A few forms of non-dualistic meditation require resting the mind on something, perhaps an object. Clarity is achieved when the mind takes on the shape of that on which it is resting without any distortion. One can then say, “I am that.”

Neuro-science maps the shape of the mind holding a clear thought another way; by using functional MRI (fMRI). It literally constructs a topology showing the active areas of the brain while it is engaged in various tasks.

Many ancient belief systems contain narratives of beings who can manifest anything just by thinking about it. What’s not so popularly known is that some of these narratives also state that such beings are a little envious of the human capacity to play with a multiplicity of ideas before settling on one, and delaying the enactment of it. In other words, we can play within the confines of our imagination. Or can we?

The idea that our thoughts create our reality is a very, very, very old one. It has been resurrected into pop culture by clever marketers capitalizing on the New Age Thought movement and the mind-bending notions of quantum physics. Even if folks don’t fully understand these ideas, most everyone is attracted to being in the mystery they present.

Once folks realize they can think their way into a better reality, the target then becomes to master thought control. One tool used to achieve this is known as setting an intent. The result is that once the thought is perfectly clear, it will manifest.

While contemplative meditation focuses primarily on the being side of existence, most of us spend our time thinking about the how, where, when, why of doing. That includes what we are doing now and what we want to be doing.

Over the years, it has become increasingly important to me to develop clarity of vision in all ways as a tool to learning and growing. About a decade ago, I began to notice that whatever I had become clear about manifested within a short period of time, usually in a matter of days.

What I’m experiencing now is that the clarity in long-range vision is much more difficult to achieve. When it does manifest, it’s usually before I’m ready. These days, if I’m standing anywhere near the pool when clarity comes, a universal wind gust throws me into the deep end. In other words, when clarity comes, I don’t have to motivate myself to take action. It’s an automatic coping response to manifesting.

I’ve begun to consider why those beings who can instantly manifest their thoughts might envy us. Some days that instant-manifestation thing seems a little like a Midas touch problem.

I’ve also wondered if the change is with me and if I’ve moved into a place of power that carries with it another level of responsibility. Once my ego finished playing with that idea, I noticed that those same sorts of upheavals or deep-end diving changes are happening with most everyone I know. It’s almost like the universe saying, “Here’s the new life you asked for. Deal with it.” All of this is a side-effect of living during the Shift. It’s not about lack of clarity as much as an under-estimation of how fast things are changing.

There’s no omniscience with my clarity these days. I used to be able to easily recognize the manifestation. Now I often only know it in hindsight; after I’ve unwrapped the box, taken it out, and played with it in the sandbox for a while.

So, maybe there is no real downside to clarity of vision, but I am having to learn to adapt and adjust more quickly as the manifesting changes come, including those that are personal as well as global. And, having to adapt to recognizing the package wrapping that the manifestation comes in now is not always so pretty. I think about Hawaii. That lush place is so beautiful, but the volcanic land didn’t look that way when it was first manifested.

How are you doing with the changes and how has it affected your clarity of vision?

I decided to do an informal poll to see if folks could pick fact from fiction. There were eight statements total in the poll, with instructions to choose all the ones that were false. One of the statements was an option for all of the other statements to be true.

Following are the results. Just over 40 people took the poll. The statements are ordered such that the ones that got the most marks (as being false) are at the top, followed by those that got less marks, meaning that folks thought those statements were true.

Sound is a lower frequency of light. 20%
Sound can be heard in space. 20%
Sound from celestial bodies can be recorded directly from orbit. 13.33%
Sound and light travel equally far, just at different speeds. 13.33%
All statements are true. 13.33%
Sound and light waves are the same type. 6.67%
Sound and light waves are measured along the same continuum. 6.67%
All statements are false. 6.67%

The correct answer is: “All statements are false.”

To give a little more room for error, I used a few statements that could have been interpreted as meaning the same thing. Basically, I was trying to discover how many folks thought sound and light were the same thing and measured along the same continuum since both are referenced by words like frequency, waves, and wavelength.

