Oprah changed my life today. Sugarbear.

So Oprah's "life-changing" episode yesterday was all about "The Secret," which is ushering in a "new era of humankind." I'm OK with that, as long as it's an era in which every mommyvan has 4-wheel drive. And also Edy's Grand Light French Silk ice cream is still readily available in your local supermarket. And people serve goat cheese salad at cocktail playdates.

I'm just putting in my order for those things, since that is apparently how "The Universe" works.

The folks who appeared on the show yesterday, including that Chicken Soup for the Soul guy and a panelful of other similar thinkers, explained that "the secret" to having everything you want is to attract everything you want into your life with your thoughts and feelings.

What you focus on expands, they say. Well, that explains what happened to my ass. Please, people, I know it looks good, but stop focusing on it so much.

If you focus on your hardship and suffering and debt and big fat smokin' hot ass and chocolate ice cream and anger and resentment, those things will expand. Your hands will be so full with them you won't have room for anything new and wonderful.

The trick is grounding yourself in gratitude, which is like a spiritual root starter, and then attracting the life you want by focusing on it - living into it.

Once you do that, "The Universe" will align with your intention and you will soar to your goals as though propelled by a slingshot. Not only that, but goodness on a level you can't even imagine will be attracted to you.

There are some caveats.

The life you want has to contribute something positive to the world. Start by asking "How can I serve?" instead of "How can I get mine?"

You have to be active in your focus. You can't just sit around visualizing the book deals and the ice cream and the crispy goat cheese salads and the 4-wheel-drive Honda Odyssey touring editions that suddenly start selling for half their normal price. You have to work toward these things.

Crazy bad stuff will happen to you anyway, and you have to learn to enjoy all your crises as learning experiences.

Of course, I don't need to point out that none of these ideas are secret. Nor are they new.

What goes around comes around. Karma. Like attracts like. Your focus creates your reality. There is no spoon. Are Jedis allowed to love?

(seriously, it's worth it to click, even if you don't watch the whole thing)

Everything they were saying about The Secret seemed to boil down to living intentionally, which is what every spiritual practice and social movement and Matrix movie all boil down to.

I can get behind that, and goodness knows I could certainly benefit from doing more of it.

So maybe my kneejerk cynicism is just defensiveness. Someone who was really living intentionally would have a cleaner house than I do.

But my very first thought was, "Geez, how stupid was I to have attracted all that cancer into my life. Boy. I sure won't do that again. And wow - all those people in Darfour really need to get in touch with their spiritual sides and align themselves with the great goodness of the universe. And maybe if the people in New Orleans had been more self-actualized as a community, Katrina wouldn't have wiped out all those neighborhoods. Or maybe they were just a bunch of sinners who got smitten by God the universe..."

I think positive thinking does have enormous power. But it also has an ugly flipside that blames people for the awful things that happen to them. It's natural, of course. We all want to insulate ourselves from bad things, and when some horrible tragedy befalls someone, why not search for some reassurance that they had some kind of control over it, and therefore the rest of us have control over whether it happens to us?

Because we don't have control a lot of the time. Yes, there are amazing lessons to be learned in the midst of the worst things that happen to you. And ultimately, the very worst things in your life could end up being the things for which you are the most grateful.

Or they could be just bad fucking luck.

My aunt, who was diagnosed with colon cancer last fall learned a couple weeks ago that her cancer has spread, and her doctors do not believe treatment would be beneficial. They have referred her to hospice. They have prepared her and her family to expect her to be around for only 3 to 9 months.

I talked to her week before last for a long time on the phone. She talked about the funeral plans she and her husband are making together. She asked me about how to get a good photo for her obituary, which she is writing now.

And while she recognizes that there are certain gifts to be found in her situation (a chance to say goodbye, to make her final arrangements the way she wants them, to not waste any precious time) she finds herself wishing fairly frequently that she just didn't know.

We agreed that it's just awful either way. We also agreed that the cancer experience is enormously educational on a physical, spiritual, social and every other level.

Then she said, "I envy you because you got to learn all of these things about life and still have a life afterward. I won't."

Because I do believe in some manner of existence outside of the mortal coil, and because I believe that that life may be free of the pain and blindness we experience here, I think that death itself is not a thing to fear. Not for the dying, anyway. It stinks for the rest of us to lose someone.

And the crushing knowledge that your family will lose you and you will lose them is such enormous suffering. It is more than anyone should endure.

All of which makes me think that the Buddhists know the real secret, which I say without any of the bitterness that, being unable to hear my tone and inflection, you might read into it.

Life is suffering. And the way out of it - the way to get what you want -  is to stop wanting anything.

Maybe that's what they meant by asking "How can I serve?" instead of "What can I get?"

Comments

[AmericanFamily]

Oh, I watched that stupid show yesterday. It pretty much summed up everything I really dislike about Oprah. She happened to get really ridiculously wealthy and she wants to believe it is because she is somehow really DESERVING rather than just the luck of the draw.

I mean, I try to do good stuff, so where is my bazillion dollars??

[jenn]

I didn't see the show, but if I had I hope that I would have had the exact same reaction as you. (I think Oprah is full of crap most of the time... sounds like yesterday was no exception.)

Insightful and lovely post, btw.

[What Now?]

I had the same concerns about the "healing ministry" at my parish a few years ago. The rector had gotten cancer, had told God very firmly what she expected in terms of her recovery from said cancer (*really* specific, as in "I expect that the tumor will be no bigger than X cm."), had prayed daily about those very specific terms, and lo and behold! exactly what she had prayed for happened. So then she decided that this was how healing worked, and she started a ministry in the parish to help other people experience the same kind of healing?

And who am I to dispute her personal spiritual and physical experience? But of course the flip side is that the people who don't recover, who actually get sicker or die, apparently didn't have enough faith, or weren't specific enough in their prayers/demands, or didn't "attract" healing -- which means that illness winds up being a character default, a lack of faith or will. And I have HUGE problems with this, not least because I think it's fundamentally un-Christian and thus inappropriate for an Episcopalian rector or for anyone else who says they believe that they themselves are not in charge of the universe.

Blessings to your aunt and her family in this time of extended goodbyes.

[Figlet]

Love this post.