My Spotless Mind

I wrote this book to show a flip side to "The Secret," by Rhonda Byrne. Her material is wonderful, but she misses an important point: there is a dark secret that prevents us from experiencing all the good we so rightfully deserve.

My book is partly a self-help guide and partly an inspirational tool. Most importantly, it makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the profession of Social Work and to the new field of Life Coaching.

We can have a healthier, happier life if we are willing to choose the Positive. However, this process poses significant challenges for us and our culture.

We are living in times of wondrous opportunity and great folly. The world still looks to America for hope, direction, and solutions. America remains a land of majestic beauty, a beacon of unlimited opportunity, prosperity, and abundance.

But America stands before us transfixed by the rhythm of automobile engines, entangled by a war of liberation and retaliation, surrounded by a haze of unnatural vapor and murky waters, mesmerized by the soothing images on color television sets and personal computers.

See the flashing lights; hear the wailing sirens of ambulances racing through our city streets to remove the bodies of children playing drug war games. Look at the women unsafe from attack while jogging in city parks or strolling through neighborhood parks or even office corridors. Youngsters are assaulted by gunman in schools, airport terminals, and McDonald Restaurants. Robbers steal and prey on the unsuspecting in subway stations, private homes or parking lots.

Meanwhile, numerous high school graduates can't read or write, and many college graduates can't find decent jobs. More of the clergy break their vows and end up in court or prison. Half of all eligible voters in our country rarely vote.

Millions of Americans who work, struggle to meet their basic needs for food, shelter, clothing and medical care. Forty-four million Americans don't have healthcare insurance. More than half of our bankruptcy claims are due to overwhelming healthcare costs; yet our political system passes laws to make filing Chapter 7 even more difficult.

In the last year alone, a million people have joined the ranks of the poor. The mentally ill and our homeless continue to overwhelm local social service networks. Medicaid and prison costs threaten the solvency of state governments. Furthermore, mass media floods us with the uneasy images of emaciated third-world children, assassinations, terrorist bombings, casualties of war, looming pandemics, natural disasters, and fear.

The good news is that life doesn't have to be an experience of constant pain and unhappiness. Unfortunately too many people, after initially trying to make some healthy changes, simply give up and return to their old ways of living. And life does appear to be very negative for so many of us.

By profession, I am a social worker who has learned to believe in our right to heal and find peace. This book will try to convince you of these facts: we can learn how to make changes or improvements in ourselves as well as our culture.

For the last 30 years of my adult life, I have reached out a loving hand to countless many that suffer and hurt. In spite of all the pain, sorrow, human misery, and hardships that I have witnessed, I am awe-struck by the incredible spiritual growth I see, including miracles that have appeared in my life's journey.

Do you need a miracle? Are you facing a challenge of sickness, loneliness, pain, loss, excessive habits or lack? Surely you will agree that living in today's world is exciting, but you also know there is so much that is wrong, destructive, and harmful.

Spend some time with me and we will talk about healings, happiness, miracles, and social reforms. My healings can be the start of your miracles; our miracles can begin to transform social ills; our culture dedicated to social healing can take its rightful place in the service to the needs of the world.

This is a book about personal healing, social work treatment, and the need for social healings; but above all else, it is a message of hope. Yet, my approach requires that ultimately each person find their own inner pathway to healing. Along these lines I am reminded of a story from the Talmud: (4):

"A young Rabbi talked to his master: 'During the time when I am studying I feel filled with light and life, but as soon as I cease to study this mood disappears. What should I do?' So the Rabbi replied: 'It is like a man who walks through a forest on a dark night, and part of the way is accompanied by a companion who carries a lantern. Soon they come to the point where their paths divide, and they must go on alone. If each carries his own lantern, one need fear no darkness.'"

What I will share with you is not new but old and it is a lantern. If we are to survive in this world, I believe it is time to wake up and look around. Let us choose to see the Light. Let us sing the song of Light, and search for our emotional connection to the Light that flows inside and through us all. With this knowledge of spirituality firmly in place, we can claim our in-born right to healing, happiness, and freedom.

Like the ancient Greek philosophers emphasized; "Knowledge is not what a man has been told, shown, or taught; it can be only what he has found out for himself by long and rigorous search." (5). Absolute Knowledge—the Light, is subject to many different styles and modes of interpretations, just like music can be expressed in an infinite number of modes.

The more I share with others, the more I discover that Light is everything I know and feel plus more than I know and feel—the mystical element. Follow that which is positive, wholesome, and good.