The way I interpret the percentages in the poll is that most folks know that sound is not a lower frequency of light. But most folks don’t know that sound and light waves are actually two different types of waves and are not measured along the same continuum.

The other set of responses I found intriguing were the two about sound in space. Most folks recognized that sound could not be heard in space, but not as many recognized that sound could not be recorded from orbit. Being in orbit is being in space, so both statements are false.

Sound is the result of a disturbance in a medium, such as air; hence, it has a finite limit of travel due to the resistance of the medium, which will eventually absorb and diffuse it. Light, on the other hand, is a self-propagating wave and can travel for infinity, given the opportunity, such as it does in space. That’s not to say that light cannot be absorbed, it’s just to point out why light and sound cannot travel equally as far, and so that statement is false.

Feel free to leave comments here on the blog about how you read the statements and why you chose as you did.

So, I’ve created a fun little poll where you can see what myths you believe about sound and light.

Check each statement that you think is false.
Or, mark them all true or all false at the bottom.
Have fun!!

After you finish you’ll be shown what others chose.

I’ll do a follow-up post tomorrow with the correct answers.

It may not, on the surface, seem that oil pumping and healthcare have a single common denominator, but they do. It is the consumer. Both industries are completely consumer driven.

While researching many of the topics in The Sage Age, I had to follow their trail back in time to gain historical context. In doing so, I came across several stories that forever altered my perspective on such things as the healthcare industry. One such instance came while researching the study of light. It involved the invention of the X-ray as a diagnostic tool.

Consumers were so enamored with the novelty of being able to see inside their body that they insisted they be given an X-ray even if they only had a cold. If the doctor refused, then the patient would simply seek a doctor who would comply with their wishes. In other words, money walked out the door and was spent elsewhere if the doctor didn’t follow the patient’s orders. This trend remained undaunted until reports began surfacing of the possibility of X-ray radiation poisoning from over-exposure.

Today, that trend of consumers dictating the standards of healthcare is still with us. Everyday there are countless TV commercials showing a person in their late 20s or early 30s advocating a pain reliever that lets them run another 10 miles. Translation – give me whatever I want so I don’t have to disrupt my life or be inconvenienced with the underlying cause I want to put on ignore.

It’s easy to argue that the pharmaceutical industry is creating the above scenario. The fact is, the consumer is creating it. No industry can sell a product for which there is no demand.

The industry follows the consumer. Case in point. When over a billion dollars a year began flowing out of consumer pockets into the alternative medicine arena, hospitals began offering Complimentary Alternative Therapies (CAM) and insurance companies began covering some of those services. Healing the underlying causes of illness takes time. That fact is the one that consumers are just beginning to wake up to.

Everyone in the U.S. is currently up in arms about the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and demanding that off-shore drilling be stopped. While public pressure may indeed bring about that very result, the fact is that the consumption of oil will not simultaneously decrease. In other words, the oil will simply be drilled somewhere else and likely cost more.

Want a real solution? Stop using all petroleum-based products. How easily pacified we are to buy a battery driven car not realizing that most everything from the dashboard to the exterior paint is made from oil.

The total amount of oil spilled in one month from the BP disaster is equal to what U.S. consumers use in one hour and gasoline is only a fraction of that total.

It’s so easy to blame the government, the pharmaceutical companies, and the oil industry. What’s not so easy is to make the real sacrifice necessary in consumption and to face the consequences of that change. When we stop using all of those products, all of the factories that make them shut down. All of the industries that make machines and supplies for those factories shut down. And, we begin to over-consume other natural resources to take the place of everything made of plastic. The same consequences are true in the healthcare industry.

Will real change come by continuing to raise our irritated voices in blaming big government and big industry? Probably not. Are we willing to look at the bigger picture and make the sacrifices needed for real change? We’ll see.

Earlier this week, she emailed to say that the book is now available and she is sending me a copy. The title is Beyond the Matrix: Daring Conversations with the Brilliant Minds of Our Times. She lists me as an “intuitive physicist,” which I found to be a very interesting description of the content of our conversation about topics from The Sage Age. You can click the link above or image to the left to view the full description of the book on Amazon.

