The Field

Ten Tips for Living a “Happy” Life

Posted by Eden

What is “happy” and is it really attainable? In this age of fast-paced, information overload, what do we really want from life?

I believe we want what people have always wanted. We want to be happy. We want to love and contribute to others. We want to be loved. We want to think we’re making a difference, that there’s a “reason” or purpose for our existence.

While some might argue that happy is an overused term and not a practical goal, let’s consider happy as being peaceful and content, as being the opposite of miserable, as being empowered to be all that we can be in life, to be able to have loving and sustainable relationships. And then, I think, everyone will agree that this is a state where we would all like to be centered. 

Based on my own personal exploration into this essential quest, I’ve summarized what I view as the Top Ten tips to a Happy Life, as taught by many of the thought leaders today who are great authors, speakers, and spiritual teachers..

TOP TEN:

1. Be Present, Be Here Now

Studies suggest we have somewhere between 12,000 to 65,000 thoughts per day, although I’ve seen reference to a wider range (between 2,000 to 600,000!). Most commonly, 50-60,000 is considered a good estimate.

Being human means being inundated with thoughts all day, every day: endless observations, judgements, interpretations, complaints, worries, ‘what-ifs’, memories, regrets, wishes, desires, dreams about our future, anger about our past, and on and on. I’ve seen statistics indicating 95% of them are similar from day to day. Some thoughts seem completely random, others can hijack us as we follow a thread and let our emotions react to what are sometimes completely irrational, twisted versions of reality. For me, it has been a major breakthrough to understand that I am NOT my thoughts. For too long, my thoughts ran me. They still try to, every single day, but I am watching them now. I used to look to my thoughts for meaning, wondering why I was suddenly upset when nothing had happened.

So how much of an average person’s thoughts are rooted in the present moment? Some suggest that the majority of our thoughts are rooted in the past (somewhere between 70 and 90%) with about 10-20% ruminating or dreaming or imagining what will happen in the future. A small percentage of our thoughts actually focus on the present moment in a purely experiential manner. Within our minds, our perception of the past, how it is affecting us now and into the future can often become warped.

Eckhart Tolle, author of “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth” and other books is a well-known speaker and teacher in this area. Tolle tells us: “Stay fully present in the now-your whole life unfolds here. In the now there is joy of Being and deep peace”.

In Deepak Chopra’s “Seven Spiritual Laws of Success”, he says that pure potentiality is pure consciousness, the field of all possibilities and infinite creativity. Meditation to connect with our inner being to be present and master our thoughts can help us to find that state of pure consciousness.

2. Your Thoughts Create your Reality

When you start to understand that you are not your thoughts, that you are a being with a powerful inner spirit that happens to also have a brain that does what brains do, non-stop generation of thoughts, you can step back and observe this and take control. Consider how you can choose how your brain operates just as you make these decisions about using your arm or your fingers or your eyes every day of your life.

The realization that you actually could control and direct your thoughts to create whatever reality you choose can open up a whole new world. If, for example, you tell yourself that you cannot succeed at something – then you probably won’t. So, the obvious question is why tell yourself that? And yet we do it all the time..

There’s so much groundbreaking work in this area over the past decade, everything from the books on the Law of Attraction (including the blockbuster work called “The Secret”) and new science indicating that thoughts are actually bits of quantum energy (see my post entitled “The Science behind the Mystery”), which opens up even more unbelievable implications for our potential capabilities if we can master our mind.

Louise Hay (founder of Hay House) is an inspiring example of this powerful concept in action. Her countless books and CD’s on Affirmations show how you can change your life by the very simple practice of constantly generating positive, life-affirming thoughts. From “Power Thoughts” by Louise Hay: “Trust life to hear and respond to your positive words. Say these affirmations every day and your whole world will change for the better.”

3. Be Grateful

Expressing gratitude, especially if you can make it a daily practice to declare everything you are grateful for in your life, can create positive self-affirming thoughts instead of negative ones and align your attention to everything that is good in your life. This alone can be transformational. Many current thought leaders and spiritual teachers encourage people to keep a gratitude journal.

