Secrets?
The Other Side
By Hill Cox

The recent best selling book The Secret has stirred up interest in the spiritual side of life and related topics. Human nature being what it is, the promise of a secret of any kind being revealed is enough to pique most people's interest. But when there's a promise of a better life at the end of it all, who can resist?

It is an interesting book and for many, will become a helpful guide in their lives. But, anyone with a casual interest in metaphysics or spiritualism will have encountered everything that is written in the book. And while I don't want to spoil things for those who haven't read it, there are a couple of oversights that are significant.

The reader is encouraged to engage in visualization where you see whatever you want coming into your life. What was overlooked is the fact that if - deep within - you don't believe you can ever be rich, for example, you can visualize all you want, but you'll never need a Brinks truck to cart your money to the bank. A more informative work on this subject was written by Shakti Gawain in 1978 titled Creative Visualization. It has been reprinted many times over the years.

In an attempt to bring science into the discussion, one of the co-authors uses two magnets attracting each other as an example of like attracting like. What was overlooked was that if you put the north pole of each together they will repel not attract. Good principle, bad example.

Many books and television programs deal with spiritual themes that indicate to me there are a lot of people looking for answers - even skeptical newspaper editors as noted in a recent column by Mark Pavilons. Ongoing revelations from the scientific community shoot many beliefs and theories down in flames but some continue to build support for the common threads woven through most of them.

For those seeking answers to the mysteries and miseries of life, a look at the spiritual side can be very enlightening. In this series, I'll do just that on a few topics I hope you'll find interesting.

Hill Cox is a member in good standing of The Spiritualists National Union of England. He has taught classes in Toronto and Brampton.