The concept of reality and the search for our ultimate reality has dogged humans ever since we stood upright and noticed the starry heavens above us. Much of our human existence is devoted to trying to make sense of our place in the universe and the role and interaction we have within that reality. Various schools of philosophical, spiritual and scientific thought now exist which attempt to explain this dominant question of our human existence.
At the dawn of the 21st century, mankind is faced with shedding the shackles of the Industrial era and the paradigms of thinking that shaped and constrained us all in that period of history. Perhaps the biggest paradigm shift that has occurred has been the emergence of Quantum Physics and what it tells us about the nature of ourselves and reality as we perceive it. The whole concept of the idea that there is a fixed objective reality “out there” and outside ourself, waiting to be discovered, as the total picture of reality, is now dead.
The work throughout the 20th century by scientists and physicists such as Einstein, Bohr, Wheeler, and Heisenberg, established that the mind or “in here”, arises at the same time as the phenomenal world, or the “out there”.
Quantum theory now describes how we create our reality in every moment as our mind influences the “reality” that “pops” from essentially an infinite “cloud” of possibility that is energy entwined with consciousness. This is the “emptiness” of the universe alluded to by all esoteric spirituality. Quantum Physicists such as Fred Alan Wolf now speculate on what is reality from these scientific principles.
Another key shift in reality has been the healing of the misconception that the body and the mind are separate entities, and are primarily run on separate processes. We now understand that the body and the mind are the two sides of the one coin that is the Self, with the embodied part of us being the gross form of energy that exists in inertia as matter, whilst the mind is the more subtle and kinetic energy that exists in interdependence with and through the body. The old 17th century Cartesian view of ourselves that the mind and the body are separate is factually dead, but still not permeating mass consciousness in society.
The final key shift in reality has been the discovery of cellular consciousness as articulated by pioneering medical researchers such as Candace Pert and Bruce Lipton. In the 20th century, Freud and the science of Psychology developed the concept of the subconscious mind but labored under the assumption and the then reality of the Cartesian bodymind split. They developed the frameworks concerning the subconscious as being a totally mental process or object. We now know that the subconscious mind is at least partly located in the body. The experiences of us all is written into our cells, and some impulses, predispositions, tendencies and traits, inherited through our DNA. The emerging science of Epigenetics is rewriting this part of the old fixed view of our DNA.
The current view is we are nature via nurture or we are a reality that stems partly from inheritance of our parents and lineage, and we are partly a product of our environment and the experiences we have had in our formative years. Cellular biology now understands that our genes have two functions. The first is the classically described “template function” which Charles Darwin theorized. Here this allows our genes to replicate, making copies of themselves that are passed from generation to generation. This is our “nature” in that nature vs. nurture debate and is beyond our conscious human control.
The second function is the “transcription function”.
This more recent finding reveals that each cell in our body contains all our genes, but not all those genes are turned on, or “expressed”. When a gene is turned on, it makes a new protein that alters the structure and function of the cell.
Interestingly when the gene is turned on, information about how to make these proteins is “transcribed” or read from the individual gene. Importantly this process influenced by the mind of the person in terms of what we do and think. Psychiatrist and researcher Eric Kandel has shown that when we learn our mind affects which genes in our brain neurons are transcribed, and so by extension we change our brains literally at a physical level. This is an example of “from mind to matter”.
This is the first level of how the mind can manifest changes at a matter reality, albeit at a cellular level. Given we have billions of cells there are implications here for how this overall effect could be influencing our overall bodily wellness or disease due to states of mind influencing the creation and release of various types of transcribed genes.
In BodyMind psychotherapy there is a clinical body of evidence that shows how the mind of the child influences the developing body in terms of musculature, body shape, posture etc. It is believed that this transcription effect plays some part in the shaping of the characterology of a person. Interested readers are referred to the 6 related articles on Characterology on this website.
The real problem is that the old Industrial era false notions still have a momentum in society that as yet has not been largely shifted, and inertia exists which resists these new paradigms becoming the new global consciousness or “common reality”.
Look out the window right now. Do you accept that what you see “out there” is largely derived from your mind in this present moment? Do you also accept the possibility that the “I” that is looking out through the window in this present moment, is a self that is both at once neither the body or the mind, but also the highly interdependent “bodymind” where there is only a subtle distinction between the entity we call “body” and the entity we call “mind” ?
Also to expand on this idea further, do you accept that the concept of the subconscious mind can be found nowhere else than in the body!!? Chances are that you cannot grasp or embody that reality beyond forming a temporary conceptual mind to understand these new ideas or views. In 5 minutes you will largely and subconsciously be acting from the old embedded reality that you and most of society run our lives to, which are the old and now increasingly discounted views of the Industrial era reality mentioned above.
The purpose of this paper is to present some interesting summaries of developments and theories on emerging paradigms of reality to describe how we can actually take control and start to shape our life and reality from a creative consciousness paradigm.
This paper is designed to inform the reader so they can start to shed themselves of the old paradigms of reality that constrain us and create suffering, and to help accelerate the ushering in of a new reality which empowers us all, and creates a basis for wellness in society.
If you have watched “What the Bleep Do We Know” then this illustrative documentary highlights how we are not really victims to life but are either unconsciously or consciously affecting and creating our reality in every moment. In this documentary we note that Quantum physics now states, as do all the esoteric mystical religious traditions, that all things are interconnected, interdependent, and essentially “one” or unified.
Quantum physics sees the universe as existing overall as energy, and this energy exists in two forms, either in particle (having form), or as wave (unformed or empty of form). Particles can be seen and observed at points in time and space, and are the basis for the objects that we perceive in the universe, or the conventional reality we are used to living and moving through. This conventional reality does exist but not in the way we are led to perceive it.
