The Secret

It's baaaaaaa-ack!

The Power of Positive Thinking, that is. Sure it's wearing contemporary clothing and wrapped in the scientific language of quantum wavicle theory, but it's back nevertheless.

I was at a meeting this weekend and there was a segment on "The Secret Isn't a Secret". Time was spent going through the wavicle theory and how the observer interacts and affects the outcome of whatever's being observed. Well, DUH! This isn't a new concept! It's been around for quite some time.

Then the presenter gives a recent personal experience of thinking she's about to be fired from her job, and Lo! and behold! ... She's fired.

Please don't get me wrong. I've been involved in community and individual prayer for positive outcomes and been ecstatic when incredible outcomes occur. I've known people who've gotten their lives back together by changing the way they approach the experiences in their lives. I'm not saying that a positive approach to life isn't a good thing.

Yet ... I can't help but see the fallacy in this approach to life. While we were watching the associated video, I kept thinking of the person blind from birth whose positive thoughts were of being able to see, and nothing happens. Then the family dealing with Alzheimer's unrelenting path to lost and befuddled death, putting positive thoughts out into the universe while their loved one continued to die bit by bit, day by day. Do we tell the amputee that if they just think good thoughts long enough, that prosthetic will somehow become real?

If this kind of message comes from a religious person, are we not telling those whose dreams and visions are not (and perhaps cannot be) fulfilled in this life that God has rejected their requests, and, thus, the person themselves? It seems to me that if putting positive thoughts and visions out there were the solution to all of life's ills, that Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane would have been "Father, I've envisioned this wonderful, peaceful way to bring your kingdom into being", and he would have been spared the suffering and death of the crucifixion.

Of course, I guess you could also look at Gethsemane as Jesus putting out the negative vibes and then getting what he deserved. Hmmmmmmmmm.....that doesn't seem right either.

"Not my will, but Thine" is the prayer of relinquishment Jesus prays. That's the harder prayer to pray, and may be why we're drawn so quickly to the "happy talk" prayer. Guess I'm just getting cantankerous in my *chuckle* 'old age'. I find myself being drawn to that Gethsemane prayer: "God, I'd love for the wonderful, positive thing to happen ... my definition of the perfect vision to occur, but God, I relinquish all that I have and am to you and am willing to trust you with it. Not my will, but Thine, O God!"