I was a teenage narcissist

As if teenagers didn't already possess an exaggerated sense of entitlement and the belief that they are at the center of the Universe...behold, the world will soon be gifted with a teenage version of Rhonda Byrne's master work, The Secret, in the form of a book to be released this fall by a division of Simon & Schuster. The Secret to Teen Power will be penned by Paul Harrington, who produced the original DVD version of The Secret. An initial printing of 500,000 is planned. Leave no market un-Byrned, Rhonda; get 'em while they're young! We look eagerly forward to subsequent versions of The Secret for elementary school kids, toddlers, infants, and fetuses. I think there should also be special editions for old people, dead people, and perhaps for pets and plants as well. The New-Wage market is utterly boundless for those who have the ability to think outside the same old demographic!

As it happens, The Blunder From Down Under, David Schirmer, is also busily working on a book for teens and parents of teens, according to the 2 July entry on his blog (sorry, the individual posts don't have permalinks). David and his lovely wife Lorna have been involved in youth-empowerment activities for a while now; he thinks it's high time for teens to be privy to the astonishing wealth-creation secrets that he has been using in his multi-million-dollar scams own life and teaching to adults for years. "Why aren't they teaching this stuff in the schools?" he laments. He aims to fill that large gap in youth education. Aussie parents, you have been warned.

In related news, Saint David was recently hospitalized with what appears to have been pneumonia, but he was able to heal himself with God's help. His healing secret? Reading the Word of God and "speaking out Scriptures."

David 'splains that all disease is a result of some part of the mind being in chaos, and the only cure is to bring the mind back in order through faith. "It doesn't matter whether it is cancer or a cold, we create it in our mind and we can cure it the same way," he wrote on his post of 23 July. On his post the following day he wrote:

Over the next few days I rested and recovered. I continued to speak out healing scriptures and study the Word of God. The doctor was amazed by how fast I bounced back which I can only put down to speaking out healing scriptures and prayer.

He says the doctor even wondered how it could have possibly been pneumonia, given the miraculous healing and all that. Of course, David asserts, spiritual healing is simply outside the good doctor's paradigm.

On his entry of 24 July is a photo of David as a strapping young farmer (no word on whether or not this photo was taken before or after he and his brother stole a design for a hay baling machine from the farmer they were working for went into business together to sell a hay baling machine they had designed. Further down in the post is a more recent photo that depicts David healing himself through the Word of God. Apparently his religion dictates that praying and speaking out Scripture involves rituals with IVs and oxygen masks.

Lest anyone think that his recent brush with illness is a reflection on his faith, David assures us that just because you get sick doesn't mean you don't have faith. It's just that some things make you more vulnerable to the Devil's work, which illness surely is.

God cannot give what He doesn’t have! I don’t believe sickness or disease is from God but rather from satan. John 10:10 says that satan comes only to steal, kill and destroy - he is the father of deception and lies and disease. Jesus said "I come to give you life and give you life more abundantly." Of course many personal development guru’s deny the existence of satan however they can never fully explain sickness, natural disasters or death.

I reckon that since the fame and accolades accorded to some of his fellow Secret stars continue to elude him, he continues to play the holiness card. It's the one thing that sets him apart from all of those "guru's." What really caught my eye, though, was the implication that diseases are created by Satan, and God has nothing to do with it. In other words, those nasty bacteria and viruses responsible for untold human suffering over the eons are all the work of the Devil. Hmmm. Somebody really oughta tell Monty Python (and here are the lyrics, in case you want to sing along).

Although his general attitude towards disease and other issues is very much in keeping with the Law Of Attraction crowd, it remains to be seen whether or not the wisdom of Saint David the Heel Self-Healer makes it into the teeny version of The Secret. I'm guessing not.

PS ~ For more about disease and David Schirmer's wisdom on this topic, see my May 7 swine flu post, to which I recently added an update.