The atomic particles of matter are a very small and subtle manifestation of this form of matter energy.
Wave form energy is not particle based but is wave form based. It can for instance be thoughts, sounds, mind images, feelings, and other states of energy noted in quantum and mechanical physics. Uniquely we humans possess both states of energy in our make-up, and so have an inner wave-form energy world and life, which then flows in and between our grosser, particle based body, which is the conventional boundary we think is where we start and end as humans.
It is our perception that our physical bodily container is our self that gives rise to our mistake that this is all we are, that this must be cherished and the focus of ourself (the function of the ego), and leads to separation consciousness where we think “I” and not “we”, and start to think of everything outside of this “I” as both objective, and not “our” concern unless it suits us.
The truth is that the embodied reality we call “I” gives us our definition of time and space (mind gives us time, body gives us object space), and so from this limited perceived particle form, gross body, we do become a reality with a self imagined point in time and space. Man created time as a concept, because our embodied reality puts us in a time-space continuum where past, present, and future can be measured and perceived, and we see ourselves progressing in a lineal fashion down a path of time.
In my related article Embodied Spirituality - Compassion and Care of Oneself, I expand the definition of the Self to include our more energetic and subtle aspects which have either a psychological(emotional or mental), or spiritual expression and purpose. This 4 bodied basis is a better representation of the human condition in respect to how we exist in a duality expression of matter and energy consciousness.
Some theories in Quantum physics state however that what we really do is keep choosing one single possible “story line” each moment in time, whereas there are infinite choices in every moment that we can choose, and each choice we make then opens up the next unlimited set of possibilities for the next moment.
In these theories we are not on a pre-determined fate line, we unconsciously or consciously choose the “outcome” in each moment, and surprisingly sometimes the decision occurs in the present or past moment, and the effect occurs in our future, and sometimes we get the effect in the past or present, from a decision taken in the future, for past/present/future all co-exist simultaneously, and each is interdependent on the other. Re-read that line a few times as it took me quite a while to get my head around it too!!
This is the aspect of reality that troubles and doubts anyone considering our reality as we are conditioned to believe and expect a linear past to future one-way continuum of reality. Events from the future which displace or affect the past seem like Marty out of the Back to the Future Hollywood movies. However these are current theories in quantum physics taken seriously in some of their schools of thought.
In fact theorist and researcher Ken Wilbur (2002) sees the truth of how we exist as being a matrix of 4 types of reality or truths. Truth is not as fixed or objective as it would seem. Each type of truth expresses a different but interconnected subset of reality. These truths are:
Quantum physics defines the way in which we are connected to the universe is twofold. Firstly we exist beyond our gross particle body. Science has now shown how we have a subtle energy bio-electric subsystem running through and around the gross physical body.
Man operates in a typical zone of 62-78Hz frequency according to the Tainio Technology instruments used to measure this bio-electric energy field.
Outside the physical body, there are increasingly subtle energy fields which surround the body like a kernel or a set of Babooshka dolls as explained in my article on the 4 bodies. Each functions to interact between the body and the energy wave of the universe outside that bodily self we perceive as being where we start and stop. This energy is in wave-form and pulsates outwards like a ripple from a dropped stone in a pond into the universe into which it is the subtle bridge between our gross body and the universe. It is this that maintains our connectedness to all things.
Our human energetic vibrational consciousness is considered by healers and esoteric philosophies to transmit outwards and affects the wave-form like universe, as well as being our most subtle sense awareness that “picks up” information from the universe and feeds it into our gross body circuitry via cellular consciousness and our cellular receptors on our skin cells. The outbound transmission from us is critical to our reality.
As Neuroscience tells us that our brain operates from images, and our discrimination and cognition of objects gives rise to feelings, then think of our reality as operating in a constant loop where we “take-in” our reality from “out there” via all our sense awarenesses, process it via the mental consciousness processes which use our nervous systems and brain neural circuitry. These in turn give rise to feelings which are effects of cellular bio-chemical reactions and pathways running in our body.
Our mind is believed to process the received sense awareness information by accessing the hippocampus in the brain which holds an object image database. Here it is now being considered that images and information is somehow held on the body’s cellular hard drive(just like a hard drive on a computer), about the object being perceived. Right at this point things can get a little distorted.
We all form conclusions and feelings to objects in our universe. In Buddhism it is said that we form a factor of mind that sees all objects as either desirous, neutral or negative. Most of these judgments are formed from early life experiences and learned conclusions about such objects.
If the brain held database conceptual image of the object being perceived contains judgments or feeling triggers which are “good” or “bad”, the consciousness of the person includes this extra body held information as being part of the reality of the externally perceived object. This ingrained “extra” information may be accessed via other more primitive parts of the brain such as the amygdala which trigger states such as fear, terror, anger, judgement, or bodily reactions such as sweating, shaking, muscular tension, crying etc. This extra information pollutes our reality about that object in the moment we perceive it, for that information is not part of the objects reality, it is only part of our own internal personal learnt reality.
This process can be readily seen all the time in action. In fact art is built on this premise. No two people will ever completely “see” the same thing in an artwork, or agree to its meaning(for abstract pieces), as it is subjective as every person pollutes their sense awareness information they receive from the artwork, with whatever they hold internally about objects that get either an exact or close fit to either an aspect of the perceived artwork object, or the entire art piece itself.
In fact we do this polluting all the time, in every moment, to everything we perceive.
This is why none of us have an objective reality of anything, and instead we have a subjective reality because of this inherent aspect of how we function as human beings.