If you do a search on Gratitude quotations, you will find many empowering thoughts. Here’s a few:

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” G.K. Chesterton

“God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say ‘thank you?’ ” William A. Ward

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you’, that would suffice.” Meister Eckhart

4. Trust that the universe is unfolding as it should..

Or perhaps an easier way to say this is, Have Faith. Sometimes in our darkest hours, when nothing seems to be going as we had wanted or expected, we can’t see this. We want only to fight against what is. Everything will not always go our way but, if you trust life and let it unfold, as Mick Jagger said, “you just might get what you need”.

For some this could mean a belief in God, aligned with one of the great faith traditions, for others it might just mean knowing that there is a greater life force, that we are all a part of it, and that life will take us where we need to go if we surrender to it.

5. Practice Forgiveness

Oprah and others, have defined Forgiveness as recognizing that you can’t change the past. We hold onto a lot of resentment and in the end, who does it hurt? We hurt ourselves more than anyone else. Accepting what has happened and creating the space to move on can be a powerful step forward.

Sometimes, particularly if you have been a victim of crime or abuse, whatever happened may seem ‘unforgiveable’. In these cases, remember that forgiveness does not mean you have to let that person back into your life but it can release you from the hold that this has on you.

In other cases, we may have imagined transgressions that were in reality, minor. Caroline Myss, medical intuitive and author of a number of bestselling books including “Sacred Contracts”, outlines the common archetypes that drive our behaviours. She identifies the “Victim” as one of the four archetypes for survival which can lead you to believe that “you are always taken advantage of and it’s never your fault.” If this feels familiar, her work may be of interest.

Regardless of the situation (and many may lie in between these two extremes), if you have anger or bitterness in your heart, you must do the work needed (whatever that is for you) to let it go. It literally will suck the life out of you and can affect all your relationships. The serenity prayer from AA says it all: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.”

6. Follow your Bliss

One of Joseph Campbell’s famous quotations…

Many will say that they would love to follow their bliss but they have to pay the bills, don’t have time, it’s too late to change course, or any other number of excuses.

I would contend that for many of us, we don’t really know what our ‘bliss’ is. Of course, it seems like it must be the greener grass on the other side. Certainly, the idea of walking away from a tough job and living in luxury seems blissful – but this is not what Campbell intended.

Sometimes we need to take a hard look at our life circumstances and make adjustments along our journey. The important thing is to be conscious. Make conscious choices. Embrace work that you love. Remember, even when you’re “following your bliss”, there will be tough sledding at times. This is certainly not a free ticket to quit.

7. Choose your Life

This is another perspective on “Follow your Bliss”. Sometimes, it’s not our outside circumstances that need to change but our interior dimension.

I took a course called the Landmark Forum many years ago, and this was a key concept after three long days of workshop. It correlates back to the idea that ‘your thoughts create your reality’.

When you declare that your life, your spouse, your children, your job, your world are all exactly what you always wanted, then they will become that for you.

8. Don’t take yourself too seriously

Or, put another way: “Get over yourself”.

No one likes criticism and we all have fragile egos… but sometimes, when our thoughts hijack us, we can turn the simplest comments into conspiracy theories.

The truth is that not everything is about you, sometimes when people scowl at you, it’s because they’re unhappy inside. If a person says something to you that you don’t like, you don’t have to react in kind. In fact you may be able trigger transformation in another by not letting your ego take over, instead be present with that person and be compassionate.

Deepak Chopra asserts that “… the ego is not who we really are. The ego is our social mask, it is the role we are playing.”

If you are aware and present with people, not coloured by past injustices or imagined indignities, then you can choose to always have powerful, meaningful conversations.

Not being driven by ego takes focus, commitment, and courage…

9. We are all one

When you take steps to be present, become committed to not ‘be your ego’ or run by your thoughts, to be grateful for the people in your life, and to create your reality then you will start to sense more and more that you are not alone but a part of something much greater, the collective spirit of humanity.

Even the latest scientific breakthroughs with respect to quantum consciousness and unified field theory are demonstrating that the universe and everything in it, ourselves included, are interconnected by a vast field of energy.