I remember most of our conversation, but I’ll be interested to see how it was edited for the book. If you read it, please feel free to leave a comment here on the blog. I’m sure Ms. Cori will be interested in knowing what you think of the book too.

Because this interview was sequestered for the book, there is no archive link for that show on The Sage Age site’s OnTour page, but there are links to several other radio interviews, as well as links to other text interviews. Plus you’ll find links to the blog tour, which includes more interviews plus reviews.

Recently I listened to the Dalai Lama teach on three ways that we come to know things. The first is perceptual knowledge that comes to us through our senses. The second is experiential knowledge. Even though we may be able to convey the knowledge we gained, the experience of obtaining it may remain mostly ineffable.

The third way of knowing is information we accept on faith as completely true. The analogy the Dalai Lama used to demonstrate this point is how you know your birthday. You were told. You have no perceptive, and likely, no intuitive way to conjure the date on your own with absolute accuracy. However, you may have a way of discerning how you feel about what you were told.

The further point He made about this third way of knowing was that until you reach the stage of enlightenment yourself, you will need to accept on faith what other enlightened humans tell you about it and how to attain it. Now, He didn’t say that faith needed to be blind. In fact, He encouraged using discernment to consider the teacher’s character and to see if they had any reason to lie to you.

It has never occurred to me to question my mother, or any member of my family, about the date of my birth. And, the whole analogy He used may seem trivial and useful only because it’s common to all. But, I found it quite profound.

Think about it. Your date of birth is one of the most important identification markers in your life. If you believe in astrology charts, your birthday has everything to do with how you relate to your world for the entire time you are here. Recall how many legal documents you’ve filled out that required both your name and your birthday. In fact, your birthday is a more stable I.D. than your name, which could be legally changed. Or, you could prefer to be addressed by a nickname or alias.

Considering that the date of our birth is so intimate and so important to our identity, it’s amazing that we accept this information about ourselves on pure faith and have no way to independently verify it within ourselves as absolutely true. Every fact we encounter about it depends entirely on someone telling someone.

The key to Buddhism is that the Buddha was a human being who attained enlightenment. We have no way to independently verify this statement. If those who are inclined to this teaching cannot accept it on faith, then they cannot practice Buddhism. Otherwise, it would be striving for a fairy tale.

Until I attain enlightenment, the best I can do is place myself among teachers that I believe to be telling me the truth in so far as they can speak the ineffable, and in so far as they know the truth of ultimate reality. It is up to me to discern what I can about what I am told and about what I experience. The rest I take on faith until I have a way to know directly.

Most every adult in the U.S. remembers when the term politically correct turned into the verb being PC. We began to wholeheartedly embrace the fact that being mindful of our language changes attitudes.

While most of that thought reformation has been targeted toward social justice in recent decades, it’s worthwhile to note the changes it has brought to our rational understanding of reality as well.

It took many years for folks to come to terms with the principles set forth in Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his work Opticks, which is about the nature of light. After that, scientists were ready to close up shop, stating that everything that needed to be known in physics had been revealed.

Thankfully, human curiosity cannot be so easily satiated. About 100 years later, Einstein showed that Newton’s laws were merely a subset of a larger truth. Einstein’s bold statements began the quantum revolution that ensured we would never stop investigating because the new theories clearly demonstrated the profoundness of our ignorance.

Most of us weren’t alive in 1905 when Einstein released his first papers that changed everything. We have no way to remember what it was like to live through an intellectual revolution of Copernican magnitude. Most believe that E=mc2 was as popular then as it is now. Unfortunately, Einstein suffered the same shunning and disbelief as Newton until others could check the math and see the truth for themselves.