The bottom line is we are being bombarded with intense environmental stimulus in the Information Age. We are overloaded and overstressed as the pace of change and the required pace of adaptation to this change, creates more and more burnout in society. This in turns then results in the adoption of more and more “medicating” behaviours and addictions in an attempt to deal with the pain and dissatisfaction being felt by so many in society now.
Our slower evolutionary adaptive process cannot cope with the pace of change demanded upon it. We are becoming more reactive and more stressed from this place. Psychology has shown how stressed people eventually can collapse into a “victim” mentality where life is simply what happens to them.
The bottom line is we are still being bombarded with intense environmental stimulus in the Information Age, and we are being hyper-aroused by marketing and object/experience promotion by our own society(e.g. drugs, pornography, Game consoles, reality TV), which work to hook into some of these impulses that are increasingly driving our society. We are suffering more and more, and our impulse to escape this suffering is herding us more and more towards unhealthy choices which we actively market and sell towards those who suffer. . The additional toxicity of our food, air, and environments assaults the very bodymind self that must cope with these demands. More and more people are collapsing under this crisis of lifestyle.
If this was the complete story then that would be bad enough but it is only half the picture. I have been talking about the reception of information via the sense awarenesses from “out there”, or from the inherited emotional and physical DNA we are born with or that we learn. This is the inward half of the loop. The outward half of the loop actually starts at the same moment we perceive the object as well.
What quantum physics is starting to propose in some quarters, and what esoteric philosophies and spirituality has always proposed, is that the human mind has the power to manifest or co-create the outcomes in our own realities. This proposition works with the outward half of the loop of reality creation.
Under some quantum physics theories and according to many schools of esoteric mysticism, our mind and the object being perceived arise together in the same moment. There is no universe nor any other object “out there” which is just sitting around in particle form waiting for us to discover it. Recent Quantum physics research into “String Theory” supports this concept. Our mind causes the object to manifest in particle form from a “resting” wave-form position, in dependence on the mind that is observing it.
There are quantum physics principles around this idea known as “The Observer effect” which are employed in all experiments at the sub-atomic level. This implication is huge.
If the mind of a person is responsible for the object arising then does that imply that the state of the mind influences the type of objects that actually arise and therefore create that persons reality?
Before we consider this point lets describe how this reality manifestation is believed to work. As already stated the mind and the auric field around the body connect us to all other things in the universe, including the space between objects. The mind energy of intention is the first movement of mind. It is consciousness or unconsciousness in its first active movement or principle. The wave-form energy created by this movement or motion affects the energy around us, the universe around us that exists in its empty form as waves with no actual form.
It is unformed, it is empty of form, it is just probability of being something, and not just something, but the possibility of being every possible thing that can possibly be conceived by a human mind, and then some. Mystics call this the void, the cloud of unknowing, the emptiness, the cloud of possibility. The key determining factor that makes one of the unlimited possibilities of things that can arise from emptiness, from wave form energy into form and substance, is the mind via its intention. In every moment your mind creates the reality you see.
In this theory, there is no objective particle reality out there to be found. All that happens from a quantum physics view is that an object or event “pops” into life or form from the cloud of possibility, from the soup of wave energy. At this point the energy goes from being wave-like, to being particle form that has a basis in time and space.
Theorists are asked why the physical form does not then just revert back to wave form when our attention goes elsewhere. Quantum physics proposes that there must always be an “observer mind” or a measuring device that keeps that point in time and space in particle form. Quantum physics theorists argue that any sentient being with consciousness, even insects, possibly fulfill this requirement, and the strange criteria of measurement devices seems to include some abstract criteria as well. In any event this matrix of such observing or measuring entities or conditions creates the basis why all objects can be consistently “found” at a point in time and space repeatedly, which is the usual reality we observe and participate in.
It is not the full picture of reality though, even though it reliably means that our experience in space and time is able to be consistent and hence taken in as absolute and fixed. Time and space only exist because our mind which creates the object, believes in time and space, and so we create that too. The hippocampus part of the brain is believed responsible for the lineal time based storage of memories.
The created object or event which “pops” out of wave form into particle form is sometimes called the probability or probable object. It was the most likely choice of the infinite choices that could have arisen.
The objects that you stumble across that have already “popped” into reality courtesy of another’s observing mind or from some measuring device will be readily perceived by you in the same point in time and space as another person. As already explained you may perceive the object differently, and have different feelings about it than another person, but as an object you will both perceive the same named object.
An object already present at a fixed point in time and space will always appear in the same spot when your mind perceives that same point in space at another time, unless something else has changed or shifted the object in another point in time, to another point in space. Objects are “real” in this sense, it’s just the sense that they exist in both particle and wave-form states, and that the mind plays a part in the object arising in its “place”, that is the key part missed by the common classical science understanding of reality.
This view of how we possibly create reality is extremely important to grasp. If we create our reality then we are doing it from our mind. Our mind can observe from an unconscious place, or from a conscious place. These are the two primary states of the bodymind. Both apparently have the same “creative” effect.
The nature of the human condition is that most of us live much of our lives from a reactive unconscious state of mind. For example how many times have you driven somewhere and when having arrived, have you “forgotten” the journey you took to get there? This is the dull unconscious state of mind that many of us lapse into for much of the time. From this place we accept and experience the world as an objective reality that just “happens to us”.
We are ignorant of the fact that we can influence and possibly create our own reality. Instead many become “victims” who actually are unaware of how they may be creating an unconscious reality in every moment without realizing it. We moan about how our lives unfold, unaware that we create it. The opposite of this is the conscious appreciation that we create our reality in every moment, and then set about doing just that from a clear and positive intention.
