The Real Secret

Picture of the Great Seal kindly provided by TW Collins under Creative Commons

The Secret
Most people would have heard or read the book "The Secret"...It basically says in not so many words you can "materialize anything you want by visualizing it repeatedly".

There is however a system of belief that the current moment holds the key to all that you need, and all that you are able to learn and assimilate from at this point in time.  

Exerting our will to materialize something implies that we always know what is best for us...well given a choice my son would eat chocolate morning, day and night, using this analogy, our awareness is too limited to see what is really the best for our own self growth...

Only in hindsight if we reflect deep enough we may be able to see what has happened that has lead us to the current moment.  Each moment, each disappointment is a chance for us to learn the real lessons in life, those of humility, love and compassion.

The Real Secret
While there is some insight on how the mind works in "The Secret", I would like to present my own very personal view of "The Real Secret".

Assuming you have the following formula:

Input + Process = Output

If we focus on just materializing the output, we will go to all ends to achieve it, the mind will do it but it will work out whatever way it can to get there sort of like a GPS in your car.

Once we get the output we desired, eventually we find out that it wasn't so great, and then we find another output, and so this goes on in a never ending cycle plummeting us into a life of misery.  My neighbour in Australia, went from relationship to relationship in this manner, he even left his wonderful wife and kids for a another woman, and did the same cycle again with her.  I am not sure how many kids he has now!

Corporations know this secret and how to manipulate people into thinking that their products (inputs) will lead to happiness in their advertisement brainwashing.  They dull a persons intelligence by clever bombarding and programming.  
Look at Coke - Open Happiness (How is happiness linked to drinking caffeinated sugar laden beverage)
Look at how MacDonald targets children and builds addiction from young
Look at the pharmaceutic companies that build drugs that have side affects that could kill you, they negate the mandatory warnings by showing happy contented people visually.
It seems everyone knows this except us.

What is the Output that Everyone Really Wants?
It is not a sense of Wholeness; a sense of Gratitude; a sense of Peace; a sense of Purpose and Meaning; a sense of Compassion; to Love and to be Loved and a sense of Contentment that we all want.  Yes, a million dollars would be nice, but my view is with an undisciplined mind (bad inputs & processes) this will still lead to nothing but suffering.

The irony is that we cannot get the above by focusing solely on the outputs.  If we look at the above, they are all positive outputs.  To get positive outputs you must have positive inputs and have a process to generate the Positive Output.

We can't get happiness from Coke!  

We can't buy health from a pill! 

We can't really get deeper relationships from Viagra!

Positive Inputs
Positive input includes right sensory input (images, sounds, thoughts), right environment, right values, right company,  compassionate diet, right purpose and right exercise.

This is like planting the right seeds on the fertile lands.  If we plant the seed of love, compassion, and truth, we will get fruits of happiness.  Positive values lead to positive actions which results in wholeness and positive results.  We can only get suffering from seeds of negative values such as Anger, Lust, Greed, Attachment, Pride, Ignorance and Sloth etc.

The Process
While the inputs are like seeds, or seedling planted.  The process is like daily maintainence of them, weeding them, watering and nourishing them.  There are some key aspects to the Process:
- Filter out the Non-Sense
- Be Mindful of the Present
- Breathe Deeply and Uniformly
- Build Positive Rituals to Focus the Mind

Filter out the Non-Sense

A good analogy is the three monkeys - "See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil".

Stop putting crap into your system, leave it out, don't buy crap, don't watch crap, don't listen to crap, don' participate in crap, don't eat crap.

Be Mindful of the Present

The present is all that is needed of you.  Time is a artificial construct.  There is only the present moment, nothing more nothing less, you could drop dead any time without warning, so make it count.

Breathe Deeply and Uniformly

Breathing has a direct correlation to emotions, deep uniform breathing engages the frontal lobe of your brain, making thinking possible in pressure situations.  You can control your responses simply by taking timeout to focus on your breathing.

Build Positive Rituals to Focus the Mind

Unless you are a Zen Master you will need daily rituals to help focus your mind, and recharge frequently during the day.  Build in rituals that help you set intentions for the day, connect to people, recharge during the day, and reflect on the day.

Closing

The real secret is that we need to forget about the what we want (outputs), and focus only on what goes into our system (inputs) and exercising our innate intelligence and mindfulness (process), all good things comes automatically  from this.  It will also be a much more enjoyable and a less stressful experience, and others will respect you for that.

Enjoy the journey, stop to smell the roses, the results happens automatically determined by the quality of your input and process.

Peace,

Kirpal

Greatness is not a function of circumstance.  Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.  Jim Collins