By Salony Satpathy:
Almost everyone has heard the phrase: “It’s all in the mind,” but how many have ever tried to understand its importance and implication? I was also a part of this crowd until a few days ago, till I was gifted ‘The Secret’ by my father. This book by Rhonda Byrne changed my way of life, renewed me and taught me how to live a peaceful and contented life and be an architect of my own happiness and success. In this book, the author unveils a ‘secret’ which she claims to have been known for centuries. In the words of the author, “It has been passed down through the years, highly coveted, hidden, lost, stolen, and bought for vast sums of money.”
The essence of the book is the power of our minds, which if identified and unleashed properly, can create waves of positive changes in our life. It deals with tuning our thought process which has the capability of making things happen; things that we otherwise would have never have imagined occurring. Everything that happens to us is directly or indirectly the doing of our own thoughts, which if modeled properly, can change everything in our lives. The book deals with the above mentioned theory scientifically, saying that our thoughts are magnetic and a frequency is associated with each one of them and when they are sent out into the universe, they attract like objects which are reflected back to us. In short, our thoughts become things.
This book answers questions like why are we asked to culture good and healthy feelings right from our childhood. As a matter of fact, these are the things that decide the course our lives take. The importance and need of feelings and emotions, the need to sometimes give in to things that our hearts desire for, the need to prematurely ‘feel’ the things we want to happen, the need to take good care of our health, the need to treat ourselves with love and respect, the ways to make our relationships with others work, the need and ways of expressing our gratitude to the Maker as well as everyone and everything that have touched our lives – all these have been discussed intricately in a detailed manner in the book.
The best part is that the theories mentioned in this book are nothing new. It is just an organized representation of what we have already experienced either consciously or subconsciously. Even before reading the book I have made certain things happen by just thinking strongly about them. A class test being cancelled when I strongly wanted it, my mother calling me when I wanted to badly talk to her, my fever vanishing when I convinced myself that I was perfectly fine are a few situations that have actually happened in my life. ‘The Secret’ has been realized by many great men like Plato, Galileo, Beethoven, Edison, Carnegie, Einstein and many other inventors, theologians, scientists and great thinkers and this realization has gone a long way in achieving success and helping them carve a space in people’s minds and hearts, to be remembered and talked about incessantly for generations to come.
A documentary movie has been made on ‘The Secret’ to showcase the importance and methods of implementation of this concept, but I feel there is a great difference between reading and viewing something. The impact created when we read something attentively is far more than any form of visual representation of the same. But owing to the shift of allegiance from printed text to videos in the current age, the movie is expected to reach a greater chunk of the human population. But I am sure that there is still a crowd that will support me in advocating for the book.
Rhonda Byrne has used statements and theories by many eminent personalities to illustrate and fortify the concept of ‘The Secret’, who are the co-authors of the book. They include Bob Procter, philosopher, coach and personal coach, Dr. Joe Vitale, metaphysician, marketing specialist and author, John Assaraf, entrepreneur and money making expert, Dr. John Demartini, philosopher, chiropractor, healer and personal transformation specialist, Dr. Denis Waitley, psychologist and trainer in the field of mind potential, Michael Bernard Beckwith, visionary and founder of Agape International Spiritual Center, and last but not the least, Jack Canfield, author, teacher, life coach and motivational speaker.
The book teaches various techniques and shortcuts to understand and implement this concept in our lives. Throughout the period when I was reading the book, I was unconsciously nodding my head in approval of the theories discussed, realizing how true and appropriate each one of them is. All in all, it is a must read in order to discover oneself, understand one’s true needs and desires, improve one’s life in every possible aspect and make the most of the power which resides within oneself.