In this collective space, love and contribution become natural which in turn can fuel harmony and peace in your life.

10. Conscious Evolution

Last year, I took the Evolutionary Worldview Course through Enlightennext Magazine and Andrew Cohen and later, watched the event: “A Call to Conscious Evolution, Our Moment of Choice” which was also hosted by this group. Both experiences were inspirational and eye-opening. As Deepak, one of the many renowned speakers at the Evolutionary Leaders’ event, said: “… the only way to transform the world is to transform yourself..” and “… even well-meaning activism is often coming from a place of outrage rather that creative consciousness..”

This jives with many of the teachings of Andrew Cohen and his team with respect to the evolution of our interior dimension and our culture. Our mind, our being, or our “interior dimension” as they call it have evolved just as our bodies have. They talk about 4 billion years of evolution on this planet and how we, as sentient, powerful beings, can now choose where we go from here. They ask questions like: “how does your own evolution come into the culture, into changing the world?” and “To what degree are you enabling this process of evolution through your own heroic efforts?” so that we can leave the world a better place because we were here.

Making conscious decisions everyday to feed and exercise your body for optimal health and well-being is the other side of the coin to choosing the thoughts that you feed yourself for optimal mental health and well-being.

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The So-called “God” Particle

Posted by Eden

If a journalist had never nicknamed this discovery the “God” Particle and we had simply heard the news that the “Higgs boson” particle had been found, would it have made as many headlines? Would it have become a trending topic on Twitter and the focus of so many in the blogosphere (this one included)?

News reports have called this one of the most important scientific discoveries of this century which seems mind-blowing to laymen such as myself. After all, how can something so small that we haven’t even been able to perceive it with our most powerful equipment change our very perception of the universe?

This subatomic particle has long been postulated as a missing ingredient to prove the existence of the Higgs boson field which converts energy into mass, connecting elementary particles and ultimately explains how the “Big Bang” produced planets and stars instead of a universal caldron of light-speed moving particles.

The Higgs boson field, also referred to as the zero point field is an invisible energy field filling the vacuum of space which is theorized to have given mass to elementary particles such as electrons and quarks, acting as the glue to form atoms, the building blocks of mass in the universe. This “god” particle was theorized in the 60’s by a group of scientists, lead by Higgs, as part of the Standard Model for the physics of the universe. Finding proof of its existence takes them closer to understanding this complex model but this does not give them all the answers.

In the past decade, many thought leaders have postulated how the properties of quantum mechanics inter-relate with theories on quantum consciousness and the spiritual implications of entanglement and nonlocality and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.  For those who have been following these ideas, you might wonder how this discovery affects this.

Generally speaking, I would say that it changes nothing.  After all, these properties still apply to the divine universe that was formed, partly as a result of our new particle ‘glue’, and further understanding this is a wondrous move forward.  It’s a unique quality of the human spirit, to seek this knowledge, to try and understand where we come from and where we are going…

 

Inspirational Science about the power of our Hearts

Posted by Eden

Earlier in May, I attended Day 3 (Sunday) of the Hay House “I Can Do It” event in Toronto.  My main reason for going was to see Gregg Braden who was the keynote speaker on Sunday morning.  While there, I also enjoyed attending sessions with John Holland (the first time I’d ever experienced a “medium in action”), Dr. Christiane Northrup, and Dr. Bruce Lipton who gave the closing keynote address.  I’ve since been absorbing more material from both Gregg Braden and Bruce Lipton.  I love the mix of scientific breakthroughs in the areas of biology and quantum physics as they relate to human spirituality intermixed with findings from our wisdom traditions.

I’m still absorbing some of this information and couldn’t possibly do this justice here, however, I thought sharing a few insights might be of interest.

Lipton and Braden have a lot in common as they both come from a science background, however, Lipton has a PhD in Biology and is more focused on that field.  I just finished listening to his CD’s called the “Biology of Belief” which go quite in depth on genetics but in a way that everyone (even me) can understand.

