The worldwide web is rife with ads for books, seminars and movies about the “the secret,” all promising to reveal “the most powerful law” in the universe: the Law of Attraction. The film, The Secret, is described in Wikipedia as a self-help documentary presenting the law of attraction through a series of “short dramatized experiences and interviews” with “personal transformation specialists, spiritual messengers, feng shui masters, and other ‘experts.’”[1] The law of attraction is outlined in three simple steps: Ask…Believe…and Receive.

The premise is that once you have mastered the Law of Attraction, you can have everything you’ve ever wanted in life, and that by mastering this law you will discover the secret to creating personal happiness and success beyond your wildest imaginings. In the bargain you may find an ever-illusive “inner peace.” The Secret is immensely popular and understandably so, for who wouldn’t want to attract greater happiness and peace into their lives?

For many decades, religious scientists and other new thought practitioners have been working toward those ends, wielding the same universal laws, and teaching spiritual principles such as: “thoughts are things,” “mind is the builder,” and (through the thought-building power of mind and the attractive power of desire) “you become what you think.”

In current “new age” parlance, the secret now being widely revealed is that “we create our own reality.” But in truth, as revealed in the Ageless Wisdom, we live within a greater reality encompassing all of life. The wisdom teachings, which present the keys to soul development and teach “the spiritual principles governing the evolution of consciousness,”[2] explain the universal laws governing the greater reality. For instance, the Law of Attraction works not only on the microcosmic scale of an individual, but functions on the macrocosmic level as well. The one in whom we “live, move, and have our being” wields the same magnetic law of attraction in the creation of the worlds.

The law of attraction influences all the creative processes of the universe, and works out under the direction of a great Cosmic Thinker—the creator of the divine Plan. The Plan is implemented by an army of spiritual workers who have transcended human experience and have assumed the role of trusted custodians of the Plan.

These esoteric teachings unveil secrets of the soul and spirit that are extraordinary in scope. Yes, the universe is responsive to human thinking through activation of the law of attraction, but there exists as well a whole body of spiritual thinkers who wield the laws of creation on behalf of the greater Life. Their whole purpose is to further the Plan of evolution and promote the Purpose of deity. These Custodians of the Law work consciously in cooperation with the greatest Thinker of All—the Lord of this world—and they do so on behalf of the evolutionary Plan.

It may be surprising to many to realize that God, deity, or Universal Mind (as described in the new thought movement) is in reality a divine thinker, and that the product of his thinking (the aggregate of his divine ideas) is the Plan for spiritual evolution.

Ideas held in the mind of God are the building blocks of this divine Plan. The Plan consists of great spiritual ideas or principles that fuel the stream of evolution, such as freedom, spiritual community, and the oneness of humanity.[3] All who seek to cooperate with the divine Plan are in some way involved in promoting these essentially spiritual ideas.

The challenge for those who would contribute to the evolutionary flow is to activate “the secret” at a higher turn of the spiral than personal self-interest, by becoming aligned with thinkers (and thinking) greater than themselves. The goal (the task at hand) is not only to think creatively to shape one’s own individual destiny, but to expand one’s sense of self to include the whole, and to learn to think co-creatively to further the destiny of all.

The great thinkers on the planet become co-creators with divinity, partaking of the very secrets of creation. They not only create their own reality by impressing the consciousness that surrounds them with thought and desire, they co-create our shared human experience in cooperation with divinity itself. Working consciously in alignment with the soul, they develop the ability to receive impression from the guides of the race, those members of the spiritual hierarchy of the planet who direct “the current of ideas emanating from the divine Thinker.”[4]

All thoughts are part of a unified stream of thought pervading the earth. We can either encumber the divine stream that feeds into the collective noosphere with thoughts of “my plans” (my separative self interests) or we can contribute to the evolutionary tide of the whole by bringing our individual thoughts into alignment with the directing current of the greater stream. As we grow spiritually, we become responsive to ideas held “in the mind of God,” ideas such as freedom, responsibility to life (in all of its myriad forms), and to community. In time, we develop a shared sense of spiritual identity with our fellow human beings. The more sensitive we become to spiritual impression, the more effective we become in bringing the one Plan into manifestation, as conscious (increasingly conscious) co-creators with the kingdom of souls of which we are all a part.

As the soul awakens and moves into the foreground of awareness, the conscious effort to cooperate with the divine flow brings the realization that the divine plan is not something that exists apart from us. The divine thinker is (as the scriptures say) “closer than breathing and nearer than hands and feet.” And we (as awakening souls) can become fellow thinkers in the greater scheme. Consciousness is not just some vague spiritual substance “out there” that we can manipulate for personal interests, as has been popularly portrayed. The universe itself is “embodied consciousness.” The solar system, the planets in their orbs, and the Earth on which we live are manifestations of consciousness, expressing on multiple planes of existence.

The truth is that we “live, move and have our being” in a conscious Being Who is greater than ourselves, and Who sustains all that exists on Earth. As the spiritual path unfolds for each of us, we develop the spiritual sensitivity to learn from that Great Being and his army of spiritual workers. We learn to cooperate with those who guide the evolution of this planet and work in service to the divine plan, whose unfoldment they oversee.

We are all manifestations of the one Life, created in the image of the maker, with the inherent potential to become conscious expressions of divinity. Endowed with mind, desire, and will, our destiny is to become co-creators with the creative forces that guide our planet on its evolutionary course. As we awaken to this basic truth, we may begin to realize that the greatest secret of all is not that we can create our own reality, but that we can co-create with those who dwell within the one Reality that is Life itself.

[1] Wikipedia – The Secret: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(Book)
[2] Seifer, Nancy and Martin Vieweg, When the Soul Awakens, p. xviii.
[3] These three “divine ideas” are described in greater detail in Chapter 10 of When the Soul Awakens, “The Soul of Humanity and the Divine Plan.”
[4] Bailey, Alice A., A Treatise on White Magic, p. 464.

Author's Bio: 

Nancy Seifer and Martin Vieweg co-authored "When The Soul Awakens: The Path to Spiritual Evolution and a New World Era." They have been studying and practicing the principles of the Ageless Wisdom for over thirty years. This book represents the harvest of their transformative journeys. "When The Soul Awakens" took a Silver Medal in the 2010 Nautilus Book Awards. Previous winners of the award include Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, the Dalai Lama and Carolyn Myss.

Nancy Seifer was an idealist and activist early in life, before finding her way to the spiritual path. During the 1960s, she was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, a staff member at the African-American Institute in New York City, and an aide for ethnic affairs to New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay. In the 70s she directed a program on women and diversity at the Institute on American Pluralism, where she wrote numerous articles, papers, and chapters for anthologies. Her writings on American working-class women include a monograph (Absent From the Majority,1973) and a book (Nobody Speaks for Me!, 1976) that are still in use at colleges and universities.

In the late 70s, Nancy embarked on a quest for spiritual truth that led her to the ageless wisdom teachings, and to involvement in several visionary endeavors. While directing the Center for Peace through Culture, she travelled to the Soviet Union in 1986—a trip that sparked a decade-long immersion in post-Soviet Russia as spirituality was reemerging there. After writing Russian Odyssey (2003), a spiritual memoir born of that experience, she began work on When the Soul Awakens in an effort to make esoteric wisdom more accessible to a growing body of seekers. More information is available at http://www.WhenTheSoulAwakens.org .