"The Secret" has obtained a lot of publicity lately. Unfortunately, many of  the ideas it popularizes will lead to lethargy, poor mental habits and bad results in societies rather than good results. The secret is in working for success, not in JUST wishing for success, imagining success, visualizing success or wanting success. Even  here I’ve left out a big portion of the ingredient for accomplishment  or success — you need merit to succeed in building what you want.

The whole premise of wishing for something, visualizing something and attracting it  without effort, karma or merit  is just basically fiction. If you already HAVE the karma for something then it will come when it’s time (even if you don’t want it), and if you don’t have the merit or karma for something, then it will not come no matter what. If the  universe runs on cause and effect - which most people would agree upon - you have to build or set the requisite causes in motion, of the appropriate type and size, to achieve the results/effects you want. Sure anything can be achieved, but only if you actively create it … not just wish for it. Thinking plays a part int the doing, but the doing is MOST of the actualization. It comes down to your skillfulness, and merit.

The key, really, to producing the karma you want, namely obtaining the results you want, is WORKING FOR THOSE RESULTS. Whether they will transpire or not will be the result of your merit and efforts, and not because of the wanting. It will be the result of building with actions rather than just dreaming with the mind. Yes, the mind plays the part of coordinator, but in this physical world you need physical actions. Never forget that, or fall prey to those $100, $300 or even $1000 courses that tell you otherwise.

Once I asked my teacher about the American tendency to promote the idea of just wishing for things (and so forth)  to mentally attract them or manifest them. You know what I mean — manifestation type thinking. He responded along the lines of , "If I cannot get things that way, why would I want to cheat others they could do so?"

That in a nutshell, summarizes the situation.

However, it is every easy to get money from people by promising them some secret formula that can attract wealth and prosperity and other things. In fact, the promise of salvation, prosperity or all sorts of results are all based on the same thing — promises only - and these have been used throughout history to even form movements that cheated people int he end. Communism is just one example. The fact is, you have to work for things, you have to build the karma for them to manifest. What the positive thinkers and New Age people fail to mention is that results depend on KARMA. If you have it, then these things come and if not, they don’t. So how do you build the karma? That’s the question… Some results come naturally because of karma from past lives (the type that seems the result of "free manifestation") and others are the results of actions done in this life.

Even then, karma is half the battle because if you don’t have the merit (from having done enough good deeds and acts of charity, merit and so forth), you can perform all the right actions in this life and still not get the results you want. So what everyone neglects to point out is that achievement is the function of action, karma and merit, something I explain clearly in White Fat Cow.

Famous marketer Dan Kennedy, whom I respect for his ability to produce material results, often said that 95% of people won’t do anything about anything, so it’s no wonder no one gets results in terms of the future they want to have. They just go along with the flow.

Those that do say they get results from some secret mind method, and who are cited for getting results through "magical thinking" and the like, usually are just people who  coincidentally manifest or mature their fortune at this time, and think it’s because of the methods espoused. That’s all.  If you really could manifest fortune this way, why aren’t they getting $10 billion or $100 million or $50 million dollars rather than $100K? Why aren’t they senators and presidents rather than what they are? All one need do, is have an astrological method like Iron Abacus Numerology performed to show that the results of fortune come  when it’s timed.  And if they can be timed, that shows it’s all due to karma.

Dan Kennedy also corrected a lot of people’s notions about positive thinking when he wrote:

"I’ve had more conversations than I care to count with my students, clients, customers, peers, and friends about “positive thinking.” Through it all, I’ve come to the conclusion that at least 95% of the people who think they’re positive thinkers actually have no idea what positive thinking is all about.

"Too many people think it’s some kind of mystical, magical shield from the real world. They believe that if they just think positive, bad things cannot happen to them. If something bad happens to somebody, they say: “See, you weren’t thinking positively.” But it just doesn’t work that way. You can think positive until you are turning blue from the effort, but you’ll still run into obstacles from time to time. People who believe that positive thinking is supposed to keep the bogeyman away eventually wind up frustrated, discouraged critics of positive thinking.

"Being a positive thinker does not mean that you should refuse to acknowledge the way things are. In fact, people succeed in business, sales, and marketing by dealing with “what is,” not “What ought to be.” The true positive thinker acknowledges potential and existing negative circumstances and reactions, and engineers a plan to overcome them, to achieve positive results." — No B. S. Sales Success, Dan Kennedy, (Self-Counsel Press, Bellingham: WA, 1999), pp. 17-18.

So let’s stand away from the positive thinking and manifestation and attraction type stuff. Sure, you need motivation and a positive attitude to keep going to solve problems and triumph over adversity. So don’t twist my words. And sure you need to know what you want, in terms of a clear mental picture or visualization, to produce what you desire. So don’t twist my words in all the ways you can. The point is, you need much more than this.

