The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Atria Books: NY, NY. 2006.

With all the fuss over this book, I had to go buy a copy to see what the hoopla is all about (no the company wouldn’t send us a review copy and now I know why!) I know what The Secret is all about!! It’s about doing as little work as possible and making bug bucks off of it!

For starters, yeah the “The Secret Team” interviewed a bunch of people – big deal. About half of this book is simply quotes from other people and then you get Ms. Byrne to add her two cents in every here and there. Wow, write a book that you hardly have to do any of the actual writing yourself, give it a name like “The Secret” and claim that you have hidden special information that can make anyone’s life better, and you have not only a bestseller on your hands, you have some awesome royalty checks besides.

What it the big secret? Why it’s the law of attraction – um excuse me?? How is this a big secret? Isn’t this what witches and other magick practicing Pagans have been using for centuries? Well hello Ms. Byrne! It may have taken you a lifetime journey to figure this out, but trust me, many many many people already knew this little tidbit of information. We just didn’t put it in a special package with a seductive title and try to market it.

According to “The Secret” you can have anything you wish for, and that’s all you have to do to get it – just wish for it and then act like you already have it. (Ok well there’s 2 steps right there of casting any spell). HOWEVER.... There are some very important concepts missing from The Secret. According to The Secret, you can have absolutely ANYTHING and EVERYTHING because there is enough GOOD to go around in the world and not everyone wants the same thing. BINGO!! NOT EVERYONE WANTS THE SAME THING. Right there you are going to have a problem because The Secret doesn’t take into consideration such things as Free Will or Ethics.

What? What do I mean by this? Ok, well according to the secret, there is enough good in the world to go around --- ok that might be true, but what about those who don’t want good? What about those who want bad things to happen to others?

What about the free will of others? This isn’t mentioned at all. According to The Secret, I can wish for Dean Cain, and poof, he is going to appear. Don’t worry, I’ll let you all know if he shows up.

The Secret also tells us that the universe can’t distinquish between “do’s” and “don’ts”. For example if I say, “I don’t want to be in debt” the universe hears “I want to be in debt” so we attract more debt to us. Also, according to The Secret, if some guy is doing 80 miles per hour, runs a red light and nails your car putting you in intensive care for a month, it’s because you WISHED for it.

Yeah, this is a load of hogwash. The Secret should go down in history as one of the biggest scams ever.

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Created Dec 26, 2009 at 11:53pm • Submit your own review...