Well said, Rocket. I have been several times during this thread reminded of an old joke I heard back in the days I subscribed to the Christian philosophy, which I will paraphrase: A man woke up one morning after several days of rain to discover that a nearby river had breached its banks, and water was rushing into his house. So much water, in fact, and so quickly, that the man was forced to flee his bed for the upstairs, and finally, for the roof. Cold water was rushing everywhere, and was still rising. The man became frightened for his life, and, being a staunch man of God, began praying. "Oh, God, please save me from drowning!" No sooner had the man uttered this prayer, than a policeman appeared in a boat filled with many other people evacuated from their homes. "Come with us!" said the policeman. "We have room for one more!" But the man was certain that God would send him a "miracle" to save him, and refused to jump from his roof. "No thanks," he said. The policeman shook his head and steered the boat away. The man watched terrified as the water rose past his knees, then his waist, then his neck. Again, even more fervently, he prayed: "Oh, God, please,
please save me from drowning!" Immediately, the man heard a loud noise, and craned his neck upward to see a helicopter hovering over him. Someone inside the helicopter dropped a rope for the man to grab onto. "Take hold of the rope!" came a voice over a loudspeaker. The man on the roof shook his head.
"I'm waiting for God to save me!" the man shouted. After hovering for several moments, the pilot steered the helicopter away, and it soon disappeared. The water continued to rise, until eventually the man could no longer stand on the roof of his house. Finally, a large wave of river water washed over him, and he drowned.
Naturally, the man went to Heaven, and stood before God to review his life. At the end of the review, he watched as his time on Earth came to an end. "I don't understand," the man said mournfully. "I prayed for you to save me. Why did you not answer my prayers?"
"What are you talking about?" asked God. "I answered your prayers even before you called out to me. First I sent a boat for you, then I sent a helicopter..."
I've always been amazed by people who think they know how the hand of God (or the Universe, the Source, the All That Is, what have you) works, and what a "miracle" is supposed to look like. The folks who put together "The Secret" may very well have been using I-M to manifest their incomes, and the mechanism which the Universe brought into play to help with that manifestation might very well have been the gentle nudging in the minds of a half-million or more people to "have a look-see at this cool and interesting movie that everyone is talking about." Who are we to suggest that this can't be true, simply because it doesn't fit the picture we have in our heads of a genuine "miracle?"
How can anyone think they can second-guess the All That Is??? And why spend so much time and negative energy attacking a principle which clearly is working for so many people?
If I recall correctly, an important part of the LOA equation is the Art of Allowing: "I am that which I am, and you are that which you are, and while it is different perhaps from that which I am, it is also good."