Braden seems to balance his scientific inquiry with his parallel mission of investigating ancient wisdom traditions which makes his material really fascinating.  I’ve heard them both dispute Darwin’s theories on evolution as it relates to human evolution and the ‘survival of the fittest’.  It’s the first time I’ve really considered that this wasn’t just pure fact but some really interesting points were made.  Braden’s upcoming book will cover this in detail.  The idea that ‘cooperation’ works better for our survival than ‘competition’ is certainly true today.

While there, I was able to briefly meet Gregg Braden and have him sign two of his books (“The God Code” and “Fractal Time”) and slip him a wrapped copy of “Vision Speak”.  I don’t know if he’ll find time to read my novel but I can always dream.  He was very gracious in accepting it. 🙂  I also picked up his DVD, “The Language of the Divine Matrix” which I enjoyed watching over a rainy weekend in May.  (which would be most of May this year..)

In this 4 hour DVD, Braden walks us through real science demonstrating some exciting concepts, for example:

  • the universe is an intelligent, evolving consciousness of which we are all connected.  He calls this the ‘divine matrix’ (based partly on Planck’s reference to the field as the ‘matrix’)
  • we are beings of energy and the strongest electrical and magnetic energy forces in our body come from our heart
  • the language of our heart – beliefs and feelings, human prayer energy – (generated by our thoughts and emotions) can change our world, affect our reality, connect us to the divine matrix…

He explained some fascinating, related experiments, including the “Global Consciousness Project” out of Princeton University which is measuring changes in human consciousness on a global scale using devices planted around the earth.  A key result from this experiment occurred around 9/11.  The measurements recorded both just before and after 9/11, indicate some astounding results which not only demonstrate the power of our collective energy but also that we may sense something is about to happen before it actually reaches our conscious state.

He then shared some of his research into ancient traditions, including his visit to Tibet, his knowledge of the Essenes, and the lost scriptures including the Lost Gospel of Thomas and related this to the science.  One of his quotations came from Thomas Verse 106 which referenced the potential power mankind can have: ‘when you can marry thought and emotion into one potent force’..

Ancient wisdom seekers were perhaps more in touch with this ‘prana’, energy body of humanity than we are today in our busy, materialistic world.

If you’re not already a fan of Gregg Braden (http://www.greggbraden.com/) and his work, as well as Bruce Lipton (http://www.brucelipton.com/), then I highly recommend you have a look at the work they are doing (and sharing).  They both have hugely inspiring insights, based on real science, that could rock your world.

Top Ten Tips for a Happy Life

Posted by Eden

What is “happy” and is it really attainable?  In this age of fast-paced, information overload, what do we really want from life?

I believe we want what people have always wanted.  We want to be happy.  We want to love and contribute to others.  We want to be loved.  We want to think we’re making a difference, that there’s a “reason” or purpose for our existence.

While some might argue that happy (as in merrily skipping along through life) is an overused term and not a practical goal, let’s consider happy as being peaceful and content, as being the opposite of miserable, as being empowered to be all that we can be in life, to be able to have loving and sustainable relationships.  And then, I think, everyone will agree that this is a state where we would all like to be centred.

Based on my own personal exploration into this essential quest, I’ve summarized what I view as the Top Ten tips to a Happy Life, as taught by many of the thought leaders today who are great authors, speakers, and spiritual teachers..

TOP TEN:

1. Be Present, Be Here Now

Studies suggest we have somewhere between 12,000 to 65,000 thoughts per day, although I’ve seen reference to a wider range (between 2,000 to 600,000!).   Most commonly, 50-60,000 is considered a good estimate.

Being human means being inundated with thoughts all day, every day: endless observations, judgements, interpretations, complaints, worries, ‘what-ifs’, memories, regrets, wishes, desires, dreams about our future, anger about our past, and on and on.  I’ve seen statistics indicating 95% of them are similar from day to day.  Some thoughts seem completely random, others can hijack us as we follow a thread and let our emotions react to what are sometimes completely irrational, twisted versions of reality.   For me, it has been a major breakthrough to understand that I am NOT my thoughts.  For too long, my thoughts ran me. They still try to, every single day, but I am watching them now.  I used to look to my thoughts for meaning, wondering why I was suddenly upset when nothing had happened.

