The Secret that s no secret

Have you heard about the phenomenal book “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne and its accompanying DVD?

According to Newsweek’s Jerry Adler, it “could be the fastest-selling book of its kind in the history of publishing with 1.75 million copies projected to be in print by March 2, just over three months since it came out, plus 1.5 million DVDs sold.”

Several friends passed on to me copies of the DVD a few weeks ago. Only recently did I receive the book from Annie Rañola, a young businesswoman and graduate of my courses. I didn’t know the book was already in local bookstores.

Intriguing
My curiosity was aroused because of the very enticing and intriguing promo write-up on the jacket of the DVD:

“The Secret,” it says, “has existed throughout the history of humankind. It has been discovered, coveted, suppressed, hidden, lost and recovered. It has been hunted down, stolen and bought for vast sums of money. Now, for the first time in history, ‘The Secret’ is being revealed to the world.

“A number of exceptional men and women discovered ‘The Secret,’ and went on to become known as the greatest people who ever lived. Among them: Plato, Leonardo, Galileo, Napoleon, Hugo, Beethoven, Lincoln, Edison, Einstein and Carnegie, to name a few.

“‘The Secret’ reveals how to apply this powerful knowledge to your life in every area from health to wealth, to success in relationships. ‘The Secret’ is everything you have dreamed of and is beyond your wildest dreams.”

Irresistible
Wow! With that kind of a buildup, who wouldn’t want to grab the DVD or book? It seems too good to resist!

As Newsweek pointed out, ‘The Secret’ “was a stroke of marketing genius.” Adds Donavin Bennes, a buyer who specializes in metaphysics for Borders Books: “We all want to be in on a secret. But to present it as the secret, that was brilliant.”

Who is Byrne? “A divorced mother who had hit a rocky patch in her business and personal life. In that moment of despair when she wept and wept (as she recounted to Oprah on the first of two broadcasts devoted to her work), she discovered a long-neglected book dating from 1910 called ‘The Science of Getting Rich.’ In it she found how to let your thoughts and feelings get you everything you want and [was] determined to share it with the world. She called it ‘The Secret.’”

And what is ‘The Secret’ all about? It is the Law of Attraction that holds that you create your own reality through your thoughts.

Age-old principle
So what’s the big secret about that? Actually, nothing. This law or principle has been known for thousands of years. Buddha taught that the world as we know it is nothing more than our own mental creation. In my “Inner Mind” seminars, which I have been conducting regularly for the last 20 years, I mention the law of attraction as one of the four hidden laws of nature that says “like attracts like.”

If you think positive thoughts, positive things happen to you. If negative, then negative things happen.

There is, therefore, nothing new about “The Secret.” In fairness to Byrne, she never claimed that what she discovered was new. What is new is the way she promoted and marketed the book and the film. After arousing the curiosity of the Australian and American public, it is now sweeping the middle and upper-class segments of Philippine society.

The idea that if you visualize strongly enough something you really want, say, a particular car or camera, that object will physically appear before you sooner or later, is still not accepted by mainstream scientists.

“That’s preposterous, on a scientific level,” they would say. But a few quantum physicists claim to have experimental evidence that “thoughts can influence physical objects.”

Dr. Robert Jahn, an engineer, and psychologist Brenda Dunne of Princeton University have been conducting telekinesis experiments under scientifically controlled conditions to show the influence of thought on the fall of a roulette dice (See their book “Margins of Reality”).

Untapped powers
Although the law of attraction is really no secret at all, I would give credit to Byrne for calling attention to one of the hidden laws of nature and to the largely untapped powers of the human mind, which this writer has been teaching and espousing for the last two decades.

By the way, the other three related hidden laws of nature not in ‘The Secret’ are: The Law of Affirmation (what you affirm becomes a reality); the Law of Compensation (whatever you do comes back to you, otherwise known as the law of karma); and the Law of Causality (everything has a cause; nothing happens by accident).

If you want to learn how to apply these hidden laws of nature in your life, attend my next seminar on “Inner Mind Development,” “Basic ESP and Intuition Development,” and “Soulmates, Karma and Reincarnation.” Call Inner Mind Development Institute at 8107245, 8926806 or 0906-3561799. There’s one scheduled in Davao, March 24-25. Call 0917-8313649 or 0917-7120253.

http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/lifestyle/lifestyle/view_article.php?article_id=55787

When Signs are Ignored

What happened to me gave me valuable insights and lessons in life.