Today I choose to share what Light means to me in the hope that you will find your own truth-vision. This is an exercise that will take patience, faith, and practice. What will soon become clear to you, from reading my book, is that the pathway to healthy change
overflows with peace, joy, and "bliss" as the mythmaker states.

I have divided my book into two parts. Part I will focus on: face stressful feelings and think positive thoughts. Part II will conclude with: take positive action and turn to Positive Power. This is a healing formula. One can use it to facilitate personal healing, to help others, and to make improvements in our country. It begins with the best we can humanly do in steps 1 through 3, and then requires our complete surrender in step 4 to the power of Light however one defines It.

I see my message as a beacon of Love-Light to those who want and need to have a better life. My book illustrates that when find the power to unlock our dark secret, we can all become more effective change agents, which will help our nation heal too. And then one can super-size "The Secret," to get the results we all are want and need.

More information is available at Lulu.com

You may not know it, but the "The Secret" DVD, the on going buzz online is generating lots of controversy between those who cannot see the rational behind the principles espoused by "The Secret" and those who see it.

Wow, folks, the truth has never been told, it is with the Master-mind. But some of our assumptions may be truths, and even outright lies become truths without evidence. This is why it is quite difficult to accept a proven principle that can be used to turn a life around for the best.

Therefore "truths" flourish. The Christian truths, which are averse to the "The Secret's" truth, can be likened to the "truth" told by the three friends of Job while the truth in the "The Secret" is akin to the truth of Job himself in challenging God to prove him (Job) unworthy. Only those who claim their inheritance shall have it.

The biggest problem of mankind is self condemnation, self deceit and outright falsification of facts. If you condemn yourself, who can salvage you. Jesus? Give me a break!

"The Secret" teaches you to be positive, and you cannot condemn yourself while being positive; rather you can turn your life around with positive thinking and affirmative actions. What I do not understand is why such a simple principle is being tied to age old lies and ambiguous claims about a "beginning and end" we will never know about. What can be more fabulous than the religious beliefs of Christians, especially in one who does not know Christianity? He was born a Jew, lived and worshiped as a Jew, and died a Jew. True Jesus' followers should practice Judaism, period.

Daniel and Rich (some antagonist at my blog on "The Secret") speak in defense of Jesus, especially Daniel, who talks about Jesus' Godness, as if Jesus himself ever claimed to be God anywhere in the Bible. What he called himself all the time was the Son of Man. Of course, followers meekly and dubiously foist their leaders with larger than life attributes and images. As for whether Jesus, according to Rich, ever used the little phrase "within you" in Mathew:6, "The Kingdom of God is Within you" is a popular answer Jesus gave to a popular question.

That being said, note that the same principles the antagonists are criticizing in the "The Secret" are what Jesus used to get things done as he desired within the time and scope allotted him by the Source of life.

I am amused to read some statements credited to Jesus about the serpent as follows:

"Ever since the serpent has been the serpent, he's been whispering that in our ears. Jesus, in His Wisdom, confronted that convincingly:
"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" Mark 8:34-37."

Oh Rich, Serpent or Lucifer is just the personification of the negative thoughts of man, for Sunday school children. You should have shaded that by now.

It is the same principles "The Secret" espouses that the Church perverted and used to rule the world and still uses with ulterior motives; for why do you think that adults continue to think like children when it comes to religious myths? Listen, if you think positively about a lie and dwell on it continuously it becomes your truth.

The most absurd of all is for anyone to think that "The Secret" is meant to prevent their death; God or the Source of life graces and withdraws grace…... as a rule to ensure the continuity of creation. Life and Death are divine purposes, "The Secret" is just a way to live life more abundantly, it does not prevent death.

It is true that man has arrogated to himself too much importance than he deserves in the scheme of things. Yet, like I said in an earlier article, man is a co-creator with God or the Source of life. That being so, man is empowered to create good or evil according to the choices he makes, and those choices he can only make from the jumble of thoughts that show up in his mind. No one creates his own thoughts, but everyone decides which thought or group of thoughts to action.

If what Daniel says is true that what happened to Jesus was what he wanted, then why was he apparently afraid and made every effort to have his tribulation averted? And why when his time came as he had said, did he lament having been forsaken by his father? Everyone of us will behave just as Jesus did, no one wants to die.

All said, I will always cancel my negative thoughts with positive ones and hope for the best - "The Secret". I will never give up till my time is up. Death is a necessary end, not the wages of sin. The Nazarenes believed what their minds bid them believe, so will anyone even today. That is "The Secret."