What all these people miss is that there are two sides to the situation. There’s the material accomplishment side — you need the Motivation to achieve something, you need action along a Method to achieve something, and your need a Measuring or Monitoring system to see that your actions are going along the lines you want and producing the effects you want. In a gist, that’s what most self-help books are about.

The second half of the equation, for building a fortune that isn’t already in your karma, is what all the New Age people miss. I’m talking about building a fate, fortune or manifest something that isn’t already in your karma. You can work your whole life at it and never achieve it, so how do you create a NEW fortune that isn’t already in your destiny? That’s what all the self help books should be talking about but never do. They only cite example of people who’s fortunes changed because they did X, Y or Z, but those changes were already in the fortune. That’s not a real change in fortunes, just a going along with the fortune.

See what I mean?

The story of Liao Fan, which you can easily find on the web, illustrates this exactly. Which brings up the second half of how to create a new fate, fortune, accomplishment, success or life if it isn’t already in your fortune. The first half of this equation is the magic of worldly action, which everyone talks about. The second half is self-improvement, but a certain type.

First, you need to create Merit for the new fortune to manifest. No merit = no achievement. It’s as simple as that.

Second, you should ask Heaven (meaning higher beings) for help in manifesting the fortune you want that isn’t already in your fate.  Plenty of stories of saints and sages from dozens of religions talk about this. And the best way to do this is Mantra or Prayer. Whether it’s the Prayer of Jabez, the Zhunti Mantra, or a sincere request to heaven every night is up to you. I always recommend a ledger of behavior such as used by Benjamin Franklin, Frank Bettger, various Confucians and Jesuits, the Greeks, and Liao Fan. It’s all the same idea in different formats. People always talk about creating better  societies and self-improvement citizens but they fail to mention that  this type of journaling is the tool that makes it possible. It produces that result because the goal, and your progress towards that goal, is constantly in front of you.

Lastly, the big thing is to change yourself through Meditation. Why meditation? Your karma works through events from the outside that just happen to you interacting with events from the inside, namely your own actions, efforts and responses. How you react and the future you create is due to your habits and inclinations. By learning how to detach from habits and inclinations and thoughts that would propel you down a different direction, you can create a new future. That’s why all the sages espouse meditation for changing your fortune.  

Naturally there is much more to it than that, but we can summarize the fact that in learning how to let go of the trajectory of your current present fortune, you can then, with wisdom and action, build the new fortune you desire. The key is to watch your mind and learn emptiness or detachment from what might prompt you down the opposite path, and meditation is the tool or remedy for this ill. Only meditation can achieve this. But even if you’re empty you still need actions and merit for accomplishment along the lines of what you intend to build.

So the self-help crowd always focuses on one side of the equation, and nothing more. They resort to mystical exhortations as the cure to a new destiny, and neglect the practicalities of the world and the words of the sages. In fact, they create pseudo-mumbo jumbo explanations to explain why "manifestation  thinking" might work, and neglect the deep basis of karma, working for results, and so forth that the sages from COUNTLESS religions commonly talk about. In fact, they cannot explain away the effectiveness of methods like Iron Abacus Astrology and what they really prove in terms of the truth about karma and so forth. If they did, they’d have to abandon all sorts of other false thoughts, and then they would have nothing to sell.

If they had to admit to karma and self-responsibility and work, customers wouldn’t like that and profits would go down. It’s always better to promise a free universe you can take from with no work to be done, and the idea that you deserve it. Also, if they had to admit to karma, they’d have to admit to reincarnation (which all the sages espouse) and if they had to do that, they’d have to  update their religious notions that they  mix in with their work  to justify the reason people justly "deserve" any future they imagine. It all goes beyond any type of logical thinking.

All of this is detailed in White Fat Cow, which is the first and only book to ever talk about the REAL way for changing your fate and destiny in a way that’s truly beyond your karma, rather than just manifesting the karma you have in store. Maybe you put acts into motion because some book motivated you or propelled you, so you owe your wealth to that, but if you calculated it out according to astrology or Tieh Pan Shen Shen (Iron Abacus Numerology) you’d see it was just a manifestation of a fate you had previously built, and your motivating force was just the tinder box in this life to ignite that fortune’s manifestation. You didn’t step outside of fate to build a new one; you just manifested a new state that was already in your fortune.

Anyway, White Fat Cow: The 6M Method for Changing Your Fate, Fortune and Destiny is the only one that explains the metaphysics behind this in an ontological no-nonsense sense. Finally someone did it by linking up the stories from countless religions and spiritual streams of people who changed their Fixed fates and fortunes by following the recipe of the sages. And since it’s the same recipe, it’s the same non-denominational cure.

White Fat Cow …