I’ve heard of the Low of Attraction (LoA) from many people. The first impression I got from the blog of Steve Pavlina. But I do not agree on the explanation of the theory. I think the usage of the term ‘universe’ is non-applicable here. Today I watched ‘The Secret’ and took notes… Minute by minute – here:
00:22 Intriguing story, including “my father died”
01:20 Picturing the guards looking for a ‘criminal’ who examines ‘the great secret`
02:11 Without the explication of the essence, the secret is introduced as the ‘greatest paper in history’ and so on.
05:08 The ‘fact’ that "1% of the population earn about 96% of money" is implicitly attached to The secret, no argument given, no alternative cause taken into consideration.
~5:30 Comment: Lots of statements are given one by one, so that you actually have 0 time to think about each one. (Edited later: this pace is maintained throughout the movie)
The theory behind "The secret" is presented;
~6:10 ‘Explanation’ of the secret – thoughts have corresponding frequencies (?)
~7:00 More on the nature of the law of attraction: ‘it doesn’t care whether you want it or you do not want it’
At least by this moment, the law of attraction is something you do not know, it’s being introduced to you – you have no knowledge to justify claims.
Generally, it sounds more like a statement rather than deduced knowledge.
~8:30 Manipulative epithets like "and law of attraction, which is the most powerful law in the universe…". It turns out that laws have a power as an attribute, mind it. The woman saying is knowledgeable enough to claim the law of attraction as the most powerful among all the laws (?)
12:50 Quantum physics and "you can’t have a universe without mind entering into it".
13:34 "It has been proven out scientifically that …" – no reference to a study is given; "scientifically proven" is a manipulative lip service than.
14:30 "The leaders in the past knew the secret (??? really) and did not want to share the power" (?? they made a confession in a diary, ?? just an obvious claim). Btw, I have an alternative viewpoint on the "social machine" pictured at that moment, and the law of attraction isn’t there.
17:33 The story switched to emotions, which is very unlike the previous ones speaking of the LoA as of a psychological universal law.
19:34 "The universe will correspond to the nature of your thought". Note: acting object is the universe.
~21:00 Introducing techniques to feel good
~22:00 Introducing "The Creative Process"
~28:00 "When all is there, act!" // Note: your actions are important
~34:00 Teaching gratitude (and "every man knows when his wife is appreciating him…" examples) as a part of "Powerful processes"; // Note: that’s a psychological exercise – no universe.
~35:00 Speaking about "every time I touch this rock I will think about things I’m grateful for" technique. (Nice technique, by the way, I like it. It implements the anchoring effect, but that’s a different story).
~36:00 Story about the apparent healing with the gratitude rock. (A miracle? Or treating actions were simply omitted from the story?)
~42:00 [I'm quite tired because of constant change of performing speakers who express the same thought or idea in a different way. When the switch happens I have no time to think or criticize the previous speaker. Being 'a regular person' I would probably give up and just perceive information, allowing to ~program me.]
~43:00 Another story of successful visualization. By the way, it’s interesting that most examples are about manifesting having something (cars, watches, homes, money and relationships here) and not creating something of your own, creating the value.
~48:00 Feeling inspired. (Programming really works?). I think if I were reading this I would fast-forward seeking for the meaningful information. But watching this (and, therefore, perceiving emotional expressions – even much more than listening), the same thoughts all over again, somehow convinces me by mere constant repeating. I have a will to close the movie or, at least, minimize the player and just listen; but since I decided to watch it and comment on it, I’m going to continue watching.
~51:00 The guy speaks about visualizing paycheques 
and how they manifested.
~55:00 Romantic story about a guy who succeeded at dating 3 women/week at first and then succeeded to get married (? thanks to LoA ?)
~1:03:00 "When you think about disease, you create more disease cells, let your doctor …" and on; sounds like a suggestion to be ignorant of diseases.
~1:04:00 "Happier thoughts lead to essentially happier biochemistry" – introducing moods in biochemistry. Don’t get me wrong – I like positivism. I just believe that a mood is an attribute of your mind and yes, there is a connection between mood and biochemistry, but my cells are neither happy nor sad. Maybe, he meant "healthier" ?
~1:12:30 "Every great teacher has taught us that life was meant to be abundant" regardless of the idea, unreferenced mention of "great teachers who say" and "great scientists who say" sounds like manipulation.
~1:14:00 "Most of the great leaders (?) of the past missed the great part of The Secret, which is empowering and sharing with others" How did he deduce that? Are there any other properties and effects of The Secret? What are the other 3 (or 6 ? or 7 – you name it) parts of The Secret that are not mentioned in this program?
After all, why does everyone interviewed refer to the Law of Attraction as The Secret? I understand the first term – philosophers may provide lots of arguments for intention->manifestation world-view (by the way, how does it feel to read "philosophers can" without knowing who exactly?). The second term, The Secret suggests that all the ‘great people’ interviewed somehow deduced that LoA is something worth hiding, to be kept in secret. Or were they all introduced to LoA as The Secret and simply repeat? Is it called so for a reason? I mean, non-marketing and sell-the-dvd reason.
~1:14:30 "If you put your hand on a proper microscope, you’d see a mass of energy vibrating" – introducing a mass of energy.
~1:15:00 "You have enough power to illuminate a city (of what size?) for about a week (why not a year?)". Why do we use power-plants? Does he mean e=mc^2 ? There’s much more equivalent of energy then than to illuminate any city, but physical processes go a different way.
~1:16:00 I don’t know how to call it, they seem to speak of energy as of godness. (introducing new religion?)
~1:18:00 "So what? The real thing is what you can do now" Yes! Introducing the constructive thought!
1:24:14 "Remember that we use at most 5% of potential of the human mind" Really? Who measured it? Why 5? Why not 14.137? Please comment if you know the source, because I’ve been searching and I couldn’t find. It is a myth? A lip service? Can you grow to 5.5% by doing mental exercises? Which ones? What can I conclude from the statement? I’ve read, in particular, Rita Carter’s Mapping the Mind and partly Mapping the Memory and 1) I didn’t find anything similar to this myth about 5% 2) Brain is a complex organ and parts of it cannot perform interchangeably but take on specific mental functions.
Yes! I’ve done it! I’ve watched the whole movie!
Apart from stories of successful healing (?), no miracles were manifested. Nobody has got a third hand, nobody has reversed the aging process, nobody learned levitation. Primarily they spoke about cars, houses, money and women. And the universe as the acting object who gave that all with which they interacted by the virtue of thoughts – "the most powerful law", remember?.
I like the idea and the positivism. A man can create more being positive and constructive as opposed to being negative and, hence, stressed – I’ll argue on that in the next post I’m going to write, which will be about concepts and how I think they are formed.
Generally, watching the whole movie (1.5h long) is mind-blowing. It would be nice to create such a social experiment: inverview ~30 people telling that flowers should be purple only. How would it feel to listen to that for 1 hour from 30 people?
Didn’t know the forum rules allowed such brililnat posts.