The Secret is a compelling documentary that has some great material as well as content that is a bit confusing.

From beginning the speakers claim the secret gives you everything you want. “You can have, do or be anything you want. I don’t care how big it is. Do you want to be a millionaire? What kind of house do you want to live in?”

Does this mean my dream of becoming Superman living in Earth orbit aboard the Star Ship Enterprise might be possible? ;-)

"Recognize the beautiful and wonderful things around you, blessing and praising them. On the other side, things that aren’t working, don’t spend your energy complaining and faulting." --From The Secret

So, in all fairness, I bless and praise the wonderful and beautiful things in The Secret because they far outweigh what didn't make sense. As for what I didn't like, I will not waste my energy complaining and faulting. ;-) This doesn't mean though that one shouldn't point out something that needs further attention and clarification before it can be understood or improved.

Below are my notes and more comments I wrote about The Secret. My quotes are in Blue:

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The secret lesson begins with: Everything coming into your life you are attracting to your life and it is caused by images you are holding in your mind. Why do 1% of the population earns 96% of all the money being earned? (Because they have The Secret or are a bit greedy perhaps?)

Think of yourself as a magnet. Like attracts like. Our job is to hold onto thoughts of what we want. You become what you think about most and you attract what you think about most.

Law of attraction can be summarized in three simple words. Thoughts become things.

At one point an image of a man standing at a lottery sign comes on screen. (Can you use The Secret to win the lottery?)

See yourself living in abundance and you will attract it. Most people are thinking about what they don’t want and it shows up over and over.

Law of attraction doesn’t care if what you think is good or bad. (That's not good for us if al Qaeda wants to use The Secret to destroy America. Or what if someone wants to use the secret to destroy the world. :-( We definitely have the weapons to do that. There must be people out there using The Secret to counter those using it to do harm.)

If you are looking at debt and feeling terrible about yourself, that’s what you are going to get more of. When you focus on the things you don’t want, you are calling that into existence. The law isn’t biased to what you like or don’t like. (The word focus here is key. You won't want to ignore the things you don't want but you also don't want to focus on them. If you focus too much on them, it will destroy your vitality and ability to take appropriate actions to avoid them.)

If you are complaining about how bad it is, what you are creating is more bad. When you focus on what you don’t want it will come faster. Your life will change when you stop focus on what you don’t want to what you do want. (The trick is to transform your entire thought orientation so you focus first on the things you want. Don't lose an awareness of what you don't want but just don't waste all your energy focusing on it at the expense of losing site of the action needed to avoid it.

Although, this actually opens a can of worms and raises many more questions. When you think about what you want; peace, love, happiness, prosperity, longevity, etc., this awareness will automatically confront you with those things that could potentially prevent you from having them. For example, say you live in New York City and post 9/11 life is going very smoothly for you. The Secret guides your every thought and you are constantly thinking of those wonderful things you want that continually bring you more joy and happiness. meanwhile, on the other side of the world an awful war is raging in Iraq. Every day hundreds die in suicide bombings across the country. Rage and resentment towards America in the Arab World is at a boiling point.

Al Qaeda starts getting more funding and more and more willing suicide bombers come forward hoping to be chosen for the next suicide mission. These people have been using The Secret for years, meditating over and over in their minds on the destruction of America. They decide the best target to attack is New York, the ultimate symbol of western power and domination.

Back to the New Yorker using The Secret. Because his mind isn't occupied by things he doesn't want, ie.; the destruction of New York, will he be less inclined to challenge U.S. policy putting him in danger of losing those things he wants including his life. If you're always thinking of the things you do want, wouldn't this include an awareness of what you don't want because it could potentially prevent you from getting what you want.

If you want more of the things that bring you joy in life, then surely this must include wanting to avoid the things making it less likely you will get them. Someone using the Secret to acquire wealth, happiness, good relationships, etc, would be wise to exert some of their energy towards preventing things that could prevent them from having these. If you live in a city filled with crime, drugs and murder, naturally it would be good investing in social outreach, programs for the homeless, etc. Or using the example of war in Iraq, someone using The Secret must surely also use it to rally for peace and take appropriate action towards the government to get a change in foreign policy to end war.)

You end up attracting to you the predominant thoughts in your mind. What you think about you bring about. Mind shapes the very thing being perceived.

It is proven scientifically that affirmative thought is 100 times more powerful than negative thought. Leaders in the past wanted to keep the secret and not share the power. they kept people ignorant of the secret. (Please see Chicken Soup of the Soul guy comment below)

Laws of universe act the same on good people and bad people. gravity doesn’t care if you are good or bad, you are going to hit the ground.

