When someone first sent me the link to “The Secret” before it came out officially, I was initially a bit down on it. While I was excited to see that it was bringing Attraction 101 to a mass audience, I was also a bit concerned about its focus on the material existence. I have since defended it more often than put it down in conversations with fellow consciousness players, as – while I think these tools are not there to attract a Lexus or a big villa – I think it is crucial for our time that people become aware of their part in creating reality.

It’s a kind of magic…

My friend Zee once put it that way: there are four different kinds of magic (he said witches, but I am borrowing freely): white magic, black magic, brown magic and technicolor magic. The first is about using conscious creativity tools to help people, the second is used to fulfill ego desires. Had to some extent placed “The Secret” here, as it was showing soul refinement tools in the context of acquiring material riches.

There are two interesting aspects to this:

• Teaching people they can do magic
• Covering the basics

Becoming aware of conscious creativity

Most people, using Zee’s definitions, are brown witches, i.e. they are stuck creating shit for themselves. Their acceptance of publicly advertised and preached scarcity left them believing that the world is a shitty place, where one needs things to be happy, those things are finite, and hence we need to compete and fight over them. Exposed to some of the concepts in “The Secret” one would hope that at least they are moving on to black magic, and if one can hope that this initial hit would get them more interested, further into white magic, and ultimately into technicolor magic, where we learn to use our consciousness to create a super fun filled reality for ourselves and everyone around us. So in that regard, I think the book/movie, is definitely doing something good. Together with Harry Potter and some of the other movies out there, it might just entice people to learn a bit more and go deeper (unlike the guy from some Long Beach familiy, who ended up sitting at home trying to visualize his new million dollar life and stopped going to work leading to a harsh financial situation for his family). My friends Chance and Vanese actually just published a series called “The Great Work”, the intro DVD being called “The Secret behind the Secret”. The series covers the material, the emotional, the intellectual and the spiritual plane. There is hope that people might actually want to jump of that cliff and enter the abyss of personal transformation…

Covering Maslow’s basics

The second aspect really dawned on me this morning. Had the pleasure of having breakfast with Marc Victor Hansen and a couple of people I met last weekend at the Global Summit. Here was Marc, a multi-millionnaire thanks to his “Chicken Soup for the Soul” and the many ventures since. And he wasn’t talking about his yacht, luxury travels, or the expensive watch on his arm. Instead, the conversation revolved around how we could do something important to help this world, especially anticipating a world-wide financial crisis created by fear mongers and scarcity thinkers. Having his future days paid for, he did not revert to lazy idle luxury living, on the contrary, it seemed that he is as active if not more so than before, but now he is playing an even bigger game.

This made me think of Maslows pyramid of needs. In today’s world it is somewhat ridiculous that we have not met the basic human needs on a larger scale. We have plenty of technology for it: Bucky Fuller calculated in the 1980’s that we had plenty of technology to have everyone on this planet live like Mr. Rockefeller. Considering it’s been thirty years since, it is pretty disgusting to think that half of the population on this planet makes less than $2 a day and that 70% of humanity do not have food, clothing and shelter every day.

A movie like the secret I think can help to eliminate scarcity thinking and help provide people with the material basics, that then allow them to move up in the hierarchy, ultimately toward self-actualization, in my mind the main reason for us being in this reality.

Dharma instead of careers

Each of us has natural gifts and talents. One reason I think that our world is so out of whack is that instead of discovering and fostering these in our children and enticing them to use them to create their reality, we try to press them into prefab careers. Not surprisingly, so many people are ultimately miserable in their jobs (think I mentioned before the connection of job to Job in the bible – a story of suffering).

Talking with Marc this morning made me think that maybe there is even more good in teaching people who to manifest material success as a first step toward opening up to the rest. If people no longer need jobs, I think, they will not become lazy, but on the contrary begin to use their gifts to follow their joy. Especially facing an impeding economic crisis, this is a beautiful thought.

Apologies to the makers of “The Secret”

So, my apologies if I have put you down because I did not get that people a) respond more easily to material pleasure and hence this movie can serve as a Trojan Horse for more conscious work and b) that I did not get the notion that if material things are taken care of, this might lead to people actually returning to their dharma and ultimately making this a better place.

Keep manifesting!