the secret

this post has been brewing in my head for weeks, and i'd like to brew for another one, but i have to get a few things out as i've had a lot of friends and people in recovery being exposed to this and left feeling confused and a bit lost.

for those of you living in a cave the secret has been touted by everyone from oprah to news anchors - it's the 'new thing' and people are all a twitter. the saddest part of this is that there is nothing new about it, other than the slick, multi-media, multi-million dollar sales pitch. john stackhouse has taken this on theologically, so i'm going to send you to his great post to explain that:

john stackhouse - oprah's secret: new? old? good? bad?

UPDATE: blair at preachy writings has some really good thoughts too: the secret vs the sphere: in pursuit of happyness and other urban fairy tales

i, on the other hand want to deal with this from the emotional, practical and recovery side.

first of all, i know it is so hard to be in a room with people who have just "found the secret" and to take issue with it. you look like you're too dumb to 'get it' - that's the point. they have found a way to pitch this like 'only the really smart people will understand this' - so ie, you stand against it, you're not smart... sigh. they're brilliant.

the other difficulty here is that you "can't" argue against it because then you are shown to be "negative", and negativity cannot dwell within "the secret". they're good, they're really good. it sets up this knowledge like a four star club that only the positive and smart people can get into - so if you challenge it you're not 'smart or positive' - brilliant. i mean, who wants to go against the queen? (oprah)

i took this position almost exactly 12 months ago when she was all gung ho on james frey and a million little lies, er i mean pieces... - remember that charade? she had found a new recovery, a new way of getting your life back together - remember? just decide and you can do it. what a hot mess that was. do you see the parallels here? oprah (and countless others) have always searched for the way you can have it all without admitting you are powerless.

this is the key. this is the 'easier, softer way' the big book speaks of. i'm sorry, but there is no 'easier, softer way.'

it is my opinion that this is the same lie from the garden, repackaged, slicked up and resold - "god doesn't have your best interests at heart, you can do it without god." it's what eve wanted to hear, it's what we all, deep in our heart of hearts wants to hear and believe.

i know that the people who are selling this will tell you that you can have god and the secret too, but the god they have packaged here is not the god of recovery. there is no easier, softer way. our lives have become unmanageable.

how many drunks, addicts and junkies want to believe that if they just stop being negative that they will be able to have everything they've ever dreamed of? every damn one of us. that's what gets us HERE in the first place, isn't it? the secret is like winning the lotto for the addict - you mean i can have my crack and eat it too? all i have to do is be positive and think good thoughts? yay! hurray! let's start today!

i just hope that oprah and her compatriots will be paying for the rehab of all of those addicts they are leading down this path. this 'easier, softer way'... because it will end in a lavish ball of decadence that leads the addict right back into the willing arms of their addiction.

come on people - how many lindsay lohans, britney spears and olsen twins does it take to tell you money and power and influence don't make people happy, whole and centered. you can't have it all. you just can't. oprah can, you can't. and even she can't fill that great big hole in her heart either, that's why she's got to take each and every one of you with her. because when the cameras stop rolling and nobody's there she's so lonely and desperate every little girl in africa can't make it better.

i love her, oh how i love her. i love her vision, her passion and her ability to see need and meet it - her heart is good, oh so good, but like mine, her heart is deceitful. i think that means that it will always trick her - just like mine. it will always lead her away from god, to the easier, softer way. and unfortunately, where she leads, many, so very many will follow.

"the secret" tells you you are powerful. step one tells us that we are powerless. it's humiliating. it's horrible to have to admit that food, alcohol, sex, drugs, gambling or any other fix has control over you - but in doing so something happens. god does for us what we are not able to do for ourselves. this is the rub. powerful vs. powerless - can you see why they're making millions selling the books and dvd's? who doesn't want to believe that if they think it and say it it will happen? powerful indeed.

what they don't tell you is that all of those people who "knew the secret" from ancient days were still just people. they were still lonely, tried to fill their lives with stuff, money and power and led empty, temporary lives. they still died. dead. done. all of their stuff went to someone else - and their power was gone. that's a secret nobody is talking about.

thomas jefferson is one of the poster children of "the secret". from what i can see he was not a happy person. we're still finding out about the mess he made of his life and the secret relationships he had. he is held out as one of those who understood "the secret". did he have power and influence, sure - but he wasn't whole, healthy and happy. he was still searching, grasping and fleeting until the day he died. do we remember his name, yes. would have we remembered it if he didn't believe in "the secret"? i don't know. but i do know that there were things he didn't understand. things he didn't grasp. things he didn't understand and no power of positive thinking could give him that.

so please, if you are pondering 'the secret' please sit with this:

How It Works

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average.