We are sentimental creatures who are hard-pressed to relinquish what brings us pleasure or security in our world. For instance, even though we know full well that we live in a solar-centric system, we are still enamored with the words sunset and sunrise. When folks in the U.S. and in Australia both point up, they are actually pointing in different directions out. And, think about our casual use of the word universal when, thanks to Einstein and every astrophysicist since, we clearly have evidence to show that what we experience on this planet is anything but universal.

Language is a living thing. Currently, there are two key words in cultural flux that are shifting us into another revolution. They are heart and brain. Material realists would have us believe that without a brain, or another physical processing center, there would be no thought. The other philosophy vying for dominance right now is that consciousness is the basis of everything and both matter and energy are an epiphenomenon of it.

The tenuous compromise being struck is that perhaps the organ in the head is not the only intelligence processing center. The term emotional I.Q. came into vogue a few decades ago and now the term heart intelligence is gaining in popularity.

With recent advancements in technology, science has been able to start measuring the subtle energy fields emanating from the hands of healers and Qigong masters. Even molecular biologists are jumping on the bandwagon by showing how our thoughts affect us at the cellular level.

The fact is, the physical body is a sophisticated, multi-faceted antenna system that transmits and receives all manner of informed energies. That’s what the first four chapters of The Sage Age are all about.

We may very well be adopting the language that will lead into another Copernican-level revolution. And our great, great grandchildren will think that all these theories and ideas must have been as popular with us as it is to them. And, they will be able to clearly see that what their great, great grandparents knew was merely a subset of a larger truth.

This engaging discussion covers the scientific investigation of thought including the PEAR studies, the Global Consciousness Project, mind-over-matter research, and using focused intent for healing. MaAnna will clarify the role of quantum physics in thought research and why Einstein called the ideas of non-locality and entanglement “spooky action at a distance.”

Also discussed are recent breakthroughs in brain-mapping technology that allow hands-free interaction with machines by using thought alone as well as what the near future holds for melding mind and machines.

The talk includes the definition of thought-forms according to advanced intuitive practitioners and how our thoughts affect ourselves and others as well as color our world view. And, there will be a special treat at the end revealing scientific data that will be gathered during the lecture.

The program will be delivered on April 25th at 10:30 a.m. Visit the Unity Church site for location information.

During the winter I marvel at their architecture. It is the perfect example of balancing the need to grow in ways that capture the light while maintaining the core structure. I also know that if humans tried to build anything similar, it would not stand the test of time. Only a living structure could sway with the winds of change and remain intact.

At this time of year, I marvel at the energy necessary to draw sap up three stories without a pump and push out thousands of buds all at once. It has everything to do with frozen sap and gas bubbles in the cellular fibers of the sap wood and the barometric pressure differences between the inside and outside of the tree. Equally important is the sap that runs back down. That’s what plugs the wounds in the tree. Technically it’s a form of latex. And, retreating sap is what’s collected for syrup.

I think of the elaborate mess humans would have to create to set up such a complicated hydraulic system to continuously provide adequate pressure to all those branches for pushing out leaves and growing limbs. Plus, it would need an intricate temperature control device to keep such a sticky substance moving.

Trees are not the silent statues of the forest either. They speak in a variety of ways and they can hear each other. I saw a documentary once where a musician inserted sensitive piezo mics into the sap wood of a tree and recorded it. I was amazed. It was a very steady rhythm that sounded like a conga drum player. I haven’t been able to find a clip of it on the web yet, but if you do, or if you saw that show too, let me know.

If a tree falls in the woods, is it heard? Yes, by the other trees. There is a bit of research on the ultrasonic and superluminal waves emitted by trees. For years, ultrasound has been used to test the quality and wood density of a standing tree. And light measuring equipment has been used to study the health of a forest and density of the canopy, because growing trees need light. But, very few scientists have used similar equipment to listen to trees.

Physicist Ed Wagner has spent a little time listening to trees. He has detected electrical standing waves between trees and recorded blips of them communicating. He calls these transmissions “W-Waves” and has measured them traveling up to three feet per second.

I have to believe that there is intelligent design in nature that could elegantly engineer something so stately and create a being to appreciate it at so many levels.

