With the popularity of the recent film The Secret, the Law of Attraction and "positive thinking" have once again captured the hearts and minds of many Americans. Mitch Horowitz take a closer look as to what makes Westerners so excited about this movement.:

One by one we enter the room, into the silence that is already there, and take our seats. The silence touches each of us, spreads and deepens as the room fills, finally gathering us all into a single body, covered by a Spirit that is beyond all names.

For the last 350 years, this gathered silence has been the foundation of Quaker worship. The silence of Quaker worship, however, is not an end in itself, but an opportunity for seeking communion with the Sacred. Quakers do not worship the silence, but that to which the silence leads. If mystical experience is a direct and unmediated experience of the Divine, the Sacred, God, then the Quaker meeting seeks and sometimes achieves a group mystical experience in which all present can share together in this connection. For these moments, all are “gathered” and are “covered” by the Spirit. Here Quakers have found— and still find—a communion in the silence as deep and strong as in any bread and wine.