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The Secret Vs. Evolutionary Astrology
(Or…Why The Secret Doesn’t Do it For Me)

So, The Secret. Hmm…

People REALLY seem to love it, don’t they? It’s hit the big time. It’s been on Oprah. Many New Age-y-type people seem to find that it hits the spot. They love it. Eat it up. Espouse it’s merits and talk about it to anyone who will listen. People are being trained as “Belief Repatterning Practitioners” in order to use its teachings on the general public. The book and movie are flying off the shelves. It’s pretty much everywhere.

For those who don’t know, The Secret is a book (later made into a movie) talking about the Law of Attraction. The basic premise is that everything experienced in the life of a human being is something he/she has attracted into his/her life. Like attracts like. So positive thoughts attract positive events/things. Negative thoughts attract negative events/things. “We create our own reality,” is the constant refrain. If we are attracting circumstances into our lives that we do not want, The Secret says, it is because we have limiting negative beliefs (that need to be “repatterned” by those Belief Repatterning people). The Secret focuses quite a lot on material abundance. We live in an endlessly abundant Universe, it says (I agree), and if we can visualize it, we can have it. A new car, a new home, a diamond ring, a wonderful mate…all these things can be our’s, almost instantly, if we think positively, believe we can have them and visualize them into being.

Now, I fully understand the power of positive thinking and creative visualization. And, on a basic level, I agree that we create the reality in which we live. But the message of The Secret only seemed like part of the story. I understood the Law of Attraction, but what, I asked myself, made this single universal law the key to our realities, when there were so many other universal laws simultaneously at work in our lives? The explanation that our negative and limiting beliefs were the only thing keeping us from the exact life we wanted seemed a little simplistic to me.

When I delved into my problem with this message, I realized it was just not fitting with my use of evolutionary astrology as a tool for understanding reality.

The major difference between these two strains of thought is that with The Secret, what a human being wants (along with the ability to positively visualize this want into existence) is the most powerful force in his or her life. Seemingly, the only reason one would not get what one wants is that the person has negative limiting beliefs holding him or herself back. (And this can possibly be remedied with Belief Repatterning Sessions.)

Using evolutionary astrology, the evolutionary desire for a human being (interconnected to the evolution of the whole) is the most powerful force in that person’s life. Evolutionary desire relates to what an individual incarnated on Earth to experience - in an attempt to learn, teach, grow and evolve, while creating specific energetics on the planet. Evolutionary astrology works with the idea that there are certain experiences we signed up for. Those experiences can take a number of different forms, but the themes remain pretty much the same. There are certain things we need to learn and master, certain things we need to move on from, and certain things we need to steer away from altogether. Some individuals have quite a lot of leeway (or free will) in their lives, and others have less because their life experiences must be very specific.

With the system of evolutionary astrology, what a person wants on a personal/individual level is not always in alignment with his or her evolutionary intent, and when it isn’t, it will appear that the individual is not getting what he or she wants. Rather than holding him or herself back with limiting beliefs, the person is simply not meant to have that particular want fulfilled at that particular time. It’s a matter of evolutionary timing. So the want being unfulfilled is purposeful, not simply the “fault” of the person’s limited and negative beliefs/thoughts.

I see this illustrated all the time in people’s charts. One example is the Moon’s Nodes. There is a North Node and a South Node in every chart. The North Node represents a new path of development and (hopefully) mastery for the lifetime - new and uncharted territory that can feel quite foreign and uncomfortable. But this is where the energy lies. This is what the person must develop in order to be successful. The South Node relates to an area that the person has already mastered to a certain extent. It feels comfortable and familiar and is where the person often feels that his or her glory lies. But this is also an area where the person can’t hang out too much. There is no glory to be relived by staying in the South Node and no new energy there, only karmic loops trying to kick the person out onto the North Node path. (Of course, there are always some exceptions to this, and this is kept simple for the sake of this article.)

The point is, of course, that people don’t always WANT to take the path that is actually the most beneficial for them. They often don’t want to venture out of old territory and into new. The challenges that lie there aren’t things they would necessarily desire from an egoic perspective, but they are desired on an evolutionary level.

Another example is Saturn. Saturn is not considered the most fun or desirable planet, that’s for sure. It relates to an area where we must take on difficult challenges - challenges that take a great deal of time and effort and skill-building. Saturn points out an area where we need to mature, grow the hell up, and get serious. An area that we need to structure and plan carefully. For illustration sake, think about your Dad standing over you making sure you study for your math exam when all you want to do is go outside and play. That’s Saturn. It’s something you do because it’s “for your own good.” And it (along with the Nodes) is an area that often has fear attached. Again, this is not an area that a person would necessarily WANT to take on. It’s scary and challenging, sometimes to the extreme. But it’s something a person NEEDS to take on, for the sake of his or her personal development and evolution. In this respect, what a person is creating and experiencing is not the result of limiting beliefs that need to be cleared out and leaped over. What is being created (although perhaps not “desirable” circumstances on a certain level) does actually have an important purpose - a broader reason and vision that we perhaps cannot always see 100% clearly from our personal perspectives. We might not understand why we aren’t getting that new car we’re visualizing or that awesome new mate. The Secret would suggest that we are just not believing we can have it strongly enough, and that we only need to change our negative beliefs, and it can be our’s. But to me, this ventures into the territory of solipsism. It loses an element of higher purpose and interconnection. Not to mention context!

An example of the context of which I’m speaking of is this: What about culture shaping our desires? What do people want in 2007 in North America and why? And are all desires completely justified? Is it in the best interests of ourselves or of the planet that we be able to have exactly what we want? Who and what taught us to want those things? Where are the roots of our personal desires?

(Personally, I don’t want to live in a world of consumer capitalists who have figured out how to have EXACTLY what they want WHEN they want it. I’m pretty sure we would need a few more planets if that were to happen.)

Another example of missing context, in my opinion, is a lifetime lived for the purpose of teaching others. When a person takes on a teaching lifetime, they might take on “undesirable” life circumstances for the purpose of illustration for others. They might take on circumstances that seem unjust so as to teach others about injustice; they might take on poverty to teach about poverty, etc. If we sever ourselves from that interconnection (that my life might have something to do with your life and vice versa), we start to look at things in an extremely individualistic and, again, solipsistic, way. We lose sense of any collective responsibility for the circumstances of Mama Earth and her inhabitants, and it’s just another race to the material manifestation finish line.

So what happens when one person’s desire is at complete cross-purposes with another? Or when the desire of an entire group clashes with the desire of another group? Who wins out then? What happens when the workers decide they want to be owners? When the working class decides it wants to be CEOs? What happens when the housekeepers of the world decide they want to own the houses and put their employers to work for them? Which desire wins, I wonder? Does the weight of the desires of the majority take over? Or the desires of the more powerful, the more self-confident? So then, is it, again, just a matter of the powerful creating more power, the wealthy creating more wealth? Group realities, group beliefs, and the reinforcement of certain beliefs to benefit some and enslave others…all things that are not really addressed.

I find that The Secret (and a similar film titled “What the Bleep Do We Know”) is using theories of quantum physics but is losing touch with the mainstream of human evolution. Yes, there may come a time when everyone’s personal desires are in complete alignment with the evolutionary desire for them and for the planet. Even then, I would take pause before promoting instant (or near instant) manifestation. And certainly I feel more caution needs to be taken with these concepts at this point in time. In 2007, there are too many manufactured wants being created by consumer capitalism and not enough responsibility being taken for what is desired/created - not to mention, often, an absence of spiritual discipline and understanding to guide the manifestation process. So to me, the world The Secret is attempting to create is not one I desire to inhabit.