Soul's Code

BY PAUL KAIHLA — Oprah's endorsement helped make a viral, online video called, The Secret, a mainstream hit a couple of years ago.

The theme of The Secret is that the good or bad you see in your life situation is a reflection of the contents of your consciousness. No, not your intellectual property — your intention. The producers of the indie Internet phenomenon co-opted the phrase, "the law of attraction" — as in, you have what you believe in. Or more to their point: your affluence equals your attitude.

By that measure, many Americans — and good people all around the world — must have been thinking some very, very bad things, indeed, since September, 2008. Since then, in the United States alone, 7 million jobs have disappeared. That's more than the entire workforces of Sweden and Norway, combined, the source of President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize.

The unemployment rate is almost twice as high as it was during the 'jobless recovery' and 'off-shoring' panics during George Bush's first term (official Bureau of Labor Statistics graph below):

The Secret and 'prosperity preachers' like Joel Osteen would trick us into a contradiction: That the power of thought will exempt us from the givens of life. But as the higher power that they aspire to says: we all have to live with givens such as suffering, loss, even taxes — and neither The Secret nor Rev. Osteen can deliver an exemption unto us.

Don't take the macro economy, personally For one thing, the stock market, labor market and real estate markets lie far outside the control of any of we single minds.

New Age Fundamentalists believe we can "co-create" our own reality, but for all of their alternative-ness, they translate that concept through the prism of a conventionally-safe American dream: big house, hot car, trophy spouse (throw in a 401K). It's a highly fractal, partial view of the ultimate reality they claim to have a purchase on.

Many motivational speakers are wanna-be mystics who miss the message The Osteens and Tony Robbins and other TV-type motivational speakers mine the body of work of transpersonal psychology and mystics. But they distort and mind-warp the mystical principle that we humans have the power to translate energy into form, the same way that the invisible nuclear force in an atom materially positions electrons and other particles that are the building blocks of the world around us. Spiritual power doesn't directly correlate to financial instruments. Look at the Dalai Lama.

Soul's Code contributors offer first-person stories of recovery from job loss, blended with insights from spiritual teachers and cognitive tactics drawn from professional therapists.

NEXT: When Material Loss Equals Spiritual Gain