Chapter 3 –
Powerful Processes
“Every time you look inside your mail expecting to see a bill, guess what—it'll be there! Each day you go out dreading the bill! You're never expecting anything great.”
In
saying this, contributor Lisa Nichols illustrates one of the huge
underlying problems with the premise of this book. If
you go out every single day expecting a bill, then why isn't a new
one showing up each day? And what, exactly, would they be for if you
did?
In other words,
there is a logical explanation for the mundane things in your life,
and none of them fucking involve the Universe no matter how badly
you want them to. Generally they can be traced back to some
previous action. Boiling down the mechanisms of cause and effect to
“think something, something happens” is not revolutionary, it's
not life-changing—it's simple minded.
“All that we
are is a result of what we have thought.”
She's quoting the Buddha here. I practice secular Buddhism, and I found this rather exasperating. Appealing to ancient wisdom is a cheap but easy way to lend legitimacy to yourself in the eyes of your readers. But knowing what I know about Buddhist philosophy, I'm pretty sure even the Buddha would punch this lady in the gut if he knew she was applying his maxims of mindfulness to a book with an entire chapter about how to implore the Universe to provide you with material wealth. At least she implores her readers not to take it for granted:
“[A]s I get out of bed, when one foot touches the ground, I say “Thank,” and “you” as my second foot touches the ground. With each step I take on my way to the bathroom. I say “Thank you.” I continue to say and feel “Thank you as I am showering and getting ready. By the time I am ready for the day, I have said “Thank you” hundreds of times.
Can you
imagine witnessing this shit go down?
I have no issue
with Ronda Byrne urging her readers to feel gratitude for their
lives, and I can't make fun of it too much. I'm not even going to add
a “but.” Appreciate the things you have and the life you live,
all the time. That's a good message. I'm not particularly grateful,
however, for Byrne's bullshit.
She mentions
famous inventors like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell to
illustrate her point that the power of visualization drives the
Secret, and that you “not only have the mind [the inventors]
had, but much more.” Presumably, since Ms. Byrne knows The
Secret, so does she. I'm dubious. But she has “proof” that
visualization is effective:
“Everyone has the power to visualize. Let me prove it to you with a picture of a kitchen. For this to work, first of all you have to get all thoughts of your kitchen out of your mind. Do not think of your kitchen . . . You saw a picture of your kitchen in your mind, didn't you? Well, then you just visualized!”Wait, what did she just prove, exactly? That I can remember what my own kitchen looks like, and that putting it in my mind by mentioning it will . . . put it in my mind? Uh, amazing.
Secret
Summaries:
Expectation
is a powerful attractive force. Expect the things you want, and don't
expect the things you don't want. Which means you can go ahead and
take the spare tire off your car. I'm sure you'll be fine.
Gratitude is
a powerful process of shifting your energy and bringing more of what
you want into your life. Be grateful not for its own sake, but so
that you can get more shit.
Giving
thanks for what you want in advance turbo-charges your ability to
ignore the things you already have.
Visualization
is the process of creating pictures in your mind of yourself enjoying
what you want. When you visualize, you generate powerful thoughts and
feelings of having it now. The law of attraction then returns that
reality to you, in the form of permanently dwelling in a fantasy
world.
To use the
law of attraction to your advantage, obsess about it constantly, not
just sometimes.
At
the end of every day, before you go to sleep, go back through the
events of the day. Any events or moments that were not what you
wanted, replay them in the mind the way you wanted to go. This way,
you will not only be permanently dwelling in a fantasy world, but you
can also edit the
things that make your mindset inconvenient or unrealistic, so that
they match up with your fantasy!
Previously:
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