Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:12:03 +0000
Sunflower, www.carolineallen.com
I was asked by a friend to listen to The Secret on CD. I was not a fan of the craze. Even before I listened to the CDs, I’d followed the hoopla and felt deeply the concepts were too simplistic and actually even dangerous. First, the idea of our thoughts generating reality has been written about by spiritual masters for centuries, philosophers who understood the concept on a much deeper, more complex and more universally spiritual level. The information wasn’t new.
Second, if a spiritual truth cannot be applied to every person at all times, I don’t believe it’s spiritual or the truth. You cannot tell me someone with cancer is to blame for their negative thoughts, someone being bombed thought that destruction upon their children. It’s just more complex than that. There is group thought that is so heavy and interwoven that a single person may be caught in it. A group thought of screwing so deeply with the environment results in personal illness, for example.
I believe the end result of The Secret was to make people feel bad for being in difficult situations, and further embedded self righteousness in many people who thought they were healthy or rich because they were spiritually better. ACK! One thing I know for sure is that we need so much more love and compassion in this world than we have, and blame is truly and deeply not the direction we need to go as a nation or a world.
So, in contemplating this after listening to The Secret, I found my own True Secret.
What is the Real Secret? Art! Art is the real secret. Writing, singing, music, visual art…all forms of personal self expression. Why? You can have negative thoughts and create from them. You can have positive thoughts and create from them. You can have cancer and create a dark painting of cancer and display it so that others with cancer or who have loved people with cancer can look at it and heal or cry or scream. In short, be human.
With art, all range of emotions is fully acceptable. Actually, all range of emotions is fully necessary. Show me that rage in novel form! Show me that hatred of a brutal oppressive government in song form. SHOW ME! I’m tired of all the smiling happy hiding people.
With my secret, the secret of the artist, all people of all nations in all emotional states are welcome. Poor people. Rich people. Ugly people. Fat ones too! With The Secret on CD, only those with positive thoughts. How boring….