This is enlightenment spoken about in Buddhism where one is “awakened” and sees directly the emptiness of the universe, and sees the energy shifts between wave-form and particle form as mere dream like phenomena, and where one stands outside of time and space as a lineal reality that our minds wrongly project.
It means that the “fixed” and inanimate objects still appear as before, but we can actually “create” new experiences and new objects that are not yet “manifest” or real in a given time at a given point in space. The wave-form energy can be influenced consciously via intention by our mind to “pop” a different reality than what would be the case than if we left to chance how the same process occurs anyway with an unconscious mind with regards to how we create our reality.
Principally we must transform ourself from being unconscious to more fully conscious if we are to take control of our reality. This is firstly a process of overcoming our inward loop distortions, obstacles and reactive “victim” thinking where we often refuse to take responsibility for our lives. From a place of responsibility there are techniques and processes, as well as mindful realities that one needs to adopt to go from the victim who “describe the world they see” towards a person who “sees the world they describe”. One goes from a victim to one who manifests, from a fate to a destiny, from unconscious to conscious life.
The word projection is critical here. The process and act of projection is a big part of the illusion that we create for ourselves. The outbound part of the loop of connecting our mind with an object involves projection from us onto the object. If our mind creates the first “movement” in this loop, and our sense awarenesses then “receive” the object in the next moment, then once the mind has processed that sense awareness input, retrieved the internal bodymind database of information about the object, we now have within our human condition such energy states as discrimination, awareness, feeling, judgement, and other information laden conscious mental factors up and running.
Critically in the next moment we actually project much of that “extra” information back out onto the object by our mind, regardless of the fact that this information did not come from the object, but came from within us, and the fact that this information can be very distorted.
When the object gets all this projected upon it, then in the next moment we make an even worse unconscious action. We re-read through all our incoming sense awarenesses not only the original naked object information from the object “out there”, but we recycle all the projected extra information back inside us again as objective input from the object. This is the basis for ignorance and suffering.
The problem is we unconsciously believe that ALL this information exists from the side of the object, and do not even see how we are recycling our own “stuff” after having projected extra information back onto the object in our discrimination process. This is a vicious cycle that continues as long as we continue to engage with the object. It doubly fools us as the extra information originally came from our own internal bodymind database.
When we re-receive it again unconsciously and without knowing it, it maps directly to what we believe we know about such objects, and our internal bodymind object database confirms this, and we reinforce our beliefs about this object from a false place. This is what creates self sustaining patterns of behaviour based on a belief that all encounters with similar object give feedback consistent with all previous experiences of that same object. In therapy one hears absolute statements such as all men are bastards!!, All dogs look dangerous!!, All spiders are scary and make me freeze!!.
If that was the end of the endless reality-loop of information receipt and projection onto objects that we engage in, that would be bad enough.
But consider this. Such repeated and sustained experiences create ingrained defences in us to ward off experiencing negative experiences with such objects in the future. Over time this in itself becomes unconscious and even shows up as chronic somatisation in the body. The body being part of the bodymind will show a manifestation of that negative defence in the body via postures, muscular development, energy disposition in the body, and eventually states of health. Refer to the Characterology section of this website for 6 separate articles on this BodyMind science.
Our physical reality modifies itself to ward off the challenges we believe lie “out there”. The big trick or big lie is we are actually creating the basis for attracting these same negative experiences towards us as a lifetime pattern due to the way in which mind creates all the objects in its personal reality. The rationale is that if our mind creates the objects we encounter “out there” then it creates the very experiences we have with those objects as well. This is because apart from the first moment when intention is the primary wave-form energy that creates the “probable” object from the energy cloud of all infinite possibilities, from then on our projection of “our stuff” subtly changes the characteristics of that object first perceived.
So if we see a person who we name as being a man, then depending on what our internal bodymind database holds as information about men, the next moment subtly changes the “man object” to be a “bastard man object”, “unsafe or abusing man object”, “alcoholic man object” etc. How does this come about beyond the projection we spoke about earlier. Think of it like this, part of our internal database information is the equivalent of a “conclusion” about the nature of that type of object. If the conclusion has a negative emotionally charged energy state, we will at some level have a defence against it.
For example, by having a defence against “bad men objects” we create the basis in the brain to activate a hyper vigilance in the bodily Autonomic and central nervous system to scan and detect these externally to us. The rear two sections of the brain, the primitive amphibian and the limbic parts of the brain are noted as controlling our bodymind database which includes primitive fear and anger states. This is wired into the bodymind via the Autonomic Nervous System(ANS) in sympathetic mode, and via neurochemical pathways of neuropeptides and receptor molecules. This process can create the basis for a person becoming “addicted” to emotional states.
The defence in the body includes whichever emotional energy it is “wired” to and can have an unfortunate effect. It turns you into a huge energy transmitter of that negative wave-form energy co-joined or mixed with the information or thought energy about the object triggering you. So maybe you transmit a mix of the negative emotional state of “fear” plus additional internal bodymind information/conclusion that “all men rip me off”. The net effect is that this becomes your unconscious intention in the next moment, and you then create the basis to “pop” from the infinite possible combination of men out there, one you fear and one who eventually rips you off.
Remember reality is subjective. Whether you really need to fear that man or whether he really rips you off is subjective. He may be someone to fear and he may rip you off, or you may just project your fears onto him, and end up having a distorted belief that he ripped you off. It does not matter. All that matters is that reality delivers to your stated but unconscious intention that you transmit from your energy field. This is the basis of what we call “self sabotage” in therapy.
