The Secret...

...is to believe.You simply need to have unswerving,unwavering faith in your wishes,dreams,goals,whatever..Sooner or later it is bound to come true.It does!It doesn't really matter how seemingly impossible your wish sounds,a strong desire to realize your dreams actually sets all the forces of nature to start working on making that wish come true...I quote Shah Rukh Khan,"Itni shiddat se maine tumhe paane ki koshish ki hai,Ki zarre zarre ne mujhe tumse milaane ki saazish ki hai".Its not gibberish he was talking about.

Its like when Peter Pan said,"Every time you say faeries don't exist,a fairy falls dead somewhere".Children are the most pure and untarnished life forms.They lack fear until burned.But still they'll trustingly try again.Its constant caution from the elders that drills fear,or the notion of fear into their heads.Hence they stop trying to do anything brave.That's probably why we lack truly courageous people today.
Ever wonder why Prahalad emerged unscathed from the bonfire?Or how Jesus Christ could walk on water?All the scriptures,religious or otherwise,from time immemorial seem to have trying to teach and preach to us the power of faith.To give our faith a form,they gave it a face..which lead to religions.In the transformation,the original idea seems to have got lost and what was left behind was all the ugliness that stemmed from those means or methods that were used to implement these ideas.religious wars,castes, creed..stuff that people shouldn't really be caring about.Because even while performing a simple act like having your meal,you don't really know who toiled in the fields to produce the cereal,who was involved in the production and manufacturing(in case of canned food).
A prayer is merely conscious affirmation of your wish.A religious place ideally is a clean mind and a pure heart.Stone structures were built just in order to manifest a physical image,because (wo)man is a thinking creature.(S)he needs proof.

These are things I have heard before several times from several quarters.I have never been able to fathom the gravity of its meaning.Take out all the negativity that encompasses you.We need hope as much as we need love.And we need to place our faith in those hopes to actually make them come true.So don't forget the original lesson in the haze of what is left behind..