There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.

Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it -- then you are ready to take certain steps.

At some of these we balked. thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.

Remember that we deal with alcohol, cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power that One is God. May you find Him now!

Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. we asked His protection and care with complete abandon.

Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Many of us exclaimed, "What an order! I can't go through with it." Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.

Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventure before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:
(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
(b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
(c) That God could and would if He were sought.

AA Big Book - Chapter 5

there is no 'easier, softer way', i'm sorry. i wish there was. i wish with all my heart there was. that i could just speak it, believe it and it would be true, but it didn't work for dorothy and it won't work for me.

this is the secret i want you to know. god loves you, god loves you, god loves you.

a million little lies? part 4

Live on 'Oprah,' a Memoirist Is Kicked Out of the Book Club - New York Times

a million little lies? part 3 - WOW oprah

i hoped, but honestly never in a million years did i think she'd turn around like this - i'm so thrilled she took this stand. YAY OPRAH!

Oprah Calls Defense of Author 'a Mistake' - New York Times

a million little lies? part 2 - dear oprah

dear oprah,

please take a stand against this. do more than support his lies. fiction is a beautiful thing, but not when it's passed off as fact. hold him accountable for all of those misled addicts who think that 'hold on' could possibly help them battle with their own addictions. recovery takes brutal honesty and facing truth head on. lies only beget lies.

your credibility is on the line here - we need to know we can trust you when you tell us that the truth is the truth. when people make a living off their words lies and falsehoods crumble the foundations upon which you stand. please make a stand here for the truth in recovery. far too many people look up to you to do anything else.

James Frey to Reunite with Oprah | A Million Little Pieces, James Frey : People.com

a million little lies?

The Smoking Gun Article - A Million Little Lies - January 8, 2006

i never read the book because of his arrogance in dealing with his supposed addictions and slamming AA - i was sad that oprah was promoting it for that reason - and now after reading this article am really sad that far too many people have been influenced by his falsehoods and lies.

it's terrifying that better research wasn't done prior to his fame and fortune and influence. he reminds me of one of my favorite teens from our last church. great heart, but you couldn't believe a word he said. the stories were always grand, gross and filled with violence and his own bravado. the pathology becomes so repeated that i truly believe they begin to believe their own embellishments and lies.

oh the damage of a story when it is not true. i'd be interested to hear if anyone has read it, or been influenced by it, especially the recovery aspects he promotes - his 'hold on' mentality of white-knuckling your addictions while still living a lifestyle that is surrounded by the drugs and alcohol. i think it's a dangerous, dangerous claim.

mixed metaphors

as a storyteller i am a metaphor junkie. i love to see complicated truth honored in the telling of a good story. this past spring at our old church my husband was allowed to preach and did such an extraordinary job that it really raised the bar for the master pastor. he was always very threatened by others outshining him.

to that end he decided that extensive object lessons and props were what was needed to raise his preaching to the next level. he had runners dressed in all sorts of comical ways to illustrate the things that keep us from 'running a good race', complete with hurdles and a finish line. as they all acted out their parts we were all told in this remedial way that we're not to run with cell phones, shopping bags and high heels, or at least that was the message i got...

he then goes on to preach and i notice off to the side there is still another prop unused thus far and i begin to wonder what lies on the table covered up by the cloth. i can hear where this sermon is going and start to guess at what is under the cloth. it's not long before my curiosity is satiated as he dramatically yanks off the cover to reveal it's contents. i groan inwardly. i can see where this is going. my fingers start to grip the arm rest.... he keeps talking. my nails are digging into the fabric covers. i begin to pray silently... please don't go here...

what was worrying me was the objects he had chosen for his illustration. a bowl of broccoli and one dozen crispy creme donuts. he's talking about the christian life - and how we need to buckle down and do the things that we might not want to do so that we can be successful in our 'walk with the lord'. i'm praying 'please eat the broccoli, please eat the broccoli...' he then compares the things that tempt us to the donuts, and the spiritual disciplines of reading our bible, praying and going to church (didn't you know there are only 3 spiritual disciplines... well, four, sorry, tithing to the church is one too...) to the bowl of broccoli... he then says that we all have to make a choice each day, and proceeds to take a huge bite out of the crispy creme.

sigh.