We set ourselves up to get disappointed, to get betrayed, used or abused, or to fail, but fail to see how we create this, instead become victims and then see the world and others out there doing it to us, or doing us over. We feel powerless and victimized in this place.
The universe is neutral. You can have it all or have nothing, it is up to you. The universe has no favourites. It merely delivers to what you request of it, regardless of whether you do that unconsciously or consciously, in every single moment. The universal law of attraction does not seem to recognize one’s attitude to an object, just the object itself. By this I mean that if you wish for an object or experience to happen then it is the focus on the object, and not the positive feeling that creates the object. Likewise if one wishes to avoid an object or experience and thinks in this negative way, then one still attracts the object, because it is the object focus that counts, and not the feeling toward the object.
Your mind creates your reality and you are the creator of your subjective reality and no-one else. Theology states that God is within you from this co-creator perspective. The only fate is that which you create, and you are only a victim because you are ignorant of cause and effect. It is not a willful process, for you already create now in every moment without needing to engage in wilfulness.
What one can do is make this whole process conscious and give it focus and intention. This is both a conscious intention setting and a letting go, an act of faith rather than will, a surrender to this whole creative process and cycle, and a constant retuning based on observed effects from what manifests “out there” in “our world”. The timing of the object “manifesting” in front of us has personally more to do with the power of positive intention versus its polar opposite power of negative intention or negative pleasure as it is also known.
Quantum physics states that its known laws will also interact and also influence the final outcome so external factors also play a key role. This is not widely talked about in New-Age explanations of manifestation but Quantum Physics acknowledges a number of influences, dynamics, and laws that operate within the realm of an object “popping” into particle reality from the quantum field. The mind or Observer Effect is important but not the only driver, but is the factor within our control.
All of us have a momentum in this (and previous lifetimes if you believe in reincarnation) that propels our bodymind forward in a time-space continuum. That momentum contains negative and positive energy states within our bodymind object due to our illusion of duality, the illusion of the separate “in here or I” reality and the “out there or You” duality. Duality means dual reality. Any positive intention causes an equal and opposite negative intention to arise, whether they both occur in consciousness or whether the positive intention occurs in consciousness, and negative intention occurs in unconsciousness is not important. All occur in the bodymind container of our human condition.
The key to stepping into the “creator” archetype is a fourfold for most of us. The key disciplines outlined below are those which work on:
empowering our energetic container of self
relaxing the bodymind component
those which “cleanup” distortions in the “reality loop” we have been describing
the visualization or intention process which activates the probability component of the quantum collapse of wave-form into particle form reality
Empowering our Energetic Container of Self
We often describe the human condition in terms of having 4 bodies.
The first is the physical body, and the other 3 bodies are energetic in nature, they being the emotional, mental and spiritual body. In essence we say that whatever attributes the last 3 bodies hold and whatever processes they enact, have its roots in the energetic reality of ourself. For this reason we believe that attending to the health of the all 4 bodies is a part of being healthy. Please refer to my article Embodied Spirituality - Compassion and Care of Oneself for more information in this general area of empowering and creating energetic charge, health and flow in the body.
In terms of influencing the manifestation of our reality it involves increasing the “volume” or power of our personal bodymind transmitter, which is the bio-electric energy field that runs through as well as surrounding the body. In human beings there is a relationship between the breath and our energy field. A key linked concept is that the deeper the breathing the more powerful our energy field.
Western society has a universal complaint of its people breathing in a very shallow fashion. The shallow nature of breathing is a known outcome of a person having lived in the Sympathetic mode or “fight and fight” mode of their Autonomic Nervous System(ANS) for sustained periods of time. This is the bodily level defence which cuts off the fuel to the bio-electric energy system of the bodymind as a side-effect of its cutting off the conscious appreciation of feelings flowing through the body.
It is a means to an end for it results in suppression of feeling and awareness in the body, and the reason we do this at all is often we had feelings and experiences in and with our bodies in childhood that created suffering and painful emotional states. In an attempt to fend off the repeated experience of such suffering and painful emotions our bodymind intuition knew to cutoff the breath so we ceased to feel and be aware of such states of being. Our bio-electric energy also retreated upward into the head where the primitive Autonomic Nervous System(ANS) kept us in sympathetic mode hyper vigilence as an allied defence to ward off such threats.
So we now all typically have compromised, blocked and stuck bio-electric energy systems which cannot transmit with the power and clarity to help us naturally step into our “Creator” archetypes. Defended people normally live in their heads in fear, and the mental recurrent thinking that creates “analysis paralysis” in an attempt to control and think the “right way” forward in life. Many will adopt the “Victim” ,“Controller”, “Perfectionist” or the “Abuser” archetypes as a consequence of the fear they believe dictates their reality. The “Creator” is suppressed by all of these stances we typically adopt, and the required ability to be able to step back, observe, and let go, cannot occur from a person stuck in a fear based, hyper vigilant, hardwired ANS and bodymind container.
The way forward for many here is to embrace either Bioenergetics exercises, Qi-Gong(chi gung), Chiropractic treatments which utilize the breath such as Network Spinal Analysis (NSA), or key yoga systems which emphasize the breath. Deep tissue massage may be needed to unlock chronic spastic or contracted muscles which result from shallow breathing over a long period of time.
Relaxing the BodyMind Component
The second key to being able to influence our manifesting reality is to be in a relaxed Parasympathetic Nervous System state of the ANS. In Buddhism we often attribute this state to being in a supple state of body and mind which settles the mind and allows for stable meditation or visualization and concentration. The key related disciplines here are meditation, yoga, mindfulness, and deep tissue massage or other supporting modalities of nurturance and resolution of stressed states.
