The Secret to the Secret.

A lot of talk on the town… from Oprah on down…… is about the newest…… New Age rage…… The Secret.

If you are one of the seven people on the planet who have not heard of it yet bunky, it boils down to what they call The Laws of Attraction!

By this we mean that your attitude and expectations are what control something called expectations, and if you develop a positive attitude about doing something or gaining something then your (I will use an old – New Age term here) Karma will help you get it.

It’s really not a bad concept folks.

The idea is that negativity breed’s negativity, and positive thoughts and emotions lead to positive expectations and results.

In other words, if you wanted a better car than the one you have then The Secret suggests that you imagine yourself driving it.

Simple right! Feel your hands on the steering wheel and the car purring beneath you and then you are setting yourself up to one day actually drive that car.

The first example of this Secret, (which is not really much of a secret at all) friends and neighbors, was a 1952 book by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale called The Power of Positive Thinking.

Positive thinking, as described by Peale, could be broken down into a three step process of practicing repeated self-hypnosis, attaining divine, or God’s power to use for oneself, and eliminating and avoiding all negativity in life.

The first step in positive thinking is focused on the use of repeated techniques.

Peale describes positive thinking as first and foremost simply a series of practical and workable techniques for living a successful life.

The reader was instructed through constant repetition of affirmations to bypass his conscious mind and implant suggestions into his unconscious mind where they would operate automatically, without the interference of conscious will.

"Let them sink into your unconscious and they can help you overcome any difficulty. Say them over and over again. Say them until your mind accepts them, until you believe them – faith power works wonders.”

Peale's readers were instructed to "pray ceaselessly," to use his techniques repetitively and permanently.

From then till now this “Secret” has evolved with the times and today’s version states, in a nutshell, that “Expectation Leads to Realization!” (My phrase)

This is all well and good my countrymen but you are being led down the garden path.

A positive attitude is definitely needed but what they don’t mention is that positive EFFORT is required as well.

What has made this latest re-incarnation of an old theme so attractive to today's adherents is that it is being sold as “something for nothing!”

It would be enough to sell this idea strictly on its own merit but to really market it properly you have to convince people that you should be able to realize your dreams without any work or devoid of merit.

Anyone who feels they “deserve” something without the accompanying effort is the product of a generation that has a certain sense of “entitlement” to begin with and as a result they are the perfect “patsy” to be sold a bill of goods.

And who is to blame for this? WE ARE! (Meaning my generation, the baby boomers)

Our kids and grandchildren have been raised on a pedestal with a sense of entitlement unheard of in previous generations.

Where a hundred years ago the old Protestant Work Ethic was what got people ahead, this has slowly been modified with the advent of privilege and the leisure class, to the point where achievement and effort are completely divorced.

No more do we reward diligence and persistence, but rather we trade it for attitude and expectations, two commodities that without the former, are worthless.

Actually less than worthless because this way of thinking automatically sets us up for defeat and despair.

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at www.God-101.com