i am saddened. distressed. forlorn even. we hadn't started the process of leaving yet, so i was still committed to the idea that this was our community. this was the place where my children were receiving a lot of their spiritual learning. so i began to speak to the leadership. first of all they couldn't hardly remember the sermon, but they did remember him taking a bite of the donut. i tried to help them understand that the spiritual leader of our community thought that the christian life is like a bowl of broccoli that nobody really wants to eat. they thought i was reading too much into it. i tried to remind them that all they could remember was that he took a bite of the donut - not the broccoli. they still didn't get it.

he could have used anything. a bowl of cheetos and a nice steak dinner. corn flakes and granola - things of no substance compared to things that have substance - no brainer, right? wrong. if you're reading this and have an audience - please, please, please know that the stories you choose stay with your audience far longer than the 3 points of the sermon you are preaching. choose well - understand the deep truth you are conveying in the story - it's really the most important thing. it's why jesus taught this way.

story stays with the hearer. even if they can't mine the truth out at the moment they will remember the story and it's richness and beauty far longer than any bright doctrine or theology you are trying to pour into their heads. story is the way to their souls. it's living and active and can bring truth to life like no other kind of telling can. please take the time to understand what you're really saying underneath it all. it is a window into your soul.

technorati tags: sermon illustrations

been there, done that. doesn't work.

jennifer at my true self and i have been having a dialog about recovery from past pain. i started to comment on her blog, but i got so passionate and so drawn out that i felt it was more responsible to move to my own blog. so you can read the beginning of the dialog there and here is my response:

been there, done that. doesn't work.

it wasn't that i misunderstood your words, i knew them too well. it's what i was told my whole life. feed the white dog so the black dog starves, crucify the old man, you can say it anyway you want, but it's just putting paint on an ugly old building.

i was raised with this dualist mentality and it's not biblical. god is the god of redemption, he doesn't make old things new, he makes all things new - he will use your pain, when you face it, to help yourself and others. pretending or avoiding will only make it surface in other ugly ways. depression, anxiety, addictions, denial. none of them work, i've tried each and every one.

god is using my journey, and all the pain i've endured to help myself and others to see that it's not just wasted. god becomes the king of sick jokes otherwise. he's not. he's the redeemer. he'll redeem your past if you let him. but it only comes through facing it. not to dwelling there, like i said in my other comment, but facing it long enough to untangle it and see how it's causing pain in your life today, and stopping it from causing pain in your tomorrow. it's a hard, ugly road to walk, and it's 'not fair' or fun or a blessing, but it's worth it.

i highly recommend 'the wounded healer' by henri nouwen. it's in our brokenness that he is strong, glorified and life makes sense again. otherwise it's just this life long battle of curses and shame. god becomes a masochist and nothing makes sense.

it is the most diabolical teaching that i've had to free myself from. those who teach it can't even fathom the damage they are doing in the kingdom of god. it makes it 'our job' to do the crucifying, instead of it being a finished work. we become the one to be redeeming, instead of god. it's heresy and it's horrible. and until we call if for what it is the kingdom and churches will be in bondage to the idol of self, instead of seeing GOD as the redeemer and completer of our salvation.

that is the beauty of the 12 steps. that is why i truly think that they are inspired (not like biblical inspiration, k?) by god. truth was redeemed in those 12 steps. truth that somehow along the way the church seemed to loose.

step 1 - admit we are powerless and our lives have become unmanageable.

thinking that i can do this on my own is, well, i'm gonna call it for what it is, satanic. there, that's plain and simple how completely distorted this teaching is. i think it comes from the pit of hell.

satan doesn't want us cutting animals to bits and sacrificing virgins in his name. he'd much rather have us tied up in knots and not getting the full understanding of the redemptive process of god.

when you say:

"Today I am very aware of living between 2 worlds. The world of my false self – the victim, the hurt child that wont let anyone close…..and the world of my true self – willing to feel the real pain of what really happened, but not be controlled by it. It's my true self that Jesus is redeeming. That redemption is the primary issue on which I need to be focused, not past abuse, or its current affects."

it sounds so close to right that you might not see how very far this path will take you from your end goal. one small notch on a navigation compass might not seem like a huge deal when looking at the compass, but when navigating a course at sea it will mean leagues of distance you have to traverse to recover your true course.

i have traveled those leagues. this is truly just a plea to learn from my mistakes. see that the lie is subtle, but diabolical. god truly will redeem your pain if you let him. you don't have to war within yourself. there is only one world, your reality lives there. the journey is 'in and through'. like i said above. it's not easy, but it's worth it.