This is a prerequisite before we can conduct the third step, which is to “cleanup” the bodymind circuitry and also the bodymind internal database content so that we transmit and vibrate our positive intention with clarity and power. This requires a bodymind system that is healthy and undefended, operating from the Limbic and frontal brain nodes, wired to the ANS in its relaxed parasympathetic nervous system.
For more detailed information on Meditation, yoga, and mindfulness I refer you to the article on this website entitled “Meditation and Mindfulness Strategies”. In terms of massage I recommend each person find a qualified massage practitioner who can sympathetically understand your bodily defences at the postural and muscular level, and work with you to correct these and release these over time.
Cleanup Distortions in the “Reality Loop”
The third key is to “cleanup” the bodymind circuitry and also the bodymind internal database content so that we transmit and vibrate our positive intention with clarity and power. We must get to work raising consciousness of ourself so we start to intervene and take inventory of what the bodymind internal database is putting into our reality loop.
We need to have conscious intervention into this loop so we can start to see our distorted belief systems and then pull back the projections we have onto all objects external to ourself. This means we cut the projected material out of the reality loop and start to see objects from a less distorted place, and in turn do not experience the negative emotional states that often accompany them. We start to own our reality and see how we set it all up as a self perpetuating illusion.
We start to break this cycle of victimhood that entraps many in life.
The previous mentioned practices of meditation and mindfulness are critical aspects of gaining this self-awareness and intervention into the reality loop process. This has traditionally been the Eastern view of correcting our “psychology” as it were and is a slow but proven system that brings many benefits to its adherent.
In the Western view, psychology has been the traditional attempt in recent times to clean up our mental and emotional distortions, using traditional mentally based observation and behavioural intervention techniques. Various therapies and approaches, including bodymind focused solutions have evolved over time.
The deep emotional work that IBMP embraces to uncover and express the lower self(read Jungian shadow self) emotions has the effect of releasing deep and transformative energy into the energy system, as well as “rewriting” the bodymind internal database. This “rewiring” process must occur with the bodymind in a fully charged energetic state, with consciousness in “present time” rather than caught up in the old “loop reality”. This will purge the bodymind of negative material and take it out of the old reality-loop explained earlier.
The person starts to “heal” and their reality changes to the positive accordingly to the amount of negative bodymind wired material they are prepared to confront and release. This, together with an increasingly powerful energetic transmitter will propel a person towards a new positive reality, release old negative patterns from their current reality, and allow them to step into their “Creator” archetype over time. Deep therapy therefore involves firstly the recovery from the distorted and wounded “loop-reality” we have setup for ourselves, and then a second stage of re-patterning or stepping into our “Creator” archetype.
The great myths and stories from all ages and societies tell of the “Hero” who must set out on a great challenge which has the threat of death, and in prevailing he finds a treasure or precious object, perhaps once lost, which bestows the wisdom and power to become the “Creator” or true hero. This is the process of deep therapy which faces that dark and disowned lower or shadow self, so we can emerge into our higher self “Creator/Hero” archetype. We must face our darker bestial natures that in myth is represented by Pan and Hermes, and integrate them into our collective personality and Self. We face rather than continue to disown our shadow or lower self.
If one tries to skip the confrontation of our shadow natures first step and go straight to the second step of trying to be the “creator”, as is the fashion with many “new age” therapies, one is doomed to fail. Refer to my article The Concept of Soul in Therapy and in Life” for more information on the failure of many therapies to confront or heal the shadow self in mankind.
If one tries to bypass our essential “shadow self”, one needs to use a “forcing current” to sustain any new change via the conscious will, but typically this often means the ego also easily delude themselves by adopting a new defence that they are “healed”, and now some form of “creator”. If you mix the power of the “Creator” archetype with an unhealed Shadow self bodymind, you are creating the archetype of the “Sorcerer” or “Magical Abuser”. Many people fear facing their lower or shadow self for the pain of going into the original wounds, but it cannot be avoided to heal the defences and distortions we have built up over time, and to release the energies that is locked up in them.
The Visualization or Intention Process of Co-creation or Manifestation
As one can now see, the path to being a manifesting person or co-creator with the universe is not a simple or easily available one. Unfortunately one cannot live a coach potato existence, then one night per week put on a DVD about “The Secret” or any other of the offered and packaged solutions to manifesting that the New Agers promote and flog with great success. If they had to spell out the hard work to clearing the obstacles and blocks in the BodyMind to being able to fully utilize or give effect to the tools they offer to the purchaser, many would pass as it’s all just too hard for many.
Given we live in an age of laziness and lack of discipline, coupled with the panacea and demand for the instant “quick fix”, it is no wonder many transformation gurus have sprung up to offer inviting and simplistic solutions. The tools and processes they offer are in many cases sound, but there is normally a missing context, and that is the blocks and obstacles that naturally arise in a person wanting to step into such a spiritual discipline. Marketing pressures dictate that any negative or overhead that accrues to a product or service purchase in our society, be downplayed or put into fine print, as it gets in the way of selling the appeal and image of the product or service. Spiritual products and services are marketed no differently in my opinion.
Ultimately the work of becoming a conscious co-creator in the universe is in the realm of Creation Spirituality which empowers the person to see their interconnectedness to all things, to act in this way, and to become an active and positive co-creator with the universe. The western tradition of Creation Spirituality under such mystics as Thomas Merton, Thomas Moore, St John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart and works such as The Great Cloud of Unknowing are a solid basis on which to turn one’s mind to reshaping one’s outlook and reality on life. It is also a useful path to develop and cultivate higher states of consciousness such as compassion, love and the wisdom of seeing the truth of the interconnectedness of all things.
