Rosh Hashanah & the Art of Wanting

Posted on August 22, 2013

Three years ago a new self-help fad swept the world. Offering nothing less than everything from unimaginable wealth to happiness and finding one’s soul mate, the people behind the fad claimed they had discovered a very old “secret” that had been carefully guarded and handed down from generation to generation for thousands of years, across many cultures. Presenting this secret to the masses for the first time, they called their film documentary and accompanying book, “The Secret.”

And they made a mint.

After one gets past the glitter, the underlying core of the “secret” is a powerful idea expressed in the Talmud that has special relevance to Rosh Hashana.

The operative dynamic behind “the secret” is a concept called the “Law of Attraction”:

Everything that’s coming into your life you are attracting into your life. And it’s attracted to you by virtue of the images you’re holding in your mind. It’s what you’re thinking.You become what you think about most, but you also attract what you think about most….

Long ago, the rabbis of the Talmud said: “The way a person wishes to go is the way he will be led” (Makkos 10b). If a person really wants to do something — for good or bad — all the elements of the world surrounding him will help him go in that direction. The universe will conspire to help him achieve his burning desire.

What we truly want is where we are going to be led.

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