BELIEVE AND RECEIVE

The Baltimore Sun

The Secret, the latest Oprah-approved mystical self-help sensation, promises to bring you wealth, fabulous sex, health, joy, jewelry, a fancy car - whatever you most want.

It works this way: When you want something strongly enough you put out a positive vibration to the universe, which then deposits whatever you desire in your lap. The opposite is also true. Think negative thoughts and bad things will happen.

This so-called "law of attraction" may get you something even more desirable than health, wealth and happiness: a great parking space.

That's what Rose Byram, 43, who lives in Carroll County and works for the federal government, says she's found. A few months ago she bought the movie version of The Secret, which spawned the best-selling tie-in book. "It definitely works," she says.

"I now get front-row parking spaces at work even if I come in late as long as I have no doubt I will. It teaches you not to think negatively. Things you don't want won't be there because you don't want them."

The law of attraction can be used for loftier purposes, says Amy Bloom Connolly, 57, who lives in Timonium and works with low-income elderly women in East Baltimore. She thinks the film dwells too much on material things, but she agrees that "When I align myself with positive energy, the universe gets on board."

She wanted to bring mindfulness training (often associated with Buddhism) into the inner city, she says, and by getting very clear on what her next step was, people and resources started to show up, including a philanthropist with a five-year grant.

If you're skeptical that the secret works, you need look no further than the filmmaker and author of the book, Australian television producer Rhonda Byrne. The secret, or rather The Secret, has brought her fame and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. Her film and book were a huge success in the New-Age community before they were featured twice last month on Oprah Winfrey's show and once on Larry King's. Now they've gone mainstream.

The book is No. 2 on Amazon's best-seller list, just behind the latest Harry Potter. The film version is the top seller on Amazon's DVD list. The book is also No. 1 in The New York Times hardcover advice category.

In Baltimore, you may have trouble getting hold of the book or the DVD.

The library copies are checked out and there's a waiting list.

Barnes & Noble continues to get new shipments of the books, but they sell out quickly. (Simon & Schuster Inc., the publisher, has ordered an additional 2 million copies - the publisher's largest reorder ever - bringing the number in the U.S. to 3.75 million.)

On Netflix, the Internet DVD rental service, there's a "very long wait." In mid-March Blockbuster wasn't carrying it.

The Ivy Bookshop in Lake Falls Village has sold 35 copies of the book since it came out three months ago and had a few left in mid-March. Check first before you go in case that's changed.

Wish fulfillment

Breathe Books, a New-Age bookstore in Hampden, has a sign outside its door announcing that both The Secret DVD and the book are in stock. Susan Weis, the owner, says she's the sole distributor of the DVD in Baltimore. She also offers monthly screenings of a previous version of the film, which she likes better because it is less focused on material gains. She has had to turn people away from the showings.

Weis used the law of attraction, she says, to will Breathe Books into being two years ago by repeating over and over again, "I am a bookstore owner. I am a bookstore owner."

"I didn't have the money or the knowledge," she says. "I'm just this girl from Pikesville. The universe set it in motion. It dropped the right people in at the right time to help me. I was vibrating at levels of bookseller so I received it. You start by believing it already exists. The universe has everything in an escrow account waiting for you to receive it."

Of course, if you are responsible for your own happiness, the opposite is true as well. Michelle Silver, a clinical psychologist who leads support groups for cancer patients in Towson, agrees that having a good attitude can help you cope with adversity but believes there is a limit to the changes you can make by thinking positively.

"If you have cancer and you envision being cancer-free," she says, "it doesn't mean it's going to happen. The implication then is that it's your fault and there's no evidence to back that up. That's why it could be potentially harmful."

Proponents of the law of attraction say that the universe is neutral: It simply gives you whatever you're thinking about.

Positive packaging

In creating The Secret, Byrne used long-standing inspirational concepts. The New Testament's "ask and ye shall receive" comes to mind, as well as the teachings of Buddha, Christian Scientists and Norman Vincent Peale, author of 1952's The Power of Positive Thinking.

"This information has been around for a long, long time," Weis says. "It's been packaged in a slick, approachable new way."

Never underestimate the power of great marketing.

Like The Da Vinci Code, there is a suggestion that this secret has been hidden through the ages by a cabal of powerful people who want to keep it to themselves.

The small book, with its scroll and red sealing-wax cover design, looks as if it contains ancient wisdom. And how much more appealing is the name itself, The Secret, than previous books, such as Esther and Jerry Hicks' The Law of Attraction, which refers to the same thing?

