Negatives, the Genius, and The Secret

Film negatives. While they won't be going the way of the vinyl record or Betamax anytime soon, it's a fact that many of us have done away with them due to the ubiquity of the digital camera. We can take pictures anywhere now through cameraphones, for crying out loud!

Anyways, remember how ghastly/ghostly images look in film negatives before they're processed to reveal their colors in all their Kodak glory? We know that they're images of real places, things, or people. Yet somehow, they look unreal...eerie even. I used to look at life like that -- in the negative. I was a closet pessimist; I wasn't surprised if bad luck befell me because I was expecting it. If something good happened to me, I'd blame it on luck. To me, the world was a shitty, negative place that had only a few pockets of color.

Until I found out about The Secret. It was introduced to me by the Genius several months ago. If memory serves me right, that fateful conversation went something like this:

G: Lizz...
Me: Yep?
G: Do you know The Secret? (Dumbass that I am, I failed to notice that he was speaking in Capital Letters.)
Me: Nope. What's the secret?
G: I'm a genius!
Me: I know that already. So what else is new? STFU and hand me a beer.

Hahaha! I'm kidding. The Genius would never say anything like that (btw, he's a smartass who's a tad shy, and for all his ingenuity,he would prefer to remain anonymous). But he did lead me to The Secret, and for that (among many other things), he has my undying gratitude.

If you believe in the power of positive thinking, if you believe that the mind can affect and effect changes within and without, then you already have an idea of what The Secret is. In my pre-Secret life, I actually looked forward to wallowing in self-misery. Is it any wonder then that the bad things I expected to happen did happen? The Secret reveals to us that the way we think changes the way we live; that how we think can actually be a major part in making our dreams come true. If this sounds like an out-of-this-world concept to you, you'd be right in a way. Because it involves the universe. It's related to the concept of synchronicity, but not serendipity. If your dream falls into the realm of health, relationships, wealth -- it doesn't matter. No job is too big or too small for the Universe to answer. Oooohhh, it's hard for me to explain it. Richard does such a better job at this.

Let me give just a couple of personal examples.

Like I mentioned before, I used to be super negative about myself and the world in general. I felt that I was never good enough for anyone -- even myself. I sucked at everything, or so I thought (and stop smirking, DJ Sir! I mean another thing entirely). Post-Secret, I've become not only more accepting of myself, but more appreciative. Does that mean I'm always in the pink of everything? Of course not! I still suffer from that voice of insecurity inside my head. The difference is, now I'm able to stand up to that terribly beautiful Medusa/Galadriel. She used to be able to reduce me to a pathetic, whimpering mass of sniveling fecal matter; now when she assails me with claws unsheathed, I can stand up to her, do battle, and say "I'm not as bad as you make me out to be." And I can say that with conviction. I can even laugh at her sometimes now.

Come to think of it, I guess I've been practicing some aspects of The Secret on a subconscious level. I used to work as an abstractor (look it up; it's NOT related to art) and I did that sort of thing for the same company (and its reincarnation) for about ten years. I liked the job and the working hours; but during the latter part of my final year there, I found myself becoming increasingly dissatisfied with it. Let's just say that it was becoming increasingly evident that it was a dead-end job -- plus the fact that the brown-nosers and the big-fish-in-a-little-pond syndrome were making me dread going to work. I started having thoughts that went something like "Fuck this, I can do better for myself given the chance." I can do better than this. These thoughts were constantly running through my mind at that time.

I had been doing freelance work for several individuals at the time, and before I realized what was happening, I began getting assignments left and right. So I happily bid adieu to the pathetic ego-trippers and the brown-nosers at my workplace and immersed myself in freelance work. It was through freelancing that I came across the Genius (or, as he likes to remind me now and then, he was the one who found me).

Be open to receiving what your heart desires. That doesn't mean wishing for something and then doing nothing but sit on your ass all day, just waiting for the universe to deliver it to you. You have to know how to receive...and that's kind of a difficult process, in my opinion.

But I'm getting there. :-)