Most of us ignore our health. We do not stop smoking until we develop emphysema or, worse, lung cancer; we do not stop pushing ourselves, working hard like a carabao, until we have a heart attack; we do not stop eating junk food until we develop diabetes, ulcer or colon cancer; and men will not stop having unsafe sex with multiple partners until they develop AIDS, and so on.

Before a fatal illness strikes, there are usually warning signs. Even those so-called silent heart attacks (that are symptomless) have some subtle early signs, if we but listen to our bodies more carefully.It is said that 30 days before a person dies (even when seemingly accidental), the soul already knows. Again, our problem is failure to listen, not absence of warnings or signs.
Long before this heart ailment struck me, I had already been warned by my doctors and friends to slow down. Antonio, my eldest brother, a medical doctor, was telling me the same thing.

Time bomb
Dr. Sandra Torres, former medical director of a large pharmaceutical company, told me I was “a walking time bomb.” And even a highly evolved spirit from the upper fifth dimension, Ang Suh, told his medium, Dr. Helen Manguera de Garriz, on Jan. 10, two weeks before I was confined, “Jimmy has to stop [what he is doing] otherwise his body will give way, and death or disability will ensue. Too much electricity [in the body] will destroy the source itself and all branches which carry the current, causing destruction.”

The warning signs were all there: elevated blood pressure, panting when walking up the stairs to the second floor, and the need for stronger medication to keep my blood pressure down.
Being a Type A personality did not help my condition at all. Type A people are always pushing themselves too hard, always ahead of time for appointments and very demanding in whatever they do. They are short-tempered, impatient and always in a hurry.

My almost two weeks’ stay in the hospital gave me valuable insights and lessons I never would have taken seriously if this near-fatal incident did not happen.

First lesson: Working too hard and not taking time off for leisure or vacation is foolish and not worth it. For years, I’ve worked at least 10 hours a day, seven days a week without letup. My children often complained they hardly saw me anymore.

I enjoyed what I was doing and didn’t realize my body and my family were being neglected. Like most people, I always justified it, saying “because of the need to earn a living,” which was also true.

In my case, I also felt it my mission to disseminate information that had been kept secret for so long. I soon realized there were other priorities that mattered more than work.

I failed to exercise, not even simple walking. I was leading a dangerously sedentary and cerebral life, one devoted to the mind and the spirit rather than to the body.

In the hospital, I learned what it meant to relax and just do nothing. I kept asking myself one question that I realized I didn’t have the answer to. “If I died, then what would become of all these things I’ve been doing?” They will cease to exist, not to be remembered forever more.
Everything in the world is temporary. Our life is temporary. Having a near-fatal heart attack gave me a profound feeling of helplessness, sadness and what one great poet said, “intimations of mortality.”The other thing I realized was that I was completely at the mercy of my physician and the pharmaceutical industry.

Caring people
One of the positive things that came out of this incident was the realization that so many people cared and were genuinely concerned about what happened to me. My daughter Sophia, who has been living in California for the last 15 years, suddenly flew back to Manila to be with me, although she was out of a job.

I received so many encouraging text messages and telephone calls from friends, relatives and even from total strangers. One typical message said, “You have touched the lives of so many people by your teachings and writings. And they are all praying for your safe and swift recovery.”

The wife of a prominent and high-ranking government official sent fruits, flowers and a miraculous statue of Our Lady of Manaoag.A well-known but very controversial journalist, television and radio host donated a substantial amount of money without being asked. “It is my dharma,” he told me.

So did another very prominent woman journalist who sent a check for my huge hospital bill. Although what she gave was large enough, she said, “I wish I could have given more,” when I called to thank her.

I felt the outpouring of strong healing energy directed at me during my confinement at the Intensive Care Unit and especially when my angiogram and angioplasty were being performed so expertly by Doctor Dy and his associates.

My recovery was very fast. Just two days after these procedures, I was discharged from the hospital, a bit poorer perhaps, but a hundred times wiser about life.

