sickness, unemployment, and The Secret
February 23, 2007 by thinking girl
I’m sick. It’s my throat, mostly, feels like it’s closing in it’s so swollen and inflamed. My voice kind of sounds like Kathleen Turner right now - husky, breathy, about an octave deeper than normal. This is the second nasty cold I’ve had since the new year.
Yesterday, I left my job. I was laid off, because my schedule with school wasn’t jiving with the kind of schedule my employers wanted me to keep. Never mind that I was promised it wouldn’t be an issue when I was hired, or that in 5 weeks, I’m finished classes and can work whenever they want. I’m disappointed to lose the job, because it paid quite well, and I hate broken promises. But otherwise, I’m happy not to be working there anymore - it was too weird for me. (For those of you who don’t know, I worked at a plastic surgery clinic as a skin care specialist.)
I’m grateful I was able to work there for the time I did - it helped me pay off some bills, and pay for my undergrad without going into major debt. I learned a heck of a lot about plastic surgery, which was a major conflict for me politically in some ways. I met some really nice people, and I got a whole ton of free skin care while I was there.
What’s interesting to me is that I’ve recently become attached to the idea that we attract into our life exactly what we are putting out - whether we are consciously aware of it or not. If you’ve seen the movie The Secret, this is exactly what I’m talking about (it was recently on Oprah, twice in a week). We’re attracting everything into our lives, through our thoughts and energy. Even things we think are “bad” experiences, which is a bit tough to wrap your head around at first, but really becomes empowering when you realize that you also have the ability to change it.
Anyway, for me, my new unemployed state is perfect evidence of the Secret working in my life. For a long, long time now, I have not wanted to work in the beauty industry any more. It has been years that I’ve been feeling restless and unhappy with my job, and I kept on trying to just find a different job to make it better. And for many months, I have also been wishing that I didn’t have to work, that I could just be a full-time student. I’ve been dragging my ass to work, wishing I could be at home working on schoolwork, or at the library, or in a specific class that I couldn’t take because I had to worry about my work schedule.
So, because I’ve been feeling this way, I have attracted it into my life. Now, I can concentrate on schoolwork full time without having to worry about working all those hours. My wish has come true! And, I also now have the chance to get out of the industry that I have been unhappy in for so long. And what’s best of all, is that I’m not really all that upset about losing my job (anymore, at first I was, until I remembered the Secret). I know I’ve created this experience, so how can I be upset? I wanted this all along, and the universe answered me.
Interesting, huh?
Good for you. You have programmed yourself and reaped the rewards of self suggestion. This also can be a spiritual epiphany.
Apply this same thought process to all the people you know and all the movements / ideologies, keep going deeper….
Steve
My blogger friend is going on about the secret too.
sorry girls, but I’m not going there, myself.
yes, very interesting indeed.
I’m pleased for you and anyone else who can see that they are flying their own plane, digging their own grave or floating their won boat.
We (hubby and I) are in the midst of big change also and it’s so clear that, though we seem out of control, we are in complete kahootz with our fate/destiny etc.
And I agree with Steve it’s got something to do with the spirit. If you are aware of where you are when you are there, rather than refusing to agree with base needs by avoiding to see your truth, then you are more likely to continue to arrive where you should be, where’s best for you.
Keep Thinking, Girl and keep Feeling too, Girl ~ a powerful combination.
I haven’t seen the Secret but shall try to get to it ! sounds good.
d
It’s a great feeling when you can clue into the universe now and again and see the big picture however briefly.
I’m very happy that you are happy about this change in life. While it may be harder in the short term I absolutely believe that it will be better for you overall. Still, too bad they (your ex-employers) are doofuses.
What the hell? (I say) There are a few women and a few people of colour/visual minorities featured in the “current teachers” section, but it is still strikingly white washed and male. For a movement/learning facilitating device this is just not enough for me.
I also really like the idea of that sort of spiritual empowerment, harnassing one’s destiny and the like… that said, I have some serious issues with the secret. (not meaning to rain on your parade here at all, and I fully admit that I have not seen the dvd/read the book myself but am commenting after seeing a snippet of Oprah and poking around the site)
The secret site definitely rubbed me in the wrong way on a lot of points. Click on teachers and what do you see? Majority white males, WAY majority white males (not that there is anything intrinsically bad about white males, I just get red flags up when they are a little too dominant as the leaders of anything, which is unfortunately a lot of the time) In fact, the “teachers of the past” section has NO women featured whatsoever. (For a project that claims to be a “culmination of many centuries of great thinkers, scientists, artists, and philosophers”
Click on the “secret superstore” (ick) and the teachers who are featured there are all white (9/9) and mostly male (8/9). In fact, the most prominently featured person of colour on the whole site is not even a person at all, they are a “genie”.. a genie who has the words written next to him “your wish is my command”
BLECH. super blech.
