Astounded as I was by the phenomenal bestselling success of Rhonda Byrnes’ The Secret 
It would be tough going. After all, how could I hope to compete with such Secret insights as:
"This is a feeling Universe . . . . Ask once, believe you have received, and all you have to do to receive is feel good" (page 53).
"You are the master of your life and the Universe is answering your every command" (page 146).
"You are God in a physical body . . . . You are all power. You are all intelligence" (page 164).
"You are a human transmission tower . . . The frequency you transmit reaches beyond cities . . . . It reverberates throughout the entire Universe" (page 11).
Moreover, who could I find to match this all-star lineup of Secret contributors:
• Dr. John Martini: Author, Chiropractor, Healer, Personal Transformation Specialist
• Neale Donald Walsch: Author, International Speaker, Spiritual Messenger
• Dr. Joe Vitale, Author, Metaphysician, Marketing Specialist
• Michael Bernard Beckwith: Visionary ( Is that what he puts down on his taxes? )
Then it came to me: Rather than concoct something original, I would think these luminaries’ lucrative thoughts after them. If their cogitations were good enough to yank from the Universe some nice coin, then why bother reinventing the oldest con in the world? I’ll simply rip them off. After all, The Secret is no longer a secret . I’ll simply hash out a sequel.
And so I am pleased and proud to present the key to health, wealth, and happiness¯entitled The Key . To help me articulate "The 7 Laws of The Key," I have enlisted the aid of some of the finest alternative thought processors not currently doing hard time. They include:
Dick Knobloch: Author, Male Aviatrix
Key Alternative Thought: The universe is easily confounded, so please speak clearly.
You must be precise about what you want or you will send out mixed signals. If your transmitter’s frequency is not clear, you will register only static, and wind up with one of those all-night sports shows. So if you want a computer, don’t just think, "I want a computer," lest you wind up with a Wang 720C. Be specific: Provide a model number and the number of USB ports, that kind of thing.
Barry Williams: Author, Farrier, Not the Guy from The Brady Bunch
Key Alternative Thought: If you see people who are poor, do not observe them.
You will reproduce in your own life that which you behold before you. You imitate that which you see, think, hear, and have deducted by court order from your paycheck. Deflect from view anything that negates your inflated vision of yourself. Especially fat people.
Devon Twitlow: Philosopher, Phrase-Coiner
Key Alternative Thought: Illness cannot exist in a body that cannot meet its deductible.
You cannot catch an illness, any more than you can catch a rainbow. Sickness is just negativity manifesting itself as shingles, or what I call "negafesting." You need never be sick again if you create an inner harmony that does not recognize the dissonance of the C282Y and H63D mutations of the HEF gene on the short arm of chromosome 6 at location 6p21.3 with two broken alleles.
Hroswitha Mittman: Author, Co-op Board Member, Spree Killer
Key Alternative Thought: You create your own reality, so remember to buy glue.
Reality is whatever we imagine it to be. My plantar warts: gone. The genocide in Darfur: over. France: what?
Delilah Mungfish: Author, Male Enhancement Practitioner
Key Alternative Thought: Seek the power of teal.
Color reflects what you want to attract. My home, my office, my torso¯all are decorated in colors that represent what I want to manifest in my life. Blue is the color of money. Green is the color of money. Lavender is the color of money. Red reminds me to take my eczema medicine.
Dennis Kanine: Metaphysician, Cell-Phone Cameraman
Key Alternative Thought: You are a magnet. No¯better yet, you are one of those thingees that tells whether a battery’s gone dead.
Everything is energy. (Although I am not quite certain what energy is. I heard somewhere it was really rain drops and kittens.) Money is energy, and the Universe is a giant ATM. But not one of those ATMs that make you pay a fee (although alternate universes may, in fact, require a fee, so look into that). You will need a PIN, which should be easy to remember but not so easy that someone else can figure it out, like your birthday or 1-2-3-4. And remember to keep an eye out for anyone creepy standing behind you.
Lawrence T. Cupatelli: Author, Past-Life Coach, Virgo
Key Alternative Thought: If you believe bad things can happen at any moment, you probably grew up in Queens.
There is no such thing as something merely happening that you did not manifest with wayward thoughts. After all: The Universe is created by thought (so would someone please stop thinking "Quark 6.5" and " Two and a Half Men "?). Children who die of water-borne illnesses by the tens of thousands do so only because they went to bed thinking, "I don’t want to die of a water-borne illness, along with tens of thousands of others." Which is merely a way of saying "I do want to die of a water-borne illness along with tens of thousands of others." It’s simple. Why can’t they get it? What’s wrong with them?
A winner, no? It was remarkably simple: I just tapped into people’s most basic fear¯that of not being in control. After all, who wants to believe that they’re at the whim of chance, accident, or worse¯a sovereign God? The idea of being either lost in a Darwinian universe or limited by environment, genetics, and luck is much too disheartening. And the prospect of being in the hands of an unsafe Creator, who sends rain on the just and the unjust alike, is absolutely infantilizing.
Then there’s the insatiable need of some people to believe that they’re not being told the whole truth. From the tin-foil-hat crowd who believe George Bush flew those planes into the Twin Towers; to the Roswell junkies easily outraged at human arrogance in thinking we’re the only life forms in the universe; to the pop-scholars who see in the Gnostics equally valid interpretations of the life and ministry of Jesus; to the mountebanks who tout crystals as the way to "release" lymphoma¯the idea of the real truth , as opposed to the official story, plays both to people’s cynicism and to their hope that, once discovered, such "truth" will protect them from future catastrophe.
Truth be told, The Secret is merely the latest in a decades-long line of self-help tomes: The Power of Positive Thinking; How to Win Friends and Influence People; I’m OK, You’re OK; and Think and Grow Rich being among the most familiar. What’s noteworthy is how truly unhelpful these books seem to be, given how quickly each title is superceded by yet another.
Now: Do you want to know the real secret? There are no secrets . And sometimes life really is that bad . Elvis is not alive on an island paradise somewhere along with Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. You really do owe VISA $85,000. There was no second gunman on the grassy knoll. That thing on your face is not a mosquito bite but a basal-cell carcinoma. Doubleday is never going to publish your novella, A Cloaca for Danny . And Bruce Lee was not assassinated for revealing martial-arts secrets to non-Chinese¯he simply dropped dead .
If this seems too harsh, well, then, I promise: If you implement faithfully "The 7 Laws of The Key" every day, you will learn the real secret of The Secret ¯namely, that there’s a lot of money to be made in the self-help market.
Just not by you.
Anthony Sacramone is the managing editor of First Things .
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