The Car of Your Dreams: Dr. Joe Vitale with Francine, a 2005 Panoz Esperante GTLM, described on his site as "a rare exotic luxury sports car."The Secret is big on visualization. Visualization is one of its more logical concepts, actually, considering the role it’s played for years in managing pain and chronic disease. It’s certainly better proven than the Aladdin’s-genie-lives-within-you tenet, or the your-feelings-tell-you-what-you-are-really-thinking belief.

A guy named Mike Dooley, described as an “author and international speaker,” introduces the concept of visualization in the video:

Look at the back of your hands, right now. Really look at the back of your hands: the color of your skin, the freckles, the blood vessels, the rings, the fingernails. Take in all those details. Right before you close your eyes, see those hands, your fingers, wrapping around the steering wheel of your brand new car.

(This is perhaps a good time to note that The Secret People don’t make any judgments about what you want to use The Secret for. It’s perfectly fine to ask the universe to give you a Maserati, for example, rather than the job that would earn you the money to buy said Maserati. I find The Secret’s unabashedly materialistic bent simultaneously refreshing and sinister.)

After Dooley, a guy called Dr. Joe Vitale—who is a “metaphysician, marketing specialist, and author”—chimes in:

This is such a holographic experience—so real in this moment—that you don’t even feel as if you need the car, because it feels like you have it already.

Yeah, right, I thought, as I leaned back on my couch to try it. But, this assignment to write about The Secret allowing me to embrace exercises I would normally consider too embarrassing, I held my hands out in front of me. I looked at their chubby snowman structure, their week-old chippy manicure, the way that, gripping an imaginary steering wheel, they resembled bear claws. Gosh, I think it’s time to start waxing my arms. Eeew. I have really hairy arms. No! I have hairless arms. I believe I have hairless arms. I am sending out a hairless arm vibration. Genie!

I closed my eyes. I saw my hands in front of me and felt my body start to shake in anticipation of nervous laughter. I gripped my imaginary steering wheel. It was wrapped in leather like the ones in Merchant-Ivory movies. My right toes moved toward the floor instinctually to engage the gas pedal. Whoa. Does my body think it is driving? A brief moment of sincere consideration, and then, an uncontrollable wave of goofiness taking over my face. This is ridiculous. Am I really doing this? Keep your eyes on the road, says some inner voice. I am overwhelmed with a smiley feeling. Reminiscent of a high school nitrous buzz. As silly as I think this is, I feel better—happier—than I did five minutes ago. Maybe The Secret People are smarter than we think; like shrinks, maybe they have a hidden agenda. Maybe they have us do the car thing to solicit a sense of true, deep hilarity, which, in turn, improves our mood and thus makes us more open to the “truths” that come later in the DVD? In seventh grade, my friend Barry told me that if you force a smile, even if you’re feeling rotten, endorphins will show up to the party and make you happy.

I opened my eyes. “Wesley!” I yelped to my friend who was getting dressed in the other room, “I was driving! Really driving! Is it possible this works?”

“Rebecca,” he said, his tone and countenance that of a 1950’s sitcom dad teaching a lesson, “You are in your living room. You are not driving.”

“Yes, obviously now I’m not, but I was—I mean, I guess I’m just surprised to be so suggestible.” If Wesley couldn’t accept the new-and-improved Secret Rebecca, surely none of my other friends could either. Should I visualize all my friends embracing the me-with-hairless-arms, in front of my Maserati? No time…

“Hey, visualize no traffic and an instant table at BLT Burger.”

So, I did. I don’t mean to freak you out, but, on a Friday night at 8 pm, it took us 13 minutes to get from 96th St. to 11th St., and there was virtually no waiting until we were seated at the only six-person table at NYC’s most popular burger joint.

No, smartass, we didn’t take the Maserati.