The eastern path that best serves this purpose is Buddhism, and in particular the Mahayana Buddhist schools of thought.
The teachings on emptiness are a direct correlation to many aspects of the quantum physics views expressed in this article, and other teachings on loving-kindness, compassion, understanding the mind, and Buddhist Cosmology give deep and powerful frameworks from which to develop Creator archetypes within oneself, and to remove bodymind internal database “old states” of information.
In both the western and eastern traditions the primary method of “rewriting consciousness” and developing the creator reality is based on meditative or contemplative practice. In quantum physics the body gives us a location in space, and the mind which creates the concept of time, gives us our point in time. The process of visualization meditation “tricks” our reality-loop by putting into the reality loop “new” information that we consciously create and feed into this process.
Science has already shown that our mind does not discriminate between what our senses read in from the external environment, and what our mental awareness consciousness creates in meditation, visualization or contemplation. Both are as real as each other to the mind. Given the mind works in images, then the most powerful of these techniques is creative visualisation. Here the meditator creates a mental picture of a reality and tries to sustain that image in a stable and concentrated way in their mind. A parallel thought process that analyses this reality and then draws a conclusion about that reality, which one then places all concentration on, is another way of “rewriting” the bodymind internal database. It has been proven over thousands of years by numerous cultures to effect deep changes in the body and the mind over time.
Recent advances in Neuroscience also support these meditative practices. Neuroscientist Alvaro Pascual-Leone proved in studies that when human beings learn a new skill, plastic changes occur in the brain by strengthening existing neuronal connections, or by creating new neuronal pathways and connections. His studies showed that those who do a short sharp burst of study or practice, such as trying to manifest, will feel some initial gain as the brain channels that skill through existing neural pathways in a plastic way.
However such gains are quickly lost and the skill does not stay embedded as the neural pathways used are not “dedicated” to that task, but are “guns for hire” in that moment that accomplish the task, and then go on to some other task.
Real change involves slow and regular committed practice that actually signals the brain to create new pathways and new connections, which will test the person as they feel inertia, resistance, and slow progress while the neural re-organisation is undergone. This is the basis to changing existing neural pathways of our BodyMind distortions from childhood and to create new realities. Sustained practice solidifies learning and “rewrites” existing neural circuits with new connections(conclusions and associations). Thoughts create the basis for material changes in our brain.
Pascual-leone showed in studies that people who did visualization practice of playing a piano or doing gym workouts, when compared to people who did the physical equivalent of those same practices, showed the same brain changes in the same regions of their brains, and developed competencies similar but not as great as those who did the physical version of those exercises. When the visualization group then did the physical exercise they only needed one-third of the time to reach the same physical aptitude as those who relied solely on physical means.
In an activity that is solely about our mental and energetic impact on the quantum field then the visualization method is the beginning and the end of this type of process. From a neuroscience point of view, imagining and act and doing an act involve the same motoric and sensory areas of the brain. Visualizing an object tricks the brain into thinking you are really seeing the object. This is the start of manifesting. Create the image or intention and let the brain change “your experience” of reality so you feel that it is real. All change must firstly come from inside us before it can objectively start to be manifested “out there”.
We have already adopted this reality of the mind to intercept the reality loop and decode electrical signals into machine instructions that mechanically create the reality “out there”.
By this there are now machines which paraplegic people use to tap into their thoughts and translate their intentions into commands for the machine to do simple activities such as driving a PC mouse, or move an object, or turn a wheelchair into a new direction or alter its speed. Manifesting our reality is already occurring via using our reality loop in a bio-mechanical way.
Imagination and action are truly integrated in the brain/mind paradigm of us humans. In a spiritual sense it is often said that the universe is in the grain of sand, or that the universe is in inside of us. What I think those mystics are saying is that the laws or mechanics that drive our own personal realities are microcosms of what drives the universe on its majestic scale. If that is the case then how imagination drives action would have its parallel in how imagination/intention can drive manifestation at the universal level. The mathematical patterns of the universe may then exist from the microcosm of us up until the macrocosm of the universe.
Neuroscience also puts forward a powerful argument as to why the practice of imagining and visualisation can effect changes within the person conducting such a practice. Neuroscience researchers such as Pascuel-Leone (Doidge:2008) note that mental imagery, visual images, and bodily actions can all activate the same motor programs in the brain. Thinking of an object, looking at the object, and actually physically interacting with the object, can cause the neuroplasticity of the brain to create new and repetitious neural pathways in the brain.
Our plastic brain is perpetually altered by every physical encounter, and every visual or imagined interaction. The practice of visualisation and intention can create good habits, and also our current unconscious habits which are not all good, are having the same effect in our brains, notes Neuroscientist Michael Merzenich (Doidge:2008).
The brain structure that regulates instinctive drivers and behaviours is the Hypothalamus(Doidge:2008). It is “plastic” like the rest of the brain and will utilise a “lose it or use it” principal on key drives in the body. Habit repetition enlarges the pathways for more of the same habitual activity and enlarges brain maps or circuits used to activate such drives(Doidge:2008).
New realities and new habits are “learned or acquired” as the brain is exposed to novel or exciting experiences, much like how visualisation and meditation stimulate the brain centres and shapes the creation of new neural circuits. These circuits then feed into the reality loop.