So how much of an average person’s thoughts are rooted in the present moment?  Some suggest that the majority of our thoughts are rooted in the past (somewhere between 70 and 90%) with about 10-20% ruminating or dreaming or imagining what will happen in the future.  A small percentage of our thoughts actually focus on the present moment in a purely experiential manner.  Within our minds, our perception of the past, how it is affecting us now and into the future can often become warped.

Eckhart Tolle, author of “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth” and other books is a well-known speaker and teacher in this area.  Tolle tells us: “Stay fully present in the now—your whole life unfolds here. In the now there is joy of Being and deep peace”.

In Deepak Chopra’s “Seven Spiritual Laws of Success”, he says that pure potentiality is pure consciousness, the field of all possibilities and infinite creativity.  Meditation to connect with our inner being to be present and master our thoughts can help us to find that state of pure consciousness.

2. Your Thoughts Create your Reality

When you start to understand that you are not your thoughts, that you are a being with a powerful inner spirit that happens to also have a brain that does what brains do, non-stop generation of thoughts, you can step back and observe this and take control.  Consider how you can choose how your brain operates just as you make these decisions about using your arm or your fingers or your eyes every day of your life.

The realization that you actually could control and direct your thoughts to create whatever reality you choose can open up a whole new world.  If, for example, you tell yourself that you cannot succeed at something – then you probably won’t.  So, the obvious question is why tell yourself that?  And yet we do it all the time..

There’s so much groundbreaking work in this area over the past decade, everything from the books on the Law of Attraction (including the blockbuster work called “The Secret”) and new science indicating that thoughts are actually bits of quantum energy (see previous post “The Science behind the Mystery“), which opens up even more unbelievable implications for our potential capabilities if we can master our mind.

Louise Hay (founder of Hay House) is an inspiring example of this powerful concept in action.  Her countless books and CD’s on Affirmations show how you can change your life by the very simple practice of constantly generating positive, life-affirming thoughts.  From “Power Thoughts” by Louise Hay at www.healyourlife.com: “Trust life to hear and respond to your positive words. Say these affirmations every day and your whole world will change for the better.”

3. Be Grateful

Expressing gratitude, especially if you can make it a daily practice to declare everything you are grateful for in your life, can create positive self-affirming thoughts instead of negative ones and align your attention to everything that is good in your life.  This alone can be transformational.  Many current thought leaders and spiritual teachers encourage people to keep a gratitude journal.  For a good example of this in practice, check out my Aunt Suzy’s Grateful List that she circulated at Christmas and I have since posted on this blog.

If you do a search on Gratitude quotations, you will find many empowering thoughts.  Here’s a few:

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” G.K. Chesterton

“God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today.  Have you used one to say ‘thank you?’ ”  William A. Ward

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you’, that would suffice.” Meister Eckhart

4. Trust that the universe is unfolding as it should..

Or perhaps an easier way to say this is, Have Faith.  Sometimes in our darkest hours, when nothing seems to be going as we had wanted or expected, we can’t see this.  We want only to fight against what is.  Everything will not always go our way but, if you trust life and let it unfold, as Mick Jagger said, “you just might get what you need”.

For some this could mean a belief in God, aligned with one of the great faith traditions, for others it might just mean knowing that there is a greater life force, that we are all a part of it, and that life will take us where we need to go if we surrender to it.

5. Practice Forgiveness

Oprah and others, have defined Forgiveness as recognizing that you can’t change the past.  We hold onto a lot of resentment and in the end, who does it hurt?  We hurt ourselves more than anyone else.  Accepting what has happened and creating the space to move on can be a powerful step forward.

Sometimes, particularly if you have been a victim of crime or abuse, whatever happened may seem ‘unforgiveable’.  In these cases, remember that forgiveness does not mean you have to let that person back into your life but it can release you from the hold that this has on you.

In other cases, we may have imagined transgressions that were in reality, minor.  Caroline Myss, medical intuitive and author of a number of bestselling books including “Sacred Contracts”, outlines the common archetypes that drive our behaviours.   She identifies the “Victim” as one of the four archetypes for survival which can lead you to believe that “you are always taken advantage of and it’s never your fault.”  If this feels familiar, her work may be of interest.

