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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Listen to the Intro
The Greatest Secret summary
Rhonda Byrne
Revelations and practices to end suffering and discover lasting happiness
23 mins
Table of Contents
The Greatest Secret
Summary of 7 key ideas
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Key idea 1 of 7
Your true self is not a person.
Let’s kick things off with a simple question: Who are you?
Well, that’s easy, you may be thinking. You’re a person with a name, an age, an ethnicity, a profession, and a particular set of memories.
But what if you learned that you aren’t a person at all? What if who you really are is something else entirely? What if your identity is an illusion – an illusion that’s causing all the pain and suffering in your life?
You might not feel as if you’re suffering. Sure, you might get upset, anxious, or stressed sometimes. But doesn’t everyone experience those things? Actually, they don’t! According to the author, if you experience any negative feelings whatsoever, you’re suffering. But it doesn’t have to be that way – you can actually live a life of constant, complete happiness. And it all starts with realizing who you really are.
The key message here is: Your true self is not a person.
Right now, you’re almost certainly having an experience that feels like being a person. You feel like you have a body. You feel like you have a mind. But these feelings are actually illusions masking the truth.
Let’s start with the body. You can think of it just like a car – a thing you use to move from place to place. When you’re inside a car, you never say that you are the car. The same is true for your body – it’s just a vehicle that carries the real you.
Your mind isn’t the real you, either, though it can often seem like it is. After all, you have a voice in your head that talks like you, knows all about you, and refers to itself using the word “I.” But that voice belongs to your mind – not you. If there are no thoughts, then there is no mind – but you are still there because you are neither a thought nor a feeling.
You also aren’t a collection of personality traits. How could you be? Your personality constantly changes over your lifetime. And these different versions of you can’t be the real you; if they were, a bit of you would disappear each time your personality changed.
The real you is not a body, not a mind, not a personality. So what, or who, is it? That’s the greatest secret – and you’ll discover the answer in the next blink.
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What is The Greatest Secret about?
The Greatest Secret (2020) is a sequel to the worldwide best seller and self-help phenomenon The Secret, which inspired millions to better their lives by using the laws of attraction. In this installment, we learn an even greater secret: who we really are, and how we can use that knowledge to achieve everlasting happiness.
Best quote from The Greatest Secret
There is only one Awareness, and its the same Awareness that is operating through everybody. There is just one of us. Our name is I.
—Rhonda Byrne
Who should read The Greatest Secret?
- Fans of The Secret and other New Age manifestos
- People attracted to the spiritual and mystical
- Seekers of joy and happiness
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