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When signs are ignored

On the evening of Jan. 26, I almost died! I did not know how serious my condition was until a few days later.Like most people, I ignored all warning signs and almost succumbed to a heart attack.

That evening I went to see a movie at Greenbelt Cinema in Makati, which was just a few minutes’ walk from my office. Since I was already late, I walked faster than usual.

I was panting when I reached the theater and felt a strange pain and heaviness in my chest. Though the pain was not too severe, I knew it was different from previous ones.

After 10-15 minutes, the pain subsided but I had already called my wife who was shopping nearby. She came, but since the pain had subsided, I decided to finish the movie.

Afterward, as I drove home, I felt weak. I decided to see an old friend, a well-known 85-year-old cardiologist. He examined me, gave me some Eastern European herbal medicine and told me to go home and rest.

I went back to the office, did a little work then decided to go home. Since we have two cars, I drove one car and my wife the other.

EmergencyAs I left the building, I felt bad again, weak and nauseous. I told my wife I wanted to go to the hospital and drove to the emergency room of the Makati Medical Center. My wife followed.It took less than five minutes to reach the hospital, as I ignored all traffic rules and red signals.

An ECG was immediately done. It revealed an ischemia, inadequate blood supply to the heart that could have led to a fatal heart attack.A blood examination revealed an elevated enzyme marker for heart attack. I was told the condition was serious but more tests were needed to determine how bad the situation was.

I refused the other tests because the doctors were not sure but they wanted me to stay in the hospital. I stubbornly refused thinking of a seminar I was conducting the next day that I could not cancel.

I signed a waiver freeing the hospital from responsibility and went home around 3 a.m. Despite very little sleep and a nearly fatal heart problem, I conducted the seminar and finished it with the help of an old student.But I was exhausted. I told my students I might not be able to conduct the seminar the next day and I would refund half of their fees. They all agreed to just have the seminar postponed.

I was back at the MMC emergency room the next day. My new cardiologist, Dr. Dy Bun Yok, was contacted. He prescribed emergency medication and had me transferred to the Chinese General Hospital in Manila so he could attend to me.I learned he was considered one of the best intervention cardiologists in the country. He supervised a team that did a successful multiple heart bypass operation on my older brother barely a month earlier.I was transferred by ambulance to Chinese General that Sunday afternoon and brought to the Intensive Care Unit for heart patients, the Coronary Care Unit.

Unable to decideI stayed there for four days because I could not decide whether or not to have an angiogram (X-ray examination of blood vessels) and possible angioplasty (surgical reconstruction of narrowed or obstructed arteries). I was afraid of surgery of any type.
Although I was assured the procedure was very safe and painless, I explored alternative methods.

But Doctor Dy, despite his long list of patients and a busy schedule, explained to me patiently there was no other way he could find out what artery was blocked and how serious the blockage was unless he did an angiogram.If he found an artery that was severely blocked, he might have to do either an angioplasty or heart bypass.I said a bypass was out of the question. I might allow the angioplasty, I said, but I asked for a couple of days more to decide. “It’s your decision,” he said, “I can only suggest.”

Here is how an angiogram is done. Using only local anesthesia, a small incision or hole is made at the groin (femoral artery in the leg) through which a thin wire (catheter) is inserted and guided to the affected area. The doctor (and even patient) can watch the procedure on a screen. I preferred not to see it.A dye is introduced into the body so the doctor can see clearly where the blockage is and how bad it is. Once the affected artery or arteries are identified, the doctor may do an angioplasty.Doctor Dy found one of my arteries was 70 percent blocked.

In angioplasty, using the same incision made for angiogram, the doctor inserts and positions a balloon in the blocked artery, inflates it and leaves a stent (some kind of a splint) to keep the artery open. Then the wire or catheter is pulled out.The two procedures lasted no more than 30 minutes. I did not even know it was over because I felt nothing at all.

The opening is then pressed by 6 pounds of sand bag and left taped for 24 hours to prevent bleeding. This is the most uncomfortable part of the procedure.The angiogram and angioplasty are considered generally safe. But, still, the fear of being opened up kept me tense while the procedure was going on. After two days, I left the hospital.

Next week, I shall discuss the insights and lessons I learned during my illness.

http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/lifestyle/lifestyle/view_article.php?article_id=53057