Important to accept that you create your reality. We have 60,000 thoughts a day and they can’t be monitored. Feelings let us know what we are thinking. Emotions let you know what you are attracting. When you celebrate the good feelings, you’ll draw more good feelings.

Our feelings are feedback mechanism to tell you whether you are on course or off. If you feel good, you are creating a future on track with your desires. If you feel bad, you are creating a future off track with your desires. (What about the folks who most likely felt good about scoring 1st class tickets aboard the Titanic or the Hindenburg.)

Whatever you are thinking and feeling today is creating your future. Rich get richer, poor get poorer. All about what you are feeling.

“You can begin feeling healthy, prosperous and love surrounding you even if it’s not there. The universe will correspond to the nature of your song and manifest it because that’s the way you feel. Your thoughts and your feelings create your life.” -- Michael Beckwith (This is a cool quote. It makes you think of Nelson Mandela hunkered down in his prison cell. He must have spent his time imagining being free and leading his nation out of apartheid.)

(Beckwith is an interesting fellow who I could totally picture playing a good guy in the movie The Matrix. I got to meet him at a 2012 Lightning in the Bottle festival in LA.)

Beckwith continues that it’s hard to accept your thoughts and feelings create your life. Whatever thought has done in your life, it can be undone by a shift in your awareness.

When you’re feeling down, put on beautiful piece of music or start singing. Start thinking of something beautiful. Life can be phenomenal and it should be when you start using the secret. (Good advice.)

Aladdin myth, there is no limit to your wishes. Every tradition teaches there is something bigger than us.

1st step in the secret is to ask, make a command to the universe, let it know what you want. The universe will respond to your thoughts. Sit down and write down what you want. Start it, I’m so happy and grateful now that... This is like having the universe as your catalogue, it is just you placing your order with the universe.

step 2. Believe that it is already yours. Have unwavering faith. Believing in the unseen. Universe will start rearrange itself to make it happen for you.

Anyone that ever accomplished anything, didn’t know how they were going to do it, they just knew they were going to do it. Doubt and frustration may come when you’re not getting what you want. Recognize that feeling and replace with an unwavering faith.

step 3. To receive. Feel wonderful about it. Feel good and happy. When you feel good you are putting yourself in the frequency of what it is you are wanting.

This is a feeling universe. (contrast with earlier statement that this is cold unfeeling universe that doesn't care if the law of gravity snares a good or bad person) if you intellectually believe something and you don’t have the corresponding feeling underneath it, you don’t necessarily have enough power to manifest what you want in your life. When you turn fantasy into fact, you are in position to build bigger and better fantasies.

The universe likes speed. don’t delay, don’t second guess. don’t doubt. when opportunity is there. When the intuitive nudge is there, act. That’s your job. That’s all you have to do. You will attract everything you require. You’ve got to pay attention to what you are attracted to.

“You can start with nothing. and out of nothing and no way a way will be made.” -- Beckwith (More people come to mind. Malcolm X, Jack London, Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou, James Cameron)

How long will it take to manifest this stuff. I don’t have rule book that tells you it will take 30 days, 30 months, etc. It has more to do with you being in alignment with the universe itself. Universe does what it does with zero effort. (Does just being in alignment with the good feelings put you in alignment with the universe?)

There are no rules according to universe (contrast this statement with their earlier one talking about the law of gravity rules being unbendable for good or bad people) You provide the feelings of having it now and the universe will respond.

A lot of people feel stuck or in prison by current circumstances. Your current reality will begin to change by watching this and beginning to use the Secret. Expect the best rather than the worst.

Most people look at current affairs and say this is who I am. It’s who you were. It’s the residual outcome of your past thoughts and actions. If you look at this to define who you are, then you doom yourself to have the same in the future.

“All we are is a result of what we have thought.” -- Buddha

1. start making a list of things to be grateful for. gratitude is the way to bring more things into your life. It attracts things in.

Every morning when you get up, say thank you. As soon as you begin feeling differently about what you have, focus on what you already have that you’re grateful for. (Good advice. I know this is true and everyone needs to learn how to be grateful for what they have because things could always be worse.)

Everyone has times when things go bad. Very important to be in an attitude of gratitude.
Visualize: When you visualize you materialize. When you are visualizing, always dwell upon the end result. This is the holographic experience that help you feel like you don’t need things because you already have them. Put yourself in a feeling place of actually having what you want. Feel the joy and feel the happiness.

That feeling and inner seeing is open doorway for power of universe to begin to express. Our job is not to figure out the how. It will show up if you turn it over to the universe, you will be surprised and dazzled. This should never be a chore. Feel good and exhilarated by this process.