While I’m sure that the people on this site have many a neat-o thing to say, it just does not do it for me at all. In fact, it strikes me as just a bit condesending to have a bunch of sucessful white guys telling the rest of us that we should think positive and it’ll work out. (While I don’t necessarily disagree with such a message, I very much disagree with the delivery, and that is what I am trying to voice here.)
Anyways, I wish you the very best of things to come (and I’m sure that a woman such as yourself, by the laws of attraction stated above, will get just that.)
Hi all,
Steve - yes, actually, The Secret has given me a bit of new insight into spirituality. Unfortunately, my christian upbringing, and more specifically my rejection of it, has left the deep and lasting impression on my brain that spirituality=christianity - which is ridiculous, I know, especially considering that I have studied islam, taoism, buddhism, and japanese and chinese common spirituality (academically, not personally). The way I have come to see the Secret is kind of that this is what all the religions have been trying to get at all this time, but on many cases, instead of putting the faith and prayer in ourselves, the religions teach us to put it in a being outside of ourselves.
It may sound a little paternalistic, but it has actually helped me to soften my views toward those who practice organized religion - where for so long before, I actually kind of thought of them as fools. so I think it’s a good thing.
L>T - your links didn’t work. try again and I’ll check it out! (the Wikipedia entry on The Secret isn’t very supportive, either…
D - yes, aware that you are there when you are there - like I said in my remarks to Steve above, this reminds me very much of zen buddhism, and taoism as well. but then again, they all sort of remind me of each other.
I’m working on it, trying my best to get to the understanding that I am always in control of my own world. It isn’t that much of a stretch, really - I’ve always kind of lived in my own little world, ever since I was a child! My imagination is what keeps my sane, and keeps my hopeful and idealistic about the larger world.
Sage - I agree.
M - good points, my dear, as usual. I hadn’t really been thinking too much about the ones delivering the message, or the delivery itself. I was trying to be open to the ideas themselves, for a change, because normally all I do, particularly with matters of spirit, is reject them based on whose mouth the ideas are coming from.
Perhaps there’s something about societal access to the Secret that plays a part in who is spreading the message - internalized racism, sexism, etc. might play a part in preventing some people from even being able to wrap their heads around these ideas in the first place. Kind of like what Virginia Woolfe wrote about in A Room of One’s Own. Jsut a thought…
I’m going to keep trying to work with the ideas themselves, and see where they might take me.
Thanks for your support!
Good for you. Sometimes we need a little push to get out of a situation that doesn’t agree with us. I went through the same thing a few years ago with a government job. And the inflammed throat is probably your system doing some clean up. I hope it’s getting better.
Although I haven’t had the opportunity of seeing (or reading) The Secret, from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot in it that make sense to me, close to the concept of the Tao.
Still, there’s something (on top of the facts M pointed out) in this kind of presentation that tickles me: what someone called The Invisibility of Drowned Worshippers. That is, people look at what those who succeed do, but never check to see if those who fail did the same thing or not.
Sorry to hear about your recent layoff — I had a similar thing happen to me while I was in university. However, it became a blessing in disguise as I was free to focus on school work — and my marks actually were noticeably higher as a result of that focus. Workplaces just don’t appreciate students who are getting a higher education — and really only care about their own bottom line — or who’s gonna work next Saturday. So, now the reality of student life kicks in…loans loans loans.
Hi Marc Andre - yes, it’s true. I do tend to need that kind of push - I tend to try to make things work even when it’s clear that they don’t. And usually, I take the burden on myself to do that work, which is unhealthy for me in the long run. I’m learning to stop doing that.
Drowned Worshippers, how interesting. the link didn’t work, but I would like to know more.
Dave - thanks. I feel the same way - it’s a blessing to not have to work right now. IF I could only shake this cold, maybe I could concentrate on schoolwork!
Try this one: http://www.sisabianovenia.com/LoLeido/NoFiccion/DrownedWorshippers.htm
The title comes from an anecdote told in Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum.
thanks MA - I’ll check it out!
This is an old thread, but I enjoyed it and hope I can contribute some light.
I tend to think this can be as simple as my Dad used to say to me ” You make your own luck”. I believe what he was conveying was that we steer ourselves, either consciously or not, into most of the situations we end up in. Small decisions made each minute of each day change our path, possibilities minutely. Constantly reshaping our ‘course’ through life. It is less ‘cosmic’ than we may imagine. Agreeing with the notion that we are very much at the helm, or in large part in control of our destiny, just blinded by the constant minutiae that flood our daily decision making process. We therefore tend to have amnesia about how we actually arrived where we are. It is much more exciting, conenient, and ‘cosmic’ to be Availability Heuristic, As Marc Andre pointed us to with the link to Taleb.
Marc Andre- thx for the read, enjoyable and enlightening. The whole Black Swan idea is powerful, sobering, debunking stuff. My favorite twist of Nitzche.