When Secrets Collide

In Annie's blog The Same River Twice you'll find a link to an amazing article about our country's latest phenom: The Secret.

Yes, we're all caught up in the idea of thinking intentionally, aren't we? I have to admit...I have been guilty of sitting quietly in my easy chair while visualizing a 120 pound me eating cheesecake without gaining a pound, a 120 pound me bounding effortlessly up Mt. Kilimanjaro, a 120 pound me.....you get the point.
I want to believe, oh yes, I do. I have tried all sorts of things -- clicking my heels together and repeating "There's no place like home," staring at my reflected image assuming its best Jedi stance, saying, "May the force be with you," throwing salt over my shoulder, avoiding ladders and opened umbrellas in the house, god blessing every sneeze....I want to believe that there is some mystic, supernatural link to having all the good luck and none of the bad!

Here's a dilemma:
Suppose my intentions and your intentions are for the same item and there's only one to be had? Does it come down to a dual of intentionality, a measure of one's Secret Quotient? If you win and I lose, does that lead to Secret envy?
Of greater concern, what if my intention is the perfect opposite of your intention and they bump up against each other in some cosmic waiting room. Do both get canceled out like adding a +1 and a -1 on the blackboard of the universe?
I'm being a little silly. But only a little.
See, while I think there is something to positive thought and good intentions I also think somewhere in the Bible it says 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Okay, maybe not the Bible. But somebody said it and somebody agreed or it wouldn't have made it so far.
Your good intentions may not be so good for the guy next door or the planet, or even you in the long run!
My great concern with The Secret is the same concern I have regarding the Prosperity Theology which has become so rampant among Christians today. Christian people claim to follow a man who had maybe one change of clothes, no house, wasn't listed in Fortune 500, didn't have a Dun & Bradstreet number, and hung out with penniless losers. So when we begin to embrace any type of thought process that endorses getting more stuff and having more money I fear we are dancing with the root of all evil (and that is in the Bible).
Jesus had a Secret, alright, and it was lived out every moment of his life.
Gandhi had a Secret, too. And so did Martin Luther King and so does Jimmy Carter.
Their Secret is less about consumption and materialistic gain and more about sharing the wealth--meaning the wealth of truly good intentions: caring for one another, loving the unlovable, forgiving the unforgivable, being grateful for the most undeserving individuals or moments. This is the secret to so much more than we have been hearing about lately.
Sadly, I believe that the intentions of our times have had a great effect on our universe. The fruit born on our collective tree is how we are known. And it's not so pretty, really.

Consider these words by James Allen:

Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,

And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes

The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,

Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills:—

He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:

Environment is but his looking-glass.