Good Intentions

I've been busy lately, reading my way through a very interesting pile of books:

The Energy Healing Experiments by Gary Schwartz 
Dr. Schwartz's website

The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart
The Intention Experiment website

Entangled Minds by Dean Radin
Website, Dean Radin PHD

The ESP Enigma by Diane Hennacy Powell
Dr. Hennacy Powell's website

These books explain the scientific research and the myriad experiments being done around the globe by some intrepid scientists.  Experiments that show how our focused intention can physically alter matter.   These scientists use the latest medical technology and some very sophisticated equipment (like a tool that can measure light so subtle it can pick up the flicker of a single burning candle a mile away) to conduct their research.   Though their subject of investigation - energy - is very difficult to quantify, many of the experiments meet the gold standard of scientific research: the double-blind study with replication of results.   These results lead to some very interesting questions.  The answers to which challenge our current understanding of physics.    If you're ready to meet that challenge, I encourage you to read these books and visit the authors' websites.   They don't pretend to have all the answers, but they sure are asking interesting questions. 

When one tugs at a single thing in Nature, he finds it hitched to the rest of the Universe.

John Muir

Good Vibrations

V is for Vibration


The whole universe is vibrating.

Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it is only transformed and transferred.

Energy and matter are different states of the same phenomenon. 

The energy that manifests itself as matter is constantly vibrating.

The most common and obvious way we experience these vibrations is through sound.   Here are some links for you to listen to the vibrations of the universe:

Forest Raindrops

Thunder 

Song Birds

Ocean Waves

If you think what you say or how you say it doesn't matter, watch here to see the human voice create vibrational patterns 

And the best "good vibrations" of them all.... The Beach Boys:

Possibillian

P is for Possibillian

 Yes, "possibillian" is really a word.  Granted, you won't find it in any dictionary (yet), but there's an entry for it on wikipedia, so it must be a real word, right?

Possibillian was coined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in response to being asked whether he was an atheist or a religious person.   He replied "I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now. "
 

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd"

Voltaire          

Once we get beyond the toolbox of science, no one knows anything for certain.  Actually, the only thing we do know for certain is the magnitude of things we don't know.    Being a possibillian means you don't have to limit yourself to one belief system - you can be open to multiple possibilities and ideas at the same time.  And it's okay to say "I don't know" - what a novel and freeing idea!

If you're interested in possibillianism you can watch David here or check out his website here

"Celebrate possibility and praise uncertainty."  David Eagleman

A little mystery

In an age where science is king, we've become gobblers of scientific sound bites, snippets of information fed to us by experts.  This is reductionism -  the reducing of complex systems to the interaction of their parts.   The standard scientific method of objective, peer-reviewed experimentation is reductionism at its best, and it's the bedrock of modern science and medicine.  Reductionism is a great tool.  Using it has rocketed us to the moon, wiped out deadly diseases,  and transplanted a baboon heart into a human.  In fact, it's working so well, it's the only tool we're using.  This is a mistake.   Many doctors working in alternative medicine end up there because they see this mistake first hand.  They come to understand that people are more than a collection of organs, bones and muscles wrapped around a personality.  They reach into their traditional western medicine tool box for help and come up empty-handed.

Thomas Moore, in is book Dark Nights of the Soul spends some time exploring the edges of the known and describes it as  "... the pulling apart of meaning to reveal the mystery."   Mystery.  Isn't this exactly what reductionist science is out to eliminate?  As a practitioner in alternative healing modalities, I see that much of what my clients experience during treatment falls into this category of mystery.  They describe physical sensations like tingling, swirling, pulling or vibration.  They report relief from pain, nausea, headache, tremors, and depression.   When viewed only through the lens of reductionism there is no explanation for these experiences, so it is concluded that the treatment is a sham, and the resulting benefits are just the placebo effect.  (It's interesting and somewhat ironic to note that scientists are currently using reductionism to validate and measure the placebo effect.)

I'm not suggesting we go back to a time when there was nothing but mystery and superstition.  Reductionism has served us well, and will continue to do so.   But it needs to scootch over just a bit , and make room for something else in our collective consciousness.  What should that something else be?  I think, as Thomas Moore suggests, we should all adopt a style of awareness that includes the mysterious and the unexplained.  How about you?  Do you have space for a little mystery in your life?