While all of these scientific findings are fascinating, they don’t really explain the communion I feel with trees and how they speak to my soul. For that, I don’t even need an explanation that satisfies my curious brain. I just receive the gift and marvel at the wonder of it. And that, to me, is the most blessed thing about trees.

Some succeeded at this task more than others. When the author did find just the right analogy to convey the main point, it became a beautiful passage of words to highlight in yellow.

But, what I found glaringly missing from most of these books was a sufficient nod to the underlying philosophical principles behind the topics. Perhaps that’s because the masses, to whom these books are targeted, find philosophy either boring or too legalistic in nature.

Philosophy is the single most critical element in having any true understanding of the Shift we are currently experiencing. As Billy Joel sang, “We didn’t start the fire.” We didn’t get to where we are from a vacuum. With all of the attention being given right now to minding our mind and being more aware of our thoughts, it’s important to recognize that our thoughts become our beliefs that become our philosophy that shifts our culture and creates the world we live in.

At this moment, there are two main philosophical paradigms vying for dominance as the basis of reality. The first is material realism and the second is consciousness. Both have existed for thousands of years and have traded places over and over again throughout our history as the accepted theory.

The coup being waged now by the consciousness adherents, who see both matter and energy as an epiphenomenon of a wholistic something, is to overthrow the hardcore material realists, who see nature as a machine that they can bend to their greedy will regardless of consequence.

While both philosophies endeavor to vault humans to a central platform of being far more than just voyeurs in the universe, the pop culture currently co-opting the consciousness philosophy espouses that we are critically important co-creators of “All That Is.” That has spawned a multi-billion dollar industry of self-help instruction aimed at creating a self-regulation regiment that will restore Eden on Earth.

But, there’s a real danger in going overboard with that idea. The philosophy of material realism last came into prominence in the West during the Protestant Reformation, which was a revolt against science based on a moral code and idealism. Because it had gone unchecked and unbalanced for so long, the consciousness-type philosophy led to beliefs based on superstition and outright myth.

Now that a consciousness-type philosophy is attempting to rise again, it is serving the beneficial purpose of balancing material realism that is out of control. It is showing that the current way is aggressive, invasive, and destructive to the point of annihilation if it is not constrained.

There is another philosophy that can mediate this balancing act. It’s called existentialism. What most folks know of existentialism is either the famous quote from Nietzsche, “God is dead” or the neurotic parodies of Woody Allen on Nietzsche’s Being and Nothingness. In fact, if it had not been for the enduring quality of Allen’s work, existentialism may have phased out quickly as just another pop culture fad.

But there’s far more to existentialism than that. The focus is still on the human element, but it does help place humanity in its proper position with regard to the whole by leaving a little room for the great mystery of existence in general.

One of the best descriptions I’ve found of existentialism comes from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which states:

“On the existential view, to understand what a human being is it is not enough to know all the truths that natural science—including the science of psychology—could tell us. The dualist who holds that human beings are composed of independent substances—“mind” and “body”—is no better off in this regard than is the physicalist, who holds that human existence can be adequately explained in terms of the fundamental physical constituents of the universe. Existentialism does not deny the validity of the basic categories of physics, biology, psychology, and the other sciences (categories such as matter, causality, force, function, organism, development, motivation, and so on). It claims only that human beings cannot be fully understood in terms of them. Nor can such an understanding be gained by supplementing our scientific picture with a moral one. Categories of moral theory such as intention, blame, responsibility, character, duty, virtue, and the like do capture important aspects of the human condition, but neither moral thinking (governed by the norms of the good and the right) nor scientific thinking (governed by the norm of truth) suffices.”

It’s good to learn all we can from science and morality. It’s better to hone both ways of knowing in order to have a full understanding of either. It’s best to balance the head and heart equally. When we, as individuals, learn how to do that, the culture will reflect it and balance itself out too. Perhaps then we will be in a position to move beyond this dualistic pendulum swinging between two philosophies and find a new way forward together.