How I See "The Secret" This Morning

Carrie wrote a blog about her nasty kleptomanic neighbour and how she has taken the steps to curtail his thieving ways. You can see the "question" here: Seriously, Can You Answer Me This? and the "answer" here: Answer to last blog.

If you can't access these blogs due to her settings, I apologize. In short, she has a neighbour that steals her water, her bananas, and her things and feels it is his right. She has been battling with him for years and is sending him a legal letter.

It seems that several people seem to think I know something about the concepts in the book The Secret. I don't really. I just live my life. But I do like the positive chord of harmony that it strikes within my soul and how even though I have been unable to attain the amazing power they claim we can harness I believe that more and more will be attainable as I actively work towards it over the next 161 years of my life. As an aside, I can now get in and out of the drugstore parking lot all the time now without ever having to wait for the Fukui drivers who seem not to understand the simple courtesy of slowing down a bit and letting other drivers enter and exit traffic, but that's OK.

This is what I wrote on Carrie's blog. It got too long as just a thought first thing in the morning before brushing my face and washing my teef (and even before going to the bathroom which I have to do now....) So I transferred it over here.

My comments on The Secret? I had a long 3hr chat with Mavis yesterday and I made a comment to her about someone on her page that said the concepts in The Secret were unrealistic because you always have to have the bad with the good.

I used to think that, too because I did believe that we must have work to appreciate holidays, and we must have ..... etc. But I don't go that far anymore. I have learned through my studies of carbohydrates and EFAs that "a balance is best" is not always true. There is no good balance of carbs and proteins. The less carbohydrates you eat, the better your body becomes. The more parent essential oils (formerly called EFAs until the nutrition industry messed it up again by getting on the bandwagon and mass marketing all the wrong stuff to us - again) your body gets, the healthier it becomes. This is how the body is designed to work.

I no longer accept that we HAVE to have the bad to appreciate the good. Why do we HAVE to have the bad? Having to have it equates to wanting it, or needing it which equates to an addiction. The need for bad things to happen. It sounds silly, but every single emotion can become an addiction (watch "What the bleep do we know?" for an excellent explanation). And when that happens, we will consciously or subconsciously do things to perpetuate the "fix" of that addiction. Just like a heroin addict will go to any length to get the money for the next fix, we will do whatever it takes, to get the rush from our emotional fix, and because we are addicted to it, we will create situations that feed our addiction. That is how addictions work, unless I am mistaken.

The thought that I had when Mavis brought up some stuff was simply this:

I believe that The Secret is not about having million dollar checques mysteriously appear in your post box (or bottles of Asience Shampoo & Conditioner for that matter *wink*). Birds will shit. Cars will hit. Dogs will bite. Neighbours will steal. Water main pipes will burst. Businesses will go belly up. Marriages will fail. People will be born, and people will die.

And these will happen all beyond our control.

We will have emotional and physical responses to each and every one of the events in our life because the events will be linked to memories of things in our past (since the brain retains EVERYTHING it processes until the day it fails to be). And the memories of the past will be linked to emotions and physical responses we have had related to those events in the past.

If, for example we associated great love whenever a bird shat inside our motorcycle helmet as we were parked, teaching classes to Japanese students, then whenever we find bird shit in our helmet, we would feel love.

If in the past someone hit our new car with their shopping cart and scratched or dented it, and we associated that with giggles and laughter, we would giggle and laugh when some redneck thoughtlessly rams their Sam's Club Mega Shopping Cart into our scratch-free new auto in the future.

And on.

And on.

This is how our brain is hard-wired: a physical event evokes a memory which is linked to an emotion which is linked to physical response. This physical response is linked to a memory of an event which is linked to the same emotion, which elicits the same response, thus making the circle even more tightly knit. (apparently this has been shown to happen physically in the brain with nerve synapses, so it isn't just conjecture or anecdotal.)

In this situation, an external (bad) event, something beyond our control, evokes an emotion (usually bad) which leads to a physical (usually bad) response in us: anger, rage, shut down, depression, headaches, exhaustion, eating, suicidal thoughts, despondency, whatever.

When this is occurring, the external event is eliciting a physical response in our body.

The event is controlling US.

Do you want to be controlled by events that are beyond your control?

So when events beyond your control occur, do YOU want to be in control of your own body? I know I do.

To me, that is the essence, or the "takeaway" from this concept.

If you want to be in control (don't we all always say we do?), then you have to LEARN how to do it because your XXX decades of reinforced automatic emotional/physical response needs to be broken. Since scientists have physiologically shown that by changing the response, by forcing a different emotion to an event, the neural network in the brain will be rewired.

That WILL make all the difference in how you feel when future events linked to past memories occur.

You will FINALLY be in control of you.

It seems like "good things" happened today regarding the neighbour, right? The legal documents, etc. yes? But just remember, the thought of the neighbour alone is linked to all of the emotions/physiological responses she has had in the past. All of them. Because the brain NEVER forgets, even if we do.

The memories/emotions linked to all the past events of the neighbour which may have led to the wicked headache Carrie had today (or contributed to it at least) will become a thing of the past.

Here is an interesting example I had last night:

I had nightmares all night about vegetarians coming to my blog and attacking me for my comments the other day (they have in the past). It was a restless sleep but Jen and Stefnee sent me an email in my sleep, warning me in advance that I was attacked in my blog. They just wanted to let me know so I could take aversion tactics in my mind and not let it get to me too badly.

Can you see how what happened last night is an amazing example of the neural net wiring thoughts to emotions and physical responses: the love from Jen and Stefnee comes through in my dreams as warm, caring, protective thoughts and feelings and responses. That's pretty amazing! (I love you two for bringing your love deep into my dream state! THANK YOU!!!)

These are my early morning thoughts on how I see we can actively use the concepts in The Secret to enhance our life.

I love you!

Cam

P.S. Mavis sent me the book "Anger and the Indigo Child". I can hardly wait to read it. Thanks, Mavis, I love you! I also am reading Robert Collier's "The Secret of the Ages". It will be a slow read... like slowly cooking a delicious pot roast all day to create a masterpiece.