Thanks a lot, Giles!
Your "view" seems very much reasonable to me! However, if you read what the Author actually says, you'll see it is quite different - the next extract is taken from
Book Excerpt: Rhonda Byrne's 'The Secret' | Newsweek Books | Newsweek.com :
"Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight. Remember, thoughts are primary cause of everything, and the rest is effects from those thoughts. Think perfect thoughts and the result must be perfect weight."
Please do not take me wrong though - I am not challenging you or being picky - quite the opposite actually - I am saying that your interpretation is much more logical than the actual original text, for me!
This said, I thank you a lot for the exhaustive post, which clarified a lot of things to me!
PS: About this part of your post:
"In truth, all that we truly need is to look after our health, have a roof over our heads to keep our body safe from 'the elements' and enough food to eat. We don't "need" to go and live in the south of Italy, that is just an attachment of ego mind to the value of one thing over another."
I am with you there, but again, this is not what "the secret" says. If you give this philosophical interpretation, then we don't really "need" anything apart from the basics for surviving. The Secret puts a lot of emphasis on how to ask everything you want to the Universe - and I agree, there is too much emphasis on material stuff there.
Last point: with your interpretation, it becomes a self fulfilled profecy: if you ask and you obtain, it worked; if you ask and do not obtain, it worked anyway because you didn't ask "the right thing", so the universe did not provide. You see what I mean?