Neuroscientists have shown via research that an early life, emotionally charged event can have laid down into the brain of a child the potentiality for the later adult to respond with a strong addictive charge to a “seems like – feels like re-enactment of such an event. This is why we have so many conditioned mind scripts from childhood that may be mal-adaptive and no longer serving us as adults. These mind scripts which create our attitudes, beliefs, reasoning and conclusions about ourself, others, and life, are those which currently serve as information in the reality loop to create our current reality, whether good or bad.
In neuroscience any possible formative experience will shape the brain that will later shape a person’s identity via neural pathways. Creating a deepening of neural pathways and imbedding new neural pathways is best achieved by the person generating deep emotional states around the object they are envisioning. Neuroscience shows that such an emotionally charged state is responsible for creating the basis for a deepening of that person’s neural circuit and impulses towards a possible intention or reality This use of emotion in meditation and visualisation then releases GABA and opiate like endorphins which neuroscience now tells us provides the protein and chemical basis for the laying down of new neural connections. The brain always responds to what it believes is positive behaviours for this chemical reason.
Merencich(2008) and Doidge(2008) argue that our brains are being reshaped by the highly stimulated nature of society, with consequences for that person’s neural connections and their reality by becoming wired up to these sensations without a conscious intent to do so, or becoming “hooked” after voluntarily doing so. For example, a 2001 American MSNBC.com survey found that 80 per cent of viewers felt they were spending so much time on internet pornography sites as to be putting either their relationships or jobs at risk.
These viewers had “stumbled” onto adult pornography sites, become addicted, and now were compulsively doing so without being able to control their impulses.
We are all being unconsciously shaped each day by the assault on our senses within the highly visual, over stimulated nature of our “experiential” focused society. Not all these changes are good for us, not all of the trends in society are understood in terms of neural changes they create within us, and they all work with the same mechanisms that one would use to consciously create positive change in one’s life.
The opposite pole or position of using the mental processes actively to create change, is the natural state of dreaming during sleep. When we are asleep and dreaming, the only sense consciousness still operating is the mental subconscious process, where via images our dreams arise during sleep. This shows the image based reality of the mind or mental consciousnesses. Many people do not remember their dreams but they effectively are processing information found in their subconscious about themselves and their reality. Images and symbols are used to convey truths as the subconscious cannot lie.
Intriguingly the concept of space and time are believed to dissolve during sleep as these are conscious states of mental reality. Under quantum physics theoretically we should have access from this dreaming state have access to past, present and future states, experiences and information. Dreams are often the basis for premonitions about future events. There are recorded instances of a person dreaming of a past setting where they hide something, which upon waking they actually are able then able to go and uncover and describe with great accuracy. This information could not have been known from other sources.
These documented accounts seem to support this quantum physics principle.
Dreams are a rich source of material for therapists and give access to deep inner truths that the subconscious may be trying to make conscious, or the dream may state the “truth” of where someone is at in an aspect of their life. This information is the same information feeding into that person’s reality loop from an unconscious source within themselves.
It is my belief that the bodymind based therapy approach combined with a meditation approach, can achieve deep results for westerners over a shorter space of time than if only therapy or only spirituality approaches in isolation are adopted. This combination of techniques is able to assist in the reality shift from the unconscious to the conscious, and from the victim to the creator. This path will transform the negative and aggressive lower self energies into the personal energy field so that they become positive aggression energy for strengthening the energy field, and therefore strengthening the personal transmitter of one’s intention to the universe.
The therapy model was never required in eastern culture as they never suffered a bodymind split in thinking, culture, science or lifestyle. As the East has embraced the Western approach we are now in this generation starting to see the same dysfunctional outcomes and illnesses of bodymind in easterners that have plagued the west for the last 150 years. For example, depression was largely unheard of in eastern cultures until about the last 20 years.
Bodymind health calls on a break from the limited reality we all can so easily and unconsciously fall into, and worse still, fall back into if not vigilant. Spirituality, like any form of development needs to be viewed as a journey and a process, not a milestone or event or endpoint focused endeavour. Neuroscience points to this long term reality as being the basis of ingrained and sustained learning.
For you to become a conscious co-creator or a manifesting person, the required changes must actually become part of your reality and so becomes a constant, a part of who you are, not just something you do, for else you create a new split in yourself between “you” and “your spirituality”. This is another duality, another split, and to be avoided. The principles of Neuroscience and Quantum physics can be seen to underpin much of IBMP theory and application. In Buddhism the non-dual and direct acquisition of a truth is called a realization, and replaces more temporary conceptual minds about the same idea or truth.
Quantum Physics is still an evolving discipline that looks at universal truths and the implications that arise from these truths.
Man today, more than ever needs a way out of the suffering caused by the flawed belief systems, institutions, sciences and social norms that are underpinned by Cartesian thinking, and the separateness we increasingly find our lives being contracted into, with the pain that we try and hide with damaging addictions, coping behaviours from anxious and depressed minds.
The gift of the paradigm shift that Quantum physics offers, and of the synergy that IBMP bodymind psychotherapy brings to the breaking down of old ways, as well as the empowering man as his own creator, in line with this Quantum physics view, is a unique gift to mankind at this point in his/her evolution. The creation of a mind that observes reality with conscious presence, and clear intention, is a powerful force. It is but one input into the quantum collapse process that works along the lines of probability causing the “popping” of wave form into particle form reality.
It is not the sole attribute or only influencing principle, and it’s not easy to get to such a place, as the New Agers and Transformation guru conmen would say and market their claims around. It is however a far better place to live from than from that place of being unconscious or a victim in life. As the great Buddhist saint Shanti Deva states “who you are is what you have practiced before, and who you will be is what you practice now”. Ultimately it’s all up to you!!
by Richard Boyd For Energetics Institute
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