Regardless of the situation (and many may lie in between these two extremes), if you have anger or bitterness in your heart, you must do the work needed (whatever that is for you) to let it go.  It literally will suck the life out of you and can affect all your relationships.  The serenity prayer from AA says it all: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.”

6. Follow your Bliss

One of Joseph Campbell’s famous quotations….

Many will say that they would love to follow their bliss but they have to pay the bills, don’t have time, it’s too late to change course, or any other number of excuses.

I would contend that for many of us, we don’t really know what our ‘bliss’ is.  Of course, it seems like it must be the greener grass on the other side.  Certainly, the idea of walking away from a tough job and living in luxury seems blissful – but this is not what Campbell intended.

Sometimes we need to take a hard look at our life circumstances and make adjustments along our journey.  The important thing is to be conscious.  Make conscious choices. Embrace work that you love.  Remember, even when you’re “following your bliss”, there will be tough sledding at times.  This is certainly not a free ticket to quit.

7. Choose your Life

This is another perspective on “Follow your Bliss”.  Sometimes, it’s not our outside circumstances that need to change but our interior dimension.

I took a course called the Landmark Forum many years ago, and this was a key concept after 3 long days of workshop.  It correlates back to the idea that ‘your thoughts create your reality’.

When you declare that your life, your spouse, your children, your job, your world are all exactly what you always wanted, then they will become that for you.

8. Don’t take yourself too seriously

Or, put another way: “Get over yourself”.

No one likes criticism and we all have fragile egos…  but sometimes, when our thoughts hijack us, we can turn the simplest comments into conspiracy theories.

The truth is that not everything is about you, sometimes when people scowl at you, it’s because they’re unhappy inside.  If a person says something to you that you don’t like, you don’t have to react in kind.  In fact you may be able trigger transformation in another by not letting your ego take over, instead be present with that person and be compassionate.

Deepak Chopra asserts that “…the ego is not who we really are.  The ego is our social mask, it is the role we are playing.”

If you are aware and present with people, not coloured by past injustices or imagined indignities, then you can choose to always have powerful, meaningful conversations.

Not being driven by ego takes focus, commitment, and courage…

9. We are all one

When you take steps to be present, become committed to not ‘be your ego’ or run by your thoughts, to be grateful for the people in your life, and to create your reality then you will start to sense more and more that you are not alone but a part of something much greater, the collective spirit of humanity.

Even the latest scientific breakthroughs with respect to quantum consciousness and unified field theory are demonstrating that the universe and everything in it, ourselves included, are interconnected by a vast field of energy.

In this collective space, love and contribution become natural which in turn can fuel harmony and peace in your life.

10. Conscious Evolution

Last summer, I took the Evolutionary Worldview Course through Enlightennext Magazine and Andrew Cohen and then a few months ago, I watched the event: “A Call to Conscious Evolution, Our Moment of Choice”  which was also hosted by this group.  Both experiences were inspirational and eye-opening.  As Deepak, one of the many renowned speakers at the Evolutionary Leaders’ event, said: “…the only way to transform the world is to transform yourself..”  and “…even well-meaning activism is often coming from a place of outrage rather that creative consciousness..”

This jives with many of the teachings of Andrew Cohen and his team with respect to the evolution of our interior dimension and our culture.  Last year, I wrote a short post on “Evolution of Consciousness” vs.”Conscious Evolution” when I began to perceive the difference.  Our mind, our being, or our “interior dimension” as they call it have evolved just as our bodies have.  They talk about 4 billion years of evolution on this planet and how we, as sentient, powerful beings, can now choose where we go from here.  They ask questions like: “how does your own evolution come into the culture, into changing the world?”  and “To what degree are you enabling this process of evolution through your own heroic efforts?” so that we can leave the world a better place because we were here.

Andrew Cohen’s annual Being and Becoming Retreat delves deeply into these possibilities.  I hope to attend this one day myself and will continue to explore and discourse on this topic in future posts.

