By Silvia Casabianca
You complain: “Life is difficult, unfair and lonely. My efforts are seldom acknowledged or rewarded. I don’t have the family, job, house, car or friends that I deserve. Not only life is not as it should be, but I cannot change the world to my convenience. Or, can I?” But then came The Secret (the movie, the CD, the book).
“Oh, you certainly can, because you create the world you live in with your thoughts, your words and your actions,” the masters say. “Just learn the principles of the ‘Law of Attraction’ and all you desire will be manifested. If it doesn’t work, just review if you are using the principles properly: find out what you’re doing wrong.”
“This is The Secret to everything – the secret to unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth: everything you have ever wanted,” read the promise delivered on The Secret’s first official web page. A misnomer by now, The Secret carries a message that caught the attention of the world in a way that perhaps none of the former publications on spirituality, religion or how to become rich in three seconds have.
So, if you crave an abundant, a worry-free life, and you haven’t seen the movie or bought the book, what are you waiting for? Besides, it’s not the only book on the topic. You can get Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires, by Esther Hicks or The Master Key System, by Charles F. Haanel, to name a few.
In the past 50 years or so, the Americas, from Alaska to La Patagonia, have been flooded with information on spiritual, religious and metaphysical matters. Most of the material presumably comes from the East or from esoteric knowledge that was previously withheld from the public. This knowledge has been marketed through books, CDs, DVDs, movies, social media and charismatic speakers. Shall we hypothesize that spirituality provides more answers than science? Even though science has dug deeper and deeper and to the level of the most minuscule particles life is made of, it would seem that the answers it provides do not suffice. In our quest for meaning, it’s not the amazing biomarkers helping doctors in early detection of cancer, the trip to Mars, or the development of fiber optics, and artificial intelligence, but the feeling that God is reachable what brings hope to people whose lives have been stricken by disease or scarcity.
Back in 2001, the economist Paul Zane Pilzer reported that Americans were spending $200 billion annually on wellness, from fitness clubs to vitamins. Well, in 2022, the industry surpassed the $450 billion mark.
Although wellness and nutritional products have reached a plateau and have faced the threat of limitations brought about by regulation of supplements and vitamins by the FDA, the industry continues to hold the promise of getting to the trillion-dollar mark soon. However, a glance at the incredible success of such movies as What the Bleep do We Know, Conversations with God, How to Know God, and The Secret, is enough to see that spirituality as merchandise nipped at the wellness industry’s heels.
What are these products really selling? Hope? Magic? A power drawn from realizing that one’s life is totally on one’s own hands? The common ingredient is faith. Recently, a Reiki patient reminded me of Friedrich Nietzsche’s definition of faith: “Not wanting to know what is true.”
Indeed, and beware! You can use superficial knowledge of the laws of the universe, or a poorly-understood spiritual principle as a tool to deny your reality. Therein lies the danger of the trivialization of metaphysics, the commercialization of the sacred and the cheapening of spirituality.
How could anyone learn the principles that gurus have mastered in a lifetime of dedication and meditation by watching a movie, listening to a tape or attending a weekend seminar? No Buddhas or Einsteins are born in a snap. Why is the marketing of promises to make over our lives so successful? Is people’s wishful thinking replacing effort and creativity in resolving financial needs, or are we all truly looking for a spiritual life and a re-encounter with a re-defined God that exists within? Is this perhaps a unique rebellion, turning off the current paradigm, whereby only a few deserve abundance and good health?
In Where Are We Going? (ReVision magazine, spring, 2001), Mariana Caplan discussed contemporary spirituality trends: “When mystical experiences become our obsession, and we run from workshop to teacher to fancy esoteric tradition looking for the next high, we have taken a great detour from the needs of our culture – a culture that is obsessed with boldness but devalues subtlety; that is infatuated with excess but scorns simplicity; that honors selfishness while mumbling about service.”