When I watched the DVD of the bestselling book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, I had to smile. Not because I thought the principles taught were funny, but because I had known about them for years. Not only that, they come right out of the Jewish mystical tradition called Kabbalah - although people rarely talk about this fact. The people featured on the The Secret discuss how to manifest what we want and how to create what we desire, by combining thought and feeling. They don't talk too much about the need for action as well, but it is somewhat implied. This technology for conscious manifestation can be found clearly Jewish mystical teachings.

First, the Kabbalistic creation story involves God manifesting the world with a series of 10 utterances. In other words, God spoke the world into existence. What precedes words? Thoughts. What precedes thoughts? Letters. The Kabbalists believed that the foundation of the world consists of the Aleph Bet, or Hebrew alphabet. Why? Because letters create thoughts that are expressed in words, and when words are spoken (ie. God said, "Let there be light, and there was light.") they have an effect. In other words (excuse the pun), letters have a creative energy, and when combined into words , those words create worlds.

Second, if you look just beyond this creation story, you will find the Kabbalistic description of the Four Worlds of Creation. The Four Worlds, simply translated as Being, Thinking, Feeling, and Doing, provide a pathway for manifestation in the physical plane. We begin with the world of connection with Divine energy from which the will to create something - inspiration - comes. Moving that energy into thoughts of what we want, we then take that thought into a feeling place - we experience what it would be like to have what we want. Finally, in the fourth world we take action towards what we want. It's also possible to use the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, with its 10 sefirot, or emanations, and follow a similar path to conscious creation.

And then, if you want the physical manifestations of your desires to seem really magical, try using an incantation when you visualize or speak what you want into existence. The Aramaic word "abracadabra" literally means "He has created as he has spoken" - manifestation according to the power of words. Abracadabra comes from the verb "daber," which refers to organizing "speech." Our speech orders things - as in creating order out of chaos - into being. In biblical Hebrew the expression would be "abrakaamra," which comes from the verb "omer" and refers to the creative "word" itself. So, our words have a creative ability. Thus, the secret is revealed: Our thoughts and our words are creative. Any Kabbalist could have told you that.