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Bob Proctor's The Secret...
Tosh
Veteran
I don't know much about this, but it looks to be some sort of gimme yer money spirituality get-rich sort of scheme; but I've a friend whose getting into this:
This probably isn't the right forum for this sort of thing, but maybe it's the perfect forum to get some feedback.
What's your views?
This probably isn't the right forum for this sort of thing, but maybe it's the perfect forum to get some feedback.
What's your views?
0
Comments
I have known it help some people, but I also know many disabled and sick people who have felt very upset by its concepts that you can have everything you want just by being positive. Sickness is part of samsara, just like poverty and other misfortunes. It irritates me these people that claim to know the 'secret' (which isn't a secret, it's pop psychology mixed with made-up mysticism) but mysteriously don't go to Darfur or somewhere like that to share it. I think if I knew the secret to health, wealth and happiness I might be rather more 'evangelical' about it, and wouldn't need to charge, since obviously I'd already be rich.
Because of course the real secret is that if you can con a load of people into paying money for some mystical nonsense, you can get very rich indeed.
1. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.
2. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.
The Secret is based on what is found in the 1st verse of the Dhammapada. Unfortunately the mind is being used to accumulate things which is contrary to what Buddhist teachings are all about.
Now are you telling me it still exists?
:banghead:
I refuse to here it!
Enjoy the Secret!
If you want money, think about money and think positively about money. Etc.
It's spiritual materialism at it's best. Lol.
Though it does have some truths like the idea that we make our reality by thinking.
But that means by our thinking we create all the problems in the world. Our thinking brings about famine, wars, etc.
They don't go into this obviously, because hey you don't want to deal with all that. You want to think positively and make money and have all the sex you want lol.
Stick with Buddhism, it's been around longer and Buddhism points to nirvana.
Nirvana is what we really want. Freedom from desires. Contentment.
With love.
As far as metta is concerned, rather than wishing well on anyone else, it is all about wishing well on ourselves to the point where we make it an obsession.
The philosophy underlying is getting our desires met as a way to happiness. Buddhism focusses on being aware as a way to happiness. That awareness comes about by developing an open heart, not satisfying our greed.
"Oh Gawd, not this cr*p again....?"
Comparing/describing 'The Secret' as mucus or feces seems short sighted to me, and inaccurate. Even intolerant!
With warmth,
Matt
It may not be as pure as a lineaged teaching... but in western culture, with the many, many channels filled with ripe manure and the glorification of self and self-indulgence... why is something like this specifically a magnet for judgement? Because its not 'good enough'? Posh!
It isn't pure "lineaged teaching", but there's a reason why Buddhist respect lineaged teaching and are suspicious of stuff that isn't. And that is because it can be harmful. Telling someone they "make their own reality" when their reality is a version of hell, is hardly compassionate. And it is wrong-thinking because it totally omits the major part of Buddhist teaching, which is that we can be free of suffering. Not sickness, or disability, but suffering, which is quite a different thing to believing you can wish-away the bad stuff.
In fact, it is more empowering than that because the Dharma teaches us that if we can think, and nothing else, even though our body has pain, our minds may not suffer.
Proctor.
Just a few letters away from being a Proctologist.
it's clear the guy is talking out of his a$$, but people will buy bulls**t if you wrap it up in a fancy package...
After I watched the secret I shrugged, thinking it was for those whose awareness was very entangled in western culture. I wouldn't consider your strong reactions benificial to anyone.
And it's not judgement, it's opinion.
I truly an of the opinion that this guy is a glorified scam artist, riding on the success-tails of wisdom already gone before, re-bundling it and packaging it like some shangri-La promised land assurance.
Success with anything takes time and effort, and there are no short cuts.
My strong reactions weren't given for anyone's benefit. People can take or leave it as they choose. I have expressed my opinion.
If it offends you, I'm afraid that's your bag, not mine.
Thanks!
I appreciate your opinion and everyone else's!
While it might seem like the fat free food is the better choice to produce, creating something that is attractive to the western audience, but more fatty, perhaps is worth more than condescension and judgment. Perhaps its even quite a skillful bridge.
Do you think a movie called "Sati" or "Sammā-Sati" would have made it to Oprah?
Psychologists have lots of criticisms about this type of teaching, like it tries to teach people that every failure and setback in life must be your own fault. Conversely, that means rich, powerful people must be living and thinking the right way, no matter how they acquired their position or money. It's wealth as virtue. Of course the upper class management loves the philosophy. It reinforces their ego.
Buddhism teaches that this attachment to success and positive thoughts is just another attachment.
Ingredients: Cheddar cheese, milk, whey, milkfat, milk protein concentrate, salt, calcium phosphate, sodium citrate, whey protein concentrate, sodium phosphate, sorbic acid as a preservative, apocarotenal (color), annatto (color), enzymes, vitamin D3, cheese culture, yellow dye.
At first glance, the fat content here is not the first thing that bothers me. What bothers me is that fat is normal in a human diet, and as westerners (Americans, particularly) we tend to care mre about fat content and less about additives and such. Not to mention the milk (hormones, antibiotics), although this seems to be changing.
And what is wrong with the teaching that it is all our fault? That is what Buddhism teaches in the form of karma.
Buddhism teaches that being subject to karma means being stuck in a wheel of suffering, and that the Middle Way is a path of liberation from karma. That's a point often overlooked in the West.
Buddhism teaches that we are responsible for our own suffering, not our own fates. Buddhism teaches that this clinging to selfish desires is what's causing our suffering. The fact that we sometimes get what we want is completely irrelevant. It's still fleeting, impermanent, part of the problem, not the solution. Think only positive thoughts, get everything you ever wanted, and you are still suffering. No, my friend, this "Secret" is a dead end.
Because it's just not true. All the positive thoughts in the world cannot keep suffering and loss from your life. Certainly a positive attitude helps.
i support this belief 100% when you discuss the psychological aspect of positive thinking in relation to how this effects your actions (and by proxy, whether or not you receive benefits). but when i was in this group, it was explained to me that what we chanted was "the mystic law" of the universe. it was said that it permeated everything and everyone, and therefore, was like a magical incantation... simply put, it was not just positive thinking. and just like The Secret, once you start attributing mystical powers to it... that's when i fell off the boat, lol.
"Buddhism teaches that we are responsible for our own suffering, not our own fates."
simply wonderful.
There are dead ends? I think only The Eightfold Path is one with an end.
As for its practical uses, positive thinking is a very limited tool that will only get you so far.