[pi11]

I am going to try and attempt to answer this very interesting distinction and contradiction. Or so it seems, at first sight. Here goes nothing...

The crucial reason for the confusion here is the lack of vocabulary. Lets expand that first before trying to tackle this issue. Otherwise we will end up getting further tangled into it. What you are pointing out are two entirely different "things", namely, two entirely different realities. I can hear the murmurs already. The logicians among us notice a self-contradictory proposition -- an opposite of a tautology. Bear with me for a bit... Lets refer to the Buddhist reality as Reality (I suppose, giving it the respect it deserves). And lets call the other reality, the one we all know and recognize and have repeatedly proven as "subjective", as simply, reality.

1. Many Buddhist texts I've read, and also Eckhart Tolle's book The Power of Now, emphasize the point that you are not your thinking mind, and that by learning to quiet the thinking mind, you can access a far more spacious plane of consciousness or Being. This plane transcends the separateness of individual people and is, in some way, the primary "stuff" of reality.

I have not read Tolle's work, but I will take your word for it that he is referring to the same Reality that the Buddhist tradition refers to. Just to bring further ideas together, this is the same Reality that known as the great Tao, introduced by Lao Tzu in Tao te Ching. This is also the same Reality that is referred to as Brahman, the Hindu concept of the godhead. If you are a student of the Greek classics, Reality is signified by the God called Dionysus.

With that in context, you can see that, Reality is something that transcends the separateness of people, ideas, worlds and universes. It transcends it all because it fundamentally precedes it. It is the primary "stuff"! The usual old reality (see below) is related to this, but it isn't the same thing at all.

2. Meanwhile, subjective reality as I have understood it so far (along with The Secret, and a lot of personal development stuff that doesn't use the term "subjective reality") seems to suggest that thoughts create reality. What you think about, you create more of. Thought is the primary "stuff" of reality.

Here you are referring to reality, as the everyday stuff that most of us seem to recognize and understand. All the above mentioned metaphysical and religious philosophies essentially say essentially the same thing about reality. It is considered illusionary and temporary. Dream like stuff. Ancient Greeks signify this reality with the god Apollo.

So what is the relation between Reality and reality? The best way I can say this is by calling reality as an instantiation or a lousy reflection of Reality. When we hang on to things, such as time or materials, we are hanging on to reality... illusionary reflections of the Real deal.

This is a topic of great big metaphysical treatise, and I can hardly do it justice here. I did talk about it a couple times in my blog [/shameless plug].

Can you believe in some kind of Zen-like "enlightenment" and also believe in The Secret?

Absolutely! As long as you know when someone is talking about Reality (related to zen's enlightenment) and when about reality (related to the The Secret and subjective-reality), there should be no ambiguity.

To further clarify this stuff, I can suggest picking up some books. There are very few books out there that talk about both... and actually bother to compare and contrast.

Pi