As Kathleen Schmidt, publicist for the book, says, "Everybody wants to be in on a secret."

Still, it's hard to figure why the film and book have become such runaway hits if these ideas aren't particularly new.

"It seems just like the latest panacea in nervous times," says Leo Braudy, a professor of cultural history at the University of Southern California. "As the world gets more complex, we look for a simpler key underneath. You move from feeling controlled to being in control."

Materialism

That's what happened to Yahya Kamau, 39, who lives in Windsor Mills. He saw the film at his church, One God One Thought Center for Better Living, just after his pay and benefits had been cut for work he didn't love.

"It had a revelation sort of effect on me," he says. He focused a "laser beam" on what he desired, a job in video production. "I had no idea how to make it happen, but I knew this thing was going to happen and I was visualizing it was going to happen. Soon I was talking to people, and things started to happen."

Now, he says, he has the job he always wanted.

The One God One Thought pastor, Rev. Bernette Jones, says that probably half her congregation has bought The Secret DVD. The staff uses it in various ways, such as screening it in the church's housing counseling program for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to show people who feel hopeless that they can own a home.

"We've shown it to our congregation many times," she says. "It's the spiritual principles we teach. It's the tip of the iceberg, but it gets the attention of people. Those material things are the things people are generally focused on."

It's hard not to focus on them when you see the film. A woman looks at a necklace in a store window, for instance, and the next thing you know a handsome man is giving it to her. That materialism is what disturbs John Clemson, 55, an architect who bought the DVD because he decided for once not to miss out on a piece of popular culture.

"About 50 percent of it is interesting and 50 percent is selfishly oriented," says Clemson, who lives in Towson. "Some of it seemed pretty valuable, other parts were pretty crass. It has nothing about interpersonal relationships, for instance."

Bookseller Susan Weis thinks that crassness may be a positive thing about the movie. "The masses grasp onto 'I want a bigger house,'" she says, but she thinks it will eventually lead them to "be happy and help others be happy."

Life coach Bill Lamond, author of Born to Lead: Unlock the Magnificence in Yourself and Others, believes when people stop dwelling on their problems and instead concentrate on the "largest, most magnificent agenda possible, then win, lose or draw, it's a complete plus at some level."

Like most Americans, he says, he's tired of seeing gloom and doom in the newspapers. That's why he likes The Secret. "The only downside," he says, "is there's really not any methodology given. The missing ingredient is a set of tools."

But people who are convinced by The Secret seem to create their own tools.

Karen Chenoweth, a 40-something who lives in Parkville, sat down and made a list of 15 things she wanted in a new job as Pilates instructor and personal trainer after she saw the film.

She then met her future boss by chance in a consignment shop, she says, and ended up getting everything she wanted except for the full amount of pay - which she received after she had been at the athletic club a year.

"It's getting clear about what you want and letting the universe bring it to you," she says.

elizabeth.large@baltsun.com

Selection of excerpts from 'The Secret'

"Your thoughts become things! Say this over to yourself and let it seep into your consciousness and your awareness. Your thoughts become things!"

"What most people don't understand is that a thought has a frequency. We can measure a thought. And so if you're thinking that thought over and over again, if you're imagining in your mind having that brand new car, having the money that you need, building that company, finding your soul mate. ... If you're imagining what that looks like, you're emitting that frequency on a consistent basis."

"Quantum physics really begins to point to this discovery. It says you can't have a Universe without mind entering into it, and the mind is actually shaping the very thing that is being perceived."

"The Universe likes speed. Don't delay. Don't guess. Don't doubt. When the opportunity is there, when the impulse is there, when the intuitive nudge from within is there, act. That's your job. That's all you have to do."

"You have got to feel good about money to attract more to you. Understandably, when people do not have enough money they do not feel good about money because they do not have enough. ... Start to say and feel, 'I have more than enough.' 'There is an abundance of money and it's on its way to me.' 'I am a money magnet.'"

"Treat yourself with love and respect and you will attract people who show you love and respect."

"The placebo effect is an example of the law of attraction in action. When a patient truly believes the tablet is a cure, he receives what he believes and is cured."

"Do not listen to society's messages about diseases and aging. Negative messages do not serve you."

"Now that you have learned the knowledge of The Secret, what you do with it is up to you. Whatever you choose is right. The power is all yours."

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