There is No Secret: It’s Just Kabbalah

In 2006, when I first watched the film The Secret, I had to smile. I wasn’t amused because the principles taught in the movie were unbelievable, stupid, or funny. I smiled because the film made it seems as if these concepts were new and mysterious. In fact, I had known about them for years. Not only that, they come right out of the Jewish mystical tradition called Kabbalah—although even most Jews don’t know this.

I had learned the so-called “secret” from a variety of metaphysical and spiritual teachers. They called it conscious or deliberate creation. When I decided to study Kabbalah, I searched for these same principles within the religion of my birth—and I found it there.

The Problem with The Secret

After the release of the film, The Secret became a best-selling self-help book written by Rhonda Byrne and based on the earlier film of the same name. The people featured in the film and book discuss how to manifest what you want and how to create what you desire. They offer two fundamental steps that comprise this secret: combine your thoughts and feelings about what you want to create. That’s it.

The Secret failed to provide a third essential step, however: the need for action. The featured experts don’t talk much about “doing” something to create what you desire, although this step is implied. Without action, manifestation rarely happens.

The Kabbalistic Secret

You can find the same technology for conscious or deliberate creation in Jewish mystical teachings. You just need to know where to look. And it includes all three steps:

1. Think about what you desire.
2. Feel what it would be like to have that desire made manifest in your life right now.
3. Take action toward creating that desire.

As for the third step, Kabbalah emphasizes the importance of exerting energy. Taking action toward anything makes a difference. Some might even say, action is where the action is. Not that thoughts and feelings aren’t important, but without action to back them up, they lose some of their power.

Create with Your Words

Where in Jewish mysticism do you find this teaching? First, the Kabbalistic creation story, which is a bit different than the biblical creation story, tells of God manifesting the world with a series of 10 utterances. In other words, God spoke the world into existence.

What precedes words? Thoughts.

What precedes thoughts? Letters.

The Kabbalists believed that the foundation of the world consists of the Aleph Bet, or Hebrew alphabet. Why? Because letters create thoughts expressed in words. And when you speak words (i.e. God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.”), they have an effect. In other words (excuse the pun), letters have a creative energy. When you combine letters into words, those words create worlds.

Manifestation Through the Worlds

Second, if you look just beyond this creation story, you find the Kabbalistic description of the Four Worlds of Creation. The Four Worlds, simply translated as “Being,” “Thinking,” “Feeling,” and “Doing,” provide a pathway for manifestation in the physical plane. Let’s look at how that works.

1. You begin with the world of Being, where you connect with Divine energy. There you discover the will to create something—inspiration.
2. You move through that energy into thought—the thought of what you want.
3. Next, you take your thought into a feeling place. You imagine and experience what it would be like to have what you want.
4. Finally, in the fourth world of action, you do something to move toward creating what you want.

It’s also possible to use the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, with its ten sefirot, or emanations, and follow a similar path to conscious creation, but it is more complicated. The four worlds provide a simple path much like that described by proponents of The Secret and conscious or deliberate creation.

The “Real” Secret

The real secret to manifesting your desires comes from applying a final Kabbalistic principle. Create what you desire not just for yourself but for sharing. In other words, receive in order to give. If you can tie your desire to create something new into a desire to share that manifestation with others, you will find yourself tapped into the flow of abundance in the universe.

Also…just for fun…to make the process a bit magical, try using an incantation when you visualize or speak what you want into existence. The Aramaic word “abracadabra,” used by most magicians, literally means, “He has created as he has spoken.” It calls upon the power of manifestation via the power of words. Abracadabra comes from the verb “daber,” which refers to organizing “speech.” Our speech creates order out of chaos and brings new things into being.

Thus, the secret is revealed: Our thoughts and our words are creative, and our actions support that creative endeavor. Any Kabbalist could have told you that.

If you are interested in conscious creation from a Kabbalistic perspective, read this short book. or contact me for Inspired Results Coaching.