I recently spoke at a women’s dinner meeting and shared my Top Ten tips, asking for their feedback.  One suggestion, which happened to come from a Chinese medicine doctor, was “Your  Body is your Temple”.  A wonderful suggestion and I believe that, in many ways, this is an extension of  this commitment to conscious evolution.

Making conscious decisions everyday to feed and exercise your body for optimal health and well-being is the other side of the coin to choosing the thoughts that you feed yourself for optimal mental health and well-being.   WILL POWER has a whole new depth of meaning…

If you’re reading this post and have opinions or suggestions on what your top ten are, don’t be shy.  Share your ideas.

Conscious Evolution

Posted by Eden

I’ve just finished viewing the Evolutionary Leaders’ “A Call to Conscious Evolution, Our Moment of Choice”.  This was a special evening held at UCLA on August 31st.  They had some technical challenges with those of us who signed up to watch the evening event live online so this weekend was our opportunity to view the program with the sound issues resolved.

The roster of speakers at this event were a long list of the “Who’s Who” in the evolutionary, quantum consciousness, personal transformation world of thought leaders (see list).  The common message was that we are all living at a unique moment in time, facing global crises.  In this pivotal time, we must consciously evolve or face the danger of extinction.   Gregg Braden gave an impassioned talk and referenced Scientific America’s recent cover: “A World of Crisis, Crossroads for Planet Earth…. will we choose to create the best of all possible worlds?”

Deepak was the opening speaker.  He must be one of the most prolific authors/speakers in this area today.  With over 50 books, a radio show, and connections or partnerships with countless, it seems like I’m hearing something from him everyday – whether it’s an email, a tweet, his radio show or something I’ve found on youtube.

A couple of Deepak’s significant points were that the only way to transform the world is to transform yourself and that even well-meaning ‘activism’ is coming from a place of ‘outrage’ rather than creative consciousness.   Conscious evolution calls for more creative powers.   A couple of hours ago, en route to the Home Depot to pick up paint supplies, I turned on my XM radio and guess who I heard?  Deepak chatting with his pal Stuart Hameroff about Consciousness.  Yippee, my favourite topic!  They were comparing the Vedic concept of pure consciousness being before ‘perception and thought’ with Hameroff’s “proto-consciousness” and how this relates to the quantum super-position idea where observation of a particle collapses it down to one place (just like conscious thought collapses us down to a specific reality).

Sorry, I digress!  Back to the Evolutionary Leaders’ event..

Jean Houston gave an energetic view of the evolution of the universe, our planet, life on earth, and humanity, with special emphasis on the “jumps” that caused significant transformation.  She said we need to be the ‘creative wellspring’ to trigger our new evolutionary path.

Bruce Lipton talked about the collapse and rebirth of various civilizations and reiterated that we now face crises at the global level unlike ever before.  He reviewed four ‘Myth Perceptions’ that we must overcome to build the foundation for the next civilization where we live in harmony and balance with the universe, with nature.  To give you an idea of his four myth perceptions, he talked about our current understanding that our biological processes employ quantum physics (not classical), that our perceptions can control our biology, overcoming genetic, that rather than the survival of the fittest which says our evolution is driven by competition, it can be driven by cooperation, and that evolution is not just random but adaptive.

There were so many fabulous speakers and the messages all coalesced.  I was thrilled to see Lynn McTaggart of “The Field” and “Intention Experiment” fame talk about the power of intentions and how we must be committed to an “enormous paradigm shift” together, in order to overcome the world’s challenges.  I think it was Barbara Marx Hubbard who talked about the physical emergence of a co-created world and introduced a video talk by Marianne Williamson whose message on our evolutionary potential and the danger of a species who has become maladaptive to its environment (yikes, that’s us!) was very powerful.

For more information on this organization, the evening event and the conference they are planning for 11/1/11, go to the Evolutionary Leaders web site.

I’m inspired by this event as I continue to discover how best to contribute and consciously evolve – along with these transformational leaders.

Maybe I’ll see you there in 2011.

