What's the frequency, Oprah?

Human viewpoint says movement is always good and upward; that it’s simply the “evolutionary cycle.” The attitude is science—or the human ability to cognitively design and think about what’s going on—is the obvious guide to progress and the Holy Bible is only a hindrance.

Last night I tuned into David Letterman for five minutes or so, curious to see who his guest would be given he only has a few more shows before his retirement. It was good old Oprah.

Of course, Winfrey could not help but give some version of her usual New Age spiel about how the good circumstances in your life boil down to the “energy” you put into the world.

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As you might remember from Oprah’s own talk show, she has a long-standing cadre of gurus who’ve helped make her more “intelligized” than the vast majority of us, especially those of us backward enough to still rely on any archaic biblical understanding of God.

Two of her favorite teachers, with their religion branded “The Secret,” are James Arthur Ray and the Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith, co-founder of the Association for Global New Thought.

According to Rev. Beckwith, “Science tells us that everything is energy, and so your thoughts are energy. Your body, your cash, your car—everything you think is solid, if you put it under a high-powered microscope, it's just a field of energy and a rate of vibration. And so are we. So if you think you're this meat suit running around, you have to think again.”

“One way to describe this energy is by comparing it to radio waves--the frequency you give out through your thoughts and your emotions is what you have a tendency to manifest in your life. Whether those thoughts and emotions are conscious or unconscious, it doesn't matter.

“This means that if you are sending out the same negative energy over and over—whether thoughts or feelings—you will attract like energy back to you. James says that when bad things happen, people might ask, ‘Oh, God, why me?’ ‘Because it IS you,’ he says.”

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On one of Oprah’s old shows lauding “The Secret,” a woman in the audience asked if its emphasis on putting “your faith in yourself,” conflicted with faith in God.

Beckwith responded, "[Jesus] said, 'Pray believing that ye have that ye may receive.' That's ‘The Secret’ in a nutshell. Pray believing and feeling and sensing that you already have it, and then you're available to receive it.

“ ‘The Secret’ isn't about contradicting religion—it supports it. It actually goes underneath the culture and explains to you the sacred laws that these wonderful teachers have brought to us.

“ 'The Secret' is about supporting the great spiritual traditions in a more modern form. It really is just putting Christianity, Judaism, all the great teachings into a current vernacular.”

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When the woman in the audience said she believed in heaven and hell and expressed concerned that “ 'The Secret's' promotion of free will and personal choice imply that you do not face a final judgment,” the response from Ray was that she look at concepts of heaven, hell and judgment ‘in a different way.’

He answered, "Jesus the Christ said the kingdom of heaven is within. He didn't say it was out there somewhere—[he said] within. And so is it possible to consider that the kingdom of hell is within as well?”

Beckwith confirmed, “The kingdom of God is actually in us, and what comes out of your mouth, what you think about, how you express—you're either participating in the realm of ever-expanding good or you're cutting yourself off from the realm.”

(new article tomorrow)