Difference of those who live in the magic of life and those who don’t, is people who live in magic of life have habituated ways of being. Magic happens with them wherever they go.

“If you can’t imagine it, it will never happen” -- George Lucas (this wasn’t in The Secret but I remembered hearing it awhile ago and it sounds like it should belong in The Secret)

Focus on what you’re grateful for already.

Chicken Soup of Soul guy grew up in family with dad who believed rich people had ripped everyone off. anybody with money must have deceived somebody, who do you think “I am rockafeller?” (this was the dad’s favorite phrase) grew up believing money was evil. Life was difficult, you had to struggle. (Maybe he thought that because according to the beginning of The Secret, the wealthy 1% who owned 96% of wealth tried to keep the secret for themselves and not share it with the poor or their industrial slaves. That sounds pretty evil and deceptive to me)

your job is to declare what you’d like to have from catalogue of the universe. Most people have a goal to get out of debt. You will attract debt. When you focus on lack and scarcity and what you don’t have, you’ll never be able to get out. You’ll attract more of what you don’t have. Focus on abundance. Focus on prosperity.

believe, money comes easily and frequently. Wealth is a mindset. It’s about how you think. Midas touch, everything turns to gold.

So many people make tremendous amount of money but their relationships stink. Their spirituality is nil. That’s not wealth. You can have a ton of money but it won’t guarantee you are wealthy. Some people are spiritual but they are sick and broke all the time. That’s not spiritual. Balance needed between spiritual and material. (Good point.)

Go for inner joy, inner peace, inner vision first and then outer things appear. - work on internal first, then external. We are creators of our universe. Every wish will manifest in our life. Important what your thoughts are and your feelings are. Because it will manifest.

Inside relationships, understand yourself. Enjoy your own company before others can enjoy your company. Do you treat yourself the way you want other people to treat you? (Good point.)

“It wasn’t until I fell in love with Lisa, my mocha skin, my full lips, my round hips, my curly hair. It wasn’t until I found in love with me, that the rest of the world was able to fall in love with me as well.” --Lisa Nichols (This is so true. Now how one may go about it is the real trick.)

In relationships we are use to complaining about other people. Always focusing on the other person. For them to work, you must focus on what you appreciate about the other person, not what you hate. Take a piece of paper and write down all the things you appreciate about that person, why you love them. When you appreciate and acknowledge their strengths, the problems will fade away. (Good advice)

We cannot control other people. When someone comes home in a bad mood, and you come home in a good mood, you will find yourself in a different place than that person.

Only one person can become in charge of your joy and your bliss, and that person is you. Your joy lies within you, nobody else can create that happiness. (Very true) Our body is the product of our thoughts. Thoughts and emotions determines the physical structure of our bodies.

Affirmations of good: The universe is a masterpiece of abundance of good health and well being. When you open yourself up to the abundance of the universe, you will experience the joy, wonder, good health, good nature. When you shut yourself off with negative thoughts, you’ll feel as though every day is painful to get through.

Dis-ease-- a body that is not at ease. Result of stress. One of the links breaks.

“When person has manifested a disease in the body temple, through the process of thinking rightly, it can be turned around.” -- Beckwith

If you have a disease, and you focus on it, you will draw more diseased cells.

One focuses on joy, possibility, focus on all reasons why they should be joyful and grateful. Another person may focus on the pain, and disease. Healing will not occur until they shift attention from being sick to being well. Move stress from body and it does what it was intended to do. Heal itself. You can change your life and you can heal yourself.

guy who crashed plane:
Told he would be vegetable and never walk by doctors. “That’s the picture they saw of me, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was what I thought. I pictured myself being a normal person again, walking out of that hospital. I could not afford to let anything come into my mind to distract me from my goal and my vision. If I summed up my life, for people what they can do in life, man becomes what he thinks about.” (I liked this story. Amazing guy.)

People have a tendency to look at things they want, and say I want that. Then they look at things they don’t want. And they give as much energy and more energy into stamping it out, eliminating it, obliterating it. War on terror etc. We tend to fight against everything we don’t want. Anything we focus on we can create. If we’re really angry at war, we are adding our energy to it. It only creates resistance. What resists persists. Anti-war creates more war. Mother Theresa said, “I will never attend an anti war rally, I’ll attend a pro peace rally.” Be pro opponent rather than anti candidate. More you talk about what you don’t want or how bad it is, you are creating more of that. (Very interesting. Probably good advice. I went to the March 17th, 2007 march on Washington rally and there were a bunch of militant counter protestors seeking to oppose the anti-war protestors. I wonder if everyone changed their mental orientation towards being pro peace, would there have been less opposition? It's an experiment worthy of testing.)