The Science behind THE Mystery

Posted by Eden

The conflict between Science and Religion, raging for centuries, has taken a surprising turn over the past few decades.  In this new age of spiritually and in the labs of enlightened scientists, the spark of attraction between the two, the esoteric and the practical, is stimulating exciting new ideas.  In some circles, they’re practically dating.

So in taking a glimpse into some of these scientific theories, let’s define “THE Mystery” as not being just any old mystery but rather THE Mystery of the universe, of life and death and afterlife, of the nature of our consciousness, of creation, and the existence of some greater life force.  Some might call this universal life force God, others might say it is an interconnected field of energy to which we are all part of the greater sum.  Regardless, I think we can all agree that this is the mother of all mysteries.

It’s also noteworthy that the title says the science ‘behind’ The Mystery, not that science has “solved” it.  In fact, it might be more relevant to this discussion to say that science today is “enhancing” or “expanding” The Mystery, giving it more colour and depth than ever.

It wasn’t very long ago that many thought they knew the answers.  The laws of Classical, or Newtonian, Physics explained how our physical world worked in deterministic, predictable ways.  Our religious institutions turned a blind eye to science as they already had the meaning of life, death, and creation explained.  Darwin’s theories exploded onto this scene to mess with their creation stories but from a scientific perspective, the evolution of species did appear to connect the dots.

But in the dawn of the twentieth century, brilliant scientists revealed new depths to our understanding of science.  They discovered Quantum Physics, which explained how the very smallest bits of matter behaved (of which everything, even our bodies, are comprised) and then General Relativity which explained how very large objects and spacetime behaved.  And yet, neither of these new areas of science jived with the laws of Classical Physics, nor with one another.

So now the brilliant scientists are searching for a unified theory which will explain how these branches of physics inter-relate. 

And meanwhile, the subatomic world of quantum mechanics has demonstrated some astounding properties.  One established behaviour (Heisenberg uncertainty principle) identified that particles are constantly in motion, in a state of superposition (many places at once) which is seemingly affected by observation.  If one attempts to measure the position of a particle, then it collapses down into one place but it becomes impossible to measure its speed, and vice versa.  

As Dr. Stephen Hawking stated in his book “A Brief History of Time”, “The uncertainty principle had profound implications for the way in which we view the world.” … and it is “not fully appreciated by philosophers and still the subject of much controversy.”

 Even more bizarre are the properties of entanglement and nonlocality which state two particles can have interconnected states even if spatially separated by extreme distances.  Once in contact, they remain in contact throughout spacetime.

The implications of this are summarized In “The Field” by Lynn McTaggart: “Nonlocality shattered the very foundations of physics.  Matter could no longer be considered separate.  Actions did not have to have an observable cause over an observable space.  Einstein’s most fundamental axiom wasn’t correct: at a certain level of matter, things could travel faster than the speed of light.  Subatomic particles had no meaning in isolation but could only be understood in their relationships….” 

In the search for the “theory of everything”, quantum field theory is a framework which relates laws of relativity and quantum mechanics.  The zero point field, postulated as a future unlimited source of energy in science fiction and now by real scientists, is a field of energy that underlies and interconnects everything in the universe.  When you try to wrap your brain around this, that our brains, our bodies, our thoughts, the room we’re in, the trees, our planet, the sun and everything in the universe are all part of a quantum web of interconnected energy, you must be struck by the enormity of the possibilities.

In the words of Dr. Hal Puthoff ,  this means that “so called empty space is not really empty at all, it’s actually full of energy.”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbn5vPhLjk0 .  What we do know is that this sea of energy is electromagnetic in nature and vast beyond our imagination.  If we could find a way to tap into this source, our energy troubles might be over.

While some ‘nay-sayer’ scientists or strict religious leaders, committed to their dogma, may scoff at how far imagination and speculation might be going with quantum theories of consciousness, these possibilities take concepts of human spirituality and our place in the universe to a new level. 

An interesting anecodote to end with is Arthur C Clarke’s Law of Revolutionary Ideas: “Every revolutionary idea — in science, politics, art, or whatever — seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:

(1) “It’s completely impossible — don’t waste my time”;
(2) “It’s possible, but it’s not worth doing”;
(3) “I said it was a good idea all along.”