which is really the core of both the philosophy and the science behind the 'secret'). What she disregards is that we set our goals and lessons before we came in, which limits the scope of our possibilities to a certain extent (otherwise it would be impossible to live as a human), and that there's a whole Universe out there with intent that may be connected to ours but is not subject to ours. If the lack of a car is something necessary to our life's purpose, we won't get one no matter how much we visualize it. If we want one thing and the rest of the Universe wants another in our lives, there'll have to be some compromise.
The fact is that there will always be aspects of this that are not known and can't be explained, and none of the people putting the information out there are doing anyone any favors by taking liberties with the science or sayings of other people. The fact is that how we think does control our chemical makeup to a great degree, and both our attitude and our physical being affect our effect in our immediate and wider external worlds. The fact is that some people must live lives of dissatisfaction, doubt, and lack while others live lives of comfort and security, or the Universe would be out of balance. The rest must be taken on faith. Either your life is what it's meant to be in this moment and every other, or it's not. If it's not, then it's up to you to find a way to change it, and what 'The Secret' and it's genre do is make responsibility personal again which is what's required in order for us to feel appropriate accountability for our own lives and actions and make any changes we see fit to make. I agree that there are no victims on a cosmic level, but I think on a human level empathy is not only useful but necessary and while it doesn't serve us to walk around with an attitude of pity all the time nor can we solve the problems of those who won't do their own work, it makes us better people to acknowledge and do whatever we can to assuage the hurt of others; I don't think that putting people in a mindset of, "Well, your misery is your own damn fault," serves to support us in doing that. So what if it is? Maybe we're there in that person's time of trial in order to give them a lesson regarding a more effective way to live, in which case they drew us there for that purpose and to simply dismiss them and walk away dishonors us by breaking the contract into which we entered before either of us came in. (They'll still get their lesson one way or another, but we won't have the honor of providing it and will circle back to our own lessons of empathy and caring until we get it right.)
So I agree with most of what this author wrote, although not with the air of extreme skepticism with which she wrote it, but I don't think it discounts the legitimacy of what's at the base of every single one of these philosophies, only of those who try to package the concept for sale to a mass audience, either forgetting or disregarding that every individual is different and while general guidance can be had each of us must find our own way. That's not new to Ms. Byrne. Every religion offers a philosophy of reward one way or another, the main difference between older and newer ones being that older ones ask us to wait for them 'til after death and the newer ones reflect our current mindset of instant gratification in telling us it can be had in life. And it's not necessarily a 'bad' thing to offer these philosophies to the masses, except that the only reward that will always certainly accompany right living is feeling good about one's life. The rest is all a crapshoot, so if we do right with the purpose of gaining rewards from outside ourselves we stand to be richly (
) disappointed if they don't materialize (and pleased when they do, but only for so long).
Anyway, these are the very reasons I always urge looking beneath the surface of these things to the fact that there is often really difficult personal work involved. There is legitimacy here, but it's not all easy-peasy rainbows, butterflies, and sunshine. Some of what one goes through on the way to finding one's personal light is darker than any black hole until we learn to bring light, to be light, wherever we find ourselves, and while it takes no more than a thought to move from utter blackness to pure white energy, creating that thought while we're in the black hole can take tremendous amounts of effort, and putting it forth exponentially more.
Once again, great article, Janielle. Thanks.
Love,
Peace