Maybe you have to be informed but you don’t have to be inundated. When the voice and vision on inside become more profound and more clear and loud than the opinions on the outside, you’ve mastered your life.

Learn to become still, take your attention from what you don’t want, and put your attention on what you want to experience.

Energy flows where attention goes.

“It’s not your job to change the world or the people around you. It’s your job to go with the flow inside of the universe and celebrate it inside the world that exists.” -- Lisa Nichols
(What about Martin Luther King, Jr.? Gandhi? Christ? Buddha? There is a story of Gautama Buddha that comes to mind. It was when he decided to avoid a life of extremes and he traveled down to the river to break his fast. After eating a bowl of rice he made a challenge to the universe. “If my bowl of rice goes up stream against the current, I will attain enlightenment” Sure enough, the bowl traveled up stream against the current. Sometimes it seems that the current and flow of life leads to people taking the blue pill. (Matrix Analogy) If you want to change the world, sometimes you have to take the red pill and go upstream. Buddha is one of those people who did change the world.)

if the universe is a catalogue and everybody goes for the stuff. Aren’t we going to run out of stuff? There is more than an enough to go around for everyone. There is a lie that acts like a virus within the mind of humanity, that lie is there is not enough good to go around, there is lack, and limitation and there’s just not enough. that lie has people living in fear, greed, stinginess and those thoughts become their experience, so the world has taken a nightmare peel. The truth is there is more than enough good to go around. there is more than enough creative ideas, more than enough power, love, joy. All of this begins to come through a mind that is aware of its own infinite nature. - Pics of Christ and Buddha show up on screen at this point - All the great teachers teach life is supposed to be abundant. Just when we think resources are dwindling, we find new resources to replace them.

When everyone starts to live from their heart and go for what they want, they don’t all go for the same things. We don’t all want BMW’s, we don’t all want the same person or the same experiences, the same clothing. (What about the masses of consumers in America and China who are going for the same things: BMW’s, Humvees, the popular fashions, computers, Ipods, trying to attract the same thin supermodel types etc. Are they not operating from their heart?)

There is enough for everyone, if you believe it, see it and act from it, it will show up for you. You have to be hungry for it. The universe will deliver for you everything you’ve been wanting. Recognize the beautiful and wonderful things around you, blessing and praising them. On the other side, things that aren’t working, don’t spend your energy complaining and faulting.

Most leaders missed the part of the secret which is empowering and sharing with others. First time in history we have the power to gain knowledge at our finger tips.

When we look at our own bodies, what we see is the tip of the iceberg. Everything is made of the exact same thing. Everything is energy.

Most people define themselves by their finite body. You are an energy field. (The Star Wars theme song begins playing inside my head at this point. :-) ) Quantum physicists believe energy creates the world. It can never be created or destroyed, it always was always has been everything that ever existed always exists, it’s moving into form, through form and out of form. Theologian: God created universe. Always was, always has been, never can be created or destroyed... etc. Same descriptions just different terminology. You are a spiritual being. You are an energy field operating in a larger energy field. We’re all connected, we just don’t see it. Just one energy field. Body just holds your spirit. You are eternal life. You are god manifested in human form, made in perfection. We are in the image of God. We are another way the universe is becoming conscious of itself. We are the infinite field of unfolding possibility. Every great tradition has told you are created in the image of the creative source. All power is from within and thus under our control.

Everybody has a sad story. That’s like so-what. the question, is what are you going to do now. You are the designer of your destiny. You write the story. The pen is in your hands. The outcome is in whatever you choose.

You can begin where you are, you can begin to generate within yourself a harmony and happiness. We can create it the way we want it. You can break yourself free from hereditary problems. Cultural codes, social beliefs, and prove once and for all that the power within you is greater than the power in the world.

Whether you think you can or can’t, you are right.

“Your life will be what you create it as and nobody will stand in judgment of it for now and ever.” -- Niel Donald Walsch (Niel Donald should tell this to the Taliban being held in Guantanamo Bay)

Inner happiness is the fuel of success.

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors up where there were only walls.”
-- Joseph Campbell

We use 5% of the potential of the human mind. Imagine a world where people were using their full emotional and mental potential.

See yourself with the good that you desire. Every great, leader, every great philosopher. They all understood the secret. (Every bad leader and every brutal dictator must have also understood the secret. Because the Law of Attraction doesn't care if what you think is good or bad so it must mean that it also doesn't care if your means are right or wrong.)

You are the creator of your destiny. Imagine what you can do from this day forward. Nobody else can sing your song or write your story.